Prosecutors in Edinburgh and Washington feared the case against the Lockerbie bomber would collapse if their concerns over the integrity of the star witness were made public, declassified documents have revealed.
The papers show that senior Scottish and US officials privately raised doubts over his reliability and are set to trigger fresh claims of a miscarriage of justice.
Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was sentenced to 27 years by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands after being found guilty of masterminding the 1988 atrocity in which 270 people were killed.
The testimony of [Tony Gauci](https://archive.md/4fgjx), a Maltese shopkeeper who claimed he sold clothing — believed to have been wrapped around the bomb — to a man resembling al-Megrahi, proved pivotal to securing his conviction in 2001. However, concerns were raised about the “soundness of Gauci’s identification” and the UK and US feared the case would founder if this became known.
The new information, disclosed last night, on the 33rd anniversary of the terrorist attack, has renewed calls for an appeal against al-Megrahi’s conviction.
Hans Koechler, who served as the UN’s independent observer at his trial, said: “I am even more convinced that a miscarriage of justice occurred.”
A report of a meeting between Alan Rodger, then Scotland’s lord advocate, and Robert Mueller, US assistant attorney-general, in Washington in 1992, states: “If it became known we or the US were sending people to check on the soundness of Gauci’s identification that would signal that we did not have a case on which we could confidently go to trial. The US Department of Justice maintained that they could not go to trial on the present identification.”
Gauci was the sole witness to link al-Megrahi directly to the bombing of Pan Am 103, over the town of Lockerbie.
In 2000 he told a panel of judges that al-Megrahi “resembled a lot” a man who bought clothes from his shop. But in 1992 a letter from the Crown Office to Mueller raised doubt. “Further inquiries concerning the identification made by the shopkeeper Gauci could be seized upon by those in Malta, Libya and elsewhere hostile to the conclusions of the investigation.” In 2007 it emerged that the US had paid $2 million to Gauci.
Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at Edinburgh University, who masterminded the trial, said: “It is now more obvious than ever that the Megrahi conviction is built on sand. An independent inquiry should be instituted into the case by the Scottish government, the UK government or both.”
The Crown Office said it would be inappropriate to comment further [while leave to appeal (by al-Megrahi’s son Ali)](https://archive.md/J8jkB) is being considered by the UK Supreme Court. Police Scotland have confirmed that their investigation remains live.
It has emerged that officials were warned about an independent investigation by the bereaved. A 1992 Foreign Office memo states: “We understand that [the Labour MP] Bernie Grant is arranging to take a group of Lockerbie [relatives] to Malta . . . to ‘investigate’ the Malta connection. Clearly such a visit has great potential for trouble.”
Al-Megrahi was released from prison in 2009 and died from cancer in 2012.
The confidential documents also show that British officials threatened to veto Malta’s application to join the EU if they did not back their demands over the Lockerbie bombing.
The UK and US insisted that the bomb which exploded over Scotland 33 years ago was loaded on to Air Malta flight KM-180, which left the island for Frankfurt on December 21. They contended it was then taken to London and transferred to Pan Am Flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie with the loss of 270 lives. The Maltese authorities strongly disputed this version of events, insisting it was technically impossible.
Their stance provoked considerable anxiety. A March 1992 memo to the Foreign Office from diplomatic staff in New York states: “We understand that the Maltese government is considering stating publicly that the allegation that the bomb was planted in Malta was not proven and instructed their ambassador to the UN to explain this to non-aligned members of the Security Council. We hope the Maltese government will think carefully on this and reconsider its position. The US embassy here have told us that their embassy in Valletta has been instructed to take action at the highest level.”
The Maltese were then told the UK would not support their attempt to join the European Community (EC), the precursor to the EU.
A letter from the office of Tristan Garel-Jones, the minister for Europe, from later that month, states: “You will have seen yesterday’s telegram in which the Maltese prime minister expressed his disappointment at our failure, as they see it, to support their application to the Community. Mr Garel-Jones thinks we do not need to turn the link between Lockerbie and membership into a blunt instrument.”
However, the Maltese were told it would “do no harm” to their case if they backed the EC’s stance and supported financial penalties against Libya.
The following month British officials noted with satisfaction: “Malta will now comply with mandatory sanctions, while not agreeing with them.”
Guido de Marco, Malta’s justice minister at the time of the bombing, wrote in 2010 shortly before his death that there had been “so much room for error” in the British version of events.
–
*Officials ordered to monitor ‘troublesome’ relatives of victims*
An independent investigation into the Lockerbie atrocity launched by bereaved family members [posed “great potential for trouble” and should be carefully monitored, government officials were told](https://archive.md/Capzg).
The police and members of John Major’s government were alerted after Bernie Grant, the Labour MP for Tottenham, announced plans to take relatives on a “fact-finding” trip to Malta. Grant believed that Libya had been wrongly accused of carrying out the bombing and made a number of trips to the north African country before his death in 2000.
A newly released Foreign Office memo from January 1992 states: “We understand that Bernie Grant is arranging to take a group of Lockerbie victims [to] Malta. The aim of the visit is to ‘investigate’ the Malta connection. Clearly such a visit has great potential for trouble.”
It adds: “The Scottish police are warning their contacts in the Maltese police. You may wish to have a quiet word with any trusted contacts.”
A second document, from the security co-ordination department, states: “There is little we can do to prevent this visit. A direct approach to Mr Grant or the relatives would risk provoking the kind of public outburst we would want to avoid. We should also warn our high commission in Valletta.” In 2018 relatives of the Lockerbie bomb victims told *The Times* they had been repeatedly bugged by the security services after official documents suggested that they needed “careful watching”.
The Rev John Mosey, a church minister who lost his teenage daughter, Helga, in the bombing, said that after speaking publicly his phone calls were often disrupted and documents relating to the bombing had gone missing from his computer.
Jim Swire, a GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, reported similar intrusions and deliberately included false information in private correspondence, only for it to appear in the press days later.
Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed, said: “I cannot believe that a supposedly decent country could behave in such a way towards grieving people whose only crime was to seek the truth.”
Odd that the article omits the witness’s financial interest in the case, which has been reported extensively. For example:
> Gordon Jackson QC, part of the legal team acting for the family of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, said there was clear evidence that the witness Tony Gauci was interested in compensation for giving evidence, and was frustrated none had emerged.
> Jackson said the prosecution had an obligation to reveal that to the trial court, which convicted Megrahi of killing 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie in south-west Scotland in December 1988.
> Instead, the relevant Scottish police interviews with Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper whose testimony convicted Megrahi, were not given to the court or the Libyan’s defence team. The undisclosed papers “showed a very clear pattern” where Gauci “had a strong motivation of a financial nature,” Jackson said.
> Jackson, the advocate who successfully defended the former Scottish National party leader Alex Salmond over 14 charges including one of attempted rape earlier this year, said the defence could have aggressively pursued this with Gauci when he gave evidence, challenging his credibility.
> “The information in those documents would’ve given them the basis to attack that credibility,” he told a panel of five Scottish appeal judges, headed by Scotland’s most senior judge, Lord Carloway, the lord justice general.
> **It later emerged Gauci and his brother were paid $3m by the US government after he gave evidence – a deal not disclosed until after the trial.**
The entire trial stunk to high heaven, read up on Jim Swire a fine man whose daughter was tragically on the flight and also the UN observer who walked out of the trial in disgust.
Sturgeon needs to order an SNP inquiry and often wonder why she seems reluctant as I believe she is fundamentally decent and would want to see justice done.
Salmond believed the guy convicted was wrongly so.
Grim. I don’t know much about this beyond the article, but to me it looks like they decided who was guilty then did all they could to ensure he went down, regardless of what the evidence said. Not good.
5 comments
Prosecutors in Edinburgh and Washington feared the case against the Lockerbie bomber would collapse if their concerns over the integrity of the star witness were made public, declassified documents have revealed.
The papers show that senior Scottish and US officials privately raised doubts over his reliability and are set to trigger fresh claims of a miscarriage of justice.
Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was sentenced to 27 years by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands after being found guilty of masterminding the 1988 atrocity in which 270 people were killed.
The testimony of [Tony Gauci](https://archive.md/4fgjx), a Maltese shopkeeper who claimed he sold clothing — believed to have been wrapped around the bomb — to a man resembling al-Megrahi, proved pivotal to securing his conviction in 2001. However, concerns were raised about the “soundness of Gauci’s identification” and the UK and US feared the case would founder if this became known.
The new information, disclosed last night, on the 33rd anniversary of the terrorist attack, has renewed calls for an appeal against al-Megrahi’s conviction.
Hans Koechler, who served as the UN’s independent observer at his trial, said: “I am even more convinced that a miscarriage of justice occurred.”
A report of a meeting between Alan Rodger, then Scotland’s lord advocate, and Robert Mueller, US assistant attorney-general, in Washington in 1992, states: “If it became known we or the US were sending people to check on the soundness of Gauci’s identification that would signal that we did not have a case on which we could confidently go to trial. The US Department of Justice maintained that they could not go to trial on the present identification.”
Gauci was the sole witness to link al-Megrahi directly to the bombing of Pan Am 103, over the town of Lockerbie.
In 2000 he told a panel of judges that al-Megrahi “resembled a lot” a man who bought clothes from his shop. But in 1992 a letter from the Crown Office to Mueller raised doubt. “Further inquiries concerning the identification made by the shopkeeper Gauci could be seized upon by those in Malta, Libya and elsewhere hostile to the conclusions of the investigation.” In 2007 it emerged that the US had paid $2 million to Gauci.
Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at Edinburgh University, who masterminded the trial, said: “It is now more obvious than ever that the Megrahi conviction is built on sand. An independent inquiry should be instituted into the case by the Scottish government, the UK government or both.”
The Crown Office said it would be inappropriate to comment further [while leave to appeal (by al-Megrahi’s son Ali)](https://archive.md/J8jkB) is being considered by the UK Supreme Court. Police Scotland have confirmed that their investigation remains live.
It has emerged that officials were warned about an independent investigation by the bereaved. A 1992 Foreign Office memo states: “We understand that [the Labour MP] Bernie Grant is arranging to take a group of Lockerbie [relatives] to Malta . . . to ‘investigate’ the Malta connection. Clearly such a visit has great potential for trouble.”
Al-Megrahi was released from prison in 2009 and died from cancer in 2012.
The confidential documents also show that British officials threatened to veto Malta’s application to join the EU if they did not back their demands over the Lockerbie bombing.
The UK and US insisted that the bomb which exploded over Scotland 33 years ago was loaded on to Air Malta flight KM-180, which left the island for Frankfurt on December 21. They contended it was then taken to London and transferred to Pan Am Flight 103, which blew up over Lockerbie with the loss of 270 lives. The Maltese authorities strongly disputed this version of events, insisting it was technically impossible.
Their stance provoked considerable anxiety. A March 1992 memo to the Foreign Office from diplomatic staff in New York states: “We understand that the Maltese government is considering stating publicly that the allegation that the bomb was planted in Malta was not proven and instructed their ambassador to the UN to explain this to non-aligned members of the Security Council. We hope the Maltese government will think carefully on this and reconsider its position. The US embassy here have told us that their embassy in Valletta has been instructed to take action at the highest level.”
The Maltese were then told the UK would not support their attempt to join the European Community (EC), the precursor to the EU.
A letter from the office of Tristan Garel-Jones, the minister for Europe, from later that month, states: “You will have seen yesterday’s telegram in which the Maltese prime minister expressed his disappointment at our failure, as they see it, to support their application to the Community. Mr Garel-Jones thinks we do not need to turn the link between Lockerbie and membership into a blunt instrument.”
However, the Maltese were told it would “do no harm” to their case if they backed the EC’s stance and supported financial penalties against Libya.
The following month British officials noted with satisfaction: “Malta will now comply with mandatory sanctions, while not agreeing with them.”
Guido de Marco, Malta’s justice minister at the time of the bombing, wrote in 2010 shortly before his death that there had been “so much room for error” in the British version of events.
–
*Officials ordered to monitor ‘troublesome’ relatives of victims*
An independent investigation into the Lockerbie atrocity launched by bereaved family members [posed “great potential for trouble” and should be carefully monitored, government officials were told](https://archive.md/Capzg).
The police and members of John Major’s government were alerted after Bernie Grant, the Labour MP for Tottenham, announced plans to take relatives on a “fact-finding” trip to Malta. Grant believed that Libya had been wrongly accused of carrying out the bombing and made a number of trips to the north African country before his death in 2000.
A newly released Foreign Office memo from January 1992 states: “We understand that Bernie Grant is arranging to take a group of Lockerbie victims [to] Malta. The aim of the visit is to ‘investigate’ the Malta connection. Clearly such a visit has great potential for trouble.”
It adds: “The Scottish police are warning their contacts in the Maltese police. You may wish to have a quiet word with any trusted contacts.”
A second document, from the security co-ordination department, states: “There is little we can do to prevent this visit. A direct approach to Mr Grant or the relatives would risk provoking the kind of public outburst we would want to avoid. We should also warn our high commission in Valletta.” In 2018 relatives of the Lockerbie bomb victims told *The Times* they had been repeatedly bugged by the security services after official documents suggested that they needed “careful watching”.
The Rev John Mosey, a church minister who lost his teenage daughter, Helga, in the bombing, said that after speaking publicly his phone calls were often disrupted and documents relating to the bombing had gone missing from his computer.
Jim Swire, a GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, reported similar intrusions and deliberately included false information in private correspondence, only for it to appear in the press days later.
Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed, said: “I cannot believe that a supposedly decent country could behave in such a way towards grieving people whose only crime was to seek the truth.”
*Marc Horne*
Wednesday December 22 2021
For those here needing a recap on the story:
>[UK Aviation News: Lockerbie: 33 years on from Britain’s worst terrorist incident](https://ukaviation.news/lockerbie-33-years-on-from-britains-worst-terrorist-incident/)
Odd that the article omits the witness’s financial interest in the case, which has been reported extensively. For example:
> Gordon Jackson QC, part of the legal team acting for the family of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, said there was clear evidence that the witness Tony Gauci was interested in compensation for giving evidence, and was frustrated none had emerged.
> Jackson said the prosecution had an obligation to reveal that to the trial court, which convicted Megrahi of killing 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie in south-west Scotland in December 1988.
> Instead, the relevant Scottish police interviews with Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper whose testimony convicted Megrahi, were not given to the court or the Libyan’s defence team. The undisclosed papers “showed a very clear pattern” where Gauci “had a strong motivation of a financial nature,” Jackson said.
> Jackson, the advocate who successfully defended the former Scottish National party leader Alex Salmond over 14 charges including one of attempted rape earlier this year, said the defence could have aggressively pursued this with Gauci when he gave evidence, challenging his credibility.
> “The information in those documents would’ve given them the basis to attack that credibility,” he told a panel of five Scottish appeal judges, headed by Scotland’s most senior judge, Lord Carloway, the lord justice general.
> **It later emerged Gauci and his brother were paid $3m by the US government after he gave evidence – a deal not disclosed until after the trial.**
— Guardian, [25 Nov 2020](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/25/lockerbie-court-should-have-been-told-witness-wanted-payment)
The entire trial stunk to high heaven, read up on Jim Swire a fine man whose daughter was tragically on the flight and also the UN observer who walked out of the trial in disgust.
Sturgeon needs to order an SNP inquiry and often wonder why she seems reluctant as I believe she is fundamentally decent and would want to see justice done.
Salmond believed the guy convicted was wrongly so.
Grim. I don’t know much about this beyond the article, but to me it looks like they decided who was guilty then did all they could to ensure he went down, regardless of what the evidence said. Not good.