7 - 13 February 2002
Issue No.572
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 7 - 13 February 2002 Issue No.572 |
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Maltese connection undermined
Lawyers of a Libyan suspected of bombing a PanAm airliner over Lockerbie have presented an appeal challenging the verdict in the original trial. Judit Neurink reports from Camp Zeist
"Why do human rights activists come to our trials in Tunisia, and I don't see any here?" said the chairman of the Tunisian bar association, Bechir Essid, attending the opening of the appeal hearings in the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. Essid was trying to warn against a double crime being committed: Not just the 270 dead in the crash of the Pan-Am Boeing at Lockerbie in December 1988, but also an innocent man in prison taken as a scapegoat.At least a dozen Arab jurists have found their way to Camp Zeist for the appeal of Abdel-Basset Al-Megrahi, 49, who was sentenced a year ago to life imprisonment for the bomb attack on the plane. His alleged accomplice, Lamine Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted. Asked where he and his colleagues were during the first stage of the trial in 2000, a Libyan lawyer says: "We thought justice was done, but after the verdict we're not so sure anymore. That's why we will each take our turn as observers at the appeal." Like Essid, they are convinced Al- Megrahi is not guilty. "There is no element to prove his guilt, nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything. It is all very hypothetical," says Essid.
To quash the conviction, Scottish law requires the defence only to prove a "miscarriage of justice," or to present significant new evidence that was not heard in the earlier trial. Defence attorney William Taylor spent the first days of the appeal to show the five new Scottish High Court judges that their three colleagues at the earlier trial have disregarded relevant evidence, and took into account irrelevant information when they decided on conviction. Taylor also pointed out the facts undermining the testimony of the Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who claims Al-Megrahi bought clothes in this shop that were later identified as having been used to pad the bomb inside the suitcase.
Gauci is the only witness tying Al- Megrahi directly to the bomb and to Malta, where the prosecution claims Al-Megrahi, as an alleged member of the Libyan secret service, had made sure the bomb was put unaccompanied aboard a connecting flight via Frankfurt and London to the US. But Taylor argues the identification of Al-Megrahi by Gauci was shaky and that the date of the purchase was doubtful.
Supporting such argument, British newspapers reported last week that Gauci has been pampered by the Scottish police with luxurious holidays in Scotland. The shopkeeper admitted in Malta to a Scottish undercover investigator he and some of his family members had been taken to Scotland for salmon fishing, hill-walking and bird-watching trips at least five times. In the secretly taped conversations Gauci said he had been an important witness in a terrorist trial and that the police had to look after him to keep "the bad man" in jail. He also claims he had been taken to Lockerbie not long after the disaster to be shown the damage. The Scottish investigative journalist Ian Ferguson, who has been on the case since 1988, had the story confirmed by a Scottish police source. He also found that Gauci enjoys witness protection from armed Maltese officers, and was told it was provided by the American authorities. Furthermore, reports have it that Gauci had been taken to the US once the appeal proceedings started on yet another holiday.
According to legal sources, the defence has demanded an explanation from the Scottish Crown. Legal experts believe that these new facts may be damning enough to invalidate the whole trial. No answer has been forwarded to date, while the trial has continued. Only upon complaints of the defence, the five judges decided on a formal investigation.
But before that, they will have to decide on the request of the defence to call to the stand a new witness, with new evidence.
Former security guard Ray Manly is reporting a breach of security at London Heathrow Airport, hours before the bomb exploded aboard the fatal Pan Am flight 103. In a sworn statement William Taylor read to the court, Manly says a padlock had been forced on a secure door giving access to airside in Terminal 3, where baggage containers for several aircraft were left. "It was often the case that loose baggage would be left in that area. Such baggage would be tagged for loading into the flights." Manly thinks it is quite possible an unauthorised person could have obtained tags for the fatal flight and introduced a thus- tagged bag into the baggage storage area at Terminal 3.
The defence said this new witness and the evidence were unknown to them at the time of the earlier trial. Manly was then a Crown witness, but he was never called to the stand. His testimony could at the very least cast more doubt over the presumption that the bomb was brought aboard at Malta. As Al-Megrahi worked for some time at Luqa Airport in Malta, the Malta link is essential for the Crown's case.
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