At a loss to explain this decision of the appeal court

[What follows is excerpted from a report published in The Guardian on this date in 2002:]

The Libyan intelligence agent who murdered 270 people in the Lockerbie bombing experienced his first night in the Scottish jail cell where he will spend the next 20 years last night after his appeal was thrown out by five judges.

Only hours after the appeal court judges announced that they had unanimously rejected Abdel Baset al-Megrahi's appeal on all grounds, the Libyan responsible for the biggest act of mass murder in British history was flown to his specially constructed cell in Glasgow's Barlinnie prison. (...)

Hans Köchler, one of five United Nations observers who followed the Lockerbie case, last night described the dismissal of Megrahi's appeal as a "spectacular miscarriage of justice".

Professor Köchler, who teaches philosophy at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, said:"I am at a loss to explain how this decision of the appeal court can have been passed unanimously in light of some of the questions asked and analysis presented by one or other of the appeal court judges during the appeal," he told BBC Radio Scotland's Newsdrive programme.

For the American and British relatives who have spent the 13 years since their loved ones died campaigning and pushing for justice, yesterday was a monumental day. In the courtroom, they hugged each other. Some shouted "yes".

Jim Swire, leader of the UK Families Flight 103 group, said it was time for the government to make good its promises and hold a public inquiry. "This is not a time for celebrating," he said. (...)

During three weeks of argument at the Camp Zeist courtroom, defence lawyers claimed that key evidence - notably an identification of Megrahi by a Maltese shopkeeper - was unsafe. They also brought new evidence of a break-in at Heathrow, where the defence claimed the bomb was planted, hours before the bombing.

The verdict was met with anger in the Arab world. Outside the court, Hafid Jhoja, president of the Libyan bar association said: "The trial was a political matter, not a legal matter. There was no clear evidence, as the whole world knows."

In Tripoli, a foreign ministry spokesman demanded the return of Megrahi, but, away from the media grandstanding, Colonel Muammar Gadafy's regime is being more subdued as the diplomatic process to bring it back into the international fold continues.

American relatives of those who died have launched a multimillion dollar civil action against the Tripoli regime. Sources close to the civil case have told the Guardian that Libyan lawyers have become more conciliatory since Megrahi's conviction last year and the Arab country appears prepared to meet the demands of the international community and pay compensation to the families of the victims.

In London, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said he hoped the appeal court's decision would bring solace and comfort to the families.

Six impossible things before breakfast

[On this date fifteen years ago, Abdelbaset Megrahi’s appeal against conviction was dismissed by the Criminal Appeal Court sitting at Camp Zeist. Here is what I have written about it:]

Introduction

Megrahi duly intimated his intention to appeal against his conviction. Pending the appeal he remained incarcerated in the Netherlands in HM Prison, Zeist. On 14 March 2002 the appeal was dismissed. An Opinion of the Court extending to 200 typed pages divided into 370 paragraphs was delivered[3]. The appeal was against conviction only: there was no attempt to challenge the recommendation, that a minimum of twenty years should be served before release was considered, which accompanied the trial court’s mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.

As required by the provisions of the High Court of Justiciary (Proceedings in the Netherlands) (United Nations) Order 1998, the Appeal Court consisted of five Lords Commissioners of Justiciary and sat in the premises of the Scottish Court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands[4]. The hearing extended from 23 January to14 February 2002. The proceedings (except when the evidence of witnesses was being heard) were televised live over the internet on a website maintained by the BBC, the first occasion in Scotland (or elsewhere in the United Kingdom) that live public broadcasting of judicial proceedings has been permitted. The consensus of opinion was that the administration of justice was not impaired by the presence of the television cameras, but that the level of excitement and drama was such that there is unlikely to be much clamour in the foreseeable future from either broadcasters or the viewing public for the experiment to be repeated.

The grounds of appeal

The only ground upon which a criminal appeal can succeed in Scotland is that there has been a miscarriage of justice. In the Note of Appeal lodged on behalf of Megrahi there were set out in 21 paragraphs (many of them subdivided) the grounds upon which, individually or in combination, it was contended that a miscarriage had occurred. One of those grounds related to the existence and significance of evidence which was not heard during the original proceedings. This evidence related to a breach of security at Heathrow Terminal 3 (potentially giving access to the baggage build-up area) the night before Pan Am 103 departed from that terminal on its fatal flight. The Appeal Court allowed the new evidence to be led before it, but ultimately concluded that it could not be regarded as possessing such importance as to have been likely to have had a material bearing on the trial court’s determination of the critical issue of whether the suitcase containing the bomb was launched on its progress from Luqa Airport in Malta (an essential plank in the prosecution case) or from Heathrow. This ground of appeal was accordingly rejected.

As far as the appeal based on the remaining twenty paragraphs of the written grounds of appeal was concerned, its failure appears to have been rendered virtually inevitable by two concessions made in the course of argument by the appellant’s counsel. The first of these, as recorded in the Opinion of the Court (paragraph 4) is as follows:

“At the trial it was not submitted on the appellant’s behalf that there was insufficient evidence in law to convict him. In its judgment the trial court rejected parts of the evidence relied upon by the Crown at the trial. Nevertheless, it was not contended in the appeal that those parts of the evidence not rejected by the trial court did not afford a sufficient basis in law for conviction.”

The second concession is recorded in the following terms (paragraph 5):

“Under subsection (3) [of s106 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995] an appellant may bring under review of the High Court:

‘any alleged miscarriage of justice, which may include such a miscarriage

based on –

(b) the jury’s having returned a verdict which no reasonable jury, properly directed, could have returned.’ …

Mr Taylor, who appeared for the appellant, expressly disavowed any reliance on para (b).”

The importance of these concessions is emphasised by the Appeal Court in the penultimate paragraph of its Opinion (paragraph 369):

“When opening the case for the appellant before this court Mr Taylor stated that the appeal was not about sufficiency of evidence: he accepted that there was a sufficiency of evidence. He also stated that he was not seeking to found on section 106(3)(b) of the 1995 Act. His position was that the trial court had misdirected itself in various respects. Accordingly in this appeal we have not required to consider whether the evidence before the trial court, apart from the evidence which it rejected, was sufficient as a matter of law to entitle it to convict the appellant on the basis set out in its judgment. We have not had to consider whether the verdict of guilty was one which no reasonable trial court, properly directing itself, could have returned in the light of that evidence.”

The issues that the appeal did not address

The limitations under which the Appeal Court was thus constrained to operate effectively disabled it from considering the issues of (a) whether there was sufficient evidence in law to justify such absolutely crucial findings-in-fact by the trial court as (i) that the date of purchase in Malta of the clothes surrounding the bomb was 7 December 1988, (ii) that Megrahi was the purchaser and (iii) that the case containing the bomb started its progress from Malta’s Luqa Airport and (b) whether those findings or any of them (on the assumption that there was a legal sufficiency of evidence) were such as no reasonable trial court, properly directing itself, could have made, or been satisfied of beyond reasonable doubt, in the light of (i) justifiable criticisms of the evidence and witnesses supporting them and (ii) ex facie credible contrary evidence.

The issues that the appeal did address

What the appellant instead invited the Appeal Court to do was to hold that various findings-in-fact made by the trial court (a) were based upon a misunderstanding of the evidence or were without a basis in the evidence; or (b) were arrived at by giving undue weight to evidence that supported them or insufficient weight or “proper regard[5]” to evidence that contradicted them; or (c) were in the nature of inferences from primary facts drawn in situations where other, non-incriminating, inferences were equally open.

As regards (a) the Appeal Court held that in two or three instances the trial court had found a fact proved on the basis of a misunderstanding of the evidence led, or where there was no evidential basis for the finding. But in each such case the Appeal Court went on to decide that the error was insignificant, could not have affected the ultimate outcome of the case and, hence, was not such as to give rise to a miscarriage of justice.

As regards (b) and (c) the Appeal Court insisted that, as long it was (as here) not contended that no reasonable trial court could have made the finding-in-fact, challenge of findings on these grounds was simply not competent. The weight to be given to evidence or the “proper regard” to be accorded to it were matters entirely for the trial court, as was the question of what inferences to draw from the primary facts that it held proved. Even where, as here, the tribunal of fact was not an inscrutable jury but a bench of judges who gave reasons for their findings, the Appeal Court was simply not entitled to substitute its own views for those of the trial judges. It followed that all of the grounds of appeal directed towards issues of “weight” or “proper regard” fell to be rejected as raising matters not within the competence or powers of the Appeal Court. This is emphasised at various points in the Opinion of the Court[6] but principally in the section headed “The function of an appeal court.[7]”

Conclusion

Before the verdicts in the original trial were delivered, I expressed the view [on TheLockerbieTrial.com website] that for the judges to return verdicts of guilty they would require (i) to accept every incriminating inference that the Crown invited them to draw from evidence that was on the face of it neutral and capable of supporting quite innocent inferences, (ii) to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, positively identified Megrahi as the person who bought from his shop in Sliema the clothes and umbrella contained in the suitcase that held the bomb and (iii) to accept that the date of purchase of these items was proved to be 7 December 1988 (as distinct from 23 November 1988 when Megrahi was not present on Malta). I went on rashly to express the opinion that, for the judges to be satisfied of all these matters on the evidence led at the trial, they would require to adopt the posture of the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, when she informed Alice "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." In convicting Megrahi, it is submitted that this is precisely what the trial judges did.

As far as the outcome of the appeal is concerned, some commentators have confidently opined that, in dismissing Megrahi’s appeal, the Appeal Court endorsed the findings of the trial court. This is not so. The Appeal Court repeatedly stresses that it is not its function to approve or disapprove of the trial court’s findings-in-fact, given that it was not contended on behalf of the appellant that there was insufficient evidence to warrant them or that no reasonable court could have made them. These findings-in-fact accordingly continue, as before the appeal, to have the authority only of the court which, and the three judges who, made them.

Until such time as an appellate court (perhaps on a reference from the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) is required to address the fundamental issues of (i) whether there was sufficient evidence to warrant the incriminating findings, (ii) whether any reasonable trial court could have made those findings (and could have been satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of the guilt of Megrahi) on the evidence led at Camp Zeist and (iii) whether Megrahi’s representation at the trial and the appeal was adequate, I will continue to maintain that a shameful miscarriage of justice has been perpetrated and that the Scottish criminal justice system has been gravely sullied.

Footnotes

3. Al Megrahi v H M Advocate 2002 SCCR 509, available at http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/sc---lockerbie/lockerbieappealjudgement.pdf?sfvrsn=2

4. The High Court (Proceedings in the Netherlands) (United Nations) Order 1998, SI 1998 No 2251, art 14(1), (2) available at http://www.uklaws.org/statutory/instruments_20/doc20555.htm

5. "Proper regard" is an expression used frequently in the written grounds of appeal.

6. For examples of grounds of appeal being rejected on this basis, see Opinion of the Court, paras 76, 80, 84, 118, 129,262, 274, 288, 327, 351.

7. See Opinion of the Court, paras 20-27.

SCCRC 'queried Lockerbie verdict'

[This is the headline over a report published on the Evening Standard website on this date in 2012. It reads as follows:]

New details of the legal grounds that could have cast doubt on the Lockerbie bomber's conviction have been disclosed, according to a newspaper report.

The six grounds for referral back to the appeal court are contained in a document by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), the body which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, with extracts printed in The Herald newspaper.

The Scottish Government has brought forward legislation to bring about the publication of the full report but data protection rules still bar its formal publication.

On claims the verdict was unreasonable, the SCCRC report quoted in The Herald states: "The commission has reached the view that the trial court's verdict is at least arguably one which no reasonable court, properly directed, could have returned."

The six grounds for referral were previously published by the SCCRC in summary. Four of the reasons refer to undisclosed evidence from the Crown to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's defence team.

Those grounds cover evidence about a positive identification of Megrahi by Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who said he sold clothes to a Libyan man. The clothes were linked to a suitcase loaded onto the plane, which was then linked to the bomb and eventually to Megrahi.

The SCCRC raised concerns that evidence suggesting Mr Gauci had seen a magazine article linking Megrahi to the bomb was not passed to the defence.

Contradictions about the day Megrahi was said to have bought the clothes were also highlighted. The court was told the purchase was on December 7 but the SCCRC said Mr Gauci also thought it might have been November 29.

"In the commission's view, by withholding this information the Crown deprived the defence of the opportunity to take such steps as it might have deemed necessary," the report in The Herald adds.

Also of concern to the SCCRC was undisclosed evidence about Mr Gauci's interest in rewards. A fifth reason covered "secret" intelligence documents not seen by Megrahi's legal team while the sixth referred to new evidence on the date of clothes purchased in Malta.

The truth about Lockerbie is likely to be ignored

[What follows is the text of an article by Jonathan S Tobin published on this date in 2014 on the website of Commentary magazine:]

Could there be a worse week for new revelations about the 1988 Lockerbie tragedy to be unveiled? The report claiming that Iran rather than Libya was the culprit in the atrocity should raise eyebrows around globe. But despite the persuasive case made for this theory, don’t expect the United States or any other Western country to heed the new evidence and re-open the case. With both the US and its European allies desperate to reach a new nuclear deal with Tehran that will enable them to halt the sanctions on the Islamist regime, discussions about the true nature of the administration’s diplomatic partner are, to put it mildly, unwelcome. If Washington isn’t interested in drawing conclusions about Iran from the seizure of an arms ship bound for terrorist-run Gaza last week or even the latest threat from its Revolutionary Guard about destroying Israel uttered yesterday, why would anyone think the Obama administration would be willing to rethink its conclusions about a crime that was long thought to be solved?

To be fair to the administration, a lot of time has passed since the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland that cost the lies of 259 passengers and crew and 11 persons on the ground. The US and the West put a lot of energy into proving that agents of the Libyan Gaddafi regime were responsible. The Libyans were known state sponsors of terror and had an axe to grind against the US at the time. After the conviction of a Libyan intelligence agent for these murders, even more energy was spent on vainly trying to persuade a Scottish court from letting him go home to Libya, where he eventually died of cancer. [RB: It was, of course, a Scottish Government minister, not a Scottish court, that granted compassionate release.] Why would anyone in the US government want to admit that we were wrong all these years? Nor would most Americans think an investigation undertaken by a news organization like the reliably anti-American Al Jazeera, no matter how meticulous, would persuade them to rethink their long-held conclusions about the case.

But, as David Horovitz writes persuasively in the Times of Israel, Al Jazeera’s report is based on information from the same Iranian defector that accurately testified about the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina that killed 85 persons. Though the full truth about Lockerbie is yet to be uncovered, Horovitz is right to point out that if we accept the word of former Iranian intelligence agent Abolghasem Mesbahi about Tehran’s terrorist plot in South America, there’s no reason to dismiss his detailed claims about Lockerbie. The pieces here fit too well to allow us to merely shrug and move on.

But the problem isn’t Mesbahi’s credibility or even the embarrassment that a finding that debunked previous Western intelligence work on Lockerbie would cause in Washington and London. Rather, it’s the fact that the defector is pointing the finger at a government that the West wants very much to rehabilitate these days.

The United States and its European allies are deeply invested in the notion that Hassan Rouhani’s victory in Iran’s faux election last year marked a genuine change in the country’s political culture. Justifying a weak interim nuclear deal that granted Iran both significant sanctions relief and a tacit recognition of its “right” to enrich uranium was made possible not only by the arguments about Iran’s supposed desire for a new start with the West but also by a determination by the administration that it wanted to step away from confrontation with Tehran at all costs.

The president is so worried about hurting the delicate feelings of the anti-Semitic government in Tehran that he is willing to veto new sanctions legislation that would have strengthened his hand in the talks. This policy is difficult enough to justify in the face of Iran’s continued support for terrorism, its genocidal threats against Israel (which make its possession of nuclear weapons more than a theoretical security problem), and its long record of diplomatic deception. The last thing the president and Secretary of State Kerry want is to have the Lockerbie case disinterred and for the regime—many of whose leading players were active in the security apparatus at the time—indicted for mass murder of innocent Americans.

So don’t expect anyone in Washington to take the new evidence about Lockerbie seriously or even to pay lip service to the notion of re-opening the case. Horovitz is right that Al Jazeera’s report ought to justify a new investigation that will fearlessly follow the evidence to the guilty parties. But as long as making nice with Iran is one of the diplomatic priorities of the United States, the truth about Lockerbie is likely to be ignored.

Lockerbie was not a Libyan bomb

[This is part of the headline over an editorial in The Independent on this date in 2014. It reads as follows:]

The idea that anybody in authority still believes the Libyans were guilty has become harder to swallow

The evidence that the Lockerbie bomb – which detonated on Flight 103 from London to Washington, killing 270 people – was planted by the Libyans gets thinner and thinner. Soon after the explosion, on 21 December 1988, many assumed that it was a revenge attack for the blowing up of an Iranian commercial flight six months earlier, killing 290 people. Certainly, given the fraught nature of Iranian-US relations in the 1980s, that seemed to make sense. Yet before long there was a screech of brakes in the official investigation and the focus of attention fell on Libya, culminating in the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in the Netherlands in 2001.

Jim Swire, father of Flora, one of the victims, went to the trial expecting to see a bad man get his comeuppance, and came away convinced the Libyan was not guilty. Many others who approached with an open mind saw the gaping holes in the prosecution and went away believing that a hideous wrong was done to Mr Megrahi, who died of cancer in 2012 still proclaiming his innocence. The official version of the chemical make-up of the timer fragment has been entirely discredited, as have claims that the bomb could have been put on board in Malta.

With news that a former Iranian intelligence officer, Abolghassem Mesbahi, has claimed – indeed, confirmed – that the bombing was ordered by Ayatollah Khomeini “to copy exactly what happened to the Iranian airbus”, and that it was planted in London, the idea that anybody in authority still believes the Libyans were guilty becomes harder to swallow. The fact that their leader, Muammar Gaddafi, desperate to lift international sanctions, seemingly accepted responsibility, or that Mr Megrahi’s appeal was unsuccessful, should not let those responsible off the hook. It is hard to look back on the unseemly wrangling over Mr Megrahi’s compassionate return from Scotland to Tripoli in 2009 without thinking that some of those quietly lobbying for it knew that he was less guilty than they were willing to admit publicly, and that the least they could do was let him die at home. Maybe they will find a bit more courage now. “Megrahi is innocent” is no longer a conspiracy theory – it is official.

[RB: The report in The Independent which prompted this editorial can be read here.]

No justification

[This is the heading over a letter from Dr Jim Swire that was published in The Herald on this date in 2008. It reads as follows:]

It is hard to see how the Westminster Foreign Secretary can justify his attempt to "protect" documents with Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificates on the grounds that they would harm the UK's relations with other nations, and that their release to the defence in the Lockerbie case would disadvantage the very public PIIs are designed to serve.

It appears these documents were supplied to the prosecution (and Dumfries and Galloway police) about 12 years ago, and concern the truth about a terrorist atrocity of nearly 20 years ago. It also appears they were considered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) to be part of their reason for considering the original trial and appeal might have been unsafe. The Foreign Secretary must realise that the longstanding release of them to the prosecution, but not the defence, wrecks any chance of the next appeal being considered fair. Coupled with their inclusion in the SCCRC's referral back to appeal, this grossly selective restriction can only destroy any remaining vestige of faith in the freedom and independence of Scotland's judicial system.

No doubt the defence will continue to fight for the documents to be released to them. Meanwhile, the use of the PII certificates will be seen outside these islands as at best a delaying tactic by Whitehall, and at worst a calculated attempt to ensure Mr Megrahi does not get a fair appeal and the relatives are denied the truth about the murder of their loved ones, as are the the public, while Scotland's independent criminal law is seen as enslaved to Britain's politicians.

London talks on acknowledgment of Lockerbie responsibility

[What follows is the text of a report by David Leppard that was published in The Sunday Times on this date in 2003:]

Ambassador William Burns, head of the US state department’s Middle East section, is expected to meet Libyan and British officials for talks in London this Tuesday. A formal announcement is expected soon afterwards.

Sources close to the talks disclosed yesterday that officials may be close to finalising a deal in which Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi finally admits responsibility for Lockerbie.

In exchange for a formal statement of admission, the United Nations Security Council is expected to permanently lift crippling sanctions against Tripoli.

Discussions have been going on for years about compensating relatives of the 270 people who died when Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Scotland in December 1988.

Libya has previously denied reports that it was prepared to pay £7m to each Lockerbie victim, provided sanctions were lifted. It is currently on the US state department’s list of countries that sponsor international terrorism.

This week’s London meeting will involve Burns, a US assistant secretary of state, and a senior Libyan official, probably Mohammed Abdul Quasim al-Zwai, Gadaffi’s ambassador in London. A senior Foreign Office official will also attend.

The security council has demanded that Libya pay “appropriate compensation” and accept general responsibility for the bombing. As well as renouncing terrorism, it must also undertake to comply with any future inquiry.

If those demands are fully met, UN sanctions — imposed in 1992 but suspended at the moment — will be scrapped.

America imposed its own separate sanctions after the Libyans bombed a disco used by American soldiers in Germany in 1986. Libya is desperate to get rid of the sanctions so it can sell oil.

Dan Cohen, who lost his daughter at Lockerbie, said he believed the wording of a statement admitting Libya’s responsibility had already been agreed.

At an international court in the Hague two years ago, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a senior Libyan intelligence official, was convicted of the bombing. He is now serving a life sentence at Barlinnie high security prison in Glasgow. [RB: The only evidence that Megrahi was an intelligence official came from the defector Abdul Majid Giaka whose evidence on every other issue was dismissed by the court as wholly lacking in credibility. The court gave no reasons for their acceptance of Giaka’s testimony on this single topic.]

Gadaffi has always denied responsibility for the attack. But evidence uncovered during the Scottish police investigation revealed that it had been sanctioned by the head of his own intelligence service. [RB: I have no idea what “evidence” this refers to. Certainly no such evidence was produced at the Zeist trial.]

The Libyans are said to have wanted revenge for the bombing of their country by American planes, in which Gadaffi’s six-year-old adopted daughter had been killed.

[RB: The Libyan letter acknowledging responsibility (which I played a part in drafting) can be read here.]

UK Government held entitled to claim public interest immunity

[What follows is the text of a report by Lucy Adams in The Herald on this date in 2008:]

The defence team for the Libyan jailed for the Lockerbie bombing yesterday suffered a set-back in its attempts to get access to a top-secret document.

The document, which originated in an unknown foreign country, is thought to contain vital information about the timer which detonated the bomb that killed 270 people in 1988.

At the previous hearing, the UK Government said the document could not be disclosed for reasons of national security, leading the defence team to accuse it of "interference" in the appeal.

Margaret Scott QC, senior counsel for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan currently serving 27 years in Greenock prison for the bombing, objected to the Advocate General for Scotland - the law officer who represents the UK Government in Scottish affairs - playing a part in the debate.

She accused the government of meddling - an allegation hotly disputed by Lord Davidson, the Advocate General, and by Elish Angiolini QC, the Lord Advocate and head of prosecutions in Scotland.

However, yesterday the appeal judges ruled against her. Their decision opens the way for several days of future debate about whether letting lawyers see the document would have any security implications.

The Libyan's defence team say it needs to see the document in order for Megrahi to have a fair appeal.

Earlier this year, the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh was told that Ms Angiolini would be prepared to disclose the document but that has also been disputed.

The document itself was uncovered during the three-year investigation of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which resulted in the case being referred back to the courts for a new appeal last summer.

The commission concluded the failure during the original trial to disclose this document, which is thought to contain information about the electronic timer used to detonate the bomb, could constitute a miscarriage of justice.

Although the Crown allowed the commission to see the material they have refused to disclose it to the defence.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband claims the document should remain confidential.

Now Lord Davidson will be allowed to put the case for "public interest immunity", on his behalf, at a future hearing - for which no date has yet been set. The hearing of Megrahi's actual appeal is still months away.

Megrahi, who was jailed in 2001, was not in court yesterday - but the appeal judges have been told he would like to attend future appeal hearings.

Death of US Lockerbie judge Thomas Platt

[What follows is excerpted from an obituary that appeared in yesterday’s edition of The New York Times:]

Thomas C Platt, a federal judge in New York (...) died on Saturday in North Branford, Conn. He was 91. (...)

Judge Platt, who sat in federal courthouses in Brooklyn and on Long Island, also presided over lawsuits against the Libyan government and Pan American World Airways stemming from the terrorist bombing of a jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. A Libyan intelligence officer was convicted of orchestrating the attack, which killed 259 people aboard a London-to-New York flight and 11 on the ground. (...)

In the lawsuits against Pan Am over the bombing of Flight 103, victims’ families contended that inadequate baggage-security procedures had let an unaccompanied suitcase containing the bomb be placed on the plane.

Judge Platt presided at the trial, in 1992. A jury agreed with the families, permitting trials on each family’s damage claim, though most were settled without trial.

In 1995, the judge dismissed family members’ lawsuits against the Libyan government, ruling that American law granted other nations immunity from suits in American courts, with exceptions that did not pertain to this case.

But after Congress amended the law in 1996 to allow suits in the United States against nations sponsoring terrorism, the families again filed their claims, and Judge Platt rejected Libyan arguments that the suits still warranted dismissal despite the change in law.

In 2002, Libya preliminarily agreed to settle the case by paying up to $10 million to each family. It was six more years before a final agreement was reached.

Judges back Lockerbie evidence suppression

[This is the headline over a report published on the website of The Guardian on this date in 2008. It reads in part:]

A legal battle to release a secret intelligence report which could free the Libyan man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is to continue after judges ruled the foreign secretary had the right to suppress the document.

The ruling from the Lord Justice General, Lord Hamilton, dashes the hopes of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi that he would be quickly released.

It emerged last year that two secret papers had been given to the UK by a foreign government in September 1996, four years before al-Megrahi's trial began, but had never been disclosed to his defence team even though Scottish police and prosecutors had seen them.

Last July, the Scottish criminal cases review commission said that one of those documents raised further doubts about his guilt, and had played a key role in its decision to return al-Megrahi's conviction to the appeal court. It refused to disclose its contents or origin, however.

The Libyan's lawyers claim the document is essential to his appeal and are contesting the decision by the foreign secretary, David Miliband, to grant public interest immunity suppressing the papers on behalf of the British government.

The lawyers told three appeal judges last month that only the Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, had the right to withhold papers in a Scottish court and she had said she had no objection to them being released.

However, the judges ruled that the Lord Advocate had said that disclosure of those papers was a decision for the foreign secretary – an opinion they upheld. Al-Megrahi's lawyers will make a further attempt to force disclosure of the documents later this summer.

Miliband has told the court that releasing either document would cause "real harm" to the UK's national security, its counter-terrorism efforts and its relations with the country which supplied the papers.

Government lawyers have denied claims it came from the US government or the CIA, but said the foreign government involved had refused requests to release it.

Al-Megrahi, then a sanctions buster for Colonel Muammar Gadafy, was convicted in 2001 of murdering 270 passengers, crew and townspeople after planting a suitcase bomb in Malta which eventually blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, the small town in south west Scotland.