“The Lockerbie trial is the most disgraceful miscarriage of justice in Scotland for 100 years. Every lawyer who has read the judgment says ‘this is nonsense’. It is nonsense.”
Robert Black QC FRSE — Professor Emeritus of Scots Law in the University of Edinburgh, also known as the “Architect of the Lockerbie Trial”
“I don’t think there’s a lawyer in Scotland who now believes Mr Megrahi was justly convicted. The Americans were out for vengeance. Anyone with a darker skin would do. With their barrowloads of money to buy witnesses, aided by our police and prosecution, they hoodwinked our courts.”
Ian Hamilton QC — Recipient of a lifetime achievement award at the 2009 Law Awards of Scotland
“I do believe that Megrahi is an innocent man and that in time the truth of that will emerge. I have never found a full answer to Lockerbie. And this will always be a source of great distress. […] We need the truth, and we need justice, to allow ourselves to be at peace. Otherwise, we’re still back on December the 21 1988, in the darkness.”
Father Pat Keegans — Parish priest for Lockerbie at the time of the crash
“I am the father of Flora Swire, who was murdered on the aircraft in 1988, and I attended the subsequent trial of Libyan Abdelbaset Al Megrahi. By the end I was convinced that we had witnessed a parody of justice. There were many deficiencies in the evidence, and those of us who have sought the truth have been further frustrated by the Government and Scottish High Court. It has become clear to us that the trial was designed not to convict those responsible, but to further the wishes of the US and UK governments.”
Dr Jim Swire (October 7 2018)
June 22 2020 — On January 31 2001, Fhimah was found not guilty. His co-accused Megrahi was convicted of mass murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 27 years. I regard the Lockerbie verdict against Megrahi as a Grand Monument to Human Stupidity. Indeed, the written opinion of the Lockerbie judges is a remarkable document that claims an ‘honoured place in the history of British miscarriages of justice.’ I sincerely hope that the readers will come to share my belief if they do not already think so. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY
RELATED POST: Lockerbie – Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!
RELATED POST: Lockerbie – Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…! [Chapter I : A week in December]
RELATED POST: Lockerbie – Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…! [Chapter II : The Usual Suspects]
RELATED POST: Lockerbie — Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…! [Chapter III : Operation Autumn Leaves]
RELATED POST: Lockerbie — Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…! [Chapter IV : The ‘Wait & See’ Strategy]
RELATED POST: Lockerbie – Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…! [Chapter V : Blame it on Gaddafi!]
Lockerbie – Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!
QUICK NOTE — To make it easier for the readers to retrieve various chapters of this book, I have created a special page “Lockerbie” where all the links to the chapters will be listed with a brief description. You can access that page directly as it appears at the far right of the top bar of this blog.
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Most Intel Today readers (89%) believe that the Lockerbie verdict is a spectacular miscarriage of justice. I understand that a similar poll among Scotland lawyers would be even more devastating. Truth never dies. We would like to know what you think. Please, take this poll and encourage your friends to participate.
Chapter VI : A spectacular miscarriage of Justice
Lord Sutherland was the presiding judge at the Lockerbie trial, sitting with Lord Coulsfield and Lord MacLean. Lord Abernethy was a substitute judge in case any of the others was incapacitated. [1]
During the trial, these Lords heard 229 prosecution witnesses and three defence witnesses.
They reviewed 2,488 pieces of evidence. The transcripts fill up 10,232 pages amounting to more than 3m words. The total cost of trial has been estimated at £ 60m. [2]
And what do these three judges write as the first sentence of the Court Opinion?
“At 1903 hours on 22 December 1988 Pan Am flight 103 fell out of the sky.” [3]
As Professor Robert Black — aka the architect of the Lockerbie Trial — remarked when the opinion was published:
“Getting the date of the disaster wrong in the first sentence of the judgement was an accurate reflection of the quality of what was to follow.”
There is simply no denying it. Nevertheless, I strongly believe that this sentence is probably the least inaccurate of the whole verdict.
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “We are ready!”
On August 24 1998, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said it was time for Libya to turn its promises into deeds and surrender the Lockerbie suspects for trial immediately.
“Whatever her family background, Madeleine Albright was the politician that I found most obstructive (and objectionable) while I was trying to broker a Lockerbie trial.” Professor Robert Black remembers. [4]
Secretary Albright then emphasized that the proposed plan was not negotiable. [5]
“Let me be clear. The plan the US and the UK are putting forward is a ‘take it or leave it’ proposition.
It is not subject to negotiation or change.
Nor should it be subject to additional foot-dragging or delay.
We are ready to begin such a trial as soon as Libya turns over the suspects.
We expect — and the families deserve — an immediate answer.”
On April 5 1999, the suspects were indeed taken into Dutch custody after flying from Tripoli to an airbase near The Hague and formally charged with the Lockerbie bombing. [6]
Under Scots law, the accused must be brought to trial within 110 days. Lord Sutherland twice agreed 110-days extensions.
When the trial date finally approached (May 2000), Lord Advocate Colin Boyd applied for a further extension… on the grounds that the prosecution needed time to interview witnesses!
Obviously, the prosecutors were not truly “ready to begin such a trial as soon as Libya turns over the suspects.”
Final submissions — No more charges of conspiracy?!?
In its final submissions, the prosecution dropped the charge of conspiracy — as well as the charge of breach of aviation security — to focus solely on the charge of murder. [7]
The reasons for dropping the charge of conspiracy are easily understood.
It was immediately obvious that there was simply no case against Fhimah. Thus, there was no credibility to this charge.
Indeed, the court eventually returned a ‘not guilty’ verdict and Fhimah was free to go home.
Implausible Scenario — The Murder Charge against Megrahi
The initial charges against Megrahi were basically the following [8] :
On 7 December 1988 , Megrahi purchased a quantity of clothing and an umbrella in the shop premises known as Mary’s House at Tower Road, Sliema, Malta.
On 20 December 1988, Megrahi — using a passport in the false name of Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad — traveled to Malta with a brown Samsonite suitcase.
On 21 December 1988 at Luqa Airport, Megrahi placed — or cause to be placed — on board an aircraft of Air Malta flight KM-180 to Frankfurt am Main Airport, Federal Republic of Germany the Samsonite suitcase, containing the clothing and umbrella bought on December 7 1988, and an improvised explosive device containing high performance plastic explosive concealed within a Toshiba RT SF 16 “Bombeat” radio cassette recorder.
The IED was programmed to be detonated by a Swiss electronic timer only supplied to Libya and the luggage was tagged as to be carried by aircraft from Frankfurt am Main Airport via London, Heathrow Airport to New York, John F Kennedy Airport, United States of America.
On December 21, the IED exploded at 7:03 over Lockerbie, destroying instantaneously Pan Am 103 and killing 259 people on-board and 11 residents on the ground.
The Maltese Shopkeeper’s Identification (Wrong man)
Many experts believe that the crucial testimony given by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, owner of clothing store Mary’s House, was simply false and should have been ruled inadmissible.
The ‘identification’ should be a textbook example of what was actually a non-identification!
On September 13 1989, during a photo-fit session with Scottish, US and Maltese police, Gauci stated that the buyer was about 50 years old. Born on April 1 1952, Megrahi was 36 in late 1988.
In his first interview held on September 1 1989, Gauci told Detective Chief Inspector [DCI] Harry Bell that the mysterious buyer was 6 feet tall or more.
Megrahi is 5 feet 8, a significant discrepancy considering that it comes from a man who sells clothes for a living.
Recently, I had the opportunity to interview two of the world top experts on the subject of eyewitness and false memories: Professor Elizabeth F. Loftus and Professor Tim Valentine. [9]
Both have studied the Lockerbie Case and both have come to the conclusion that Tony Gauci’s testimony and statements are simply not credible.
Professor Elizabeth F. Loftus wrote:
“Al-Megrahi was released from prison in 2009 and sent back to Libya on compassionate grounds because of advancing cancer. Public outrage was sparked. Al-Megrahi lived with his cancer for a few years (…) One cannot help but wonder whether the outrage over his release might be tempered if those angry individuals were to seriously examine the suspicious eyewitness testimony that led to Al-Megrahi’s conviction in the first place. My examination has led me to seriously wonder: Is the Lockerbie bomber still out here?”
Gareth Peirce — one of the best known English solicitors and a human rights activist — has written a good summary of the ‘identification’ of Megrahi by Tony Gauci [10] :
“Megrahi’s identification by Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper, would remain spectacular in its noncompliance with any safeguard. He described al-Megrahi as ‘6’0’’’ (he was 5’8’’), ‘50 years old’ (he was 37), and ‘hefty’; said that he ‘had been to the shop before and after’, ‘had been there only once’; that he ‘saw him in a bar months later’; that he ‘will sign statement even though I don’t speak English’; that al-Megrahi ‘was similar but not identical’, ‘perhaps like him but not fully like him’, and, fatally for any identification of al-Megrahi in the first place, that he was ‘like the man in the Sunday Times’ (in other words, like Abu Talb, whose picture Gauci had initially identified). But Gauci’s evidence was needed and, reports suggest, handsomely rewarded.”
The date of the purchase: Nov 23 or Dec 7 1988? (Wrong Date)
The ‘December 7 1988’ date was critical because it was the only possible day for Megrahi to have bought these clothes in Malta.
Regarding the day of the purchase, Tony Gauci remembered that his brother Paul had gone home earlier to watch an evening football game (Rome vs. Dresden), that the man came just before closing time, around 7 p.m., and that there was some very light rain. [11]
The game allows for only two dates: November 23 or December 7 1988.
The game Rome-Dresden on December 7 was played at 1 p.m., not in the evening. As a result, Paul Gauci thought that the purchases had occurred on November 23 1988.
And there is more. It did not rain on Sliema on December 7 1988. Mark Vella, the managing director of METEO-MALTA, told the author that their records unambiguously indicate that it did not rain in Sliema on December 7 1988.
On the other hand, Vella could confirm to me that it was drizzling during the evening of November 23 1988. [12]
When asked to try to assess the most likely day of the purchase by DCI Harry Bell, Tony Gauci stated:
“I’ve been asked to again try and pinpoint the day and date that 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.”
During a three-year long investigation, the SCCRC has established that the Christmas lights were put up in Sliema on December 6 1988, ruling out — once more — December 7 as the date of the purchase.
Not surprisingly, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission concluded:
“There is no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgment for its conclusion that the purchase of the items [clothes that were found in the wreckage of the plane] from Mary’s House [in Malta] took place on 7 December 1988.”
The clothes (SLALOM shirt)
This issue is of paramount importance as forensic experts claimed to have discovered in the collar of one of these shirts the fragment of an electronic timer which provided the key link between the bombing and Libya. [13]
During his first interview with DCI Harry Bell, Tony Gauci made a list of the items he had sold to the mysterious buyer.
The list matched exactly the items that forensic experts at RARDE believed to have been in direct contact with the bomb, except for a black umbrella that they eventually “identified”.
On that day – September 1 1989 — Gauci made no mention of the Slalom shirts.
On January 30 1990, Gauci was shown a SLALOM shirt and was asked if he had sold one to the mysterious buyer.
“That man did not buy any shirt, I am sure,” Gauci stated to the investigators.
Then, on September 10 1990, Gauci suddenly recalled selling two SLALOM shirts. It is not just odd, but contradicts a statement Gauci made in his first interview and repeated at the trial.
During his first interview, Gauci told DCI Harry Bell that he remembered that the bill amounted to 76.5 Maltese pounds (LM). Gauci even clearly remembered that the man paid him with eight 10 LM bills, and that he returned 4 LM as he was not able to give a half pound in change.
Quite logically, DCI Bell then asked him to check the price of all the items he had just mentioned.
And, lo and behold, the sum added to 76.5 LM… without any Slalom shirt. Had Gauci sold two shirts to the mysterious buyer, the bill would have been 84.5 LM.
Obviously, if the SLALOM shirt is a fabrication, so must be the items discovered inside it, including the infamous fragment of the MST-13 timer. [14]
After researching and studying all of Gauci’s statements, Professor Valentine came to the following conclusions. [15]
“Tony Gauci didn’t mention shirts in his first statement, and is adamant that he did not sell any shirts when first specifically questioned about shirts. However, at that time he did sell Slalom shirts to the police.
Some months later he recalled selling shirts to the man. This pattern in the statements is consistent with post-event information becoming incorporated into the memory (a process known as memory distortion).
For this reason I regard the first statement made prior to questioning about the shirts to be more likely to reflect Tony Gauci’s original memory for the event because there is no possibility for it to be influenced by the subsequent questioning.”
The suitcase at Malta Airport (No explanation!)
Also, as the judges pointed out, the prosecution failed to suggest an explanation as to the method by which the suitcase was introduced on board of Malta Flight KM 180.
Therefore, the charge of ‘breach of aviation security’ had also to be dropped.
In their opinion, the judges wrote [16] :
“If therefore the unaccompanied bag was launched from Luqa, the method by which that was done is not established, and the Crown accepted that they could not point to any specific route by which the primary suitcase could have been loaded. (…) The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM 180 is a major difficulty for the Crown case, and one which has to be considered along with the rest of the circumstantial evidence in the case.”
The Samsonite suitcase (False testimony)
According to the indictment, an unaccompanied suitcase — containing the IED — arrived in Frankfurt on Air Malta Flight KM 180.
There, the suitcase was transferred on to Pan Am Flight 103 A to London where it was transferred — again — to Pan Am 103. The modus operandi has always appeared dubious to terrorism experts.
Actually, a ‘FBI Briefing Paper’ (marked “Director FBI/Priority”) disclosed in 1995, revealed that:
“There is no concrete indication that any piece of luggage was unloaded from Air Malta 180, sent through the luggage routing system at Frankfurt airport, and then loaded on board Pan Am 103.”
Why did the FBI investigators believe that Megrahi arrived at Malta with a brown Samsonite suitcase?
The answer to this key question is very simple and rather disturbing. Libyan defector and CIA asset Magid Giaka lied to them, and the CIA knew that the ‘super-star witness’ was lying to the FBI.
Lockerbie investigators have long been puzzled by the fact that Giaka — despite being paid by the CIA to spy on Megrahi and other colleagues — never mentioned the December 20 1988 trip to his CIA handlers. [17]
Richard Marquise — the special agent who led the FBI investigation — has suggested an explanation in his book.
“Giaka had met his CIA handlers in the morning of December 20, 1988. He had not yet been to the Luqa airport. (…) He next met his CIA handler about one month later and this travel was not fresh in his mind; He either did not report it or his CIA case officer failed to document it.”
The truth, as I reveal here for the first time, is actually far more simple. Giaka did not report this event because he never witnessed it.
The debriefing with his CIA handler did NOT occur in the morning of December 20 but in the afternoon, between 12:00 and 18:00. [18]
Megrahi and Fimah arrived in Malta with Flight KM 231 which landed in Luqa airport at 5:15 pm.
Actually, Giaka testified that Megrahi and Fimah arrived at Malta in the evening, when the LAA (Libyan Airline) flight landed around 8:00 pm. [19]
The FBI never paid attention to that error. The CIA knew that Giaka could not have witnessed the arrival of Megrahi in the afternoon but they never told the FBI. Why not?
What about London?
The judges accepted the evidence from a baggage handler at London Heathrow Airport that a suitcase which could fit the description of the infamous ‘brown Samsonite’ was in the container loaded on Pan Am 103. Not everyone agrees.
Jessica de Grazia — former chief assistant district attorney in New York — and Philip Corbett — a former police officer and ex-security advisor to the Bank of England — investigated several aspects of the Lockerbie Case.
Their report, which was written in 2002, was never published. I had the opportunity to read it.
The authors suggest that the Lockerbie investigators were “directed off course” and that this was “most likely” done by a senior official in the CIA.
“We have never seen a criminal investigation in which there has been such a consistent disregard of an alternative and far more persuasive theory of the case,” the report states.
Corbett and de Grazia investigated the background of Mr Bedford, the baggage handler who ‘saw’ the brown Samsonite suitcase in the container before it was loaded on PA103.
They were told by his supervisor that Bedford was a thief and should not be trusted.
Moreover, as it was pointed out long ago by a former Hong Kong police officer, the official story is simply idiotic as Bedford claimed to have seen the ‘primary luggage’ — coming from Frankfurt — one full hour before the feeder flight — Pan Am 103 A — landed in London!
And yet, the judges concluded [20] :
“There is, however, no reason to doubt Mr Bedford’s evidence that he did take AVE 4041 to the build-up area and leave it there. It emerges from the evidence therefore that a suitcase which could fit the forensic description of the primary suitcase was in the container when it left the interline shed.”
I kid you not. The verdict is that STUPID!
The location of the Primary Suitcase (CIA Psychic Spies)
The forensic investigation was no better. Discredited ‘scientists’ first established that the primary suitcase was lying directly on the floor of the container, as it would be if it had originated directly from London.
Later, they ‘relocated’ the luggage to the second layer of baggage, as it would have been if the suitcase had come from Luqa and Frankfurt airports.
In their report, AAIB investigators had estimated the stand-off distance to be about 25 inches. However, it was eventually revealed that the calculation was erroneous.
After correction of an obvious mistake, the stand-off distance was reduced to no more than 12 inches.
This scientific result leads to a paradox as such short distances put the locus of the explosion outside the luggage container.
This result not only runs against the official narrative, it also makes it impossible to understand how the only pieces of the luggage container showing ‘evidence ‘ of an explosion had the pitting marks on the wrong side? [21]
Of course, the folks at the CIA have never let scientific facts interfere with their ‘truth’.
Eventually, the CIA wizards solved the issue by hiring psychic spies — people with mysterious super-natural powers — to correctly assess the locus of the explosion.
Again, I kid you not! The Lockerbie investigation is that CRAZY. [22]
“The mission of Project n° 5269 was to identify the location of the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988. This ‘Remote Viewing’ project concluded that the bomb was sitting on the floor of the luggage container.”
Just ask yourself a simple question. Why on earth would the CIA rely on ‘psychic spies’ and ‘remote viewers’ to locate the position of the Lockerbie bomb?
The trigger of the IED
The story of the MST-13 timer will be the subject of chapter VIII. However, I would like to point out yet another incredible mistake of the verdict.
In their opinion, the Lockerbie Trial Judges wrote [23] :
“The timer recovered in Togo which, as we have said, was one of two, was considered by the witness Richard Sherrow to be identical to one which was discovered in Dakar, Senegal, on 20 February 1988 within a briefcase found on board a passenger aircraft which had arrived at the airport there from Cotonou in Benin.
It was recovered in October 1999 by CI Williamson from the French Ministry of Justice in Paris but was not examined forensically. It cannot therefore be said whether its circuit board was single or double sided.”
This is simply not true. The timer given to CI Williamson,a senior Scottish police investigator, by the French Ministry of Justice was the second timer (unboxed) allegedly recovered in Togo by BATF Richard Sherrow in September 1986.
The SCCRC noticed the error in their report. [24]
“8.105 It is worth noting that in terms of paragraph 52 of its judgment the trial court appears to have confused the Senegal timer, which was never recovered by the investigating authorities (as explained below), with the second Togo timer obtained from the French authorities in 1999.
However, the Commission does not consider this apparent error by the trial court to have had any material effect on the verdict.”
The Metamorphosis of the Toshiba Radio
In early February 1989, Feraday wrote that he was completely satisfied that fragments recovered at the Lockerbie crime scene originated from a white Toshiba brand stereo radio cassette recorder type RT-8016 or RT-8026. [25]
This very specific Toshiba radio strongly hinted to the involvement of a Palestinian terror group (the PFLP-GC) based in Syria and sponsored by Iran.
By the time the US and UK issued a joint indictment against the two Libyan men, Feraday had established that the bomb had been hidden in a black Toshiba radio model RT-SF 16 almost solely sold to Libya. [26]
Is that subtle or what?
Undeclared Payments to Witnesses
In February 2009, Richard Marquise — the FBI agent who led the Lockerbie investigation — told me that no witness was ever offered money for his testimony at the Lockerbie trial.
“I can assure you that no witnesses were ever offered any money by anyone–including the CIA,’”Marquise told me.
“This issue came up at trial and I spoke with the defense lawyers about it in Edinburgh in 1999 — before trial.
No one was promised or even told that they could get money for saying anything. Every FBI agent was under specific orders not to mention money to any potential witness.”
However, former State Department lawyer Michael Scharf told me that rewards were paid in the context of the Lockerbie trial.
“I knew that rewards payments were made, but not the amount. The Awards for Terrorism Information program has been around since the 1980s, and has been expanded to rewards for information leading to the arrest or conviction of international indicted war criminals like Karadzic and Mladic.
When I worked at the Office of the Legal Adviser of the State Department I was involved in the program,” Scharf told me.
Today, we now know that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found out that US$2 million had been paid to Tony Gauci and US$1 million to Paul Gauci under the US Department of Justice “Rewards for Justice” programme. [27]
And of course, failure by the Crown to disclose the promise or the payment is a serious breach of their duty to the court and to the administration of justice. [28]
Conclusion: An Irrational & Incomprehensible Verdict
On January 29 2001, senior Foreign Office officials briefed a group of journalists in London. They clearly expected both Megrahi and Fhimah to be acquitted.
Like most independent observers, Foreign Office officials believed it was impossible for the court to find the prosecution had proved its case against Megrahi beyond reasonable doubt.
Two days later, after an eight-month trial, the three Scottish judges, found Fhimah not guilty and convicted Megrahi.
On February 3 2001, Dr. Hans Köchler — UN observer at the Lockerbie Trial — issued a damning report. [29]
“The Opinion of the Court seems to be inconsistent in a basic respect: while the first accused was found ‘guilty,’ the second accused was found ‘not guilty.’
It is to be noted that the judgement, in the latter’s case, was not ‘not proven,’ but ‘not guilty.’
This is totally incomprehensible for any rational observer when one considers that the indictment in its very essence was based on the joint action of the two accused in Malta.
The Opinion of the Court is exclusively based on circumstantial evidence and on a series of highly problematic inferences. As to the undersigned’s knowledge, there is not one single piece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime.
In such a context, the guilty verdict in regard to the first accused appears to be arbitrary, even irrational.
This impression is enforced when one considers that the actual wording of the larger part of the Opinion of the Court points more into the direction of a not proven verdict.”
The Lockerbie verdict is indeed utter nonsense. A few journalists had the courage to say so.
Hugh Miles — Award-winning freelance journalist and author specializing in the Middle East — wrote:
“From the outset the Lockerbie disaster has been marked by superlatives. The bombing was the deadliest terror attack on American civilians until 11 September 2001.
It sparked Britain’s biggest ever criminal inquiry, led by its smallest police force, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary. It spelled the end of Pan Am, which never recovered from the damage to its reputation.
The trial at Camp Zeist was the longest and – at a cost of £75 million – the most expensive in Scottish legal history. (…) Lawyers, politicians, diplomats and relatives of Lockerbie victims now believe that the former Libyan intelligence officer is innocent.”
American Journalist Arthur MacDonald was quite blunt:
“Exactly when everyone decided Libya was responsible for this outrage I can’t actually remember. Mr Gaddafi seemed to be everybody’s whipping boy at the time, so that could explain it.
What I do know is that none of the journalists I worked with on the story ever believed that Libya was guilty.”
Commenting on the New York Times obituary of Megrahi, Professor Edward Samuel Herman — Professor at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania and a media analyst — wrote:
“The case against the two Libyans was ‘circumstantial,’ as the Scottish judges noted in their decision, and New York Times editors conceded (2/1/01).
This is a generous use of the word; there is no evidence whatsoever that Al-Megrahi or anybody else put a bomb-laden bag in for shipment at Malta, as the improbable official scenario requires.”
So yes, without a doubt, the Lockerbie verdict is a spectacular miscarriage of justice. But, as we shall see, this tragedy is much worse than that.
As Gareth Pierce wrote a decade ago:
“The term miscarriage of justice carries with it the inference of accident, but also of death.
There is a pressing need to investigate in detail how it has come about that there has been a form of death in this case – the death of justice – and who should be found responsible.”
PS — I thought that I would share with you an old rumor which I believe to be true. The scuttlebutt in Parliament House — the headquarters of the Scottish Courts and the Bar — was that Lord Coulsfield wanted to acquit both accused, whereas Sutherland and Maclean wanted to convict both.
The compromise that was arrived at was to acquit Fhimah and convict Megrahi. The judges were very well aware that a non-unanimous verdict would have been a public relations disaster and so they agreed on a compromise that both camps thought they could live with.
However, Lord Coulsfield is widely believed to have come to regret agreeing to the compromise.
Shortly after the trial he had a long period of ill-health absence from the Bench.
The gossip at the Bar at the time was that Lord Coulsfield was suffering from a nervous breakdown brought on by remorse at agreeing to the conviction of Megrahi.
Lockerbie – Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!
Chapter VI : A spectacular miscarriage of Justice
I wish to dedicate this story to Professor Robert Black. Whenever I had difficulties to understand a legal point, Professor Black always took the time to answer my questions in a clear and simple way that even this scientist could easily comprehend.
Robert Black is now Professor Emeritus of Scots Law in the University of Edinburgh. He has been a member of the Scottish Bar since 1972 and a QC since 1987.
He has taken a close interest in the Lockerbie affair since 1993, not least because he was born and brought up in the town, and has published a substantial number of articles on the topic in the United Kingdom and overseas.
He is often referred to as the architect of the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. [Lockerbie Case]
Lockerbie – Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!
Chapter VI : A spectacular miscarriage of Justice
REFERENCES
1) See : PT35B — Lockerbie Trial: Men in Robes… And on the Ropes
2) Lockerbie trial in statistics
3) Lockerbie trial — Opinion of the Court
“[1] At 1903 hours on 22 December 1988 Pan Am flight 103 fell out of the sky. The 259 passengers and crew members who were on board and 11 residents of Lockerbie where the debris fell were killed.”
4) See: On This Day — Madeleine Albright Discovers Her Jewish Roots (February 4 1997) [Lockerbie]
5) Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright — Statement on venue for trial of PanAm #103 Bombing Suspects — Washington, D.C., August 24, 1998 (As released by the Office of the Spokesman U.S. Department of State )
6) See: Chronology: the Lockerbie trial
7) Lockerbie trial — Opinion of the Court
“The Crown case is that the cause of the disaster was that an explosive device had been introduced into the hold of the aircraft by the two accused whether acting alone or in concert with each other and others. This device exploded when the aircraft was in Scottish air space thus causing the aircraft to disintegrate. In these circumstances it was originally contended that the accused were guilty of conspiracy to murder, alternatively murder, alternatively a contravention of section 2(1) and (5) of the Aviation Security Act 1982. At the conclusion of the Crown’s submissions, however, the libel was restricted to the charge
of murder.”
8) See Indictment — Lockerbie charges in full as presented on website of BBC: Friday, 29 October, 1999
9) See :
Lockerbie — The Eyewitness Evidence Against Megrahi : Exclusive Q&A with Pr Elizabeth Loftus
Lockerbie — The Eyewitness Evidence Against Megrahi : Exclusive Q&A with Professor Tim Valentine
10) The Framing of al-Megrahi by Gareth Peirce — London Review of Books
11) According to Tony Gauci’s statements, “the man returned to the shop to buy an umbrella.”
12) NB. Official copies of their records are available.
13) The SLALOM shirt will be the subject of Chapter VII and Appendix A.
14) In Chapter VII, I will investigate how and when the SLALOM shirt was fabricated and entered in the chain of evidence.
15) See :
Lockerbie — The Eyewitness Evidence Against Megrahi : Exclusive Q&A with Professor Tim Valentine
16) Lockerbie trial — Opinion of the Court Paragraph 39
17) Giaka had regular meetings with his handlers at a CIA safe-house in Malta.
18) Precognition of the CIA officer who was handling Giaka.
19) Lockerbie Trial transcripts
Page 9087
12 Majid Giaka’s evidence of this event was that
13 it happened some time in October, November, or December
14 of 1988. His evidence put the second accused on the
15 wrong flight. That’s perfectly clear. He said he was
16 at the airport at 8.00 at night, which would be the
17 time when the second LAA flight arrived. The Crown
18 proved, by way of incontravertible and unchallenged
19 evidence, that on 20th December, the second accused
20 came in on an Air Malta flight about three hours
21 earlier.Page 10116 & 10117
19 If the court were to contemplate considering
20 that he is reliable in general on this incident but
21 mistaken about the 8.00 p.m., the court has the
22 difficulty that he was meeting with his handler during
23 the afternoon of the 20th of December 1988.
24 The court will recall that the Crown made
25 inquiry with the CIA about the times of meetings at the1 request of the Defence and of the court. The court can
2 reasonably infer from the fact that no further evidence
3 has been led as to the time of this meeting, that no
4 further specification of the time has been forthcoming.
5 The fact that the meeting was in the
6 afternoon was disclosed in Production 813, referred to
7 on day 51 at page 6968, and is now the subject of
8 Joint Minute 14, paragraph 4.
20) Lockerbie trial — Opinion of the Court — See : Paragraphs 23 & 24
21) Please remember that FBI Thomas Thurman is the person who discovered the only two items showing evidence of a high performance plastic explosive. Thurman has been accused of fabricating false evidence. The US Attorney General 1997 Report on the FBI Forensic Lab concluded that Thomas Thurman deserved special censure for his work. It recommends that Thurman — who only had a degree in political science — be reassigned outside the FBI laboratory and that only scientists work in its explosives section.
22) Project SUN STREAK — n°: 5269 (Pan Am 103) — See:
23) Lockerbie trial — Opinion of the Court — See : Paragraph 52
24) SCCRC — See:
The Senegal Timer: Zeist Judges Dead Wrong. Again.
25) See: Chapter V
26) See:
27) See SCCRC : Ref 23:19
28) See :
29) Report on and evaluation of the Lockerbie Trial conducted by the special Scottish Court in the Netherlands at Kamp van Zeist by Dr. Hans Köchler, University Professor, international observer of the International Progress Organization nominated by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the basis of Security Council resolution 1192 (1998)
“The arbitrary aspect of the verdict is becoming even more obvious when one considers that the prosecution, at a rather late stage of the trial, decided to “split” the accusation and to change the very essence of the indictment by renouncing the identification of the second accused as a member of Libyan intelligence so as to actually disengage him from the formerly alleged collusion with the first accused in the supposed perpetration of the crime.”
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Lockerbie – Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…! [Chapter VI : A spectacular miscarriage of Justice]
Intel Today 