Serious doubts remain about the verdict in the Lockerbie trial – and now we’ll never know the truth, says Bryan Rostron
Fury over the release of the dying “Lockerbie bomber” Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has drowned out the voice of reason. A cool appraisal of the evidence shows that the Libyan appears to be the scapegoat of crude international realpolitik, dictated by the United States’ need for new Middle Eastern allies during the first Gulf war.
Professor Hans Köchler, the legal observer nominated by the United Nations Secretary-General to monitor the trial at a specially created court in Holland, stated: “There is not one single piece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime. In such a context, the guilty verdict… appears to be arbitrary, even irrational.” Köchler concluded that: “The outcome of the trial may well have been determined by political considerations.”
Outrage over Al-Megrahi’s “hero’s welcome” in Libya also reveals nasty double standards. At first it was thought the bomb that exploded on Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1998, resulting in 270 deaths, was revenge for the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner by a US warship six months before – which resulted in 290 deaths, including 66 children.
The Americans said this was a “mistake”, but never formally apologised. When Captain William C Rogers III, in command of the USS Vincennes, returned after his tour of duty, he was awarded the Legion of Merit.
For nearly two years after the Lockerbie tragedy, both US and British intelligence services were convinced it was a revenge attack. They leaked the names of suspects and pointed to a clear plot: that Iran had paid millions of dollars to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – hosted by Syria – to carry out a revenge attack.
They identified PFLP leader Ahmed Jibril and, crucially, Abu Talb (by then in a Swedish prison for other terrorist offences) as having been in Malta when clothes were bought that were later wrapped around the device that blew up Flight 103. In December 1989, the Sunday Times reported: “During a 90-minute closed court session, Ulf Forsburg, the Uppsala district prosecutor, told the presiding magistrate that the owner of a boutique in Sliema, Malta, had identified Talb as the man to whom he sold the clothes.”
This, however, was soon forgotten. And the Maltese shopkeeper contradicted his original evidence to suit the new scenario.
What had changed was international politics. During the long Iran-Iraq war, the West secretly backed Iraq. As soon as that conflict ended, the US and Britain provided Saddam Hussein with massive trade credits and arms. In August 1990, however, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The West suddenly needed new allies in the region.
“The US, UK and their allies started to negotiate with their former enemies,” wrote the late Paul Foot in his forensic 31-page special report for Private Eye, called Lockerbie: The Flight From Justice. “All this was completed quickly – in November 1990, new deals were signed to neutralise Iran and bring Syrian forces into the combined operation against Saddam already known as Desert Storm.”
So neither Syria nor Iran could still be vilified as instigators of the Lockerbie bombing. President George Bush senior announced: “Syria took a bum rap on this.” Abruptly, a new country was fingered: Libya.
So where did Al-Megrahi’s name surface? At the Camp Zeist trial in Holland, it emerged that it was provided by Majid Giaka, an unreliable Libyan informer for the CIA. Giaka didn’t produce that name until his increasingly frustrated CIA handlers threatened to cut him off unless he provided something useful. At the Camp Zeist trial, the judges summed up Giaka’s evidence as: “at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue”.
But when investigators showed a photo of Al-Megrahi to the Maltese shop owner Tony Gauci, who had previously identified the Palestinian Abu Talb, Gauci suddenly agreed that the Libyan could have been the man to whom he’d sold clothes. Yet in his initial testimony Gauci had stated that this man had been at least six feet tall and over 50. Al-Magrahi is five feet eight inches and at the time of the supposed shop visit was 37.
Gauci’s evidence, on which Al-Megrahi’s conviction really hangs, is riddled with discrepancies. Some British relatives of victims of the Lockerbie bombing, who have monitored every twist in this sinister saga, are convinced that justice has not been served.
One convenient advantage of Al-Megrahi’s compassionate release is that his appeal will not now be heard. Lawyers representing the Libyan would have alleged that Tony Gauci was “coached” and that he was paid a $2million reward by the US. Sadly, these devastating charges will never be tested in court.
Camp Zeist trial observer Köchler noted several disquieting factors. He pointed out that, quite improperly, two representatives from the US Department of Justice were seated next to the prosecution team, giving the impression of being “supervisors”. He concluded that foreign governments (or their agencies) may have been allowed to determine what evidence was made available, adding: “Virtually all people presented by the prosecution as key witnesses were proven to lack credibility, in certain cases even having lied openly to the court.”
Is Al-Megrahi guilty? We don’t know. Clearly, he did not get a fair trial.
