A DOCTOR whose daughter died in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie has said that the right of families to know the truth about what happened is being blocked by the authorities’ failure to re-examine evidence from the trial in the Netherlands, which led to the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the atrocity.
Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the 1988 bombing, is among a number of victims’ relatives who believe Libyan Megrahi – who died in 2012 – was innocent.
In an open letter published on the Intel Today website, he said the evidence now appears to show that the bomb was loaded on to the flight at London Heathrow and not Malta.
That was a key part of the prosecutors’ case against Megrahi at the Camp Zeist trial, which heard from a Maltese shopkeeper who said he had sold the Libyan clothing that was found wrapped around the device.
“The attempt by a group of UK relatives to initiate a further appeal against the Zeist verdict was rejected when the SCCRC [Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission] requested guidance over our application from the Edinburgh High Court,” said Swire. “The High Court in the form of Lord Carloway ruled that we, a group of close relatives of some of the dead, had no locus to request a further appeal. We wanted the truth, that’s all.
“Writing this in 2017, when there is thought to be widespread concern over the interests of victims in murder cases such as this, I find it astonishing that the highest lawyers in Scotland believe it right to exclude us in this way.
“There has been profoundly coherent evidence readily and even publicly available for at least the last 18 years which seems to show not only that the late Mr Megrahi was not guilty, but that the whole prosecution case, alleging that the bomb was planted in Malta by Libyans, is not correct. The totality of evidence now appears to show beyond reasonable doubt that the bomb was first put aboard at London Heathrow, and that its origins do not point even to the country of Libya.”
Megrahi was convicted of the bombing, which killed 270 people, in 2001 and was jailed for 27 years. He lost an appeal in 2002, and the SCCRC recommended in 2007 that he should be granted a second, but Megrahi dropped this bid ahead of his return to Libya in 2009, when he was released on compassionate grounds. He died of prostate cancer three years later.
Swire added: “These matters can only be resolved once and for all in a Scottish court of law. It should long have been obvious that without formal resolution they will not fade away. The Scottish authorities have perhaps forgotten that even their own Criminal Cases Review Commission found six reasons why the Zeist trial might have been a miscarriage of justice. Meanwhile, the simple right of the relatives of the dead to know the truth [about] all that is known about the perpetrators, and the failure to protect their loved ones, is blocked by the failure to re-examine the evidence used at Zeist, and its augmentation since.
“Once it is confirmed that the prosecution case at Zeist was invalid, we shall all want to know why Scottish authorities took so long to realise their dreadful mistake, and how the prosecution case came to be built up in the face of so much knowledge pointing in a very different direction.”
Megrahi’s family said earlier this week they would pursue a further appeal to clear his name.
Meanwhile, pressure group Justice for Megrahi (JfM) is still awaiting the results of the Operation Sandwood investigation by Police Scotland into nine criminal allegations it made against police and others involved in the initial investigation and trial.
JfM member and former police officer Iain McKie, said: “We have never been in a better place for getting to the truth. Sandwood has been a dedicated investigation by Police Scotland and its final report will be a seminal document.”
A spokesperson for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) told The National: “The only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the criminal court, and Mr Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior judges. His conviction was upheld unanimously by five judges, in an appeal court presided over by the Lord Justice General, Scotland’s most senior judge. As the investigation against others who were acting with Megrahi in this Libyan plot remains live, it would not be appropriate to offer further comment.”
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