Lockerbie: Megrahi Publishes His Defence

The Lockerbie case is back in the news with the publication of Megrahi: You Are My Jury by John Ashton, a member of Abdelbaset ali al-Megrahi’s defence team. That Megrahi remains alive, if only just, two and a half years after he was released on compassionate grounds is, plainly, an embarassment and all the evidence required to demonstrate that Kenny Mackaskill’s decision to release him on license was mistaken. It has been contradicted by events.

Worse for Mr MacAskill, however, is Megrahi’s suggestion that MacAskill advised him that his chances of being released on compassionate grounds would be enhanced if he dropped his appeal against his conviction for the bombing. There was no legal need for this kind of quid pro quo; the status of Megrahi’s wrestling match with the Scottish authorities was – or was supposed to be – entirely separate from his health issues. (The UK-Libya Prisoner Transfer Agreeement negotiated by Tony Blair, which covered Megrahi despite the protests of the Scottish government, was a different matter: Megrahi could not be transferred to a Libyan prison while his appeal was continuing. Of course, MacAskill rejected Megrahi’s PTA application before agreeing to release him.)

According to the new book:

“On 10 August (2009), MacAskill and his senior civil servants met a delegation of Libyan officials, including Minister [Abdel Ati] Al-Obeidi. By this time I [Megrahi] was desperate.

After the meeting the Libyan delegation came to the prison to visit me. Obeidi said that, towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, MacAskill told him it would be easier for him to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal. He [MacAskill] said he was not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me to be clear. I was legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk doing so. It meant abandoning my quest for justice.”

How convincing is this? I suspect that depends upon your view of both the Libyans and Kenny MacAskill.

Be this as it may, the book appears, on the evidence of extracts published in this morning’s Herald, to bolster Megrahi’s case that his conviction was not as safe as it once appeared. Of course in one sense we knew this already: the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had already suggested as much. Though this is necessarily a matter of conjecture, it may remain the case that Megrahi and the Libyans were guilty but that the evidence against Megrahi points more towards a not proven verdict than a guilty one.

Much of Megrahi’s case appears to rest upon allegations that crucial evidence was withheld from the defence team. Again, if this is the case then, had he not contracted cancer, he might very well be a) still imprisoned in a Scottish gaol and b) quite likely to win his appeal. In that respect his cancer proved “useful” to almost all parties to the case, offering a “face-saving” way out of the mess for the Scottish authorities.

For its part the UK government was clearly content to allow Megrahi to be covered by the PTA knowing that this could not actually make Megrahi’s release or even transfer substantially mroe likely since the decision would be made by the Scottish, not the UK, authorities and the Scots insisted that no transfer could take place while Megrahi was appealling his conviction (and nor would any application for transfer necessarily be approved even if he dropped his appeal).

Nevertheless, the new book, partial as it obviously is, would seem to raise some important questions about the reliability of at least two vital parts of the prosecution case: the testimony of Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who claims Megrahi bought clothes from his store that were subsequently found amongst the wreckage and, just as importantly, the provenance of the timers used to detonate the bomb. It had been claimed that these had been manufactured exclusively for and sold exclusively to the Libyans. If this was not the case then the evidence against Megrahi is unavoidably weaker. Perhaps not conclusively weaker but definitely weaker. (That said: Megrahi’s explanation of why he was travelling on a “coded”, ie false, passport is utterly unconvincing. Apparently it was to keep Mrs Megrahi happy by making her believe he was away on “business” elsewhere in Libya but not overseas. Hmmm.)

So you can see why the case remains open in everything except a formal, legal sense. Equally, one can see why people want to believe there were any number of deals made between London and Tripoli, London and Edinburgh and Edinburgh and Tripoli. Cock-up still seems more persuasive a theory than conspiracy but on this, I think, most people agree: few people really wanted to see Megrahi’s case return to the courts. His cancer, if not quite as advanced as once thought, was convenient; it offered a way out of the mess that, while scarcely uncontroversial, was less embarrassing than at least some of the possible alternatives.