Pressure piles up for independent prosecutor in Lockerbie case

This is the headline over a lengthy report by John Davison published today on the website of Exaro news agency. Today’s article can be read here. Earlier Lockerbie-related reports by Exaro can be accessed here.

Lockerbie victims' relatives to appeal over 'wrongful conviction'

[This is the headline over a report by John Davison just published on the website of Exaro news agency.  The following are excerpts:]

Families of some of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing are to apply for a fresh appeal against the only conviction for the terrorist attack.

One option under consideration is to launch a joint appeal with the family of the convicted man, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Some victims’ relatives are liaising with members of his family in Libya, who are separately studying legal papers with the intention of mounting their own appeal to clear al-Megrahi’s name. (...)

Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died aged 23 in the attack, told Exaro: “Since the 25th anniversary, we have realised that we are not going to get anywhere unless we take fairly brutal action against those who are obstructing us in obtaining the truth about the murder of our families.” (...)

Swire said: “One way or another there is going to be an application to the SCCRC in the near future for a further appeal.” (...)

But he saves his strongest criticism for Scotland’s legal system, speaking of “lies and denials” in response to previous attempts to question the official version of events at Lockerbie.

“I am incensed by the way people in Scotland have behaved over this,” he said.

He is keen to see the verdict overturned in court because, he said, the authorities had repeatedly used that conviction against campaigners.

“They say ‘We got one of the bastards,’” said Swire.  “Oh no, you did not. You connived in a case that clearly was bolstered by false evidence. You owe us an explanation for that too.”

Swire has a reputation for steely determination, but has also been seen as almost mild-mannered.  “There is a fairly belligerent kind of Swire this year,” he said.

Lockerbie: US intelligence maintained doubt about Libya's role

This is the headline over a report published today on the Exaro News website.  A sub-heading reads “Secret documents show how US privately retained view that Iran was behind bombing” even after Libya was being publicly identified by the US and UK as responsible for the attack.

The relevant intelligence documents were discussed and analysed more than two years ago by Dr Davina Miller in her seminal article Who Knows About This? Western Policy Towards Iran: The Lockerbie Case which featured at the time on this blog.

Libyan and Scottish views on appointment of Libyan prosecutors to Lockerbie investigation

[Yesterday’s edition of The Tripoli Post carries a report about the appointment of two Libyan prosecutors to join the “ongoing Lockerbie investigation”. It is perhaps significant that this report, unlike those in most of the UK media, draws attention to the doubts that exist about the responsibility of Megrahi and Libya for the Lockerbie bombing.  The article reads as follows:]

Libya is said to be ready to let US and British investigators to question Gaddafi's former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi over the Lockerbie bombing, with Libyan Justice Minister Salah Margani saying his government will allow the investigators to question him, over what they believe is his complicity in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people died.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who died last year, is the only person convicted in the attack, but many questions surrounding the bombing have once again arisen and remain unanswered that could in the end prove that Meghrahi might have been innocent of the crime. If Libya were responsible for the atrocity, al-Senoussi could be a critical source of information.

[Salah] Margani [the Libyan Minister of Justice] has been reported telling Britain's ITV News that it was "the intention" to allow investigators to question al-Senoussi. However, Britain's Foreign Office would not comment.

Meanwhile, a few days ago, an Egyptian terrorist, Mohammed Abu Talb - who is serving life in prison for a series of bombings, has been revealed as a likely suspect in the devastating attack. He has been named in a private investigation called Operation Bird.

The investigation - put forward as a report by Forensic Investigative Associates in London – alleges that he was behind the blast that took place on board Pan Am Flight 103. According to the The Sunday People and Exaro it also accuses the CIA of covering up Talb's role in the atrocity.

The [investigation] is reported to have been commissioned by lawyers for Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was jailed in 2001 for masterminding the bombing.

If the report is correct, it means al-Megrahi - who died of cancer aged 60 last year after being controversially freed from jail in 2009 – may, as many believe, have been wrongly imprisoned.

Investigators claim key pieces of evidence in the case against al-Megrahi - including a fragment of circuit board for a timer - were faked.

[Here is what the Scottish Crown Office has to say about the appointment of the Libyan prosecutors in a message to relatives of Lockerbie victims:]

We can confirm that following a series of meetings and correspondence with senior representatives of the Libyan Government, the Libyan Attorney General has appointed two prosecutors to the case. They will work with the UK and US prosecutors and law enforcement agencies in the ongoing investigation into the involvement of others with Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103.

This is obviously a very welcome development and we are working with our Libyan colleagues to arrange a meeting as soon as practicable.

As the investigation remains live, and in order to preserve the integrity of that investigation, we cannot offer any further comment but will endeavour to keep you all updated whenever possible.

We are all thinking of you as the 25th anniversary of the loss of your loved ones approaches.

Daily papers run Exaro News Lockerbie disclosures

Following yesterday’s Exaro News disclosures, the story has been picked up in a good number of the daily newspapers, including The Independent’s Egyptian is ‘the prime suspect for Lockerbie bombing’; the Belfast Telegraph’s Lockerbie bombing: Evidence against Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was faked, claims report; The Scotsman’s Lockerbie suspect to be named after ‘CIA cover-up’; and The Herald’s CIA 'interfered in police probe into Lockerbie'.

None of today’s articles adds anything of significance to what appeared yesterday.  The Scottish Government trotted out its usual mantra (as reported in The Herald):

"Any issues raised in relation to the conviction itself must be a matter for a court of law - Mr al Megrahi was convicted in a court of law, his conviction was upheld on appeal, and that is the only appropriate place for his guilt or innocence to be determined.

"As was made clear by the Justice Secretary in his statement to the Scottish Parliament last year, it remains open for relatives of Mr al Megrahi, or others, to ask the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to refer the case back to the court for a further posthumous appeal which Ministers would be entirely comfortable with." 

John Ashton has this morning posted the following on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website:

"A number of press reports on Operation Bird, including the original one published by Exaro News and the one in today’s Scotsman, claim that the Bird investigation would have been central to Abdelbaset’s second appeal. This is completely untrue. The investigation was commissioned in the run up to Abdelbaset’s first appeal, but its findings were not used because the investigation failed to turn up any hard evidence. It was rejected by the SCCRC for the same reason and because some of the findings were contradicted by known facts. For these reasons it would have played no part in Abdelbaset’s second appeal. My reservations about the investigation are set out in yesterday’s blog post."

John Ashton advises circumspection over Operation Bird Lockerbie claims

[Following the flurry of interest engendered today by Exaro News’s disclosures, John Ashton advises circumspection in an article on his website Megrahi: You are my Jury entitled Operation Bird -- some words of caution.  It reads as follows:]

Today’s media contains a number of articles about an investigation codenamed Operation Bird, which was carried out by a firm called Forensic Investigative Associates, on behalf of Abdelbaset’s defence team prior to his first appeal. The main articles, by the excellent John Davison, are published by Exaro news, and can he read here and here. There are follow up pieces in the People and Sunday Mail. The subject was originally covered by the Mail on Sunday on 16 August 2009.

The reports of the Operation Bird investigation claim, in essence, that the Lockerbie bombing was planned by a terrorist coalition led by the PFLP-GC and was carried out by Mohamed Abu Talb. Anyone wishing to familiarise themselves with the detail can find a summary in chapter 16 of the SCCRC’s statement reasons, which can be read here. The SCCRC concluded that many of Operations Bird’s central claims were ‘incapable of being regarded as credible and reliable by a reasonable court.’ However, the commission made no serious effort to investigate them.

The Bird investigators – former New York district attorney Jessica de Grazia and former deputy head of Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Branch Philip Corbett –undoubtedly had a couple good sources within terrorist groups close to the PFLP-GC. The question is, were those sources telling the truth?

Their main claim, that Lockerbie was the work of the PFLP-GC and fellow travellers, including Hezbollah, is very likely true. However, some of their specific claims strike me as unlikely, while others, I believe, are probably invented.

Among the most important of the unlikely claims is that Mohamed Abu Talb travelled to London by on a merchant ship, arriving in the early hours of 21 December 1988 (the day of the bombing), and organised the placing of the bomb on PA103 at Heathrow. The main reason for my scepticism is that on 1 November, less than a week after the Autumn Leaves raids in Germany, Abu Talb was arrested by the Swedish police and questioned about his activities over the previous weeks. Although released the same day, both he and the PFLP-GC must have feared that he was being monitored and therefore could not risk taking a central role in the bombing operation.

Another unlikely claim is that the bomb contained an MST-13 timer that Hezbollah had obtained from the Russian mafia. OK, not so much unlikely as just plain bizarre.

According to the Bird reports, Abu Talb attended two key planning meetings in Malta, the first on 13 March 1988 and the second, crucial one on 20 October 1988. It is not disputed that Abu Talb was in Malta from 19 to 16 October, however, there is good reason to doubt the March trip. The sources alleged that he entered Malta on a stolen Swedish passport in the name of Fred Edwards. When they received this information, Abdelbaset’s defence team instructed Swedish lawyers to investigate the claim. They made inquiries with the Swedish authorities, who said that only four people called Frederic Evans and one called Freddie Evans had ever been registered in the country. Three of the five had never held a Swedish passport, the fourth emigrated in 1953 and his passport expired in 1963, and the fifth was only four at the time of Lockerbie, so had a child’s passport. The passport could, of course, have been forged, but it seems most unlikely that either the forgers or Abu Talb would have chosen such a suspiciously incongruous name.

The primary cause of my scepticism is the claim that the crucial meeting in Malta on 20 October was attended by the leader of the PFLP-GC’s German cell, Hafez Dalkamoni. Dalkamoni was closely monitored by the German federal police, the BKA, throughout most of October, however, as the Bird investigators noted, there seems to be a break in the surveillance from the evening of the 19th until 22October. BKA and Scottish police reports record that on 20 and 21 October he called the PFLP-GC’s bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat in Nuess and fellow group member Bassam Radi from unknown locations. Maybe, then, he was in Malta – or maybe not.

Dalkamoni was last observed by the BKA meeting Bassam Radi at 18.10 on 19 October at the railway station in Giessen. Giessen is close to Frankfurt, which is where he would need to be if he was flying to Malta. However, evidence buried in the translated BKA files suggests that he never left Frankfurt.  The files show that when the BKA searched his car they found a ticket dated 20 October 1988 for the Atelier X-Hot Maxi porn cinema in Frankfurt. It had the number 063336 printed on it. They showed the ticket to the cinema staff, who said that the number indicated that it had been issued between 10.30 and 14.00. That would, of course, leave him time to get to Malta, if there was a flight, however, the ABC world airlines timetable, which was a Crown production at trial, shows that the only direct flight on a Thursday (the 20th was a Thursday) departed at 09.00 and the only indirect one at 10.15 (arriving 14.55). A further reason to doubt the Bird account is that Khreesat told the FBI that Dalkamoni arrived back in Neuss on the late morning of 21 October. Khreesat was a German intelligence mole, so was hardly likely to cover up for Dalkamoni.

The Bird investigation’s sources reported that the bomb was flown from Cyprus to Heathrow by two of Abu Talb’s in-laws from the Moughrabi family, possibly the brothers Ahmed and Mohamed. As was revealed at Abdelbaset’s trial, four people called Moughrabi flew from Cyprus to London on 21 December on Cyprus Airlines flight CY1634. Could they have included the brothers? No, because the flight manifest shows that two of them were women and the other two children.

Detail aside, there is another, more important, reason to treat the Bird claims with caution. Terrorist sources are, by their nature very tricky: anyone who is prepared to take up armed struggle for their cause is unlikely to have qualms about telling a few fibs to investigators in order to serve their ideological or personal agendas. (The personal agendas might include self enrichment. One of the Bird reports states that one of the sources, codenamed Ivan, had been paid as an “operative to develop critical intelligence.” The report does not specify who made the payment.)

Why should we trust the claims of the Bird sources any more than we should trust those of Mobdi Goben, Tunayb, Atef Abu Bakr and any other former terrorists who claim to have inside knowledge of the bombing? The answer is that we shouldn’t, especially as their accounts contain numerous factual conflicts.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the Bird sources were engaged in a classic disinformation exercise: telling a story that was, essentially true, but lacing it with facts that were demonstrably false in order to discredit the whole story. It wouldn’t be the first time that investigators had been led into a wilderness of mirrors.

CIA interfered with Lockerbie case, says former US prosecutor

[This is the headline over a report by John Davison published late yesterday evening on the Exaro News website.  An accompanying report on the same website is headlined Lockerbie probe was ‘directed off course’, say top investigators. An article based on these two reports and headlined Is this the real Lockerbie bomber? appears on the website of the Mirror newspaper and in The Sunday People. It reads in part:]

A shock report called Operation Bird alleges a CIA cover-up points the finger at Mohammed Abu Talb, who was later convicted of a campaign of bombings

If it is correct, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi may have been wrongly jailed for the pre-Christmas blast on board Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland that killed 270 people in 1988.

The material, seen by The Sunday People and investigative news website Exaro, alleges a cover-up by the CIA led to a travesty of justice.

Other devastating findings claim a key piece of evidence in the prosecution case against al-Megrahi – a fragment of circuit board for a timer – was faked and remnants of a Slalom-branded shirt in which the timer fragment was supposedly found had been doctored.

Furthermore, the bomb was allegedly planted in luggage that was put on the plane at London’s Heathrow airport, NOT, as the prosecution claimed, loaded by al-Megrahi in Malta to connect to a feeder flight from Frankfurt to London.

The new theory was put forward by a London-based team of private investigators, Forensic Investigative Associates.

They were commissioned by lawyers for al-Megrahi, who died of cancer last year aged 60.

And their findings will spark calls for the case to be re-opened.

The report places Talb in key meetings with other Middle East terror suspects in the run-up to the attack.

It also reveals he was a suspect in the initial investigation.

But he ended up giving evidence against al-Megrahi at his trial in 2001 in return for ­immunity from prosecution.

The new report will be aired in an Al Jazeera TV documentary this week.

Its respected authors are Jessica de Grazia, a former New York chief assistant district attorney, and Philip Corbett, who was chief security advisor to the Bank of England after a career as a top-ranking Met police officer.

They conclude: “We have never seen a criminal investigation in which there has been such a consistent disregard of an alternative and far more persuasive theory of the case.”

The report was written in 2002 and was due to form part of al-Megrahi’s appeal in 2009. But it was never used and its sensational contents have been kept under wraps until now.

Part of the document details the wicked past crimes of Talb.

He was jailed for life in Sweden in 1989 after being convicted of carrying out terrorist bombings in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Amsterdam, Holland, in 1985.

The attacks – on offices of Northwest Airlines and El Al, the Israeli airline – killed one person and reportedly injured another 20 people.

A further seven people were injured in an attack on the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen.

Talb, now 59, has always denied any involvement with the Lockerbie bombing. But the report alleges that he had close links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [-General Command], which was initially blamed for Lockerbie.

It also places Talb in Britain on the day an explosion tore a Boeing 747 apart over the town of Lockerbie 25 years ago next Saturday.

He is alleged to have met other terrorists to place the bomb on the plane at Heathrow.

Qatar-based Al-Jazeera has tracked down Talb, who has been living a quiet life in Sweden since his release. But he refused to comment on claims in the Operation Bird report.

The allegations are spelled out in this week’s documentary, If not Megrahi, then who?

Al-Megrahi’s conviction on the basis that the bomb was placed on a flight from Malta was key to the case.

It was then allegedly transferred in luggage at Frankfurt on to a feeder flight for Pan Am 103, which left Heathrow bound for New York on December 21 1988.

But the private investigation uncovered evidence that Talb had previously bribed a Heathrow worker to smuggle a suitcase through security.

And the report says that is how the Lockerbie bomb could have been planted.

Operation Bird also points to claims by Robert Baer, a retired CIA expert on the Middle East, that Talb was paid 500,000 dollars months after Lockerbie.

In his book See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism, Baer also raises the possibility that Iran made the payment.

The 2002 report would have been central to a second appeal by al-Megrahi – had it not been abandoned because of his controversial release from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds in 2009.

Former Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi has been accused of ordering the Lockerbie atrocity.

But the investigators concluded that police were misled in their investigation into the bombing – and that a government agency, probably the CIA, was to behind the cover-up.

De Grazia and Corbett wrote that their five-month inquiry “leads us to believe the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing was ­directed off-course as a result of government interference”.

They go on: “In our experience, the decision to intervene would have been made at the highest level of government, most likely a top executive of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

“The decision would have been communicated in both blunt and subtle ways down the chain of command to the line investigators.

"Since political interference in investigations runs counter to the professional ethos of US and UK law-enforcement agents, superiors would have played on fear, timidity, gullibility, greed, ambition, patriotism, and other human frailties to silence the qualms of the line investigators.”

It is not clear what the motive for a cover-up might have been.

But British doctor Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died aged 23 in the Lockerbie bombing, told Exaro: “Talb is a life-long, proven terrorist.

“He has completed 20 years in prison for bombings in Scandinavia, and is now out of prison and living in Uppsala in Sweden.

"I believe he played a crucial part in causing the Lockerbie disaster.

“My elected government actively prevented me from obtaining my human rights to know why my daughter’s life was not protected, and who it was who killed her.

“That still makes me extremely angry and also very sad.” 

[These disclosures should be read along with this caveat from John Ashton.]

Scotland's Lord Advocate challenged over remarks on Lockerbie

[This is the headline over a report published today on the website of the Exaro news agency. A summary of the report reads as follows:]

Scottish Crown Office accused of mishandling allegations over conduct of Lockerbie case

Scotland's most senior law officer has been challenged to withdraw dismissive comments about allegations over the investigation and trial of the Lockerbie bombing.

Campaigners for a public inquiry to re-open the case have issued a stinging rebuke to Frank Mulholland, Lord Advocate and head of the Crown Office, Scotland’s prosecuting authority, over his handling of their allegations of criminal conduct in the case following the bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie.

Scottish police have launched an investigation into the claims, including allegations against authorities in Scotland of perverting the course of justice.

Police in Scotland launch probe into conduct of Lockerbie case

[This is the headline over a report on the website of news agency Exaro (registration required for access to full text).  A summary provided by Exaro reads as follows:]

Scottish authorities ‘attempted to pervert course of justice’ following terrorist bombing

Scottish police have launched an investigation into the conduct of the original case over the bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie. Exaro can reveal the development amid allegations that Scotland’s police and prosecuting authorities attempted to pervert the course of justice in the case. It remains Britain’s biggest-ever terrorist attack, but controversy has dogged the investigation into who was responsible. http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4940/police-in-scotland-launch-probe-into-conduct-of-lockerbie-case

[Within the report, I am quoted as follows:]

Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh and a member of the [Justice for Megrahi] campaign’s committee, said: “We have what I hope is a genuine police investigation into what precisely went wrong in the original investigation, prosecution and trial. Not just mistakes that were made – actual criminal conduct.

“If that is investigated seriously, then it really does open up a whole new perspective on Lockerbie.”