The death of the only man to have been convicted of the
Lockerbie bombing
– when Pan Am flight 103 was blown out of the sky over Scotland in the
week before Christmas 1988, means it is less likely than ever that the
full story behind the outrage will be told.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi
who died in Tripoli on Sunday, two years and nine months after his
release from a Scottish jail, always protested his innocence.
The
60-year-old, whose imminent death had been predicted on several
occasions since his return to Libya, had, according to US and UK
authorities been a Libyan intelligence officer as well as head of
security for Libyan Arab Airlines and director of the Centre for
Strategic Studies in Tripoli.
In November 1991, he and Lamin
Khalifa Fhimah were indicted in the US and Scotland for the bombing
which killed 259 passengers and crew on the Pan Am jet and 11 people on
the ground. Libya refused to extradite them, though they were kept under
arrest in Tripoli.
However, eight years later they were handed
over after complex negotiations that led to their being prosecuted under
Scottish law, at a court with three judges but no jury, in the
Netherlands. In January 2001,
Megrahi was convicted of 270 murders and jailed for life. Fhimah was acquitted.
The
Libyan government paid $2.7bn (£1.7bn) in compensation and accepted
responsibility for the actions of its officials while not admitting
direct responsibility for the bombing. Megrahi was jailed first at
Barlinnie, in Glasgow, and later at Greenock. His wife and children
moved to Scotland too.
Years of legal wrangling followed, with an appeal rejected in 2002, and a £1.1m investigation by the
Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) that found there were six grounds where a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.
A
full appeal got under way in April 2009. But it was dropped suddenly
the following August, two days before Megrahi was put aboard a plane to
Tripoli. Climbing aboard the plane, he wore a white shell-suit to hide
body armour. He had been transferred from prison in a bombproof vehicle
accompanied by security officers, also wearing body armour and drawing
enhanced danger pay.
International furore erupted over the
release, with allegations it had been sanctioned by the UK government in
order to secure more business and oil deals with the Gaddafi regime.
Gordon Brown's administration was forced to admit it had known in
advance of the release but that it had been a matter for the Scottish
justice system. Nonetheless, David Miliband, then foreign secretary,
made no apology for protecting business links with Libya. "With the
largest proven oil reserves in
Africa
and extensive gas reserves, Libya is potentially a major energy source
in the future", he told MPs at Westminster. David Cameron always said
that Megrahi should have died in jail.
Even as the Gadaffis faced
overthrow last year, state TV showed Megrahi at a rally in support of
the threatened rulers. But when rebel forces took control of Tripoli and
discovered Megrahi apparently close to death, the national transitional
council said he would not be returned to Britain.
Late last year,
the new Tripoli government gave Britain some encouragement to mount
fresh investigations, both into Lockerbie and the shooting of PC Yvonne
Fletcher in London in 1984.
Megrahi's family insisted he was too
ill to be seen by British officials and in March this year Libyan
officials appeared to rule out the possibility of UK detectives
travelling to Libya to conduct new inquiries for the foreseeable future.
However,
Frank Mulholland, the Lord Advocate and Scotland's chief law officer,
recently visited Tripoli with the FBI chief Robert Mueller to kickstart
talks about getting access to records from Gaddafi's regime and
potential suspects, believed to include the former Libyan head of
intelligence Abdullah al-Senussi.
While many relatives of
Lockerbie victims remain convinced of Megrahi's guilt, there are some,
particularly in Britain, who believe he is innocent.
John Ashton,
Megrahi's biographer and author of Megrahi: You Are My Jury, said: "I
think there will be moves to reopen the appeal. That has yet to be
decided. I would very much hope that his appeal is resurrected and that
somebody does make an application to the SCCRC. The people best placed
to do this would be his family."
The SCCRC and Megrahi's legal
team believe they uncovered a series of critical flaws in his
conviction, which made it highly likely he would be cleared by an
appeal.
Ashton's biography quotes Megrahi stating he was "framed"
for the attack. While he refused to blame Dumfries and Galloway police,
he accused the Crown Office of "a blatant breach" of their obligations
to disclose all the evidence in the case. "If I was a terrorist, then I
was an exceptionally stupid one," Megrahi said.
The grounds of
appeal included compelling evidence that the chief prosecution witness,
Tony Gauci, had wrongly identified Megrahi and linked him to the bomb
which brought down the plane; new evidence that Gauci and his brother
were paid very large rewards after the conviction; new scientific
evidence disputed evidence that the type of timer in the bomb was solely
used by the Libyans; and failure to disclose a break-in at Heathrow
airport near Flight 103 which could easily have allowed the bomb to be
planted.
Ashton, who had worked as Megrahi researcher during the
Libyan's appeal, said he was upset by his death. "We have always
expected this day to come; we'd been expecting it for three years, but
it's still shattering. It's still pretty shocking. I had come to like
him. For all he had been through, there was remarkably little rancour.
He was, all things considered, very gracious and never lashed out at
those closest to him."
Their claims are rejected by the Scottish
and UK governments and the Crown Office, the Scottish prosecution
service, which has reopened its investigation into the case after the
fall of Muammar Gaddafi and has sought cooperation from the new Libyan
civilian government.
The UK and US authorities have repeatedly
brushed off claims by campaigners that the bomb was planted by Syrian
agents and Palestinian terrorists in revenge for the attack on an
Iranian passenger airliner by a US warship.
The Scottish first
minister Alex Salmond said: "The Lockerbie case remains a live
investigation, and Scotland's criminal justice authorities have made
clear that they will rigorously pursue any new lines of inquiry. "
Jim
Swire, whose daughter was a passenger on Pan Am 103 told Sky News:
"It's a very sad event. Right up to the end he was determined – for his
family's sake, he knew it was too late for him, but for his family's
sake – how the verdict against him should be overturned.
"And also
he wanted that for the sake of those relatives who had come to the
conclusion after studying the evidence that he wasn't guilty, and I
think that's going to happen."
So who actually carried out the bombing of the PANAM Airliner in 1988 over Lockerbie? Was it a conspiracy? Were the 270 innocent victims sacrificial lambs for a country's hidden agenda? Did Megrahi die with all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle? Time will tell and the truth will actually be revealed one day. My condolence goes out to all the families who lost loved ones in that tragic incident.
