Abdelbaset al-Megrahi

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi in 1992 under arrest in Libya
Born	1 April 1952
Died	20 May 2012 (Age 60)
Supposed perpetrator of	Pan Am Flight 103
Subpage	•Abdelbaset al-Megrahi/Compassionate release

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi framed by banned expert witness Alan Feraday

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli, Libya, and an alleged Libyan intelligence officer.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi told author John Ashton that it came as a complete surprise when, in November 1991, he and his former LAA colleague Lamin Fhimah were charged with the bombing (Fhimah was found not guilty). Megrahi maintained it was their decision to stand trial and that they were not ordered to by their government. He was repeatedly warned that he was unlikely to receive a fair trial, but believed he would be acquitted.

In 2000 at his trial which was held under Scots Law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, Crown expert witness Alan Feraday - who had been banned in 1993 by the English Lord Chief Justice Taylor - fabricated the time bomb evidence that led to Megrahi's conviction. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was sentenced to 27 years in prison: one year for every ten victims of the Lockerbie bombing.

During the decade he spent in prison, Megrahi's good manners and cooperative behaviour earned him the respect of the officers. He bonded with them through football, joining in their three-a-side matches at HMP Barlinnie and bantering about Glasgow's 'Old Firm' rivalry. Perversely, he supported Rangers, but his favourite player was Celtic's Henrik Larsson.

Megrahi was cheered by visits from well-known figures, most notably Nelson Mandela, and by hundreds of letters of support. In 2005 he was transferred to a low-security wing of HMP Gateside in Greenock, where he was placed among long-term prisoners nearing the end of their sentences. He was soon accepted by both inmates and officers, one of whom volunteered to Ashton: "We all know he didn't do it."  

Sub-Page

Page Name	Size	Description
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi/Compassionate release	51,974	The actual grounds for Megrahi's release may in fact be as "compassionate" as claimed; this may have been a convenient way to short cirtcuit increasing realisation that he had been falsely convicted.

On 13 November 1991, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, LAA's manager in Malta, were indicted jointly by the US Attorney General and Scotland's Lord Advocate on charges of 270 counts of murder, conspiracy to murder, and breaching the UK's Aviation Security Act 1982 for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988.

Following the indictment, Megrahi and Fhimah were arrested in Libya, which offered to put them on trial if the US and Britain would supply the evidence. The Libyan offer was rejected by the US and Britain, whereupon Nelson Mandela proposed to have the two accused Libyans tried in a neutral country and by independent judges.

Contrary to Mandela's proposal, Professor of Scots Law, Robert Black conducted a series of negotiations for the Lockerbie trial to be held without a jury and in front of a panel of three Scottish judges sitting in a special court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, which for the duration of the trial became British territory.

On 31 January 2001, the conspiracy to murder charge having been dropped, Megrahi was convicted of murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. His co-accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was found not guilty and set free.

In February 2002, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi unsuccessfully appealed his conviction but, in 2003, applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) for his case to be re-examined. On 28 June 2007, the SCCRC granted Megrahi leave to appeal against his Lockerbie bombing conviction for a second time. "Lockerbie Revisited", a Dutch documentary film, was broadcast in the Netherlands on the eve of the start at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh on 28 April 2009 of his second appeal. During the two-year delay between the SCCRC's ruling and the start of al-Megrahi's second appeal, he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. Megrahi decided to abandon his second appeal in August 2009, a few days before being granted compassionate release from prison in Scotland and returning to Libya. On his return to Libya, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was initially hospitalized but was allowed to leave on 2 November 2009, taking up residence in a villa in Tripoli.

In October 2010, the Justice for Megrahi campaign group created an e-petition which called on the Scottish Parliament "to urge the Scottish Government to open an independent inquiry into the 2001 Kamp van Zeist conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988." Petition PE1370 is currently under consideration by the Scottish Parliament's Justice Committee, whose Chair is Christine Grahame.

In October 2011, al-Megrahi gave an interview from his bed in which he claimed that he had only days, weeks or months to live.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died on 20 May 2012 nearly three years after his release.

Lockerbie's 271st victim

Dr Jim Swire and Aamer Anwar announcing the new application for a review of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's Lockerbie bombing conviction

Relatives of the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing have embarked on a legal bid to clear his name amid claims that his case is the "worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history". Six immediate members of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's family have joined forces with 24 British relatives of those who died in the atrocity to seek, ultimately, a third appeal against his conviction in the Scottish courts.

Campaigners say they are still "desperately seeking to get to the truth" 25 years after their loved ones were murdered and two years on from Megrahi's death. They have united to submit an application to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) for a review of the conviction, a move which could see the case referred back to the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh. They claim to have evidence that Megrahi was pressured by ministers to drop his second appeal.

Reversal of the guilty verdict would expose the US and UK governments "as having lived a monumental lie for 25 years", their lawyers claim. Quoting Megrahi's relatives, their solicitor, Aamer Anwar, said:

"'We, the family of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, will keep fighting for justice to find out who was responsible for 271 victims of the Lockerbie disaster.' They, of course, include Mr Megrahi as its 271st victim."

The members of Megrahi's family involved have not being identified due to concerns for their safety.

Mr Anwar and campaigner Jim Swire today submitted three volumes of papers to the SCCRC in Glasgow, launching their application. Dr Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died in the bombing, said: "As relatives, we want to know all that is known about who was responsible for murdering our lovely families all those years ago. Who did it? Why am I and other relatives still desperately seeking to get to the truth 25 years after our families were murdered?"

The fact that Megrahi's own family have chosen to take forward an appeal bid could boost its chances of getting back to court. It is expected to be several months before the review body makes a decision on any way forward. The Commission will be asked to reconfirm the six grounds of appeal it cited in 2007. The application will also focus on "question marks" over material evidence, allegations of the Crown's non-disclosure of evidence and claims he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopkeeper who "gave a false description" of him. Mr Anwar said:

"The case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has been described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history. A reversal of the verdict would mean that the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom would stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for 25 years and having imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for 10 years."

The legal team will also ask the SCCRC to consider the circumstances that led to Megrahi abandoning his last appeal. Mr Anwar said:

"To date both the British Government and Scottish Government have claimed that they played no role in pressurising Mr Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. However the evidence submitted to the Commission today claims that this is fundamentally untrue."

SCCRC chief executive Gerard Sinclair said:

"As it does in every case, the Commission will now give careful consideration to this new application."

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "Mr al-Megrahi was convicted in a court of law, his conviction was upheld on appeal and that is the only appropriate place for his guilt or innocence to be determined."

The Lockerbie case remains a live investigation, with Scotland's criminal justice officials saying they will pursue any new lines of inquiry.

A Crown Office spokesman said:

"We do not fear scrutiny of the conviction by the SCCRC. The evidence upon which the conviction was based was rigorously scrutinised by the trial court and two appeal courts, after which Megrahi stands convicted of the terrorist murder of 270 people. We will rigorously defend this conviction when called upon to do so. In the meantime we will continue the investigation with US and Scottish police and law enforcement, and will keep fighting for justice to find out who was responsible for 271 victims of the Lockerbie disaster."

CIA wanted to assassinate Megrahi

In June 2013, a Capitol Hill academic William C Chasey, after being diagnosed with incurable cancer, reported that the CIA had made repeated approaches to him. They wanted to get him to attach tracking devices to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and his co-accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, so that they could assassinate them before their trial. "He wasn’t explicit but my belief is that the CIA wanted the suspects eliminated to stop any trial taking place and bury the alternative view that Iran and Syria were behind Lockerbie."

Charges, conviction and punishment

Background

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was born in Tripoli and was educated in the United States and Cardiff, Wales. He was the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), and director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli. It was alleged by the FBI and the prosecution in the Lockerbie case that he was also an officer of the Libyan intelligence service, Jamahiriya el-Mukhabarat.

Indictment and arrest

In November 1991, Megrahi and Fhimah were indicted by the US Attorney General and the Scottish Lord Advocate for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Libya refused to extradite the two accused, but held them under armed house arrest in Tripoli, offering to detain them for trial in Libya, as long as all the incriminating evidence was provided. The offer was unacceptable to the US and UK, and there was an impasse for the next three years.

On 23 March 1995, over six years after the 1988 attack, Megrahi and Fhimah were designated as United States fugitives from justice and became the 441st and 442nd additions on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. This list offered a US$4 million reward from the US Air Line Pilots Association, Air Transport Association, and United States Department of State, and $50,000 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), for information leading to their arrest.

The parties eventually agreed on a compromise and a trial was held in the Netherlands under Scots law. The trial format was engineered by legal academic Professor Robert Black of the University of Edinburgh and was given political impetus by the then foreign secretary, Robin Cook.

Protracted negotiations with the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and the imposition of UN economic sanctions against Libya brought the two accused to trial. Over ten years after the bombing, Megrahi and Fhimah were placed under arrest at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands on 5 April 1999. During his seven-year house arrest awaiting deportation and trial, Megrahi lived on a Libyan Arab Airlines pension and worked as a teacher.

Trial

The Scottish High Court of Justiciary at Camp Zeist was presided over by three senior judges and an additional, non-voting, judge. The two accused, Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, denied all charges against them. The full charges included the names of the murdered 259 passengers and crew of Pan Am Flight 103, and the eleven residents killed on the ground at Lockerbie in Scotland.

Representing Megrahi were his solicitor, Alistair Duff, and advocates William Taylor QC, David Burns QC and John Beckett. Fhimah was represented by solicitor Eddie McKechnie and advocates Richard Keen QC, (thirteen years later to be appointed Chair of the Scottish Conservative Party) Jack Davidson QC and Murdo Macleod. Both defendants also had access to a Libyan defence lawyer, Kamel Maghur, a former foreign affairs minister in the Libyan government.

Court proceedings started on 3 May 2000. A crucial witness against Megrahi for the prosecution was Tony Gauci, a Maltese storekeeper, who testified that he had sold Megrahi the clothing later found in the remains of the suitcase bomb. At the trial, Gauci appeared uncertain about the exact date he sold the clothes in question, and was not entirely sure that it was Megrahi to whom they were sold. Nonetheless, Megrahi's appeal against conviction was rejected by the Scottish Court in the Netherlands in March 2002. Five years after the trial, former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, publicly described Gauci as being "an apple short of a picnic" and "not quite the full shilling".

Verdict

The judges announced their verdict on 31 January 2001. They said of Megrahi: "There is nothing in the evidence which leaves us with any reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the first accused, and accordingly we find him guilty of the remaining charge in the indictment as amended." Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he should serve at least 20 years before being eligible for parole.

The judges unanimously found the second accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, not guilty of the murder charge. Fhimah was freed and returned to his home at Souk al-Juma in Libya on 1 February 2001.

Megrahi was imprisoned at the high-security Barlinnie Jail.

Prison visit by Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela visits Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in Barlinnie Jail

On 10 June 2002, Nelson Mandela visited Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for more than an hour at Barlinnie Jail in Glasgow. Megrahi described the meeting thus:

"Three months after my transfer to Barlinnie, Nelson Mandela kept his promise to visit me. That the world’s most respected statesman should again take the trouble to demonstrate his solidarity gave me a great lift. We chatted for sometime, mainly about the unjust guilty verdict. Having spent 27 years imprisoned on Robben Island, the agonies of prison life were etched into his soul. He asked me about my living conditions, the standard of my food and my bed, clearly aware of the huge importance of those things to a prisoner’s well-being. Before he left I introduced him again to my family, who thanked him and presented him with a bouquet of flowers. I was allowed to take photographs of him in the reception area and he signed my Arabic version of his book 'Long Walk to Freedom', which describes his prison years. In it he wrote:

'To Comrade Megrahi, Best wishes to one who is in our thoughts and prayers continuously. Mandela'."

Following the meeting which took place in Megrahi's own cell within the prison, in a section nicknamed by other inmates as "Gaddafi's Cafe", Nelson Mandela held a 30-minute press conference and called for a fresh appeal in the case.

"Megrahi is all alone," Mandela said. "He has nobody he can talk to. It is a psychological persecution that a man must stay for the length of his long sentence all alone." He added that al-Megrahi was being "harassed" by other inmates at Barlinnie. "He says he is being treated well by the officials but when he takes exercise he has been harassed by a number of prisoners," said Mr Mandela. "He cannot identify them because they shout at him from their cells through the windows and sometimes it is difficult even for the officials to know from which quarter the shouting occurs."

Mandela continued:

"It would be fair if Mr Megrahi was transferred to a Muslim country - and there are Muslim countries which are trusted by the West. It will make it easier for his family to visit him if he is in a place like the Kingdom of Morocco, Tunisia or Egypt."

Nelson Mandela described in detail how a four-judge commission from the Organisation of African Unity had criticised the basis by which Megrahi came to be convicted at a special Scottish court, sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001:

"They have criticised it fiercely, and it will be a pity if no court reviews the case itself. From the point of view of fundamental principles of natural law, it would be fair if he is given a chance to appeal either to the Privy Council or the European Court of Human Rights."

Concluding his remarks, Nelson Mandela said he also hoped to meet Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush to discuss the Megrahi case.

Appeals

Megrahi's appeal against his conviction in January 2001 was refused on 14 March 2002 by a panel of five Scottish judges at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. According to a report by the BBC, Dr Hans Köchler, one of the UN observers at the trial, expressed serious doubts about the fairness of the proceedings and spoke of a "spectacular miscarriage of justice".

On 24 November 2003, Megrahi appeared at the High Court in Glasgow, in front of the three judges who originally sentenced him at Camp Zeist, to learn that he would have to serve at least 27 years in jail – back-dated to April 1999 when he was extradited from Libya – before he could be considered for parole. This court hearing was the result of the incorporation into Scots law of the European Convention on Human Rights in 2001, nine months after Megrahi's sentence was imposed, which required him to be told the extent of the "punishment part" of his life term. On 31 May 2004 he was granted leave to appeal against his 27-year sentence. The appeal against sentence was scheduled to be heard in Edinburgh by a panel of five Judges on 11 July 2006. However, the Scottish Court of Criminal Appeal decided to postpone the July hearing to allow consideration of whether the appeal against sentence ought to be heard at Camp Zeist rather than in Edinburgh.

Judicial reviews

On 23 September 2003 lawyers acting for Megrahi applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) for a review of the case (both sentence and conviction), arguing that there had been a miscarriage of justice. On 1 November 2006 Megrahi was reported to have dropped his demand for the new appeal to be held at Camp Zeist. In an interview with The Scotsman newspaper of 31 January 2006, retired Scottish Judge Lord MacLean – one of the three who convicted Megrahi in 2001 – said he believed the SCCRC would return the case for a further appeal against conviction:

"They can't be working for two years without producing something with which to go to the court."

MacLean added that any new appeal would indicate the flexibility of Scots law, rather than a weakness:

"It might even be the strength of the system – it is capable of looking at itself subsequently and determining a ground for appeal."

In January 2007, the SCCRC announced that it would issue its decision on Megrahi's case by the end of June 2007. On 9 June 2007 rumours of a possible prisoner swap deal involving Megrahi were strenuously denied by the then-prime minister, Tony Blair. Later in June, The Observer confirmed the imminence of the SCCRC ruling and reported:

"Abdelbaset al-Megrahi never wavered in his denial of causing the Lockerbie disaster: now some Scottish legal experts say they believe him."

Second appeal

On 28 June 2007 the SCCRC concluded its four-year review and, having uncovered evidence that a miscarriage of justice could have occurred, the commission granted Megrahi leave to appeal against his Lockerbie bombing conviction for a second time. The second appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal was abandoned in August 2009, as an impediment to the legal power to release him to Libya under the Prisoner Transfer Scheme then operating in the United Kingdom. Ultimately, he was not released under this scheme, rather, on compassionate grounds due to his ill health. There was in the event, no requirement to drop his appeal against conviction.

In a statement dated 29 June 2007 Dr Hans Köchler, international observer at the Lockerbie trial, expressed his surprise at the SCCRC's narrow focus and apparent bias towards the judicial establishment:

"In giving exoneration to the police, prosecutors and forensic staff, I think they show their lack of independence. No officials to be blamed, simply a Maltese shopkeeper."

New information casting fresh doubts about Megrahi's conviction was examined at a procedural hearing at the Judicial Appeal Court in Edinburgh on 11 October 2007:

1. His lawyers claimed that vital documents, which emanated from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and related to the Mebo timer that allegedly detonated the Lockerbie bomb, were withheld from the trial defence team.
2. Tony Gauci, chief prosecution witness at the trial, was alleged to have been paid $2 million for testifying against Megrahi.
3. Mebo's owner, Edwin Bollier, claimed that in 1991 the FBI offered him $4 million to testify that the timer fragment found near the scene of the crash was part of a Mebo MST-13 timer supplied to Libya.
4. Former employee of Mebo Ulrich Lumpert swore an affidavit in July 2007 that he had stolen a prototype MST-13 timer in 1989, and had handed it over to "a person officially investigating the Lockerbie case".

On 1 November 2007 Megrahi invited Professor Robert Black QC to visit him at Greenock Prison. After a two-hour meeting, Black stated "that not only was there a wrongful conviction, but the victim of it was an innocent man. Lawyers, and I hope others, will appreciate this distinction."

Prior to Megrahi's second appeal, another four procedural hearings took place at the High Court of Appeal in Edinburgh between December 2007 and June 2008.

Megrahi's grounds of appeal were published in November 2009, two months after the appeal was abandoned.

Observations by UN Observer

In the June 2008 edition of the Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm, the UN Observer at the Lockerbie trial, Dr Hans Köchler, referred to the 'totalitarian' nature of Megrahi's second appeal process saying it "bears the hallmarks of an 'intelligence operation'." Pointing out an error on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's website (FCO) and accusing the British government of "delaying tactics" in relation to Megrahi's second Lockerbie appeal, UN Observer at the Lockerbie trial Dr Hans Köchler wrote to Foreign Secretary David Miliband on 21 July 2008 saying:

As international observer, appointed by the UN, at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands I am also concerned about the Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate which has been issued by you in connection with the new Appeal of the convicted Libyan national. Withholding of evidence from the Defence was one of the reasons why the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has referred Mr al-Megrahi's case back to the High Court of Justiciary. The Appeal cannot go ahead if the Government of the United Kingdom, through the PII certificate issued by you, denies the Defence the right (also guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights) to have access to a document which is in the possession of the Prosecution. How can there be equality of arms in such a situation? How can the independence of the judiciary be upheld if the executive power interferes into the appeal process in such a way?

The FCO corrected the error on its website and wrote to Köchler on 27 August 2008:

"Ultimately, it will be for the Court to decide whether the material should be disclosed, not the Foreign Secretary."

On 15 October 2008, five Scottish judges decided unanimously to reject a submission by the Crown Office to the effect that the scope of Megrahi's second appeal should be limited to the specific grounds of appeal that were identified by the SCCRC in June 2007.

In January 2009, it was reported that, although Megrahi's second appeal against conviction was scheduled to begin on 27 April 2009, the hearing could last as long as 12 months because of the complexity of the case and volume of material to be examined. At a preliminary High Court hearing in Edinburgh on 20 February 2009, Megrahi's Counsel, Maggie Scott QC, was informed that a delegation from the Crown Office was due to travel to Malta to "actively seek the consent for disclosure" of sensitive documents that could determine the outcome of the second appeal.

Scottish ministers denied in April 2009 they had clandestinely agreed to the repatriation of Megrahi before the start of his second appeal on 28 April.

Kenny MacAskill announced in May 2011 that the re-elected SNP Government would seek to change Scots law to allow publication of the SCCRC report, which can presently be blocked by any party that provided evidence to the review. Nevertheless, The Herald published this report online in March 2012.

Compassionate release

Full article: Abdelbaset al-Megrahi/Compassionate release

On 20 August 2009, after Megrahi agreed to abandon his appeal, he was granted "compassionate release" by Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, and flew back to Tripoli accompanied by Saif al-Islam Gaddafi.

Same bad science and scientists

Gareth Peirce, the solicitor who overturned the miscarriage of justice convictions of the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six, has backed the call for a full inquiry into the Pan Am Flight 103 debacle, and has directly criticised former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s role in shoring up "layers and layers of deceit" in the Lockerbie case. Peirce says that the construction and maintenance of the discredited case against Megrahi has required active participation from those at all levels of the criminal justice system, with both tacit and overt support from the top of the political hierarchy.

"In the most notorious cases, everyone played their part, absolutely everybody," Peirce says. "A big part of the blame lies within those who form the criminal justice system. It looks as if in the prosecution of the Lockerbie case, the defendants met the same fate, even to the extent of the same personnel featuring, in the person of the forensic scientists."

The principal forensic analyst, Thomas Hayes, employed by the Crown to testify against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was the same discredited analyst who was proven to have fabricated his evidence in the manufactured case against the Guildford Four.

He and Alan Feraday testified that the key forensic evidence, a fragment of circuit board, survived the explosion of Pan Am 103 and left traces of clothing connected to a shop in Malta. The owners of that shop provided the identification of Megrahi to the court, and were later found to have been paid in millions of dollars for their testimony. This testimony has been widely discredited by EU explosives consultant John Wyatt and others who claim that such an thing is not possible in physics.

"That was the most shocking revelation to me," Peirce says.

"Exactly the same forensic scientists who produced the wrongful conviction of Guiseppe Conlon, the Maguire family and of Danny McNamee, and had been stood down for the role they played. Yet here they were. Without them, there wouldn’t have been a prosecution, far less a conviction in Lockerbie. What shocked me most was that I thought that all that had been gone through on Guildford and Birmingham, the one thing that had been achieved was that nobody would be convicted again on bad science. But yet in the Lockerbie case, it isn’t just the same bad science, it is the same bad scientists."

Death

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died at home in Tripoli on 20 May 2012 at the age of 60. His funeral was held the following day, on 21 May.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking at a NATO summit in Chicago, said that it was a day to think of the victims of "an appalling terrorist act". Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond also stated that people should use the occasion of al-Megrahi's death to remember the Lockerbie victims. The Guardian reported that Libyans "expressed relief rather than sadness" at news of al-Megrahi's death, as he was a reminder of the international sanctions that had impoverished the country following the bombing.

Many families of the Lockerbie victims called for al-Megrahi's appeal to be reopened following his death and headed by investigators outside of Scotland, claiming that it would exonerate al-Megrahi. Cameron refused, stating, "I’m very clear that the court case was properly done and properly dealt with."

Alex Salmond said it was up to Megrahi’s relatives to apply to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to seek a further appeal, adding that his death "ends one chapter of the Lockerbie case, but it does not close the book".

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Bloggers Under Siege - Craig Murray Charged with Contempt of Court	blog post	27 April 2020	Ludwig De Braeckeleer	From Lockerbie to the Russia Hoax, Craig Murray has of course upset people in high-places, including some who work for Intelligence Agencies.
Document:CIA wanted to kill Lockerbie bomber before trial	article	5 July 2013	Gareth Rose Bob Smyth	A report of William Chasey's allegation (after being diagnosed with incurable cancer) that CIA agents tried to convince him to plant homing devices on Megrahi and Fhimah as part of the plot to assassinate them before the Lockerbie trial.
Document:Call for US to give update on fourth Lockerbie suspect	Article	18 December 2022	Kathleen Nutt	Former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill: "Britain and America know everything. I want the UK and US to be more open. Libya have offered up Abu Agila Masud. But Masud is smaller beer. The Lord Advocate should find out what progress is being made on bringing Abdullah Senussi to court."
Document:Ex-Scottish Government Ministers: Political Consequences of Public Statements	Letter	16 March 2018	Robert Forrester	Professor Robert Black said that Kenny MacAskill’s contention in his new book that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi had not bought the clothes wrapped around the explosive device that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 amounted to “the end of the conviction”.
Document:Fragments of Truth	Article	1 December 2009	Mark Hirst
Document:How Megrahi and Libya were framed for Lockerbie	article	22 July 2010	Alexander Cockburn
Document:Justice for Megrahi awaits at the Supreme Court	Letter	4 April 2021	Patrick Haseldine	My recommendation, Mr Anwar, is that you appeal to the UK Supreme Court to quash the Scottish Court in the Netherlands' 2001 conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on the basis of fabricated timer fragment evidence led by the "non-expert witness" Allen Feraday
Document:Justice for Megrahi is gonna happen!	Letter	14 April 2021	Patrick Haseldine	Aamer Anwar said: "I have no doubt that the new democratic Libyan Government headed by Abdul Hamid al-Dabaiba will support this final appeal for justice on behalf of the Al-Megrahi family and help in our efforts to prove the innocence of Libya and its people."
Document:Lockerbie Lies	Article	22 December 2017	Steven Walker	The Lockerbie bombing remains a text book case of a terrible tragedy causing considerable pain and suffering to relatives whose search for answers and clarification about why and how their loved ones died have taken second place to geo-political manoeuvres, deliberate meddling in legal processes, and the murky world of secret service wheeling and dealing on behalf of governments with no respect for human decency.
Document:Lockerbie bombing: Megrahi's posthumous appeal rejected by Scottish judges	Article	19 January 2021	Steve James	No explanation or significance has been attached to a break in at Heathrow airport, where security was poor, the night before, adjacent to the luggage loading area for PA103.
Document:Lockerbie case: new accusations of manipulation of key forensic evidence	Statement	28 August 2007	Hans Köchler	Those responsible for the mid-air explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 will have to be identified and brought to justice. A continuation of the rather obvious cover-up which we have witnessed up until now is neither acceptable for the citizens of Scotland nor for the international public.
Document:Megrahi Obituary	obituary	21 May 2012	Tam Dalyell	The day after Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died, Tam Dalyell opines that he was not the Lockerbie bomber.
Document:Pan Am Flight 103: It was the Uranium	article	6 January 2014	Patrick Haseldine	Following Bernt Carlsson's untimely death in the Lockerbie bombing, the UN Council for Namibia inexplicably dropped the case against Britain's URENCO for illegally importing yellowcake from the Rössing Uranium Mine in Namibia.
Document:Release of the Lockerbie Prisoner	report	21 August 2009	Hans Köchler	A report by the official UN Observer of the Lockerbie Trial in the Netherlands, commenting on the release on compassionate grounds of the only person convicted in the Lockerbie case.
Document:The Framing of al-Megrahi	Article	24 September 2009	Gareth Peirce	It is not difficult to achieve a conviction of the innocent
Document:The Political Scientists of Lockerbie - Allen Feraday	blog post	26 October 2010	Adam Larson	"Patrick Haseldine’s famously deleted Wikipedia page on Alan Feraday sums up nicely that he 'has appeared as an expert witness at criminal trials leading to convictions in at least four high-profile cases, three of which were subsequently overturned on appeal. The appeal in the fourth case is ongoing'.”
Document:The Political Scientists of Lockerbie - Thomas Hayes	blog post	22 October 2010	Adam Larson	Dr Thomas Hayes' testimony was central to the Lockerbie verdict. Yet he and two colleagues conspired to withhold evidence from the 1974 alleged IRA Maguire Seven trial which would have indicated innocence. The Maguires were freed on appeal after fifteen years in jail. This matter was exposed at the Lockerbie trial, but the Judges trusted Hayes' word implicitly.
File:Koechler-lockerbie-appeal report.pdf	report	26 March 2002	Hans Köchler	A report on the appeal proceedings at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.

See also

• Lockerbie Official Narrative
• Cameron's Report on Lockerbie Forensic Evidence
• The Framing of al-Megrahi
• The How, Why and Who of Pan Am Flight 103

External links

• Lockerbie Case Judgement
• Pan Am 103 – Lockerbie: the judges
• Trial and appeal reports by Dr Hans Köchler, international observer appointed by the United Nations
• Aims & Objectives of Justice for Megrahi campaign
• Website of Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph
• Dr Jim Swire: My hopes
• London Review of Books – The Framing of al-Megrahi by Gareth Peirce 24 September 2009
• Blackout of Mandela Blueprint for Lockerbie Justice by Patrick Haseldine
• Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi - My Story Website Created September 2009, containing the grounds for appeal against conviction.
• Investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
• Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial
• Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories
• Hans Köchler's Lockerbie trial observer mission

This page imported content from Wikipedia on 15 March 2013.
Wikipedia is not affiliated with Wikispooks.   Original page source here