When the bomb that brought down Pan Am 103 detonated, it initiated a sequence of events resulting in a flawed legal process based on a misguided investigation, which has left the reputation of the Scottish criminal justice system in tatters and ultimately besmirched Malta’s reputation. The Crown’s initial star witness’ at Camp Zeist was Abdul Majid Giaka. His testimony was dismissed as that of a money grubbing ‘fantasist’ by the judges. Sadly however, without the promise staked by the prosecution in his claims implicating Abdelbaset al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, the trial may well never have gone to court in the first instance.
Whether one invests even a morsel of credibility in anything Giaka said relating to this case is open to question, nevertheless, during debriefs, he indicated that Gaddafi had ruled out involving Luqa in any nefarious plots because of the airport’s stringent security regime.
The mantle of ‘star witness’ was then transferred to the shoulders of Maltese shopkeeper TonyGauci. Profound question marks dangle over Gauci’s identification of Megrahi from photo spreads and formal line up, inconsistencies linking his description of the mystery purchaser’s age and physique when compared with that of Megrahi’s, and to the date when the purchases were made. Reasonable doubt?
Gauci and brother also appear to have been the beneficiaries of a $3 million inducement for his appearance at Camp Zeist: information that the court was not made privy to. Nor was the court made aware of the grooming process applied on Gauci by Lockerbie investigators.
As a result of the Lockerbie bombing, the security systems in place at Luqa, Frankfurt and Heathrow were subject to independent examination, resulting in Luqa coming out top of the class and Heathrow ensconced in the dunce’s corner.
There is no documentary or eyewitness evidence whatsoever that an unaccompanied and unaccounted for brown, hardshell Samsonite was loaded onto Air Malta flight KM180 at Luqa. None. Similarly, there is no evidence whatsoever that such a suitcase was transferred from KM180 to Pan Am 103 at Frankfurt. None. Reasonable doubt?
On December 21, 1988, prior to the arrival of Pan Am 103 from Frankfurt, baggage handler John Bedford noted the existence of a brown, hardshell Samsonite style, suitcase not only in the container in which the bomb went off but also in the position that it detonated.
He could neither account for this item nor did he pull it for inspection. Despite the fact the Crown went to great pains to encourage the Heathrow baggage handlers to say the luggage had been shuffled in the container to accommodate the imagined suitcase from Malta, such testimony from the Heathrow witnesses was not forthcoming. Reasonable doubt?
To compound this evidence from Heathrow, another eyewitness statement, to the effect that Heathrow airside had been broken into only hours before, giving access to the 103 interline shed, was denied to the court.
Furthermore, recent evidence has emerged indicating that perjury may have been committed surrounding forensic testimony relating to the metallurgic composition of the shard of printed circuit board claimed to have been part of the triggering device for the bomb.
The judges, who, exceptionally, were also the jury, preferred the case founded on speculation rather than accept that eyewitness evidence available to police in the first weeks of the investigation pointing not to Luqa but to Heathrow as the origin of the bomb. Thus Megrahi was convicted and Fhimah acquitted.
Bizarrely, with the acquittal of Fhimah, a central plank of the Crown case was demolished, namely that the plot could not have been accomplished by a lone individual.
With the conviction being upheld at the first appeal, partly due to the wrong grounds being adopted, and the second appeal being dropped in politically dubious circumstances, the Crown has maintained what comes across as a cynical charade to attempt to incriminate other Libyans as Megrahi’s co-conspirators to shore up the indefensible.
The Crown’s constant refrain is that Megrahi was convicted in a court of law and a court of law is the only appropriate platform for dealing with the matter. Obviously, it is open to the Megrahi family to make an appeal referral but, given Libya’s highly fraught and unstable circumstances, that likelihood seems most improbable. It is also open to the families of the bereaved who regard the case to have been a miscarriage of justice.
This inexcusable tragedy of errors has produced even more victims than it started with and has seemingly permitted the actual perpetrators to roam free. Campaigners are calling for an independent inquiry into the case. Perhaps now, 25 years on, provides a symbolic moment for Malta to join the fray.
Robert Forrester is secretary, Justice for Megrahi group.