Lockerbie bomber conviction 'may have been miscarriage of justice' - This is not new news!

On 21 December 1998, Pan Am flight 103 was on its way from London to New York when it exploded over Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.

This killed 243 passengers and 16 crew and also led to the deaths of a further 11 people from the town of Lockerbie as the falling debris rained down. The total number of those killed in one of the UK's worst terrorist attack came to 270.

The wreckage of Pan Am 103 on a field in Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Photograph: AP


The subsequent investigation led to the  Lamin Khalifah Fhimah and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi being indicted by  US Attorney General and the Scottish Lord Advocate.

The question is, did these two men commit this horrendous crime?

The Libyan government were not going to allow two of their citizens to be tried in the US or UK but held them under house arrest for trial in Libya. Eventually an agreement was brokered for Fhimah and Megrahi to stand trial in the neutral Netherlands but under Scots law.

The trial resulted in Fhimah's acquittal, he was in Sweden at the time of the bombing, but Megrahi was convicted on all counts.

The judges announced their verdict on 31 January 2001.

There was much criticism of the outcome of this trial. Some legal scholars feeling there was a bias in favour of conviction. There were also key witnesses that recanted their accounts. One in particular, Ulrich Lumpert, admitted lying in court and stealing a key piece of evidence and handing it to investigators.

I give the above by way of some background and I don't want to go in to the reasons why it would be 'convenient' for Megrahi or any Libyan for that matter, to have been convicted of this terrible crime. A more detailed piece will better do that description and analysis justice.

I just want to illustrate that this 'headline' is not new. In fact, the Guardian, in 2010 ran the following story:

I have purposely left the 'This article is more than 9 years old' banner to emphasise that this is not a new story.

For me this begs the question, who had interest in ensuring someone, anyone, stood trial for this heinous crime?

As a normal person it is in my interests to know that when 'justice' is meted out then that person has had a fair trial. As much as I may hate the idea of the person being presented to me I have to remember, that's what they are, an idea of the hideous thing that has happened. Without the real perpetrator being held to account, no one has had justice, the accused, the majority of the investigators, the system itself and certainly not the victims or their families.

Clearly this is not a new story. Magrahi died of prostate cancer on 20 May 2012, aged 60. However, campaigns to exonerate him began in earnest in May 2014 when a group of relatives of the Lockerbie victims campaigned to clear al-Magrhi's name.

A month later in June 2014, one of Scotland's top criminal lawyers Aamer Anwar was instructed by immediate members of Al-Megrahi's family.

This is not going to go away and deserves all the coverage possible. If we, the general public, can't rely on the 'fact' that our justice system is in fact just then why conform to this system at all?

I look forward to seeing you all at the next post.

Take care, keep on reading, please comment, take a look at the YT channel and all the best,

Dave

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