“The case was largely based on this inside guy [Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka]. It wasn’t until the trial that I learned this guy was a nut-job and that the CIA had absolutely no confidence in him and that they knew he was a liar. The CIA and the FBI kept the State Department in the dark. It worked for them for us to be fully committed to the theory that Libya was responsible.”
Michael Scharf — Director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law
“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.’ If the [SCCRC] Commission accepts the application for a full review, the infamous Zeist verdict doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving.”
INTEL TODAY — July 5 2017
On January 31, 2001, the Scottish Court in the Netherlands rendered its verdict in the Pan Am 103 bombing trial. The court found one of the two Libyan defendants, Al Amin Fhima, not guilty and he was immediately returned to Libya where he received a hero’s welcome.
It found the other defendant, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, guilty of murder and sentenced him to a minimum of 20 years imprisonment in Berlinie prison in Scotland. The verdict did not, however, implicate those higher up in the Libyan government, nor did it rule out the possible involvement of Iran in the bombing.
Moreover, although the decision to convict Al-Megrahi was unanimous, the judgment indicates that it had been a close call, with the three judges acknowledging that the prosecution’s case had “uncertainties and qualifications” and that key witnesses had repeatedly lied.
Indeed, portions of the judgment read as though the text had been drafted for a “not proven” verdict, which is used under Scottish law when the court is convinced of guilt but the evidence does not rise to the level of “beyond reasonable doubt.”
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