With the only Lockerbie conviction now going to appeal, Libya's alleged role in international terrorism is again open to refutation, writes Issaka Souaré* Libya has always maintained its innocence amid the allegation that it is responsible for the bombing of the American Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988. It however accepted, about a decade later -- after many diplomatic manoeuvres -- to hand over two of its citizens to Scottish authorities to be tried for the alleged crime. Three Scottish judges, representing the Scottish High Court of Judiciary (HCJ), sat at a special court in a third country, as Libya had demanded (the Netherlands). Whilst they acquitted and subsequently released one of the two Libyan nationals, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhima, the other one, Abdul-Basit Ali Mohamed Al-Meghrahi was convicted of murdering 270 people in the bombing and was imprisoned for life. Al-Meghrahi, as his country, has consistently maintained his innocence. He thus appealed against his conviction, but the Scottish High Court rejected this application in March 2002, just over a year after his trial concluded on 31 January 2001. However, in September 2003, he applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to review his conviction in light of this body referring his case to the HCJ. The SCCRC is described in its mandate as an independent public body established in 1999 by Scottish authorities with responsibility for reviewing alleged miscarriages of justice in Scotland. As such, it has the power to refer to the HCJ any conviction or sentence passed on a person, whether or not an appeal against the conviction or sentence has been heard and determined previously. In this instance, the HCJ must hear an appeal in the case referred. But to refer a case to the HCJ, the SCCRC must be convinced that the evidence presented to it establishes that; a miscarriage of justice may have occurred; and it is in the interests of justice that a referral should be made. Understanding this background is important in understanding the case at hand. Al-Meghrahi's defence team lodged an application to the SCCRC in September 2003. About six months later, in February 2004, the SCCRC allocated the case to an investigative team of three legal officers on a full time basis. In May 2007, the SCCRC accepted the request of the defendant's legal team to appeal Al-Meghrahi's imprisonment, justifying this by the fact that the defence team had enough ground for the appeal. In an official press release of 28 June 2007, in which it announced the referral of Al-Meghrahi's case to the HCJ, the SCCRC declared that it had identified six grounds -- some of which resulted from the SCCRC's own investigation -- where it believes that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred against Al-Meghrahi and that, "it is in the interests of justice to refer the matter to the court of appeal." One of the grounds on which the SCCRC referred Al-Meghrahi's case to appeal is that there are new facts that challenge some of the "core" evidence that the trial court relied upon to convict Al-Meghrahi. At the trial of the two Libyan officials between 1999, when the trial began, and 2001, when Al-Meghrahi was convicted, judges were led to believe that the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 was contained within a Toshiba radio cassette player that had been placed inside a suitcase that also contained 12 items of clothing and an umbrella. A number of these items had been traced to a shop called Mary's House in Malta. The proprietor of this shop, Anthony Gauci, claimed he had sold many of the items to a man he described as Libyan. It was also claimed that the bomb had been triggered by a digital timer device which was manufactured by a Swiss firm called Mebo. The judges accepted the testimony of Edwin Bollier, one of the partners in that firm, that in 1985 and 1986 he had supplied 20 samples of this device to Libya. As a result of an identification parade organised in Libya, Gauci had pointed to Al-Meghrahi as resembling the purchaser of the items, a testimony the trial court accepted after being led to believe that Al-Meghrahi was in Malta staying in a hotel close to Mary's House on 7 December 1988, the date on which the shop owner claims he sold the items. These testimonies were added to other "facts" which convinced the trial court that Al-Meghrahi was guilty of the bombing. But now it has been established that albeit Al-Meghrahi was in Malta on several occasions in December 1988, he never was there on 7 December, which is the only date on which he would have had the opportunity to purchase the items. Yet findings as to the date of purchase and Al-Meghrahi being the purchaser were very important in the verdict against him. Additional evidence, not made available to Al-Meghrahi's defence team, indicates that four days prior to the identification parade at which Gauci picked out Al-Meghrahi, he saw a photograph of him in a magazine article linking him to the bombing, which suggests that Gauci's exposure to this photograph in such close proximity to the parade undermines the reliability of his identification both at that time and at the trial itself. Further to all this, it seems that Al-Meghrahi's defence team is still being denied a critical and highly sensitive document for their appeal. In a report of the 23 February 2008 issue of the Scottish Sunday Herald, Al-Meghrahi's lawyer is said to have criticised the Scottish authority's silence over allegations that the British government, through Foreign Secretary David Miliband, is the one behind this, and that this constitutes an undue interference by Westminster in the Scottish judicial system. The document is thought to contain sensitive information about the electronic device used to explode the airliner that may clear Al-Meghrahi of the crime. Al-Meghrahi's defence team argue that the document was deliberately withheld from them at trial. On the basis of the above, a number of questions are opened. If Libya was not behind the crime -- as it has always maintained -- then who was? Ex-CIA agent Robert Baer, who worked on the Lockerbie investigation, claims Iran was responsible. Why wouldn't the Americans seize on this allegation? Why the exclusive focus on Libya? Why would the British government zealously protect a document that supposedly incriminates Iran, or Syria for that matter? Iran could not be responsible for this; so who might be? A parallel case is the near silence about who is responsible of the bombing of an Italian civilian airliner en route from Bologna to Palermo and the killing of all its 81 passengers on 20 June 1980. In interview with the French daily Libération, former Italian president Francesco Cossiga (1985-1992) argued that he never had and has no doubt that the French were behind the bombing of the plane because they mistook it for Muammar Qaddafi's personal plane. Qaddafi was visiting Italy at the time and was at loggerheads with France in Chad. France is nowhere near the dock in this case. Why did Libya agree to pay compensation to the families of Lockerbie victims when it claims it is innocent? Could it be that Qaddafi was that desperate to have Western sanctions against Libya lifted that he accepted to pay an amount that was little compared to what his country stood to gain from restoring relations with the West? One senior Libyan diplomat told me so. If so, was this a wise decision on the part of Tripoli? Could the ruling of an American court in mid-January ordering Libya to pay more than $6 billion in damages over the bombing of a French aircraft over Niger in September 1989 be seen as possible only because of Tripoli's decision? Will Libya refuse to pay, or will it conclude again that the amount is little compared to the benefits it gets from its relations with the West? The release of Al-Meghrahi, should the Scottish appeals court acquit him, would surely open the door to many unanswered questions. * The writer is author of Africa in the United Nations System, 1945-2005 and Civil Wars and Coups d'Etat in West Africa .
