Megrahi: You are my Jury

I have just come across the following passage about the Lockerbie trial in the latest edition Geoffrey Robertson QC’s book Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice (pages 665-6). My comments follow.

The importance of the trial was that it established, to the satisfaction of three experienced Scots judges (and five more on appeal) that the bomb was planted by an agent of Libya, not by terrorist groups supported by Iran or Syria. The open and adversarial nature of the proceedings also served the interests of truth – in particular by subjecting the CIA’s star witness to a cross-examination which comprehensively destroyed his credibility, and through painstaking forensic science, which found tell-tale clues in tiny fragments which fell from 31,000 feet (the ‘made in Malta’ label from the Babygro jumpsuit covering the suitcase bomb). The reasoned verdict proved important, not least because it has informed subsequent debate over the correctness of Al-Megrahi’s conviction.

Lockerbie stands as an important acknowledgement in state practice of the overriding importance of bringing terrorists to justice. It also provides a good example of why international criminal courts should abolish the so-called ‘ right of silence’. Al-Megrahi was too craven to enter the witness box to face cross-examination, later claiming that his lawyers advised him to remain silent. This may well have been because they feared his guilt would have been exposed had he done so, but as a matter of morality, whenever a court holds that the prosecution has established a prima facie case of mass murder against the defendant, the relatives of victims and the public should be entitled to an explanation. If he refuses to take the opportunity to testify, his refusal should be a factor in the assessment of whether he is guilty. Al-Megrahi’s supporters who claim that ‘he always asserted his innocence’ overlook the fact that he failed to assert it at the appropriate time, namely in the witness box at his trial. The ‘right to silence’ is a valuable protection to suspects against being forced to incriminate themselves in police stations after their arrest but is inappropriate at the trial, by which time they will have had years of legal advice to prepare themselves for cross-examinations. The so-called ‘right’ has been abolished in England, where it originated, but not in any international court.

Before discussing Robertson’s view of the Megrahi’s right to silence, it’s worth noting some of the serious omissions from his account.

1. For a trial to operate openly and in the interests of truth, all relevant evidence should be disclosed to the defence. As Robertson well knows, it was not. The SCCRC report and my book (which Roberston confirmed, during a debate on BBC 5 Live on 21 May last year, that he had read) revealed that numerous items of vital documentary evidence had been withheld from the defence. Indeed, four of the SCCRC’s six grounds of referral concerned such non-disclosure.

2. The five appeal court judges did not conclude that the bomb was planted by an agent of Libya and not by terrorist groups supported by Iran or Syria. Rather, they simply rejected the defence’s submissions. Moreover, in doing so the judges made clear in paragraph 369 of their judgment that they had ‘not had to consider whether the verdict of guilty was one which no reasonable trial court, properly directing itself, could have returned in the light of that evidence.’

3. Defence counsel were only able to destroy the credibility of the CIA’s star witness, Majid Giaka, because they pushed for the disclosure of redacted sections of CIA cables about Giaka. The Lord Advocate had earlier told the court, entirely wrongly, that those sections contained nothing that bore upon Giaka’s credibility.

4. As Robertson should also know, the ‘painstaking forensic science’ examined at trial did not include the results of crucial metallurgy tests, which proved that the fragment of circuit board, which, according to the Crown, originated from one of a batch of Mebo timers supplied to Libya, was different to boards used in those timers.

5. The ‘reasoned verdict’ was condemned as ‘incomprehensible’ by UN trial observer Professor Hans Kochler, and has been criticized by numerous other senior international jurists and Scottish legal experts. Moreover, the SCCRC concluded that it was ‘at least arguably, one which no reasonable court, properly directed, could have returned.’ The judges were satisfied that Megrahi bought the clothes that ended up in the bomb suitcase on 7 December, his only window of opportunity, however, the SCCRC said: ‘The Commission does not consider there to be any reasonable basis for the trial court’s conclusion that the purchase took place on 7 December 1988 and therefore for the inference it drew that the applicant was the purchaser of the items from Mary’s House’. This was almost as good as saying that it considered, not only the judgment to be unreasonable, but also the guilty verdict itself.

As for the right to silence, Megrahi was not ‘too craven’ to give evidence, in fact he was quite prepared to. It is undisputed fact – not merely a claim by Megrahi – that his lawyers advised him against it. As Robertson knows, one of the main reasons for this advice was that, a few days after being charged with the bombing, Megrahi had lied in an interview with American TV channel ABC, which he had been falsely assured would not touch upon the prosecution case. He did so, he said, because he feared that, if he confirmed certain aspects of the case, such as his presence in Malta under a false passport, it might provide a pretext for the US government to attack Libya, something it had done five years earlier in response to a much smaller terrorist attack (see pages 11-12 of Megrahi: You are my Jury). It would be a difficult point for any defendant to argue against a ferocious Crown counsel. Megrahi’s difficulty would have been all the greater because he would have to testify in his second language, or via a translator.

The SCCRC gave detailed consideration to Megrahi’s untested defence and numerous other matters that might be considered unfavourable to him. It concluded that, cumulatively, they did not provide a basis for refusing his application for referral.

The fact that Robertson clearly does not believe Megrahi’s story, I suspect, says more about how far removed he is from other people’s realities than it does about Megrahi’s guilt or innocence (he has never, as far as I’m aware, lived under the threat of air strikes). More importantly, if he doesn’t believe the story, then why would equally unworldly judges? The right to silence is, inter alia, a safeguard against such failures of understanding. It exists – or, in England, existed – because the burden of proof is, properly, with the Crown and no defendant need contribute to their own prosecution. That a human rights advocate of Robertson’s stature should advocate its abolition, is as bewildering as it is alarming.

In an endnote, Robertson writes:

Al-Megrahi’s latest self-serving defence is set our in John Ashton, Megrahi You Are My Jury (Birlinn, 2012). But if the bomb was loaded in Malta, the circumstantial case against him remains, without a credible answer.

Isn’t a defence supposed to be self-serving, Geoffrey? Setting this aside, he ignores the fact that, at Megrahi’s insistence, the book set out the case for the prosecution as well as the defence, including evidence not heard at trial. Furthermore, Megrahi requested that I publish the SCCRC report on his case, even though it contained facts and opinions that were unfavourable to him.

The Malta point is utter nonsense. As Robertson should know, even if the bomb was loaded at Malta’s Luqa airport (a possibility that’s all but ruled out by documentary evidence from the airport) the circumstantial case against Megrahi is exceptionally weak. The two main strands of that case are 1) that on 7 December 1988 he bought the clothes at Tony Gauci’s shop, which were subsequently packed in the bomb suitcase; and 2) that a fragment of circuit board recovered from one of the garments was part of a bomb timer that had been supplied to Libya by Swiss company Mebo, whose Zurich offices were shared by a company in which Megrahi was a partner. Gauci consistently described the clothes purchaser as around 50, 6ft tall, heavily built and dark skinned. Megrahi was considerably younger, smaller and lighter skinned. Furthermore, as the SCCRC recognised, meteorological and other evidence ruled out 7 December as the purchase date. Forensic evidence, which, despite being available since the early 1990s, was not disclosed to the trial court, proves that the circuit board fragment could not have originated from a Libyan timer.

For what it’s worth, in my view Robertson has put so much energy into the promotion of international justice that he is blind to the possibility that it can so spectacularly miscarry.  More generally, he displays the depressing tendency of the commentariat to put opinions before the evidence. It’s a trait that’s all the more lamentable in a senior jurist.

The latest edition of Private Eye carries the following article:

David Cameron and Scottish police and prosecutors hoping to unearth material relating to the 1988 Lockerbie bombing have all left Tripoli empty-handed. Libyan justice minister Salah al-Marghani told the Telegraph last week: “The matter was settled with the Gaddafi regime. I am trying to work on the current situation rather than dig into the past.”

While the Scottish Authorities are, by contrast, trying to put an upbeat spin on last month’s meetings with Libyan ministers and officials, saying they hoped for further progress, the apparent break should give Dumfries and Galloway detectives time to follow up more tangible leads. It is more than a year since new forensic evidence came to light which in effect destroyed not only the prosecution case against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, but also any positive links to Libya itself. Police have still not been to see the two UK scientists whose findings come from a re-examination of crash debris. Dr Jim Swire, who has campaigned tirelessly find out exactly how his daughter, Flora, came to die in the bombing, and who was responsible, is now preparing a case for a full independent inquiry, calling the police, Crown and government failure to properly investigate the new evidence a ‘dereliction of duty’.

Eye readers may remember two experts, Dr Chris McArdle and Dr Jess Cawley, showed that the most important forensic evidence recovered from the debris of Pan Am 103 – a fragment of timing device circuit board said to match those known to have been supplied to Libya – was in fact fundamentally different. The plating metal on the two boards was different. On the debris fragment, it was pure tin and on the boards used in the Libyan timers, it was a tin/lead mix.

The new evidence would have formed a major part of Megrahi’s appeal, had he not – because of his advanced cancer -    abandoned it in order to return to Libya to die with his family. Instead it was detailed in the book, ‘Megrahi: You are my Jury’, by John Ashton, a researcher, writer and one of the Libyan’s defence team. But if the blast fragment was no match for Libyan timers, where or who did it come from?

Cameron will no doubt continue to avoid calls for an inquiry by maintaining that Scottish police are “looking further into the issues around the Lockerbie bomb”, and protracted wranglings with the Libyans buys more time. It is, of course, always possible that detectives could unearth some material in Libya that provides a link to Gaddafi and the sophisticated plot to blow up a passenger aircraft – he was, after all, no stranger to state-sponsored terrorism.

Ever since the dictator’s overthrow, various Libyan defectors and politicians, including Mustafa Abdel Jalil, Gaddafi’s former justice minister who later headed of Libya’s National Transitional Council, have promised “proof” of Gaddafi’s involvement. And yet it has still not been forthcoming. 

Another was Moussa Koussa, Gaddafi’s intelligence chief at the time of Lockerbie and the man who London and Washington always claimed was behind the atrocity. After his defection he was interviewed in London by Scottish police. But curiously for a man, once thought to be a mass murderer, his assets were unfrozen and he was allowed to leave the country.  Newspaper reports suggested that Koussa had in fact long been a useful MI6 asset, which if true, just raises more questions about the government’s approach to Lockerbie.

The only Lockerbie-related document confirmed to have come out of Tripoli since the revolution is a private letter from Megrahi himself, written while he was in jail, to Libya’s then intelligence chief and Gaddafi’s right hand man, Abdullah al-Senussi.  It was found by Wall Street Journal staff among other “apparently untouched” papers in Senussi’s ransacked office. In it Megrahi maintains his innocence, claiming fraudulent information had been passed to investigators by “Libyan collaborators” and saying British and American investigators ignored “foul play” and irregularity.  He gives details of his lawyers’ efforts to prove his innocence.

That Megrahi should seek to convince of his innocence, the very hit man who should have known all about the bombing and who carried it out, (if the Crown’s case is correct) again raises fundamental questions about the conviction.

As Jim Swire says in the latest of a series of letters to David Cameron, the Crown Office and the Scottish government, last month:  “There is thus now no remaining credible link between the take off of the Lockerbie flight from Heathrow airport with the bomb on board, and the island of Malta, or the hand of Megrahi. It is now over 24 years since my daughter Flora was murdered at Lockerbie. As her father I have a right to know who murdered her and why her life was not protected. Such lethargy as this is intolerable”.

On this, the 24^th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, comes a remarkable story, courtesy of the BBC. It carries the encouraging headline Lockerbie bombing: Libyan government set to release files. The first sentence reads: ‘The new Libyan government in Tripoli is prepared to open all files relating to the Lockerbie bombing, the country’s ambassador to the UK has confirmed.’ There’s nothing especially new here: the Libyan government, and the National Transitional Council before it, have always made the right noises about cooperating with the Scottish police investigation. It’s the next sentence that is so surprising: ‘However, Mahmud Nacua said it would be at least another year before Libya was in a position to release whatever information it holds.’ The article explains: ‘Mr Nacua told the BBC no formal agreement had yet been reached, but that Libya would open the files it holds on the case. He said that would only come when his government had fully established security and stability – a process he believes will take at least a year.’

Of course, the new government has to establish security and stability and, of course, it has other pressing priorities, but in a year’s time it will be almost two and a half years since the old regime fell. Locating and handing over whatever files exist should be a relatively quick and straightforward matter, which should not interfere with the nation building process.

Why, then, is the government stalling? In my view, the most likely explanation is that it has no evidence that the old regime was behind the bombing. If ever there was evidence, it would probably have been shredded a long time ago. I believe it’s rather more likely that there never was such evidence. While I doubt anyone in the new government will be prepared to say this publicly, there are plenty of senior officials who are aware that the case against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was a sham (and, of course, as things stand, the case against Abdelbaset is the case against the Gadafy regime).

The new government is potentially in a very awkward position, as during the 2011 revolution the NTC played the Lockerbie card in the propaganda war against Gadafy. It would be very difficult for it to now admit that it had no evidence of the old regime’s involvement. And it would be especially embarrassing for former NTC chair Mustafa Abdel Jalil, who claimed to have proof that the dictator ordered the bombing. (It’s worth remembering that when pressed on BBC Newsnight about the evidence, the best he could come up with was that Gadafy’s government had paid Abdelbaset’s legal bills, a fact that was both widely known and, more importantly, completely non-incriminating. I have written more about Jalil’s and other Gadafy regime defectors’ claims here.)

That said, I have a good deal of sympathy with the Libyan government, which is caught in the middle of a mess that, for the most part, is not of its own making. I cannot say the same of the Scottish government, which continues to dig an ever-deeper hole for itself. The latest shovel load comes in a letter I received yesterday from the criminal law and licensing division of the government’s justice directorate, in response to a freedom of information request.

I made the request to get to the bottom of why the government has repeatedly gone out of its way to say that it does not doubt the safety of Abdelbaset’s conviction, even after the publication of the SCCRC’s statement of reasons, which, lest we forget, found six possible grounds for a miscarriage of justice. In response to my original request, the government confirmed that the justice secretary, Kenny McAskill, had read the statement of reasons and that Alex Salmond was provided with a briefing on its contents. You can read the response and the appended documents here. It contained the following statement:

It might be helpful for me to clarify Scottish Ministers’ position concerning the safety of Mr Al-Megrahi’s conviction. Scottish Ministers have stated repeatedly their view that as Mr Al-Megrahi was conyicted in a court of law, that a court remains the only appropriate forum for considering the evidence and determining his guilt or innocence. Following consideration of all relevant matters, only a court has the power to either uphold or overturn Mr Al-Megrahi’s conviction. It remains open for relatives of Mr Al-Megrahi or, potentially, relatives of the Lockerbie bombing victims, to ask the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer the case to the court for a further appeal and Ministers have made clear they would be comfortable if this were to happen.

This prompted me to write back as follows:

Your letter points out that the government has stated that a court remains the only appropriate forum for considering the evidence and determining Mr Megrahi’s guilt or innocence. While this is true, it is also the case that the government has repeatedly stated that it does not doubt the safety of Mr Megrahi’s conviction. It is very unusual for a government to take a partisan stance on a conviction that has been referred to the appeal court. This issue was at the heart of my information request, yet is not addressed in your letter.

I would therefore like to know:

1) Why did the government consider it necessary to express the view that it did not doubt the safety of Mr Megrahi’s conviction, rather than simply stating that it was for the courts to determine the safety of the conviction?

2) Why did it consider it necessary to publicly hold to that view after the publication of the statement of reasons and the reading of the statement by Mr MacAskill?

3) Why does Mr MacAskill not doubt the safety of the conviction when the SCCRC found six grounds to doubt its safety?

In yesterday’s letter, which you can read here, the government could offer only the following shameful dissembling response:

As you will be aware, it is not a role of the Scottish Government to investigate allegations that there has been a miscarriage of justice. Any person who alleges that they have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice may apply to the SCCRC, which was established in 1999 to review cases where it is alleged that a miscarriage of justice has occurred, either in respect of a conviction or sentence. Where, following investigation, the SCCRC concludes that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred and that it is in the interests of justice to do so, it will refer the case to the High Court for determination. Mr Al-Megrahi, as you know, chose to abandon his appeal before it was determined by the High Court.

In general terms, in the absence of any court decision quashing a person’s conviction, it would not be appropriate for the Scottish Government to call into question the safety of any conviction which is why it was appropriate for the Scottish Government to state that it did not doubt Mr Al-Megrahi’s conviction as the conviction was at the time of such statements (and indeed continues to be) a matter of court record. We have also made clear that a court remains the only appropriate forum for determining Mr Al-Megrahi’s guilt or innocence and explained the process by which a further appeal could be heard by the court in this case.

This begs the question, if it would be inappropriate for the government to call into question the safety of the conviction, why does it consider it appropriate to state that it does not doubt the safety of the conviction? There is a world of difference between it saying that Abdelbaset’s conviction was a matter of court record, and it saying that it does not doubt the safety of the conviction. The former is a neutral statement of fact, whereas the latter is a highly contentious opinion, which, in my view, represents political interference in the appeal process (although Abdelbaset abandoned his appeal, as the government well knows, his family might launch a fresh application to the SCCRC).

Why did the Scottish government decide to nail its colours to the prosecution mast? In my view it’s because it daren’t admit that Scotland’s foremost independent institution, its criminal justice system (the prosecution arm of which is headed by McAskill’s cabinet colleague, the Lord Advocate), made a hash of the UK’s biggest ever murder case.

I shall be speaking at the Wigtown Book Festival this Saturday, October 6th, at 12 noon in the Baillie Gifford Marque. Tickets are £8.

I was interviewed this morning on BBC Good Morning Scotland about the yesterday’s story in the Times of Malta. The interview is available on BBC iPlayer for the next seven days here (UK only). It starts at around 2:09:00.

Today’s Scottish edition of the Times contains the following comment piece by Magnus Linklater, with whom I had an exchange of views at the Edinburgh Book Festival event on Saturday. My response to the paper’s letters editor is further below.

A remarkable thing happened at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Saturday. Eight senior Scottish judges were accused of presiding over a major miscarriage of justice in the Lockerbie affair — and a packed Scottish audience applauded.

That trust in the judiciary should have descended to this level says much about the way that the long saga of this terrorist atrocity has evolved. A determined campaign to absolve the convicted bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, of guilt, has succeeded to the extent that not only does it appear to have swayed public opinion in his favour, it has also undermined confidence in the most important legal process Scotland has been involved in since the Second World War.

The man who lodged the accusation was Hans Köchler, the UN observer at the Lockerbie trial. He believes that the judges, both at the original trial, and the appeal, were prepared to overlook flawed evidence to ensure a conviction. His fellow panel members, Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the bombing, and the writer John Ashton, who has ghosted al-Megrahi’s own account of the affair, agreed.

They believe not only that the evidence was deliberately manipulated at the trial, but that, from the outset, there was a conspiracy to point the finger at Libya and divert attention from the real instigator, Iran.

Yet that contention has never been challenged in any detail. Because the trial judges and the Crown Office, Scotland’s prosecution service, are bound by convention to remain silent, the counter-argument has gone by default so that we have only heard one side of the case. The opportunity of a second appeal, which might have tested the allegations, was abandoned by al-Megrahi himself when he was released on compassionate grounds and returned to Libya.

But the case mounted by the pro-Megrahi campaigners is every bit as flawed as the one it seeks to dismantle. To demonstrate that Libya was framed, they have to prove that there was a calculated decision to do so. That decision would have had to lead to the planting or suppression of forensic evidence, the control of witnesses by intelligence services, the approval of senior politicians, the complicity of police officers, a prosecution team prepared to bend every rule to secure a conviction, and a set of senior Scottish judges willing to go along with that.

This last contention is perhaps the most controversial. As Brian McConnachie, a senior Scottish QC, puts it: “The idea that eight Scottish judges took part in a deliberate manipulation of evidence for political reasons is simply preposterous.” But for the conspiracy theorists, who have excluded reason and logic, the preposterous is all that remains.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Magnus Linklater’s article in today’s Scottish edition of the Times, ‘Has Scotland really swallowed this crazy conspiracy?’, misrepresents my position on the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. It claims that I, and certain others who believe that Mr Megrahi was wrongly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, have alleged a grand conspiracy to frame him and Libya, in which the police, the Crown Office, witnesses, judges, senior politicians and the intelligence services were all complicit. As I pointed out to Mr Linklater at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Saturday, had he read my book, Megrahi: You are my Jury, carefully, he would know that I have done no such thing.

Like the majority of Mr Linklater’s fellow audience members on Saturday, I have not swallowed a crazy conspiracy theory about Mr Megrahi’s conviction. Rather I have noted, among other things, that the Crown failed to disclose to Mr Megrahi’s defence team at least seven key items of exculpatory evidence; that two of the most important Crown witnesses were secretly paid millions of dollars by the US Government; and that the trial court’s judgment was, according to no less an authority than the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, unreasonable. All these facts Mr Linklater’s article omits to mention.

If Megrahi was framed – a big ‘if’, but not inconceivable given their extraordinary antics in the 1980s – it would almost certainly have been done by one of the US intelligence services, without the knowledge of the other protagonists listed by Mr Linklater. It is a matter of public record that during the Eighties the US National Security Council and CIA waged a massive covert campaign against Libya, which involved, among other things, spreading disinformation. During the same decade the same organisations made secret deals with the original prime suspect in the bombing, Iran. One of the Crown’s most important witnesses was revealed to be a CIA informant and prior to Lockerbie the CIA had at least one of the Swiss timing devices that the Libyans were alleged to have used to detonate the bomb. As my book revealed, new forensic evidence proves that the famous fragment of circuit board found within the bomb debris could not have been from one of the timers that, according to the undisputed Crown case, had been supplied to Libya. We don’t know the origin of the fragment, but it is by no means crazy to suggest that it was a plant. According to the head of the FBI’s Lockerbie investigation, Richard Marquise, his opposite number in the Swiss police believed this to be the case.  Indeed, Marquise admitted that this possibility also crossed his mind.

Whatever the truth about the fragment, in my view Mr Megrahi was convicted, not because of a grand conspiracy, but, primarily, because the police, Crown and judges, while no doubt all acting in good faith, failed to pursue the truth objectively. It’s a flaw to which newspaper columnists are equally vulnerable.

Yours sincerely …

The following article appears on the front of today’s Scottish Sunday Express under the ludicrously overblown headline ‘Lockerbie: the truth at last‘. It reports on the latest claims of the leaders of Libya’s National Transitional Council and interim head of state Mustafa Abdul Jalil. As so often with the Sunday Express, the article recycles claims that are already in the public domain (the interview and was first reported last month) and when analysed in detail, is really thin stuff. My comments are in normal typeface.

THE head of the Libyan government has revealed his country’s true role in the Lockerbie bomber’s release in a sensational television interview.  Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who has been running the war-torn North African state since the downfall of Colonel Gaddafi last year, broke his silence to expose the contents of secret government files in Tripoli.

He revealed that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi – the only man convicted of Britain’s worst ever terror atrocity – and his family were paid up to £15million in monthly installments to “buy his silence”. 

Jalil also disclosed that Megrahi was ordered to drop his appeal by Gaddafi, who was terrified he would “release critical and confidential information” and have his conviction overturned.

In addition, Jalil said the new regime would continue to work with Scottish and American investigators to “reopen past files that can deliver the truth”.

And, in a further astonishing claim, he suggested that Gaddafi deliberately blew up a Libyan passenger jet in 1992 in a ruthless tit-for-tat bid to frame the West.

Speaking to Dubai-based TV station Al Arabiya, Jalil – the head of the ruling National Transitional Council – said Megrahi was paid 150,000 Euros per month “to keep him quiet”.

If the payments ran from when he was handed over to Scottish police, in April 1999, to his release in August 2009, they would total 18.6million Euros – or £14.6million at today’s exchange rates. 

The fact that Abdelbaset’s family were paid by the government is no secret and hardly surprising. He was the main breadwinner of a family of five who, by the time he gave himself up for trial in 1999, had endured seven and a half years very difficult years. In agreeing to stand trial, Abdelbaset and Lamin Fhimah helped free the country from years of crippling sanctions. In that context, the figures cited are paltry, especially when compared to the billions spent by the Libyan government to settle the case. There is absolutely no evidence that the payments were to keep Abdelbaset quiet. If that was Gadafy’s aim, then surely Fhimah would also have been paid (in a newspaper interview last year he claimed that he had had to sell his farm because the government had left him financially high and dry). Alternatively, Gadafy could have had them both killed well before the trial was mooted.

In the interview, Jalil – who was also Gaddafi’s Justice Minister from 2007 to 2011 – said he had been “advised to keep away from cases linked to external affairs, and this includes the Lockerbie case”.

This is hardly surprising. As justice minister, he had responsibility for the domestic justice system, rather than international relations. Furthermore, Abdelbaset’s return to Libya in August 2009 effectively closed the case. It’s worth noting that Jalil’s successor as justice minister, Mohamed al-Alagi, who is now head of Libya’s human rights commission, has publicly stated that Abdelbaset is innocent.

He added: “However, I witnessed two things. First, the insistence of both Saif [al-Islam Gaddafi, the dictator's son] and his father that I get back [Megrahi] by whatever means necessary…

“Meanwhile, the sentence was not completed and the appeal was getting closer.

“But the insistence of the country for Abdelbaset to waive his appeal and his fast return indicates the country was in a crisis, considering that the late Abdelbaset wanted to release critical and confidential information about Lockerbie.”

It’s not clear here whether the country referred to is Libya or Scotland. The only critical and confidential information that Abdelbaset sought the release of was held by the Crown Office and the UK authorities.

Megrahi’s decision to drop his appeal, just days before his release from prison, has always been shrouded in mystery – especially because he continued to protest his innocence right up until his death in May.

Jalil added: “The Libyans wanted him back as soon as possible, in return for the waiver of the appeal. If the appeal had persisted maybe some critical evidence that proved his innocence would have surfaced.

“And perhaps evidence that convicted him would have resurfaced as well. So, they preferred that he returns to Libya at this point to ensure that he does not reveal confidential information.”

Again, it’s unclear exactly what Jalil means (perhaps owing to poor translation). The Libyan government had no power to make abandonment of the appeal a condition of his release and had no interest in doing so. The appeal would not have produced any evidence of Libyan government involvement, because it was focused on the narrow issue of the safety of Abdelbaset’s conviction. There was no prospect of Abdelbaset revealing confidential information concerning Libyan government involvement in the bombing, firstly, because he almost certainly had none and, secondly, because, if he had, he would have both undermined his own appeal and jeopardised the safety of his family in Libya. 

However, he insisted he had been misquoted by a Swedish newspaper last year which claimed he had evidence that Gaddafi personally ordered the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which claimed 270 lives.

He said: “All I said then is what I say right now, which is that the regime was involved in this case, evident by insisting he returns and that they spent a lot of money on him while he was in jail.”

Really? Sounds like backpedalling to me.

Jalil also hinted at the existence of government files which could finally establish once and for all whether the bombing was the work of Megrahi and other Libyan agents, under orders from Gaddafi – or was in fact an Iranian-backed plot, as many campaigners believe.

He said: “We sympathize with the families of the innocent victims and we are willing to reopen past files that can deliver the truth.”

Megrahi, who developed terminal prostate cancer during eight years behind bars in Scotland, is known to have had a number of Swiss bank accounts, including one which allegedly held £1.8million at the time of his trial in 2000.

The £1.8 million claim originates from a Sunday Times article of 20 December 2009. In fact there is only evidence of one Swiss bank account, which was dormant from 1993 onwards, and had a balance of only $23,000. Had Abdelbaset given evidence at trial, he could have accounted for all the payments in and out of the account.

But the full extent of the fortune paid to ensure his silence will appal many of those who lost loved ones in December 1988.

However, campaigners calling for a public inquiry into Lockerbie said the new evidence supports claims that Megrahi was simply a well-paid “fall guy”.

Robert Black, Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, said: “He was getting a lot of money because he had taken the fall for something he didn’t do.

“By surrendering himself for trial in Scotland he brought Libya under Gaddafi back into world commerce. That was something the Libyans thought worth paying for.”

This wrongly implies that Abdelbaset’s supporters believe that he took the rap for Gadafy. I’m not aware of any of his prominent supports, including Prof Black, who believe that to be the case.

Gaddafi ordered 1992 bombing

COLONEL Gaddafi may have deliberately blown up a passenger jet, killing 157, in a bizarre bid to frame the American and British governments and sue for compensation.

Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 1103 was involved in a mid-air collision with a Libyan MiG 23 fighter jet as it was approaching Tripoli Airport on December 22, 1992.

The fighter pilot and navigator safely ejected, but all of the Boeing 727′s passengers or crew were killed – including oil worker Victor Prazak, from London.

At the time, Gaddafi was under growing pressure to hand over the Lockerbie suspects and facing severe UN sanctions.

In his TV interview, current Libyan leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil said: “This trip was chosen on a day that coincides with the Lockerbie bombings and the flight number was almost identical.

“It was confirmed that the plane, going from Benghazi to Tripoli, was stuffed with explosives. It was given a new route deep into the sea, that no other plane has taken before.

“It was in the landing stages at Tripoli when, some say, it was intersected by another plane that bombed it.

“Nothing was left intact from the bombing.”

 I have not studied the case of LAA flight 1103, but find Jalil’s suggestion bizarre.

Dr Jim Swire, Prof Hans Köchler and I shall be doing a keynote session on the opening day of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, entitled Megrahi: A spectacular miscarriage of justice?  Saturday 11 August, 11.30 to 12.30, RBS main theatre, Charlotte Square Gardens. Tickets are available from 29 June and cost £10 and £8. The full festival programme, which was announced today, can be read here.

Below is an interview that I did last week for the Canadian Sun News Network.

The latest issue of Private Eye carries the following two short articles under the headline Phony forensics.

The last Eye’s revelations that the crown I had kept secret a report which undermined prosecution claims about the circuit board fragment used to convict Abdelbasset al-Megrahi of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing has prompted justice campaigner Jim Swire to raise further questions.  The fragment, said to be part of the bomb’s timing device, was said to have been found by scientists embedded in blasted shirt remains, and the evidence bag in which it was discovered had been altered by someone who was never identified.

Furthermore, the fragment had tested “negative” for explosive traces and there were discrepancies about how it was stored, tested and identified. It had been passed between UK scientists and the US investigators who came up with the “match” to timing devices supplied to Libya thus linking the country and Megrahi to the bombing, which killed 270 people, including Dr Swire’s daughter, Flora.

“Now that we know that it was always known that it could not have been part of a Libyan timer used in the bomb, where did it come from?” asked Swire. So far there is no indication that the Crown Office has chosen find out.

Nor, says Dr Swire, is it looking into the break-in at Heathrow 16 hours before the departure of PanAm flight 103. This information was also withheld from Megrahi’s trial – although it had been disclosed by the time of his appeal. As he told the Eye: “I would like to know why this myth about the fragment and Libyan bombs from Malta is still being used to conceal the truth, and why the real perpetrators remain free from ever being brought before any court for this crime against humanity.”

Earlier this year the Scottish newspaper the Herald confidently reported that two oft he leading lawyers involved in the Lockerbie case were about to become high court judges. It said that the judicial appointments board had recommended for the bench the former Lord Advocate Colin (now Lord) Boyd QC, who led the

prosecution of Megrahi, and Maggie Scott QC, who led Megrahi’s abandoned appeal, along with Michael Jones and David Burns. [JA note: in fact David Burns QC was also involved in the case, as he was the second senior counsel on Abdelbaset’s team.]

Lord Boyd was recently criticised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for failing to disclose crucial information about a series of CIA cables referring to its Walter Mitty-like “star witness”, Abdul Majid Giaka, a so-called double agent, which completely undermined the witness’s credibility (Eyes passim). But guess who failed to make the judicial cut out of the four candidates? Only the troublesome Ms Scott. She declined to discuss the matter with the Eye.