Lord Advocate Peter Fraser ennobled

[On this date in 1989 Peter Fraser QC was elevated to the peerage as Lord Fraser of Carmyllie. What follows is excerpted from his entry in Wikipedia:]

Fraser first stood for Parliament for Aberdeen North in October 1974, but was beaten by Labour's Robert Hughes.

He was elected as a Conservative & Unionist Member of Parliament for South Angus in 1979, where he remained in the House of Commons until June 1987 (from 1983 representing East Angus). He was Parliamentary Private Secretary to George Younger, Secretary of State for Scotland. In 1982 he was appointed Solicitor General for Scotland by Margaret Thatcher and became Lord Advocate in 1989. He was created a life peer as Baron Fraser of Carmyllie, of Carmyllie in the District of Angus on 10 February 1989 and was appointed a member of the Privy Council the same year.

During his time as Scotland's senior law officer, he was directly responsible for the conduct of the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Lord Fraser drew up the 1991 indictment against the two accused Libyans and issued warrants for their arrest. But five years after the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, when Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of 270 counts of murder, he cast doubt upon the reliability of the main prosecution witness, Tony Gauci. According to The Sunday Times of 23 October 2005, Lord Fraser criticised the Maltese shopkeeper, who sold Megrahi the clothing that was used to pack the bomb suitcase, for inter alia being "not quite the full shilling" and "an apple short of a picnic".

Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd, who was chief prosecutor at the Lockerbie trial, reacted by saying: "It was Lord Fraser who, as Lord Advocate, initiated the Lockerbie prosecution. At no stage, then or since, has he conveyed any reservation about any aspect of the prosecution to those who worked on the case, or to anyone in the prosecution service." Boyd asked Lord Fraser to clarify his apparent attack on Gauci by issuing a public statement of explanation.

William Taylor QC, who defended Megrahi at the trial and the appeal, said Lord Fraser should never have presented Gauci as a crown witness: "A man who has a public office, who is prosecuting in the criminal courts in Scotland, has got a duty to put forward evidence based upon people he considers to be reliable. He was prepared to advance Gauci as a witness of truth in terms of identification and, if he had these misgivings about him, they should have surfaced at the time. The fact that he is coming out many years later after my former client has been in prison for nearly four and a half years is nothing short of disgraceful. Gauci's evidence was absolutely central to the conviction and for Peter Fraser not to realise that is scandalous," Taylor said.

Tam Dalyell, former Labour MP who played a crucial role in organising the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, described Lord Fraser's comments as an 'extraordinary development': "I think there is an obligation for the chairman and members of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to ask Lord Fraser to see them and testify under oath - it's that serious. Fraser should have said this at the time and, if not then, he was under a moral obligation to do so before the trial at Zeist. I think there will be all sorts of consequences," Dalyell declared.

[RB: Readers may also care to be reminded of James Robertson's magnificent jeu d'esprit Oh, come on, it's all over now.]

James Robertson on Megrahi book (and Peter Fraser)

[What follows is a review of Megrahi: You are my Jury on the Amazon website by ‘Ken Fyne’ who (I am reliably informed) is none other than Scotland’s most distinguished living novelist, James Robertson:]

For those who have long had severe doubts, if not downright disbelief, about the way the Lockerbie investigation and trial were conducted, John Ashton's book provides all the detailed analysis of what went wrong that one could wish for. Just about all the relevant information is gathered here, so it is an excellent handbook for anyone interested in this tragic affair.

Of course the purpose of the book is to put Megrahi's side of the story, and some will find that difficult or even offensive. But what emerges - whether or not you believe that he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice - is such a damning critique of the Scottish justice system that it is surely inconceivable that the legal and political establishment can hold out much longer against disclosure of all the facts. It is certainly unacceptable if the report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission into why Megrahi may have had an unfair trial is not soon published in full: that report is now leaking like a sieve and there is no longer any sensible reason not to let us see all of it.

Personally I believe that Megrahi is innocent. I am willing to be persuaded otherwise but the original trial judgment certainly failed in every way to convince me of his guilt. John Ashton's book scores particularly highly in describing all the information that came to light AFTER the trial - including much evidence that appears to have been deliberately withheld from the defence team by the Crown and the police. The incredible interference and control of American intelligence agencies in the affair is also well documented.

This book rightly concentrates on why Megrahi's conviction was wrong, and does not dwell on the question of his compassionate release, which is a secondary matter. Whether Scotland opts for independence in the next few years or stays within the United Kingdom, its justice system has a terrible stain on it, and will continue to have unless and until a full inquiry into the whole sorry business brings the facts out of the shadows.

[James Robertson also has a letter published in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads as follows:]

Is the Lord Fraser of Carmyllie who envisages a future scenario in which English aircraft "bomb the hell" out of Glasgow and Edinburgh airports by any chance the same Lord Fraser of Carmyllie who last year was appointed by Alex Salmond as an adviser to the Scottish Government on standards of ministerial conduct ("English 'would bomb our airports'", The Herald, March 13 & Letters, March 14)?

And could he be the same Lord Fraser of Carmyllie who as Lord Advocate drew up the indictment against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing, was satisfied by the verdict against Megrahi, yet subsequently described the Crown's key witness, without whose evidence Megrahi could not have been found guilty, as "not quite the full shilling" and "an apple short of a picnic"?

And can we take anything said by Lord Fraser of Carmyllie with any degree of seriousness?


[A letter from Tom Minogue in the 16 March edition of The Scotsman reads as follows:]

In a 2005 interview, Peter Lovat Fraser, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, who as lord advocate set up the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeiss in the Netherlands – which resulted in the conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi – said that the key prosecution witness, Tony Gauci, was “not quite the full shilling”, and “an apple short of a picnic”.

As we now know (...) on the contents of the 821-page Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission dossier, that Gauci received payment equivalent to £2 million, does it not raise questions about the former lord advocate’s judgment?

Surely if a man of modest means such as Mr Gauci can become a millionaire for giving evidence for a few days in a Scottish court case, he cannot be said to be anything other than very astute?

If he were to be the subject of analogy surely a more fitting example would be “as sharp as a tack”?

Lockerbie Lord Advocate Peter Fraser dies

The death at the age of 68 has been announced of Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC (Peter Fraser) who was Scotland’s Lord Advocate at the time of the bringing of charges against Abdelbaset Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103. The mentions of Lord Fraser on this blog, extending over the period 14 November 2007 to 14 November 2012, can be accessed here. A statement from the present Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland QC, can be read here; and a sympathetic appreciation on the website of The Telegraph, the house newspaper of Lord Fraser's political party, can be read here.

Peter Fraser was a genial figure who was popular across the political spectrum in Scotland. What he was not, was a great lawyer or a distinguished Lord Advocate. When Alan Rodger QC -- later House of Lords and UK Supreme Court judge Lord Rodger of Earlsferry -- who was a great lawyer, was appointed Peter Fraser's Solicitor General an official photograph was taken which showed Fraser seated at a desk with a massive tome open in front of him and Alan Rodger looking at it over his shoulder. A version of this photograph was posted in the robing room of the Faculty of Advocates with a bubble coming from Fraser's mouth saying, "What's this, Alan?" and a bubble coming from Rodger's mouth saying, "It's a book, Peter." This, I think accurately, if somewhat cruelly, indicates the Bar's assessment of Peter Fraser's legal abilities.  

As far as the Lockerbie charges against Megrahi and Fhimah are concerned, it is a widely held view that Fraser allowed himself to be bounced into bringing them by the US Department of Justice, which assured him that it had a credible and reliable eye-witness to the suspects' preparation of the bomb on Malta. Fraser took this on trust: whether or not he sought it, he was not given access to the witness in question. The witness was, of course, the Libyan CIA asset Abdul Majid Giaka who testified at Camp Zeist and whose evidence was dismissed by the judges as totally lacking in credibility, largely on the basis of CIA cables (which the prosecution sought to have excluded from evidence) that showed that his CIA handlers regarded him as a fantasist prepared to say virtually anything to keep his US stipend and to gain asylum in the United States.

Peter Fraser's career as a law officer began in 1982 when Sir Nicholas Fairbairn QC MP was compelled to resign as Solicitor General under Lord Mackay of Clashfern as Lord Advocate. There were at that time two young Tory MPs who were advocates -- Peter Fraser and Alexander Pollock. Neither was a QC, but Fraser had passed advocate in 1969 whereas Pollock was not called to the Bar until four years later in 1973. It was probably for this reason that Fraser was preferred for appointment to the vacant office, assuredly not because of superior legal reputation and ability. He became a QC at the same time. On Lord Mackay's resignation as Lord Advocate in 1984, Kenny John Cameron QC was appointed to replace him, with a seat in the House of Lords as Lord Cameron of Lochbroom. Peter Fraser remained as Solicitor General. He lost his seat in the House of Commons in the 1987 general election (as, incidentally, did Pollock) but was confirmed in office. Lord Cameron resigned as Lord Advocate in January 1989, the month following the Lockerbie disaster. Peter Fraser succeeded him and was immediately given a peerage. When in 1992 he became Minister of State in the Scottish Office, his Solicitor General, Alan Rodger, became Lord Advocate.

Lord Fraser and the unanswered questions

[This is the headline over an article in today’s edition of the Scottish Review by the editor, Kenneth Roy.  It reads as follows:]

Two of the leading figures in the Lockerbie scandal have fallen off their perches within 13 months of each other. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man to have been convicted of the bombing, died on 20 May 2012, aged 60, and Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, the lord advocate who drew up the indictment against al-Megrahi and his co-accused, died on 23 June 2013, aged 68.

Few tears were shed for al-Megrahi, except by those – a small minority, though a significant one – who believed him to be innocent. In remarkable contrast, the tributes to his accuser, in the few days since his sudden death at the weekend, have been fulsome. Leaders of most parties, including Scotland's ruling one, have been at pains to assure us that he will be keenly missed from Scotland's public life.

Perhaps he will. He was certainly an ornament of it for long enough; and he had an enviable capacity for bouncing back from life's adversities. Just before Christmas 2006 he was charged with disorderly conduct on board an aircraft; two months later the Crown Office dropped the charge 'due to insufficient evidence that an offence had been committed'; and by August of the following year he was back in business as a member of the government-appointed Scottish Broadcasting Commission. This swift rehabilitation said much for his essential geniality and his popularity with the political and media classes.

In the general election campaign of 1979, which brought Margaret Thatcher to power and Peter Fraser into parliament as the member for South Angus, the young advocate (as he then was) took part in a BBC outside broadcast of the 'Any Questions' type. I was in the chair that night and remember him as pleasant but unremarkable. Three years later he became solicitor-general for Scotland and in 1989, at the age of 44, he was promoted to lord advocate. Not bad going, all things considered.

But the fulsome tributes should not be allowed to obscure important questions of continuing public interest about his record as Scotland's chief law officer (1989-92).

It was Fraser who was responsible for the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am flight 103; Fraser who issued warrants for the arrest of the two Libyans; Fraser who initiated the prosecution which led to the trial at Camp Zeist. And it was Fraser's opinion that Tony Gauci could be depended upon as the chief prosecution witness – relied upon to the extent that, without Gauci's testimony, the case against al-Megrahi effectively collapsed.

Did Fraser really think that Gauci could be trusted? Or was the lord advocate bounced into the prosecution of al-Megrahi and his co-accused by the US justice department? The architect of the Camp Zeist trial, Professor Robert Black QC, believes that improper influence was exerted on Fraser and that he bowed to it. We shall probably never know.

It was five years after the trial that Fraser, long out of major public office by then, gave an unguarded interview to The Sunday Times in which he cast doubt on Gauci for the first and only time. This is what he said (and never denied saying): 'Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say he was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy. I don't think he was deliberately lying, but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer.'

These comments scandalised the legal establishment. The lord advocate at the time, Colin Boyd, said that at no stage had Fraser 'conveyed any reservation about any aspect of the prosecution to those who worked on the case, or to anyone in the prosecution service'. Colin Boyd challenged Fraser to clarify his apparent repudiation of Gauci. Fraser declined to rise to the challenge: there was no clarification.

William Taylor, the QC who defended al-Megrahi at his trial, went further: 'A man who has a public office, who is prosecuting in the criminal courts in Scotland, has a duty to put forward evidence based upon people he considers to be reliable. He [Fraser] was prepared to advance Gauci as a witness of truth in terms of identification and, if he had these misgivings about him, they should have surfaced at the time. The fact that he is coming out with this many years later, after my former client has been in prison for four and a half years, is nothing short of disgraceful. Gauci's evidence was absolutely central to the conviction and for Peter Fraser not to realise that is scandalous.'

Lord Fraser had nothing to say publicly about these serious allegations. But in August 2009, long after the fuss had died down, he gave a little-noticed television interview which was concerned mainly with al-Megrahi's release and the justice secretary Kenny MacAskill's handling of it. In the course of the interview he again referred to Tony Gauci, but in rather different terms. I was so struck by what he said that I played it back and took a note of it: 'I have always been of the view and I remain of the view that both children and others who are not trying to rationalise their evidence are probably the most reliable witnesses and for these reasons I think that Tony Gauci was an extremely good witness.'

How could Gauci be 'not quite the full shilling' according to Lord Fraser in 2005, yet 'an extremely good witness' according to the same Lord Fraser four years later? Is there any way of reconciling these conflicting assessments of the chief prosecution witness?

After the death of al-Megrahi, and the Justice for Megrahi committee's clumsy attempts to revive interest in the scandal, it seemed unlikely that the truth about Lockerbie would ever be established. But I suppose some of us were clinging to a faint hope that, in his old age, in some distant memoir serialised by The Sunday Times, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie would reveal all about his pivotal role in the affair. Since, like al-Megrahi, he has failed to reach old age, that hope has now gone. The unanswered questions seem destined to remain just that: unanswered.

Lockerbie evidence planted or "improved"? "I don't know" said Lord Advocate Fraser.

What follows is an item posted on this blog six years ago on this date:

Peter Fraser pins colours to the mast

In an article in The Times, the Lord Advocate at the time that charges were brought against Abdelbaset Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah for the destruction of Pan Am 103, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC, expresses his confidence in the evidence that led to the conviction of Megrahi. Here are excerpts:

'Lord Fraser does not discount the involvement of other states, but he points out that no definitive evidence has been produced to link them to the attack. The Libyans, on the other hand, were traced through the diligence of Scottish detectives, who managed to identify the manufacturers of clothing found in the suspect suitcase that had held the bomb. By proving that the clothing had been bought in Malta, and then establishing that the purchaser was al-Megrahi, they laid the foundations of the Crown case. “For me that was the most significant breakthrough,” Lord Fraser says now.'

'Tam Dalyell, the former MP, has argued that the CIA may have known about the attack beforehand. Lord Fraser rejects that. “I told Tam Dalyell: if there was a conspiracy, then I am in it up to the neck. I have to be involved. The only other possibility is that I have been so naive that bits of evidence have been planted, and I have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. But four other Lord Advocates have also examined the evidence and they have all concurred with it.”'

On the issue of the provenance of the MST-13 circuit board fragment which was crucial to the establishment of a link between Libya and the destruction of the aircraft, Lord Fraser hedges his bets somewhat:

'The discovery of a fragment of circuit board from a timer made by a Swiss company with links to Libya was critical to the prosecution. But accounts of how, where and by whom it was found varied. The original fragment was found several miles from the wreckage, and some weeks after the disaster.

'It was not until very much later that the CIA claimed to have identified it and matched it with a circuit board manufactured by Mebo of Zurich, a company run by Edwin Bollier, who had supplied timers to the Libyan Government. Some experts have argued that the find was just a bit too convenient to the US investigators, since, by targeting the Libyans, they could avoid falling out with Iran and Syria, important allies at the time of the Gulf War. So could the CIA have planted the evidence? “I don’t know,” says Lord Fraser. “No one ever came to me and said, ‘Now we can go for the Libyans’, it was never as straightforward as that. The CIA was extremely subtle. For me the significant evidence came when the Scottish police made the connection with Malta.” Pressed for his own view, he cites a Scottish murder case, that of Patrick Meehan, in which, it was alleged, the prosecution case had been “improved” by the planting of evidence. Was there a similarity? “I don’t know,” he said again, “but if there was one witness I was not happy about, it was Mr Bollier, who was deeply unreliable.”'

Three dead men and their secrets

[This is the headline over an article by Kenneth Roy in today’s issue of the Scottish Review. It reads in part:]

Three of the key figures in the tangled politics of Lockerbie have now died within four years of each other: Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person ever to have been convicted of the bombing (died 2012), Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, the Lord Advocate who initiated the criminal proceedings against al-Megrahi (2013) and Tony Gauci, the chief prosecution witness (a few days ago). To say that all three left unanswered questions would be one of the under-statements of our time.

Gauci was the owner of a clothes shop in Malta called Mary’s House. It was alleged that on 7 December 1988, a fortnight before the atrocity, al-Megrahi bought some clothes and an umbrella from his shop, that the clothes were wrapped round the device which brought down flight 103, and that al-Megrahi, a former head of security at Libyan Arab Airlines, collaborated with an official of the airline to breach the security at Luqa Airport and get the device on the first stage of its journey as an interline bag to Frankfurt.

But how reliable was Gauci? His credibility took a battering four years after the trial in a remarkable newspaper interview with Lord Fraser. The words attributed to Fraser – he never denied using them – were: 'Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say he was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy. I don’t think he was deliberately lying, but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer’.

When his successor as Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd, read this assessment of the Crown’s star witness, he asked Fraser to clarify his opinion of Gauci; others, including Tam Dalyell and al-Megrahi’s counsel, William Taylor QC, spoke out more strongly. If Fraser did clarify his opinion, the world was not made aware of it at the time.

Three years later, however, he gave Gauci a friendlier character reference in a television programme about the Lockerbie case: 'I have always been of the view, and I remain of the view, that both children and others who are not trying to rationalise their evidence are probably the most reliable witnesses and for that reason I think that Gauci was an extremely good witness’.

How this statement could be reconciled with his earlier disobliging view of the witness, Fraser did not divulge. But the remarks received little attention, for the story had moved on dramatically: al-Megrahi was now on his way home to Tripoli, released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds, having been diagnosed with terminal cancer, after serving eight years of a life sentence for mass murder.

Fraser’s re-evaluation of Gauci as 'an extremely good witness’ looked ridiculous on close scrutiny. When the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had a detailed look at the case, it concluded that there was 'no reasonable basis’ for the judges’ opinion that the purchase of the clothes from Mary’s House took place on 7 December; the commission decided that they have must have been bought on some unspecified date before then.

This was an encouraging finding for the many defenders of al-Megrahi (myself included) who believed that 7 December was the date of his only visit to Malta. But in 2014, in a documentary for American television, Ken Dornstein, whose brother died at Lockerbie, produced evidence which undermined the case for al-Megrahi’s innocence. During 15 years of patient investigation, Dornstein discovered that al-Megrahi had been in Malta in the weeks leading up to the bombing, and that he had company: a Libyan bomb-maker, Abu Agila Mas’ud, who was among those who greeted him on his return to Libya. (...) [RB: It was never disputed that Megrahi had been in Malta earlier in 1988. What was disputed -- and what has never been proved -- is that he was there on 23 November, the other possible purchase date. On the Dornstein films, see John Ashton here and Kevin Bannon here.]

A number of fascinating secrets now go to the grave and seem destined to stay there. We shall never know what Peter Fraser really thought of the witness who was to prove so vital to his successful prosecution. We shall never know how much Tony Gauci was paid by the American authorities in return for his helpful evidence (or how much the Scottish authorities knew of the deal). And we shall never know what al-Megrahi was doing in Malta with Mas’ud if he was not there to facilitate the planting of the device.

There is a fourth 'we shall never know’ that can be stated with a sense of growing probability: that with the passage of time, and as the important players in the saga continue to fall off their perches, we shall never know the truth about Lockerbie.

Peter Fraser pins colours to the mast

In an article in The Times, the Lord Advocate at the time that charges were brought against Abdelbaset Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah for the destruction of Pan Am 103, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC, expresses his confidence in the evidence that led to the conviction of Megrahi. Here are excerpts:

'Lord Fraser does not discount the involvement of other states, but he points out that no definitive evidence has been produced to link them to the attack. The Libyans, on the other hand, were traced through the diligence of Scottish detectives, who managed to identify the manufacturers of clothing found in the suspect suitcase that had held the bomb. By proving that the clothing had been bought in Malta, and then establishing that the purchaser was al-Megrahi, they laid the foundations of the Crown case. “For me that was the most significant breakthrough,” Lord Fraser says now.'

'Tam Dalyell, the former MP, has argued that the CIA may have known about the attack beforehand. Lord Fraser rejects that. “I told Tam Dalyell: if there was a conspiracy, then I am in it up to the neck. I have to be involved. The only other possibility is that I have been so naive that bits of evidence have been planted, and I have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. But four other Lord Advocates have also examined the evidence and they have all concurred with it.”'

On the issue of the provenance of the MST-13 circuit board fragment which was crucial to the establishment of a link between Libya and the destruction of the aircraft, Lord Fraser hedges his bets somewhat:

'The discovery of a fragment of circuit board from a timer made by a Swiss company with links to Libya was critical to the prosecution. But accounts of how, where and by whom it was found varied. The original fragment was found several miles from the wreckage, and some weeks after the disaster.

'It was not until very much later that the CIA claimed to have identified it and matched it with a circuit board manufactured by Mebo of Zurich, a company run by Edwin Bollier, who had supplied timers to the Libyan Government. Some experts have argued that the find was just a bit too convenient to the US investigators, since, by targeting the Libyans, they could avoid falling out with Iran and Syria, important allies at the time of the Gulf War. So could the CIA have planted the evidence? “I don’t know,” says Lord Fraser. “No one ever came to me and said, ‘Now we can go for the Libyans’, it was never as straightforward as that. The CIA was extremely subtle. For me the significant evidence came when the Scottish police made the connection with Malta.” Pressed for his own view, he cites a Scottish murder case, that of Patrick Meehan, in which, it was alleged, the prosecution case had been “improved” by the planting of evidence. Was there a similarity? “I don’t know,” he said again, “but if there was one witness I was not happy about, it was Mr Bollier, who was deeply unreliable.”'

“Not entirely happy with the evidence against Megrahi”

[It was on this date ten years ago that The Sunday Times published its notorious “an apple short of a picnic” article. Here it is, in its full glory:]

Fraser: my Lockerbie trial doubts

The former Conservative minister described Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper whose testimony was central in securing a conviction against Abdelbasset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, as “not quite the full shilling” and “an apple short of a picnic”.

[Peter] Fraser [Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC], who as Scotland’s senior law officer was responsible for indicting Megrahi, says he is now not entirely happy with the evidence against Megrahi during his trial in 2001 and in his subsequent appeal.

While making clear that this does not mean that he believes Megrahi was innocent of the 1988 atrocity, in which 270 people were killed, Fraser said he should be free to leave Scotland to serve the remainder of his sentence in Libya.

His intervention is the most significant yet in a series of developments that have cast doubt on the safety of the conviction against Megrahi.

Pan Am flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988 after an explosion in the cargo hold. Megrahi was sentenced to 27 years following a trial presided over by three Scottish judges in the Netherlands. A condition of his sentence was that he served the full term in Scotland. His co- accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was cleared.

Lawyers acting for the former intelligence officer and head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines have since claimed to have uncovered anomalies suggesting that vital evidence presented at the trial came from tests conducted months after the terror attack. The new evidence is due to be presented in an appeal to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission next year.

Earlier this month it was reported that officials from Britain, America and Libya had met to discuss moving Megrahi back to Libya on the condition that the appeal is dropped.

A key plank in the case against Megrahi was provided by Gauci who claimed that he sold Megrahi clothes that were believed to have been wrapped around the bomb. Fraser said that he believes Gauci was a “weak point” in the case and has expressed concern that he was a “simple” man who might have been “easily led”.

“Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say (that he) was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy, I don’t think he was deliberately lying but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer,” he said.

“You do have to worry, he’s a slightly simple chap, are you putting words in his mouth even if you don’t intend to?” Fraser said he has been invited to Tripoli to meet Colonel Gadaffi after the Libyan leader learnt of his views but, so far, he has declined.

“I wasn’t particularly impressed with his defence. Their techniques of muddle and confusion can work for a jury but it doesn’t work for three judges,” he said.

Fraser said he believes that Megrahi should now be free to return to his native Libya to see out the remainder of his sentence.

A blot on the conscience of Scotland

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Kenneth Roy headlined The Lockerbie cover-up that was published by Newsnet Scotland on this date in 2010:]

The conviction of Megrahi hinged on the testimony of one man, the chief prosecution witness Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper. Without Gauci there was no case. He was the owner of a clothes shop in Malta called Mary's House. It was alleged at the trial that on 7 December 1988, Megrahi bought some clothes and an umbrella from Gauci's shop. The clothes were then said to have been wrapped around the improvised explosive device that brought down the PanAm aircraft over Lockerbie a fortnight later. This was the only piece of evidence linking Megrahi to the device.

The credibility of Tony Gauci was badly damaged by the man who initiated the prosecution of Megrahi and his co-accused, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, in a remarkable newspaper interview four years ago. The words attributed to him – he has never denied using them – were:

'Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say he was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy. I don't think he was deliberately lying but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer.'

When the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd, read this assessment of the Crown's star witness, he was sufficiently moved to ask Lord Fraser to clarify his view of Gauci's credibility; others, including Tam Dalyell and Megrahi's counsel, spoke out more strongly. If Lord Fraser did clarify his view, the world remained unaware of the clarification. Last August, however, Lord Fraser gave a revised opinion in a little-noticed television interview mainly concerned with Megrahi's release and the justice secretary Kenny MacAskill's handling of it. I noted down his reply to a question about Gauci:

'I have always been of the view and I remain of the view that both children and others who are not trying to rationalise their evidence are probably the most reliable witnesses and for that reason I think that Tony Gauci was an extremely good witness.'

What the use of the phrase 'children and others' was intended to convey about Gauci, and how this statement could be compared to Lord Fraser's earlier view of the witness, was not pursued as an issue (except in this magazine). Conveniently, perhaps, all eyes were on Megrahi himself, the 'triumphant' return to Tripoli, and the perceived shortcomings of Kenny MacAskill. Tony Gauci and Lord Fraser of Carmyllie pretty well disappeared off the radar.

Extremely awkward questions remain unanswered, however, and will continue to haunt the Lockerbie case so long as there is an official conspiracy of secrecy. Specifically:

Were the clothes sold to Megrahi?

Were they sold on the date alleged?

As a result of its investigation, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission formed the view (a) that there was 'no reasonable basis' for the court's judgement that the purchase of the clothes from Mary's House took place on 7 December and (b) that the clothes were bought on some unspecified date before then. As 7 December was the only date when Megrahi was in the area, it follows (a) that they could not have been sold to Megrahi and (b) that the case against Megrahi collapses.

This much we know. What we do not know – and what we seem to be further away than ever from knowing – is the nature of the 'additional evidence' which so convinced the commission that the court's judgement was wrong; and, more disturbing still, why this evidence was not made available to the court of Scottish judges sitting in the Netherlands.

In 2007, the commission concluded that it had identified six grounds where it believed that 'a miscarriage of justice may have occurred and that it is in the interests of justice [my italics] to refer the matter to the court of appeal'. Since there is no possibility of a referral to the court of appeal, and no prospect of the commission's report being published, we have the worst possible outcome – lingering doubt and suspicion, a complete lack of closure, and a continuing affront to the families of all those who died.

I wrote here last August: 'Judicially, the case is at en end. We are therefore left to assume that the interests of justice will never be served. There is a blot on the conscience of Scotland and it is hard to see how it will ever be eradicated'. It is harder still today.

Police cannot substantiate Malta-Frankfurt unaccompanied baggage

[What follows is the text of a report headlined Warning of media risk to Lockerbie disaster prosecution that was published in The Herald on this date in 1989:]

The protection of any possible prosecution over the bombing of the PanAm flight that came down in Scotland last December was paramount, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, the Lord Advocate said yesterday when he called for restraint in reporting the Lockerbie criminal investigation.

He disclosed in a statement that reports about unaccompanied luggage having gone from Malta to Frankfurt “let alone unaccompanied baggage with a bomb in it” could not be substantiated by the Scottish police officer leading the inquiry.

Lord Fraser said in Edinburgh that he was deeply concerned and disturbed that reporting could reach a point which seriously jeopardised not only the international investigation but also any future court proceedings.

“It must be kept in mind that this is the largest mass murder investigation in recent times in Britain and it is incumbent upon us all to exercise restraint in the interests of justice,” he said.

“We all owe it to the 270 victims who perished as a result of the bombing of PanAm 103 and, just as importantly, the bereaved relatives, that the perpetrators are brought to justice,” he said.

“It is most important that this is not lost sight of, as speculative reporting causes dismay and distress to them.”

Lord Fraser's call follows intense reporting of the matter in recent days on both sides of the Atlantic.

He said that he had frequently made it clear that his prime concern, indeed his only concern, was the integrity of the investigation, which he said was being very methodically and skilfully conducted by the Lockerbie team under the direction of the chief constable.

“The purpose of the investigation is not simply to establish that there was a web of opportunity for those determined to commit this appalling terrorist outrage and assault on the sovereignty of the United States, but to identify those who did it and how they did so to a standard of proof to satisfy a criminal court,” he said.

“As Lord Advocate, I have to say our essential purpose is put at risk if premature disclosure shuts off lines of enquiry or puts potential witnesses under threat,” he stated.

Lord Fraser said that he had also noted considerable “ill-informed and inaccurate speculation” in relation to the Federal German Police and other international agencies.

“I want to make it quite clear that the degree of international co-operation in this case has been unprecedented and we would certainly not have reached the stage we are at had this not been the case,” he said.

“The Chief Constable of Dumfries and Galloway, Mr George Esson, has told me that he cannot substantiate reports about unaccompanied luggage having gone from Malta to Frankfurt let alone unaccompanied baggage with a bomb in it,” Lord Fraser said.

[RB: The Frankfurt Airport computer printout saved by Bogomira Erac that led the Zeist court to conclude (wrongly, it seems) that there had been an item of unaccompanied baggage from Malta was disclosed to the Scottish police by the German Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) in August 1989: see John Ashton, Megrahi: You are my Jury, pages 106-109. It is therefore a little difficult to understand why Peter Fraser should have chosen to go public in November 1989 with this statement.]