Convicted Pan Am 103 Lockerbie Bomber May Yet Get Some Justice

By Andrew I. Killgore

In January 2001 Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted of the Dec. 21, 1988 bombing of Pan American Airways Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 persons on board, most of them Americans, and 11 people on the ground. In a strange decision, Megrahi’s co-defendant, Libyan Airways employee Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted.

The court turned down Megrahi’s appeal in March 2002. Both the lower court and the court of appeal sat at Camp Zeist, a former U.S. military base near Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Mastermind of the unique judicial arrangements by which the two Libyans were tried in the Netherlands under Scottish law was Dr. Robert Black, professor of criminal law at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Professor Black shares the widespread skepticism that Megrahi is guilty, believing instead that the onboard bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 was placed on the plane in London rather than in Malta.

The plight of Megrahi, who faces a lifetime in prison, has evoked a mood of deep and widespread unease. Many feel he is not guilty—or, at least, that the evidence presented against him at Camp Zeist was not sufficient to justify a conviction. Among these are British physician and explosives expert Dr. Jim Swire, whose son died over Lockerbie.

Swire served as an explosives expert in the British army, then decided to get out and study medicine. The spokesman for British relatives who lost family members aboard Pan AM 103, Swire, too, believes that the bomb destroying the plane was loaded aboard in London.

The prosecution’s case at Camp Zeist was that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi arranged the destruction of Pan AM 103. The American media in particular portrayed Libyan intelligence service defector Abdul Majid Giaka as the key witness who would show how Megrahi loaded the bomb on the plane at Valetta, Malta. When Giaka took the witness stand, however, he was unpersuasive as a witness. A CIA officer who was supposed to buttress Giaka’s testimony also was lacking in credibility.

Megrahi has appealed his case to the European Court of Human Rights (CHR) in Strasbourg. While the CHR cannot examine the substance of the case, it can consider whether the defendant’s legal counsel was adequate. Dr. Black believes on this issue Megrahi has a good case, because defense lawyers failed adequately to pursue several lines of questioning.

For example, the defense counsel might have questioned whether a Valetta shopkeeper who supposedly sold Megrahi some clothes on a particular day had adequately identified the defendant, and whether he even had the day correct. There was plenty of room for doubt on both counts.

According to Black, if serious doubt can be placed on these two points, the CHR could well decide that Megrahi had not been adequately defended. Should it issue such a decision, the British government would then have to decide what to do: to release Megrahi or to foreshorten his life sentence.

Megrahi’s counsel is still preparing an appeal to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) on the grounds that a miscarriage of justice occurred in their client’s case. Speaking before a Glascow audience Nov. 24, Dr. Black said he was “convinced” of Megrahi’s innocence, and predicted that the Libyan will be released within two years.

Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.