Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Tam Dalyell. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Tam Dalyell. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday 27 January 2017

Tam Dalyell 9 August 1932 – 26 January 2017

I am deeply saddened to learn of the death yesterday of Tam Dalyell. For more than twenty-five years he campaigned relentlessly to uncover the truth about Lockerbie. It is a tragedy that he goes to his grave with the shameful conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi still unrectified. But when it is -- and I have no doubt whatsoever that it will be -- the name of Tam Dalyell will be one of the most prominent on the list of those who fought honourably for justice and truth.


Over the (almost) ten years that this blog has existed, Tam Dalyell has featured on many, many occasions. The items can be found here.

[RB: I am grateful to Jim and Jane Swire for allowing me to reproduce here what they wrote early this morning in an email to friends:]

Very sadly Tam Dalyell died today after a short illness.
We first met Tam and Kathleen after keen dissent began to arise over the handling of the background to the Lockerbie disaster of December 1988 in which our elder daughter Flora was amongst those brutally murdered.
There is nothing on this earth that can counter the intensity of grief at the loss of a child, but the friendship and love of Tam Dalyell and his wife Kathleen often fed our strength and determination to establish the truth about all that was really known about the disaster. We felt enriched by their friendship.
We came to know no other person, politician or not, who so exemplified true caring and integrity as did Tam and his wife.
Because Tam lived within complex strata of society close to the heart of the Whitehall establishment, he was able to elicit confidences and assess allegations with an insider's knowledge second to none. As the truth about Lockerbie began to become clear through the fog of deception he was prepared to use his privileges and the respect in which he was held to progress the search for that truth.
There was a difference of texture about Tam which stamped him immediately as a man who simply could not become contaminated with the half truths and convenient hiding places used by those prepared to tolerate convenient fictions in order to make their lives easier or their ascent towards power smoother. It was similar to how oil and water can share a space but never mix.
Tam did not tolerate fools gladly and many of us will long remember the message he had  recorded on his answering machine, of which the key phrase was DO NOT GABBLE. Many years of dealing with those of lesser integrity had made him a master at assessing the integrity of others. Nor will we forget his working  'spitting image' kept at the Binns to the great amusement of both visitors and Tam and Kathleen themselves.Tam had become a thorn in the side of Margaret Thatcher to earn that accolade. But for those he trusted there was no stauncher friend
I have no doubt that had Tam been prepared to compromise his integrity he would have risen to lead at least his party and probably his country. It was a key part of the measure of the man that he could never do that. .
Although nothing can staunch the hurt of our loss of Flora, meeting Tam and his family and having them share in our suffering was an uplifting experience for which we shall be eternally grateful. Tam was a righteous and fearless soldier in the cause of what is right, and with the strength of Kathleen's support he was a tribute to all that was best in the old world preceding the post-truth age in which we are now said to live.
We shall not see his like again, and Kathleen and the family, Linlithgow and a galaxy of other friends and acquaintances will miss him and his unique integrity of purpose for as long as memory lasts.  
Our thoughts are with them all.

Monday 30 January 2017

Fresh look at Lockerbie report 'would honour memory of Tam Dalyell’

[This is the headline over a report by Greg Russell in today’s edition of The National. It reads in part:]

The Crown Office has been urged to honour the memory of Tam Dalyell by ensuring that a police report into criminal allegations against those involved with the Lockerbie investigation and subsequent trial is given an “objective analysis”.
Iain McKie, a leading member of Justice for Megrahi (JfM), whose members believe Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was innocent of the bombing, was speaking to The National after our sister paper the Sunday Herald published details of Dalyell’s last interview.
In it, the former Labour MP said he would go to his grave believing Megrahi’s conviction was a “massive injustice”. (...)
Dalyell, who formerly represented Linlithgow, died last week, and was convinced Megrahi was innocent.
“I had great admiration for Tam Dalyell,” said McKie. “I really respected the way he stood up for his principles, and Lockerbie of course was one of the biggest he stood up for.
“It’s a major loss when you lose someone of the integrity and standing of Tam Dalyell.”
McKie said that while the MP’s death was a loss for JfM, it would also keep Lockerbie in the public eye, although he did not think it would affect the Operation Sandwood report on the group’s nine criminal allegations against police, Crown Office officials and forensic scientists involved in the Lockerbie investigation and trial.
He said: “It’s an awful thing to say in the tragedy of someone dying, but when something like this happens it keeps whole Lockerbie case open. It says that even in death he is speaking out to people and saying he believed in the innocence of Megrahi and he continued to believe in that until his dying day.
“It won’t directly affect the police report, but I think it affects the atmosphere in which it will be received and one would hope it would make the Crown Office open their eyes for once and realise that this is an issue which does matter to people; and when they receive the Operation Sandwood report that they give it an objective and fair look, because certainly the previous Lord Advocate had made up his mind that wasn’t going to happen.”
McKie said JfM hoped that Lord Advocate James Wolffe, QC, who replaced Frank Mulholland last summer, would ensure Sandwood was considered “objectively”.
“People like Tam Dalyell have held it close to their heart for many years – and there are others like him – and the Crown Office could honour him by ensuring that the police report gets an objective analysis,” said McKie.
Meanwhile, The National understands that Megrahi’s wife Aisha is likely to lead a new appeal by the family to clear his name, and is preparing to lodge a dossier of documents with the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.
The commission had ruled in 2007 that there were several grounds that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.
The Megrahis will be backed by British relatives of those who died in the bombing.
However, Glasgow lawyer Aamer Anwar, who has represented the Megrahi family, yesterday would not comment on the move.
He said: “I can only say that things are at a highly critical and sensitive stage and it would be inappropriate to comment at the moment.”`

Friday 31 October 2008

Tam Dalyell: The Megrahi I know

The website of The Times runs an opinion piece by Tam Dalyell, former MP and Father of the House of Commons, which will again presumably appear in Saturday's print edition. Here is part of it:

'My deep conviction, as a “professor of Lockerbie studies” over a 20-year period is that neither al-Megrahi nor Libya had any role in the destruction of Pan Am 103.

'I believe they were made a scapegoat in 1990-91 by an American government that had decided to go to war with Iraq and did not want complications with Syria and Iran, which had harboured the real perpetrators of the terrible deed. Libya and its “operatives”, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah (al-Megrahi's co-accused) and al-Megrahi, only came into the frame at a very late date. In my informed opinion, al-Megrahi has been the victim of one of the most spectacular (and expensive) miscarriages of justice in history. (...)

'Visiting him in prison, I was struck by his self-possession - a self-possession that had struck many people at his trial, possibly because it never occurred to him that he would be found guilty. It explains my passionate involvement over 20 years, as well as that of Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh. It was on our say-so that Libya ever surrendered its citizens to Scottish justice. Whatever happens to al-Megrahi, faced with advanced terminal cancer, the case will continue because on trial is the international reputation of Scottish justice and particularly of the Crown Office...

'Almost the last thing that al-Megrahi said to me was: “Yes, of course I want to go back to Tripoli. I have my wife and my five children are growing up, but I want to go back an innocent man.”

'Some of us are determined to find the truth and justice that we believe will find him innocent.'

On 6 November 2008, The Times printed the following "clarification":

'In Tam Dalyell's article in last Saturday's Times “A civilised, caring man - not a mass murderer”, Mr Dalyell claimed that the prosecution in the Lockerbie case had lied to Lord Coulsfield, the High Court judge, when it told the trial court at Camp Zeist that it had full confidence in the evidence of the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci. Mr Dalyell's claim was based on reported comments made by a previous Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, that Mr Gauci was an unreliable witness who was “not the full shilling”. The present Lord Advocate has asked us to point out that Lord Fraser made it clear in 2005 that he did not have any reservations about any aspect of the prosecution, and had no aspersions to cast on Tony Gauci's evidence and, therefore, that there is no substance to the serious allegation in the article that the Crown had lied to the court about its confidence in the evidence of Tony Gauci.'

It should be noted that there is, and could be, no denial that Lord Fraser of Carmyllie used the words attributed to him by Tam Dalyell.

Sunday 29 January 2017

Tam Dalyell’s last interview: Megrahi conviction “massive injustice”

[What follows is excerpted from an article by John Ashton (wrongly attributed originally to Neil Mackay) in today’s edition of the Sunday Herald:]

Tam Dalyell, the former campaigning MP who died on Thursday, said in a poignant final interview he would go to his grave believing that the conviction of the alleged Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was a “massive injustice.”

He recalled that after visiting Megrahi in prison, “I was absolutely convinced that he was not involved in Lockerbie.” (...)

The ex-Linlithgow MP, who inherited the Baronetcy of the Binns in 1972, spurned his title and was never known as Sir Tam. His interest in the Lockerbie case began 10 days after the bombing when he was approached by a police whistleblower who complained that American agents were wandering the crash site without police supervision.

The officer, a constituent, was among hundreds of Lothian and Borders police sent to Lockerbie the day after the crash to help the local Dumfries and Galloway force.

In his last interview Dalyell recalled, “[The officer] said he was very uncomfortable because Americans were allowed to go around where they liked in a way that would not be acceptable in any Scottish murder investigation and the normal police rules were absolutely being thrown to the wind.”

He said the officer had never wavered from his claims and had last repeated them only two years ago, but did not wish to go public. “I think this is partly about pensions and police etiquette, but he sticks absolutely to his story,” Dalyell said.

There are longstanding claims that large quantities of drugs and cash were removed by Americans agents from the crash site. The agents were also said to be concerned about items belonging to a US intelligence team who died on Pan Am 103 while returning from an aborted hostage rescue mission in Lebanon.

Some of Megrahi’s supporters suspect that American intelligence agents manipulated evidence in order to frame Megrahi and conceal the truth about the bombing. Initial indications suggested that the bombing had been commissioned by the Iranian government and carried out by a Syrian-based group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).

Two months before Lockerbie the German police caught members of the group with a bomb designed to detonate at altitude, built in to a Toshiba radio-cassette player. Forensic evidence suggested that the Lockerbie bomb was also contained within a Toshiba radio-cassette player, although a different model.

Three months after the bombing the UK government’s transport secretary Paul Channon privately briefed lobby journalists that the PFLP-GC was behind the attack He later lost his job after being named as the source of the story. Dalyell, who was a close friend, revealed that Channon was angry at his treatment by the government.

Many were surprised when, in 1991, the then Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, and US Department of justice announced charges against Megrahi and another Libyan, Lamin Khalifa Fhimah. The UK and US governments both made clear that Iran and the PFLP-GC had been exonerated.

Dalyell condemned Fraser as being a “quite unsatisfactory Lord Advocate [who] just went along with the Crown Office line.” He added, “[He] was absolutely beholden to Mrs Thatcher because he had lost a blue chip seat in Angus so had no job and was made a law officer by the generosity of the Prime Minister.”

During the nineties Dalyell frequently urged the Conservative government to agree to Libyan proposals to try the two suspects before a Scottish court in a neutral venue. He also tabled numerous parliamentary questions about events at the crash site and other facts that challenged the official narrative. He initiated sixteen adjournment debates on Lockerbie, which he said was four times as many as anyone had ever had on a single subject.

In 1997 the new Labour government signaled that it was prepared to accept a neutral venue trial and in 2000 Megrahi and Fhimah were tried before three law lords at a specially-convened Scottish court at Kamp Zeist in The Netherlands. Fhimah was acquitted and Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum 20-year tariff, later increased to 27 years.

Dalyell believed the guilty verdict was built on unreliable evidence and flawed reasoning. The judges accepted the prosecution claim that two weeks before the bombing Megrahi bought the clothes that were later packed in a suitcase with the bomb from Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci. However, evidence suggested that the clothes were bought when Megrahi was not in Malta and Gauci described the purchaser as being considerable older and larger than Megrahi.

Visits to Megrahi in Barlinnie and Greenock prisons convinced him that the Libyan was innocent. “With 43 years in the House of Commons one develops an instinct as to whether one is being told the truth or spun a yarn,” he recalled, “My whole body reacted to the fact that I was being told the truth.”

Following a failed first appeal, in 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission granted Megrahi a second appeal on six grounds including flawed reasoning by the trial court judges. In 2009, following a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Megrahi abandoned the second appeal in the belief that it would aid an application to Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill for compassionate release. MacAskill controversially granted the application a few days later and Megrahi was allowed to return to Libya, where he died three years later.

Sunday 6 November 2016

Megrahi and Libya “were made a scapegoat”

[On this date in 2008 The Times printed a “clarification”. What follows is part of the article by Tam Dalyell to which it related, followed by the clarification itself:]

My deep conviction, as a “professor of Lockerbie studies” over a 20-year period is that neither al-Megrahi nor Libya had any role in the destruction of Pan Am 103.

I believe they were made a scapegoat in 1990-91 by an American government that had decided to go to war with Iraq and did not want complications with Syria and Iran, which had harboured the real perpetrators of the terrible deed. Libya and its “operatives”, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah (al-Megrahi's co-accused) and al-Megrahi, only came into the frame at a very late date. In my informed opinion, al-Megrahi has been the victim of one of the most spectacular (and expensive) miscarriages of justice in history. (...)

Visiting him in prison, I was struck by his self-possession - a self-possession that had struck many people at his trial, possibly because it never occurred to him that he would be found guilty. It explains my passionate involvement over 20 years, as well as that of Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh. It was on our say-so that Libya ever surrendered its citizens to Scottish justice. Whatever happens to al-Megrahi, faced with advanced terminal cancer, the case will continue because on trial is the international reputation of Scottish justice and particularly of the Crown Office...

Almost the last thing that al-Megrahi said to me was: “Yes, of course I want to go back to Tripoli. I have my wife and my five children are growing up, but I want to go back an innocent man.”

Some of us are determined to find the truth and justice that we believe will find him innocent.

The clarification
In Tam Dalyell's article in last Saturday's Times “A civilised, caring man - not a mass murderer”, Mr Dalyell claimed that the prosecution in the Lockerbie case had lied to Lord Coulsfield, the High Court judge, when it told the trial court at Camp Zeist that it had full confidence in the evidence of the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci. Mr Dalyell's claim was based on reported comments made by a previous Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, that Mr Gauci was an unreliable witness who was “not the full shilling”. The present Lord Advocate has asked us to point out that Lord Fraser made it clear in 2005 that he did not have any reservations about any aspect of the prosecution, and had no aspersions to cast on Tony Gauci's evidence and, therefore, that there is no substance to the serious allegation in the article that the Crown had lied to the court about its confidence in the evidence of Tony Gauci.

[RB: It should be noted that there was, and could be, no denial that Lord Fraser of Carmyllie used the words attributed to him by Tam Dalyell.]

Monday 19 March 2012

Lockerbie: Crown owes explanation

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Herald.  It reads in part:]


The Crown Office owes the country an explanation for its handling of the Lockerbie bombing, former MP Tam Dalyell has claimed.

Mr Dalyell, who believes that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is innocent of the atrocity, said the Crown had "misbehaved" during the prosecution and that the trial judges "seemingly were deceived".
The veteran politician and former Father of the House of Commons has been a prominent figure in attempts to uncover the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in which 270 people were killed.
Mr Dalyell, taking part in the Glasgow's Aye Write! literary festival, said during several of his 16 adjournment debates in the House of Commons, he raised the questions contained in a report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) and revealed in The Herald last week.
He said: "The Crown Office have been really culpable in my opinion in that they misbehaved, and misbehaved in relation to the judges.
"I realise that the judges find it difficult to go back on previous cases but in these exceptional circumstances, I really wonder what Lord Coulsfield [one of the trial judges], is thinking because the judges seemingly were deceived."
Mr Dalyell, who has previously said that he was "mystified" at how the judges could have arrived at a verdict other than not guilty or not proven, added: "I am quite prepared to concede that the judges didn't know all the evidence at the time, but the Crown Office did. And the Crown office really do owe the rest of the country an explanation."
He said that after John Major left Downing Street, the former Prime Minister told him he had spent an hour after an adjournment debate questioning officials on whether "Tam Dalyell could be right" in his concerns about the Lockerbie trial.
At the Aye Write! festival Mr Dalyell was asked about Holyrood's handling of the return to Libya of Megrahi and he said he believed the dying, convicted bomber was released because the Scottish Government "knew he was innocent".
Mr Dalyell's latest book, The Importance of Being Awkward, an autobiography, includes details of his hard-fought Lockerbie campaign.
Meanwhile, it has been reported that the former FBI officer who oversaw the Lockerbie investigation has claimed that the SCCRC did not consult anyone from the Bureau when it was compiling its report.
[If the SCCRC consulted the lead investigators – the Scottish police – and had access to the records of the investigation, why should it be expected to consult all the other national police forces working in the lead investigators’ team? Are Messrs Revell and Marquise suggesting that the FBI had incriminating material that it did not share with the rest of the team?] 

Friday 1 April 2016

Destruction of Lockerbie evidence challenged

[What follows is the text of an article by Steve James published on this date in 2002 on the website WSWS.org:]

Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP for the Scottish constituency of Linlithgow, used his parliamentary privileges to effectively accuse the British government of destroying evidence relating to the criminal investigation of the 1988 attack on PanAm flight 103, which killed 270 people.
Dalyell is the longest serving MP in Westminster—the so-called “father of the house”. Something of a maverick figure, he has a long record of raising awkward questions for successive British administrations. Dalyell harried Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for years over the circumstances surrounding the sinking of an elderly Argentine warship,General Belgrano, off the Malvinas/Falklands Islands, by a British nuclear submarine during the 1982 war with Argentina.
Speaking on March 26, in an adjournment debate in which MPs can raise whatever they like, Dalyell insisted that Libyan Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, currently jailed for life in Barlinnie prison in Glasgow for the Lockerbie attack, was innocent. Dalyell, who has long followed developments around the Lockerbie disaster, asked what was being done to preserve evidence collected during police enquiries. He went on to ask, “Can an assurance be given that they will not be destroyed in the same way as certain police notebooks have apparently been destroyed?”
Dalyell quoted a statement given by a retired policewoman, Mary Boylan, who had been based at Lockerbie in 1988. In 1999 Boylan was asked to give a statement at Livingston Police Station, presumably relating to the upcoming trial of al-Megrahi and his then co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. She asked for her notebooks from 1988 to refresh her memory. She was told they could not be found and later read in the Scottish press that Lothian and Borders Police had destroyed the notebooks.
Dalyell asked, “Who gave the instruction for the destruction of notebooks? After all, this was the biggest unresolved murder trial in Scottish legal history. The answer to that question is likely to be found not in Edinburgh, but in London.”
Dalyell said he had worked closely with five heads of the police’s “F Division” which covers West Lothian, as well as successive chief constables of Lothian and Borders Police: “I simply do not believe that any one of them, off their own bat, would have allowed, for reasons of routine and storage space, the destruction of notebooks relating to the biggest murder trial in Scottish history.”
Dalyell quoted a subsequent statement from Boylan in which she described how, in 1999, she attended Dumfries police station and was asked to describe a suitcase rim, with a handle attached. Boylan asked the Procurator Fiscal, a local Scottish legal official, about the significance of the case. He would not say, but, “What he did say was that the owner of said suitcase was a Joseph Patrick Curry and that I would be hearing and reading a lot about him at the time of the trial.” Boylan later found out that Curry was a US Army Special Forces Captain.
According to Dalyell, Boylan claims a colleague informed her that Curry’s suitcase contained the bomb that blew up the aircraft. Dalyell said, “I want to know who will verify the statement and show whether it is true or false. If the bomb was in Curry’s suitcase, Mr. Megrahi is hardly likely to be guilty.”
He concluded by asking for “these extremely serious matters [to] be taken on board by the government in London”.
Speaking after the debate Dalyell reiterated his suggestion that “something highly irregular has taken place, apparently with consent.”
Joseph Patrick Curry was one of several members of a US Special Forces team on PanAm 103, whose luggage, and remains at the crash site were the subject of a great deal of well documented US CIA and FBI activity in the hours and days after the disaster. A special forces major, Charles McKee, and the CIA’s Beirut station deputy chief, Matthew Gannon, also died on the plane.

Friday 3 August 2007

Bid to restore Scottish legal reputation

[This is the headline over an article published in The Sunday Post on 29 July 2007. It reads as follows:]

Foreign judges for al-Megrahi appeal

By Paul Johnson

AN MSP wants the court hearing the Lockerbie bomber’s appeal to include at least two international judges.He says it’s a bid to restore the reputation of the Scottish legal system.The call came in a letter from SNP backbencher Alex Neil to the Lord President of the Court of Session, Lord Hamilton on Thursday. He claims his idea has the support of Lockerbie campaigner Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died in the bombing, plus former MP Tam Dalyell and Iain McKie, father of “fingerprint case detective” Shirley.

It also has the backing of Professor Robert Black, who originally suggested holding the trial in a neutral country.

Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was jailed in 2001 for the 1988 atrocity. But the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission recently said he could go ahead with a second appeal.

Supportive

Mr Neil said, “I haven’t discussed my letter with Executive members, but Tam Dalyell, Iain McKie and Jim Swire are all very supportive. “If you look through the report of the Review Commission there are a lot of unanswered questions about due process and justice at the original trial. This brings into serious question aspects of the Scottish legal system.”

Mr Neil claimed the conduct of the McKie and Lockerbie cases has damaged the system’s international standing.“I know people in the US who are very critical about what has happened,” he added. “There’s a need to re-establish the criminal justice system’s reputation.“The world’s eyes will be on the appeal, so it’s critical justice is done and seen to be done.“I feel people have been complacent about the effectiveness of the system because it has always been held up as something to admire.“Those romantic memories of yesteryear will not sustain us tomorrow.”

Edinburgh University professor Robert Black is credited with drawing up procedures for the original trial which convinced Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi to hand over the accused men.

Neutral venue

He said last night, “My January 1994 proposal for a non-jury trial in a neutral venue suggested foreign judges should be involved with a Scot presiding. But the UK Government insisted all the judges should be Scottish.“I still think including foreign judges is a good idea.” There is no precedent for this but Prof Black says it could be possible to extend the categories of people who can become temporary judges in the High Court to include foreign judges.“I think it would require legislation in the Scottish Parliament which would be easy to draft. The question is whether it would have majority support.”

A Justice Department spokesman said, “The priority is to allow the legal process to follow its natural course. This is very much a matter between Mr Neil and the Lord President.” Tam Dalyell said, “I’ve been calling for an international element to the appeal hearing for some time. If not judges, what they might want to do is have some international observers.”

At al-Megrahi’s first appeal in 2002 a panel of five judges met at the special Scottish court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, led by then Lord President Lord Cullen

Wednesday 29 July 2015

A need to re-establish criminal justice system's reputation

[What follows is the text of a report published in the Sunday Post on this date in 2007:]

Bid to restore Scottish legal reputation

Foreign judges for al-Megrahi appeal

By Paul Johnson

An MSP wants the court hearing the Lockerbie bomber’s appeal to include at least two international judges.He says it’s a bid to restore the reputation of the Scottish legal system.The call came in a letter from SNP backbencher Alex Neil to the Lord President of the Court of Session, Lord Hamilton on Thursday. He claims his idea has the support of Lockerbie campaigner Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died in the bombing, plus former MP Tam Dalyell and Iain McKie, father of “fingerprint case detective” Shirley.

It also has the backing of Professor Robert Black, who originally suggested holding the trial in a neutral country.

Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was jailed in 2001 for the 1988 atrocity. But the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission recently said he could go ahead with a second appeal.

Mr Neil said, “I haven’t discussed my letter with Executive members, but Tam Dalyell, Iain McKie and Jim Swire are all very supportive. “If you look through the report of the Review Commission there are a lot of unanswered questions about due process and justice at the original trial. This brings into serious question aspects of the Scottish legal system.”

Mr Neil claimed the conduct of the McKie and Lockerbie cases has damaged the system’s international standing. “I know people in the US who are very critical about what has happened,” he added.

“There’s a need to re-establish the criminal justice system’s reputation. The world’s eyes will be on the appeal, so it’s critical justice is done and seen to be done. I feel people have been complacent about the effectiveness of the system because it has always been held up as something to admire. Those romantic memories of yesteryear will not sustain us tomorrow.”

Edinburgh University professor Robert Black is credited with drawing up procedures for the original trial which convinced Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi to hand over the accused men.

He said last night, “My January 1994 proposal for a non-jury trial in a neutral venue suggested foreign judges should be involved with a Scot presiding. But the UK Government insisted all the judges should be Scottish. I still think including foreign judges is a good idea.”

There is no precedent for this but Prof Black says it could be possible to extend the categories of people who can become temporary judges in the High Court to include foreign judges. “I think it would require legislation in the Scottish Parliament which would be easy to draft. The question is whether it would have majority support.”

A Justice Department spokesman said, “The priority is to allow the legal process to follow its natural course. This is very much a matter between Mr Neil and the Lord President.”

Tam Dalyell said, “I’ve been calling for an international element to the appeal hearing for some time. If not judges, what they might want to do is have some international observers.”

At al-Megrahi’s first appeal in 2002 a panel of five judges met at the special Scottish court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, led by then Lord President Lord Cullen.

Monday 10 November 2008

Closed minds?

[Here, in its entirety, is a report from Google News, attributed to the UK news agency The Press Association.]

American relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have been accused of closing their minds to the possibility of a miscarriage of justice.

The charge came from former MP Tam Dalyell as the Lockerbie saga reached another milestone.

The US has begun transferring more than 500 million dollars in Libyan compensation money to the families of American victims of the 1988 Pan Am bombing.

[A fuller report can now be found on the website of The Independent. It reads in part:

'American relatives of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing were today accused of closing their minds to the possibility of a miscarriage of justice.

'The charge came from former MP Tam Dalyell as the Lockerbie saga reached another milestone.

'The US has begun transferring more than 500 million dollars in Libyan compensation money to the families of American victims of the 1988 Pan Am bombing.

'Mr Dalyell, who is convinced of the innocence of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, serving a life term in a Scottish prison for the bombing, said developments in the case often saw some but not all US relatives asserting that Megrahi should die in prison.

'"This would be understandable if there were not the gravest doubts about whether he has anything to do with this crime that bereaved these relatives in the first place," said Mr Dalyell. a former Labour MP.

'"But I recognise that the pressures from some very vociferous relatives in the States are huge.

'"They have shut their minds to the possibility that the court could have carried out a miscarriage of justice."'

The full article can be read here.]

Friday 27 March 2015

Lockerbie evidence destroyed, claims Dalyell

[This is the headline over an article published on the website of the Kirkintilloch Herald on this date in 2002. The following are excerpts:]

The government was accused last night of conspiring to destroy critical evidence from the wreckage of the doomed PanAm flight 103 before the Lockerbie trial.

Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP for Linlithgow and Father of the House of Commons, used parliamentary privilege to claim that a decision to subvert vital clues to the identity of the bombers was taken in London.

He said ministers must answer claims that notebooks belonging to police officers who scoured the crash site in Dumfriesshire after the disaster which claimed 270 lives in 1988 had been destroyed.

Mr Dalyell, who has long had an interest in Lockerbie and believes that Abdelbaset Ali Momed al-Megrahi, now serving life for the mass murder, is innocent, told MPs yesterday during an Easter adjournment debate that he feared there had been a cover-up.

His statement was the first time an MP has challenged the government over the handling of Scotland’s biggest ever murder investigation and trial. (...)

The MP said: "This Easter, an innocent man, innocent of the monstrous crime he was found guilty of committing, languishes in Barlinnie prison in Glasgow.

"His name is Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Before parliament rises, the House ought to get an undertaking that the British Government, yes the British Government, and not a highly controversial devolved Crown Office in Edinburgh, will address certain questions."

He said that not one of the 129 members of the Scottish parliament had been prepared to take a "sustained, in-depth view" of the Lockerbie case.

Mr Dalyell went on: "Our country’s relations with the Arab world have not been devolved to a Scottish parliament." Mr Dalyell said a former police constable, Mary Boylan, had been asked to give a statement to the procurator fiscal regarding her activities at Lockerbie.

As the request had come almost 11 years after the event, the retired WPC phoned Livingston Police Station to ask for her notebook only to be told it had gone missing.

"Who gave the instruction for the destruction of the notebooks? After all, this was the biggest murder trial unresolved in Scottish legal history.

"The answer to this question is more likely to be found not in Edinburgh but in London," said Mr Dalyell. (...)

Megrahi, a Libyan, lost his appeal against conviction for the bombing of flight 103 and is serving a life sentence in Barlinnie jail.

Speaking after making his comments in the Commons, Mr Dalyell said: "What I am asking the government to comment on is the suggestion that something highly irregular has taken place, apparently with consent.

"I find it absolutely incredible that for reasons of routine or storage space that the notebooks belonging to police officers investigating the biggest murder case in Scottish history should be destroyed. I think it is extraordinary."

Mr Dalyell insisted his remarks were not an attack on the competency of MSPs and suggested the real sources of any alleged conspiracy to cover up the perpetrators of the bombing were in London and the United States.

"This is a serious request and I expect answers," he added.

Saturday 25 April 2015

The public has a right to know the truth

[What follows is the text of a press release from this date in 2002:]

London, 25 April 2002/P/RE/17666c-is
The President of the International Progress Organization, Professor Hans Koechler, earlier today held a meeting at the House of Commons in London with Mr Tam Dalyell, MP, “Father of the House” (the longest-serving member of the British Parliament), and Mr Ross Cranston, MP, former Solicitor-General of the United Kingdom. He briefed the members of the British Parliament on his report on the Lockerbie appeal proceedings which he had submitted earlier last month to the Presidency of the United Nations Security Council, to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson.

In his capacity as international observer of the Lockerbie trial, appointed by the UN Secretary-General, Professor Koechler discussed with Mr Tam Dalyell basic issues of the fairness of the Lockerbie trial and appeal proceedings. In a statement made at the adjournment (Easter) session of the House of Commons on 26 March 2002, Mr Dalyell had raised serious doubts about the handling of the Lockerbie case by Scottish judicial authorities. In his report on the Lockerbie appeal proceedings, Prof Koechler had expressed reservations about the fairness of the trial and had further explained his position that the proceedings were not in conformity with the requirements of the European Human Rights Convention.

Prof Koechler agreed with Mr Dalyell that the Lockerbie case should be further investigated and that the public has a right to know the truth. He reiterated his suggestion that the British Parliament should undertake a comprehensive investigation into the Lockerbie affair – particularly in regard to the detrimental role played by international power politics. Prof Koechler stated that the Lockerbie case is of exemplary nature in regard to the future development of international criminal justice and that the independence of the judiciary has been at stake in the highly politicized context of the trial. He explained that, for this reason, he considers a comprehensive public inquiry into the background of the Lockerbie case and into its handling by the Scottish judicial authorities of utmost importance.

[RB: It was exactly two years earlier, on 25 April 2000, that Professor Koechler was appointed by Kofi Annan as one of the UN observers.]