6/17/07 (UK):
Lockerbie Bomber - New Evidence Casts Doubt
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Two hundred and seventy people died as a result of the 1988 Lockerbie bomb that caused a US bound airliner to explode in flames and land on the small Scottish town 11 residents of the town were among the dead, as burning lumps of the 300 ton plane fell from the sky. The tragedy constituted the worst terrorist atrocity in British aviation history and sparked the biggest murder investigation in British legal history.
It was also the deadliest attack on American civilians until four hijacked airliners shook the country on 11 September 2001.
At first, suspicion for the Lockerbie bombing fell on the Syrian-led Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, a terrorist group backed by Iranian funding. Then there was speculation it was linked to the 1991 Gulf War, which profoundly altered diplomatic relations with the Middle East and cast Libya, led by Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, in the role of a pariah state.
But in 1991 the Lockerbie inquiry's focus intensified on Tripoli. Indictments for murder were issued against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer and the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), and Lamin Khalifah Fahima, the LAA station manager in Luqa Airport, Malta. Eight years later, after protracted negotiations with Gadaffi, and United Nations sanctions against Libya, the pair were finally handed over to Scottish police at a neutral venue, Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.
The trial - under Scottish law and before three judges, not a jury - was a long and painful experience for the families of the victims, whose names were read out, one by one, at its opening.
In January 2001, Megrahi was convicted of murder by the panel of judges, and sentenced to 27 years in prison. Fahima was acquitted. The families expressed their relief that closure had been achieved. But Megrahi insisted he was innocent of the crime and would fight for his freedom. His application to the European Court of Human Rights to appeal against his conviction was declared inadmissible. In September 2003 Megrahi, serving his sentence in Greenock Prison near Glasgow, turned to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in the hope that his case would be referred back to the High Court for a fresh appeal.
Megrahi's legal team has submitted evidence to the SCCRC contending there are major flaws in the case against him. The SCCRC will announce its ruling next week.
The vital evidence that linked Megrahi to the bombing of Pan-Am 103 was a tiny fragment of circuit board found in a wooded area 25 miles from Lockerbie six months after the atrocity. Crucial to the prosecution's case was the use of expert witnesses to make the link between Megrahi and the circuit board timer which was said to have been part of the bomb's detonator.
Evidence considered by the commission cast doubt on the credibility of the three key forensic scientists used by the prosecution during the trial to make the connection between the timer and Megrahi. One of these, Allen Feraday, also gave evidence against defendants who have since had their convictions quashed. After one case, in July 2005, the Lord Chief Justice said Feraday should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in the field of electronics. Lord Woolf ruled that the conviction of Hassan Assali, 53, on terrorist conspiracy charges was unsound.
Another of the scientists who gave evidence in the trial, Dr Thomas Hayes, was involved in the case of the Maguire Seven, imprisoned in 1976 for handling explosives shortly after the Guildford bombings. They also won their appeal after major flaws in forensic science.
The involvement of a third expert witness has also been called into question. The FBI's Thomas Thurman identified the fragment of circuit board as part of a sophisticated timer device used to detonate explosives and as manufactured by Swedish firm Mebo, which supplied the component only to Libya and the East German Stasi. At one point Megrahi was such a regular visitor to Mebo that he had his own office in the firm's headquarters. The testimony enabled Libya - and Megrahi - to be placed at the centre of the investigation. Thurman, however, has subsequently been accused of doctoring scientific reports.
Megrahi's legal team claim that the forensics case provided by the prosecution was taken at face value. 'It transpired that there was never any chemical analysis, no swabbing for the gaseous reaction that would indicate whether the circuit board had survived an explosion. It was all visual, for instance that it looked a bit charred, and all on the say of experts,' said a legal source close to the investigation, adding that such a process of forensic analysis is unheard of in criminal trials.
In addition, one of the strongest pieces of evidence in the prosecution case was the testimony of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci. He identified Megrahi as the man who bought the clothing wrapped around the bomb and later found scattered in the countryside around Lockerbie. The clothing was traced by police to Malta. Documents seen by the commission reveal that Gauci was interviewed by Scottish and Maltese police 17 times during which he gave a series of inconsistent statements.
A legal source said: 'A key witness who could be proven to be so unreliable is more than sufficient to collapse any trial. Plus there was evidence of leading questions put to Gauci, a practice then known to distort evidence.'
The commission's 500-page report is unlikely to be made public - only an executive summary will be published. Even then, perhaps, the questions will linger about who caused Flight 103 to became a ball of orange flame in the night sky above Lockerbie that would never reach its destination.
© X-Pro 2007
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