Wednesday 21 September 2016

UK Lockerbie relative would welcome appeal by Megrahi family

[What follows is the text of a report published this morning on the website of the Bromsgrove Advertiser:]

A retired doctor whose daughter died in the Lockerbie bombing says he would welcome an appeal against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s conviction.
Dr Jim Swire, formerly of Pikes Pool Lane in Bromsgrove, has spent nearly three decades campaigning for the truth after his daughter Flora, 23, was among the victims killed in the atrocity.
Megrahi was convicted of 270 counts of murder for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town on December 21, 1998, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Numerous appeals against his conviction were refused before he was controversially released for compassionate reasons after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2008. [RB: Only one appeal was refused; another was abandoned.]
He died in Tripoli, Libya, in 2012, and his son Khalid Al Megrahi has now revealed he will aim to clear his father’s name and seek "justice" with a fresh appeal in Scotland.
Dr Swire, who has always argued Megrahi was used as a scapegoat and that Libya was a side issue, said he would welcome the appeal as a "major step" to discovering the truth.
He told the Advertiser: "It would be fantastic if this appeal did turn up and was examined by the Scottish authorities. We would more than welcome that.
"It would be a major step into getting closer to the truth.
"If Megrahi junior was to come to this country that would be excellent. If the appeal does go ahead I am sure that the original conviction will be overturned."
The UK Families Flight 103 Group have previously had their own appeal into Megrahi’s conviction rejected, including a recent appeal which collapsed last November. [RB: They did not appeal. They made an application to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which dismissed the application having been instructed by the High Court that relatives of the victims of the atrocity did not have a “legitimate interest” to pursue an appeal.]
As the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said it could not proceed without input from Megrahi’s family, Dr Swire hopes the latest efforts will prove more successful.
Dr Swire, who now lives in Chipping Campden, added: "Last year we tried to persuade the Scottish authorities to action a further appeal against the Megrahi verdict.
"Unfortunately it was decided by a judge of the Scottish High Court that the relatives of the dead did not have the locus to challenge the verdict of the Zeist court in this way.
"Two dozen of us UK relatives had applied together to do so. It is difficult for some of us to accept that the relatives of the dead are deemed not to have a locus on this issue.
"The impression was given to us however that had the Scottish system been able to satisfy itself that Mr Khaled Megrahi was indeed Mr Megrahi's executor and was applying for such an appeal, then agreement for appeal might have been granted.
"Against the chaotic conditions in post-Gaddafi Libya it proved impossible to convince the Scottish authorities that Megrahi's son Khaled was indeed that executor and was genuinely wishing to start a further appeal himself.
"If Khaled Megrahi persists in his expressed wish it may prove possible for a further appeal to be granted.
"That would be a powerful way of getting more of the real story out into the open at last."

Lockerbie court rejects bid for further CIA Giaka cables

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2000. It reads as follows:]

Judges at the Lockerbie trial have ruled that a Libyan double agent working for the CIA should enter the witness box next week.

Abdul Majid Giaka, who is living under protection in the US where he defected 10 years ago, is expected to be flown to The Netherlands to begin giving evidence on Tuesday.

When the trial resumed on Thursday after a three-week adjournment, defence lawyers sought a further delay in his appearance.

But that has been overruled and Giaka is expected to give evidence over several days to the Scottish Court at Camp Zeist.

Giaka's appearance has been held up repeatedly by defence objections and legal debate.

At the heart of the objections has been the issue of the availability of notes of interviews held between Giaka and his CIA handlers in America.

These papers - or cables - have been trickling out with varying degrees of censorship.

Defence lawyers William Taylor QC confirmed on Thursday they had received 36 additional cables.

But their contents suggested there was even more key CIA evidence they wanted to see, particularly relating to possible Palestinian involvement in the bomb plot.

Scotland's Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC, who heads the prosecution team, said the latest CIA evidence provided more details on Giaka himself.

There were also details about his CIA "rewards" and information about two Palestinian terror groups which, he acknowledged, had originally been strong suspects in the Lockerbie inquiry.

Presiding judge Lord Sutherland said the request for more information could only be accepted if there was a "valid basis" for calling on the CIA to produce them, if the documents had "proper purpose" and if they would be of "material assistance" to the defence.

The court also had to consider whether failure to produce such documents would jeopardise the fairness of the trial of the two men accused of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

After consulting his two fellow judges he told the court: "On the information placed before us we are not satisfied that the criteria have been met."

At the time of the Lockerbie bombing in December 1988 Giaka was already on the CIA payroll, working for Libyan Arab Airlines at Malta airport.

His court appearance is likely to be behind screens.

Giaka is believed to have been pressing for a disguise as well. When he gave a statement to prosecution lawyers last year he met them on a moving bus while wearing a Shirley Bassey wig.

His concern not to be seen reflects constant fears that Libyan agents have been out to murder him ever since his defection to America.

[RB: The history of this disgraceful episode can be followed here.]

Tuesday 20 September 2016

New hope for justice

[This is the headline over a report that appeared in the Malta Independent on this date in 2012. It reads as follows:]
Irrespective of which side of the Lockerbie divides one stands, it is beyond argument that the case that convicted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the atrocity has more than a few gaping holes in it. And with a furtive request by Scottish prosecutors for the Maltese courts to gather more evidence in the case, the chances of those holes being filled once and for all have seen a new light of day.
This fresh push for evidence raises hopes that justice and the answers to the many pending questions could at long last be delivered to the Lockerbie attack’s victims, al-Megrahi’s family and to Malta as well, which many believe had been erroneously labelled as the bomb’s point of departure.
This week, a Maltese court began hearing evidence from several witnesses behind closed doors with even the courtroom’s peepholes blocked from prying eyes. Both the Maltese and Scottish judicial authorities have been reticent about revealing details of the new line of inquiry. All the Scottish authorities would say, according to press reports, was that they were working in conjunction with American law enforcement on yet to be disclosed lines of inquiry and that ‘this is a live investigation to bring to justice the others involved in this act of state-sponsored terrorism’.
Authorities in the post-Gaddafi Libya have said they have in their possession previously top secret documents related to the case, while the capture last month and ensuing interrogation of Gaddafi’s intelligence chief Adbullah al-Senussi, it is hoped, could also shed further light on what many still believe to be an unsolved mystery.
The new lines of inquiry also come as ‘Justice for Megrahi’ campaigners prepare to repeat their arguments for the case to be re-examined in an inquiry. They are expected to appear before the Scottish Parliament later this month.
Malta’s name has been much maligned over the years for its connection to the case in which Megrahi was convicted of placing the bomb on a plane leaving Malta International Airport, where its fateful journey to the skies over Lockerbie was said to have begun.
With his death last May, al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, the victims’ families and the world runs the risk of the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing going to the grave with him, but this new inquiry could finally clear Malta’s, and al-Megrahi’s names.
The man died protesting his innocence, despite having dropped a planned appeal against his conviction so as to clear the way for his release and return to Libya under Scottish law, which grants compassionate release for the terminally ill.
That, were it to come to pass, would also be a gross injustice to Malta, whose good name has been tarnished over these last 23 years as the point of departure of the lethal luggage that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland on 21 December 1988, killing 270 people.
Evidence presented during the trial that the bomb, it has been said time and time again, had originated at Luqa Airport was some of the weakest of the entire proceedings. Al-Megrahi, a former employee with Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta and the only person to have been found guilty of the terrorist attack, was convicted largely on the basis of evidence supplied by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci – of the now infamous Mary’s House on Tower Road, Sliema.
In his evidence, Mr Gauci identified Mr al-Megrahi as the purchaser of articles of clothing and an umbrella found in the suitcase containing the bomb – placed on an Air Malta flight and transferred to the ill-fated Pan Am flight in Frankfurt.
It is not known whether Mr Gauci himself gave evidence in the Maltese courts this week. But he certainly should: in reviewing Megrahi’s request for an appeal, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had clearly found “there is no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgement for its conclusion that the purchase of the items from Mary’s House, took place on 7 December 1988” – the very argument that had sealed the indictment against Mr al-Megrahi.
In fact, this week’s testimony is believed to have centred on matters related to travel logistics.
In recommending that the appeal be heard, the Commission had ruled that although it had been proven that al-Megrahi had been in Malta on several occasions during the month in question, it was determined through the new evidence submitted that 7 December 1988 was the only date on which he would have had the opportunity to make the purchases from Mary’s House.
The evidence that was not heard at the trial concerned the date on which Christmas lights had been illuminated in Sliema near Mary’s House which, taken together with Mr Gauci’s evidence at trial and the contents of his police statements, indicates the purchase of the incriminating items had taken place before 6 December 1988 – when no evidence had been presented at trial to the effect that al-Megrahi was in Malta before 6 December.
Yet more new evidence indicated that, four days before the identification parade at which he picked out Mr al-Megrahi, Mr Gauci had seen a photograph of al-Megrahi in a magazine article linking him to the bombing.
The Commission found Mr Gauci’s exposure to the photograph, so close to the date of the identity parade, “undermines the reliability of his identification of the applicant at that time and at the trial itself”.
Al-Megrahi’s lawyers have also claimed that Mr Gauci had given contradictory evidence, including differing dates of purchase and his account of the sale itself, and that, on one occasion, he had even identified Palestinian terrorist leader Abu Talb as the purchaser.
And then there are the other allegations made by Mr al-Megrahi’s defence team that Scottish detectives had coached Mr Gauci on at least 23 occasions, sometimes over alleged fishing trips on the Scottish lochs, and that he also received up to US$2 million in return for his testimony.
There are so many questions about the case that are still lingering or, rather, festering, that one questions whether the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing will ever be known, new lines of inquiry or not. Real justice, however, will never be served until those questions are answered once and for all and this new line of inquiry, however vague it may be at the moment, offers a new ray of hope.

Monday 19 September 2016

Lockerbie inquiry commitment dishonoured

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Tam Dalyell MP entitled The Lockerbie scapegoat that was published in The Spectator in August 2002:]

At no point did Megrahi get the chance to tell his story. When I went to see him with his solicitor, Mr Eddie McKechnie, in Barlinnie, he expressed his dismay that his previous defence team had prevailed upon him, against his every instinct, not to go into the witness box. Had he done so, he would have made the convincing case that he was not a member of the Libyan intelligence services, but a sanctions-buster, scouring Africa and South America and the Boeing Company for spare parts to allow Libyan Arab Airlines to continue operating in the face of sanctions. (...)

There should have been an inquiry. For an adversarial system of justice to arrive at the truth requires both of the adversaries to place before the court all information that was available to them. In the Lockerbie trial, the defence team of Abdelbaset al Megrahi chose not to do so. In such circumstances, the adversarial system simply does not work, and the objective becomes not to uncover the truth, but to find someone to shoulder the blame.
The British relatives of the Lockerbie victims were, as far back as 19 September 1989, offered an inquiry by the then secretary of state for transport, Cecil Parkinson — subject, he said, as they filed out of his room, to the agreement of colleagues. Somewhat sheepishly on 5 December 1989 Parkinson told the relatives that it had been decided at the highest level that there would be no inquiry.
[RB: In January 1995 Mr Dalyell had asked the Prime Minister, John Major, about the Parkinson meetings. Here is the Hansard report:]
Mr Dalyell To ask the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library his correspondence with Mr Martin Cadman, of the Lockerbie victims' relatives association, and in particular his response to Mr Cadman's letter of 18 December 1994, concerning Lord Parkinson's meetings on 19 September 1989 and 5 December 1989 with the relatives, and his answer of 15 December [1994], Official Report, column 1068.
The Prime Minister No, it is not my normal practice to do so.
Mr Dalyell To ask the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library a copy of his response to Lockerbie victim relative Rev John Mosey's letter to him of 28 December 1994.
The Prime Minister No, it is not my normal practice to do so.
Mr Dalyell To ask the Prime Minister if, following communications from Mr Martin Cadman, Pamela Dix, Rev John Mosey and Dr Jim Swire, relatives of Lockerbie victims, he has anything to add to his oral answer to the hon Member for Linlithgow of 15 December [1994], Official Report, column 1068.
The Prime Minister I understand that the meeting between Lord Parkinson and a group of British relatives of the Lockerbie victims to which I referred in my reply to the hon Gentleman on 15 December took place in December 1989, not in 1990. At that meeting, Lord Parkinson explained the Government's decision not to hold a confidential inquiry into the disaster, but said that the Lord Advocate was likely to hold a public fatal accident inquiry. I have received representations from several relatives of Lockerbie victims calling for a further inquiry. However, in view of all the investigations that have already been carried out, and the need to avoid the danger of prejudicing a criminal trial of the two accused, I do not believe such an inquiry is warranted.

Sunday 18 September 2016

The Lockerbie agreement between UK and Netherlands

[On this date in 1998 a treaty was concluded at The Hague between the governments of the United Kingdom and the Netherlands providing for a Scottish court to sit in the Netherlands to try the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing. The treaty can be read here. What follows is from an article written by me some years ago:]

The details of the arrangement -- the fine print -- are to be found in two documents: a British Order in Council (SI 1998 No 2251), made on 16 September 1998, conferring the necessary legal authority for Scottish criminal proceedings against the two Libyan suspects to be conducted in the Netherlands, and an international agreement between the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Government of the United Kingdom, concluded on 18 September 1998, making the diplomatic arrangements necessary for the "neutral venue" trial to take place. (...)

Although the British proposal was announced in late August 1998, it was not until 5 April 1999 that the two suspects actually arrived in the Netherlands for trial before the Scottish court.  Why the delay?  The answer is that some of the fine print in the two documents was capable of being interpreted, and was in fact interpreted, by the Libyan defence team (now chaired by Mr Kamel Hassan Maghur as successor to Dr Legwell) and the Libyan government as having been deliberately designed to create pitfalls to entrap them.  And since the governments of the United Kingdom and United States resolutely refused to have any direct contact with either the Libyan government or the Libyan defence lawyers -- their attitude being that the scheme had been advanced on a “take it or leave it basis” and that no negotiations would be entered into -- these concerns could be dealt with only through an intermediary, namely the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan (or, in practice, the Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and the Legal Counsel of the United Nations, Hans Corell).   This meant that issues that could have been thrashed out and settled in a matter of a few hours in a face-to-face meeting took weeks and months to resolve.  The US government, particularly the Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, took every available opportunity to accuse the Libyan government and lawyers of stalling and trying to wriggle out of the assurances they had given over the years to support a “neutral venue” trial.  My own clear impression, however, through my continuing contacts with the Libyans, was that if anyone was looking for pretexts to avoid a trial ever taking place, it was the US and UK governments.

Between 20 and 22 September 1998, Dr Jim Swire and I were again in Tripoli and were able to provide to the Libyan government and the Libyan defence team a measure of reassurance regarding some of the points that concerned them.  However, it was we who had to inform the Libyan government that the chosen location in the Netherlands for trial was Kamp van Zeist, a former NATO base to which the air force of the United States still had extant treaty rights of access.  This information was faxed to me (in Dutch, which I can read  -- with difficulty -- through my knowledge of Afrikaans) at my hotel in Tripoli by a Dutch journalist who had developed an interest in Lockerbie and who had heard it from an official at The Hague.  Dr Swire and I discussed whether we should inform our Libyan government contacts of the intended venue and came to the conclusion that we should do so.  One compelling reason for doing so was to preserve the trust that the Libyan government appeared to have developed in us.  Another was our assumption -- which may or may not have been justified -- that all our communications in Libya were monitored and that the Libyan authorities would have the information anyway as soon as they could arrange for a copy of the fax to be translated from Dutch into Arabic.

I anticipated that the news about the proposed location would cause the Libyans to renounce the "neutral venue" concept in high dudgeon and complain of the lack of good faith demonstrated by the British Government in selecting, or agreeing to, such a site.  But they did not do so.  When we raised the issue at our next meeting, the Libyan officials were remarkably relaxed about the matter.  This, more than anything else, convinced me that the Libyan government and the Libyan defence lawyers genuinely wished a trial to take place and that the concerns they had expressed regarding details of the scheme now on offer were genuine concerns, not merely a colourable pretext for evading their earlier commitment to such a solution.

On 22 September Dr Swire and I had a further meeting with the Leader of the Revolution.  On this occasion the meeting took place not in Tripoli but 400 kilometres to the east in a genuine (not reinforced concrete) Bedouin tent in a desert location inland from the town of Sirte.  We drove most of the way in the usual government black Mercedes, transferring into a 4 x 4 only for the last few off-road miles.  When at the tent nothing could be seen but sand and sky; but out of sight just beyond the nearest dunes was a lengthy convoy of communications vehicles, ambulances, canteen vehicles and troop carriers. 

Surrounded by the sand dunes and by noisily ruminating camels, Colonel Gaddafi, Dr Swire and I discussed the details of the British scheme.  He accepted my assurance that at least some of the concerns that Libyan government lawyers had raised were unwarranted and that it would be worthwhile to continue to seek clarifications and reassurances through the office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations regarding the remaining issues. 

Saturday 17 September 2016

Terrorism, Spies, Palestinians and the FBI

[This is part of the headline over an article by John R Schindler published yesterday on the US Observer website (not connected to the British Sunday newspaper The Observer). The following are excerpts:]

We have smoke on board—I can’t see anything” were the panicked, halting words transmitted from the cockpit of Swissair Flight 330 shortly before it hit the ground. Less than a minute later came the final message from the captain: “We are crashing—goodbye, everybody.” Then the four-engine airliner, a Convair Coronado, came down hard in a forest near Würenlingen, west of Zürich Airport, where the airplane had taken off less than 20 minutes before. There were no survivors.
The crash of Flight 330 on February 21, 1970, which killed 47 people—38 passengers and nine crew—remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Swiss history. Nine minutes after takeoff, shortly after the Coronado passed 14,000 feet on its climb-out from Zürich, a bomb exploded in the rear cargo hold. (...)
Swiss media this week is abuzz with revelations from a declassified American intelligence assessment which points the finger at one or more groups who may have assisted the Middle Eastern terrorists who blew up the Swissair jet. The truth about what befell Flight 330 appears to be far more complicated than anyone might have guessed.
First, the facts. The bomb which brought the Coronado to earth was placed inside a radio and had a barometric pressure trigger designed to explode at a fixed altitude. On the very same day that Flight 330 was destroyed, an identical bomb detonated in the cargo hold of an Austrian Airlines Caravelle jetliner shortly after takeoff from Frankfurt, West Germany, bound for Vienna. The lucky pilots managed to land their aircraft safely back in Frankfurt, with a hole blown through the fuselage. The Caravelle’s 33 passengers and five crew survived unscathed.
It was immediately apparent that the same terrorist cell was likely behind both bombings. Palestinian terrorism was new on the scene in 1970, having captured the world’s attention with a wave of airplane hijackings and bombings across Europe and the Middle East. (...)
Suspicion soon fell on the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a radical terrorist group that was founded in 1968 by Ahmed Jibril, under Syrian patronage. Practically an appendage of Syrian intelligence, PFLP-GC had cells operating in several countries in the Middle East and Europe and specialized in attacks on airliners. That Swissair Flight 330 was bound for Tel Aviv made it a logical target for Jibril’s killers.
Before long, investigators in Switzerland and West Germany determined that the bombs which exploded on February 21 had been assembled by a PFLP-GC cell operating in the Frankfurt area. They were disguised as mail packages being sent to an address in Israel—a fake address, as it turned out. Police were looking for four Palestinians known to be affiliated with the PFLP-GC: two Jordanians, Sufian Radi Kaddoumi and Badawi Mousa Jawher, plus their helpers Yaser Qasem and Issa Abdallah Abu-Toboul. The men had purchased several altimeters in Frankfurt and were the prime suspects in the bombings.
They had fled to the Middle East, however, out of the reach of European police. Swiss authorities never seemed especially motivated to find them either, leading to longstanding whispers of a conspiracy, perhaps even a back-room deal between Swiss officials and the PFLP-GC to ignore the wanted men in exchange for no more Palestinian terrorism against Switzerland.
That Switzerland may have something to hide is illustrated by the suspicious case of Marwan Khreesat, a top PFLP-GC bomb-maker whom investigators early on believed played a key role in the downing of Flight 330, but strangely he was never officially considered a suspect. Only two decades later, when Khreesat was a suspect in the bombing of Pam Am Flight 103, which was blown apart over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people, did Swiss authorities seem to acknowledge that Khreesat had a hand in the downing of Flight 330. Even then, nothing was done.
Therefore, significant unanswered questions linger in the Swissair case—including who was really behind the bomb plot. The investigation has now been blown wide-open by the sensational revelations contained in an intelligence assessment produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation way back in June 1970.
Titled The Fedayeen Terrorist—A Profile, the short document, just seven pages of text, was classified Secret and intended for internal FBI use only. (...)
… according to the FBI, the prime movers of the attacks were two unidentified West Germans, who contacted the PFLP-GC at their headquarters in Amman, Jordan, in September or October 1969. They showed up unannounced, claimed to be sympathetic to the Fedayeen cause, and wanted to help. As the FBI study explains:
One of them was an electrical engineer and PFLP-GC sought his advice on electrical problems connected with explosives, which he readily provided. They then returned to West Germany, and PFLP-GC maintained contact.
The two mystery men played a pivotal role in the downing of Flight 330, as the FBI knew:
On February 10, 1970, the West Germans were contacted in Frankfurt by [Kaddoumi] and [Jawher], two PFLP-GC members who had flown to West Germany on a terrorist mission. A discussion was held as to what device should be used to blow up a plane. One of the West Germans suggested an altimeter rigged to an explosive and set to give an electrical charge at 3,000 meters. All agreed that this was a satisfactory technique. The altimeters were then purchased in Frankfurt and the West Germans helped the terrorists wire them to the explosives which were then placed in a hollowed-out used radio set and packaged for mailing to Israel.
In other words, two unidentified West Germans reached out to the PFLP-GC, offered their help with terrorism, then provided their expertise on how to blow up civilian airliners in midflight. The mystery deepens, since the FBI notes that, after the downing of Flight 330, the West Germans disappeared. Even the PFLP-GC could not locate them, despite several attempts.
The Palestinians suspected they had been played by the “West Germans” too. According to the FBI, one of the PFLP-GC operatives (presumably Kaddoumi) detected an Israeli hand behind the plot. From the safety of Amman, after his escape from Europe, he stated that their anonymous helpers were actually Israeli agents who had reached out to them to keep the bombs off El Al jetliners while tarring the Palestinian cause with mass murder.
Seeing an Israeli false flag behind the downing of Flight 330 sounds fanciful, even allowing that terrorists are paranoid by their nature—especially Arab ones, who see Mossad lurking in every dark corner. That said, any reinvestigation of the case would want to examine any possible foreign intelligence ties to this mass killing, even if only to rule them out.
Is a serious relook at the Flight 330 massacre possible, so many decades later? Based on Swiss reports, Sufian Kaddoumi died in Jordan several years ago, while Badawi Jawher may not be in Jordan at all. All traces of him have gone cold. Marwan Khreesat lives in Jordan too. Just two years ago he was boasting on Facebook about his bomb-making exploits for the PFLP-GC back in the 1970s, while bizarrely posting photos of the Lockerbie disaster.
The best source of information for anybody wanting to know what really happened to Flight 330 may be American intelligence files. The FBI’s assessment was clearly derived from solid spy information on the Swissair case (to the trained eye, it looks like some of it comes from signals intelligence from the National Security Agency, which the FBI masked to protect sources and methods). Perhaps when those classified reports are eventually released to the public the full story of how and why 47 innocent people died will be known.

Only a child would believe such a story

[What follows is the text of a report published in The Scotsman on this date in 2008:]

Two leading authorities on the Lockerbie trial have called for a new public inquiry to reinvestigate the atrocity, which killed 270 people nearly 20 years ago.

Dr Hans Koechler, the United Nations observer at the trial, has been strongly critical of the original proceedings and conviction of Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who is serving life for the killings.

Professor Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots Law at Edinburgh University and an adviser on setting up the trial in the Netherlands, has also spoken out against the hearing.

Both now expect Megrahi, who is seeking to appeal his sentence, to be sent home to Libya and fear the circumstances of the tragedy and who is responsible could remain a mystery.

This week they will urge the Scottish legal system to assert its independence and re-examine the case, and were in Skye yesterday, on the invitation of campaigners.

Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie on 21 December, 1988, killing all 243 passengers, 16 crew and 11 people on the ground. After a three-year investigation by Dumfries and Galloway Police and the FBI, indictments for murder were issued for Megrahi and al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah.

They were tried at a Scottish court convened at Kamp Zeist in the Netherlands. Fhimah was acquitted but Megrahi was sentenced to 27 years in jail.

Last year the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said Megrahi had grounds for an appeal, including a possible miscarriage of justice because the Crown had not disclosed a document which an unidentified country had provided to the UK government in 1996.

Dr Koechler said the Kamp Zeist trial was not independent or impartial, and that the presence of FBI agents in the court added to the "appearance of outside influence". He also said there is evidence "rewards" involving millions of dollars were paid to prosecution witnesses.

He added: "Irrespective of the outcome of the current appeal, there should be a reinvestigation of the incident by the Scottish authorities." This, he said, should be at least another fatal accident inquiry, but a wider-ranging public inquiry would be more appropriate.

"It is extremely frustrating that with regard to such an incident just one person has been presented as the culprit and no further questions asked. Only a child would believe such a story."

Prof Black said Megrahi could go home if his appeal succeeds or if a fair appeal cannot be achieved. He said he is not convinced there is the political will to have the case reinvestigated, but added: "One of the things we have been trying to do is to insert some backbone into those politicians who have the power to make it happen."

Vocal and influential critic of 'flawed' case
Dr Hans Koechler's forensic dismantling of the legal procedure of the Lockerbie trial has led to him becoming a leading critic of the case.

The president of the Vienna-based International Progress Organisation was the only international observer to submit comprehensive reports on the trial and appeal proceedings to the Secretary General of the United Nations. These in turn were forwarded to the Registrar of the Scottish Court in the Netherlands.

Their publication triggered international debate, including in the House of Commons.

He said the initial trial verdict which acquitted one of the accused was "inconsistent" and "arbitrary". He also said the rejection of Megrahi's initial appeal was a "spectacular miscarriage of justice".

Friday 16 September 2016

Legal warrant for Lockerbie trial

[On this date in 1998 the legal instrument that authorised the High Court of Justiciary to sit in the Netherlands to try the Lockerbie case, and prescribed the procedure to be followed by the court, was made by the Privy Council. The High Court of Justiciary (Proceedings in the Netherlands) (United Nations) Order 1998, SI 1998 No 2251 can be read here. Article 5 provides:]

… the Lord Justice Clerk shall appoint three Lords Commissioners of Justiciary to constitute a court for the purposes of any trial to be held in the course of proceedings to be conducted by virtue of this Order, and shall nominate one of them to preside.

   (2) The determination of any question of law arising in any such trial shall be according to the votes of the majority of the members of the court, including the presiding judge.

   (3) The court shall conduct any such trial without a jury.

  (4) For the purposes of any such trial, the court shall have all the powers, authorities and jurisdiction which it would have had if it had been sitting with a jury in Scotland, including power to determine any question and to make any finding which would, apart from this article, be required to be determined or made by a jury, and references in any enactment or other rule of law to a jury or the verdict or finding of a jury shall be construed accordingly.

  (5) At the conclusion of any such trial, the court shall retire to consider its verdict, which shall be determined by a majority and delivered in open court by the presiding judge.

   (6) In the event of a verdict of guilty -

(a) the presiding judge shall pass sentence; and

(b) without prejudice to its power apart from this paragraph to give a judgment, the court shall, at the time of conviction or as soon as practicable thereafter, give a judgment in writing stating the reasons for the conviction.

[RB: The Order was made by “The Queen's Most Excellent Majesty in Council … At the Court at Heathrow”. Since, as Dr Morag Kerr has conclusively demonstrated, Heathrow is where the bomb was loaded, this is strikingly appropriate.]