Did U.S. Machinations at the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie Trial Sully the Verdict?

By Andrew I. Killgore

Libyan intelligence service officer Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was sentenced on Jan. 31 to 20 years in prison for destroying Pan American Airways Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988. Co-defendant Lamen Khalifa Fhimah was acquitted. Early this fall an appeals court consisting of five Scottish judges will review the decision of the three-judge lower court which tried al-Megrahi and Fhimah under Scottish law near Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

So many twists and turns and new surprises mark the Pan Am 103 tragedy that some stage magician might be playing with the global audience. The latest “new” surprise is that two American prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice worked so intimately with the Scottish prosecutors that the court seemed more Scottish-American than Scottish.

Dr. Robert Black, professor of criminal law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and mastermind of the unique arrangements for trying the accused Libyans in the Netherlands under Scottish law, told the Washington Report that whenever Abdul Majid Giaka was called to testify, the supposed “key witness” always conferred with the two American prosecutors before responding. Giaka, a Libyan intelligence service defector, left some trial observers with the impression that he was being “coached” on what to say.

Dr. Hans Koechler, professor of the philosophy of law at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a United Nations observer at the Lockerbie trial, stated in his Feb. 3 report to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (see below), “…there is not one single piece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime…” Koechler thus joins the many others, including Professor Black and Dr. Jim Swire, spokesman for relatives of the 30 British passengers who lost their lives in the Pan Am crash, who think that al-Megrahi was unfairly convicted.

Dr. Koechler, appointed as an observer of the trial under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1192, submitted his report to Kofi Annan on Feb. 3, only three days after the Lockerbie trial verdict. Publication of the Koechler report on April 8, two months after it was issued, was deemed by the newspaper Scotland on Sunday to be “a monumental embarrassment to the United Nations and the Scottish legal establishment.”

“Old” surprises in the continuing mystery surrounding the destruction of Pan Am 103 are that key prosecution witness Abdul Majid Giaka was a dud on the witness stand. A CIA officer, supposedly fully cognizant with the case, also lacked credibility when he was put on the stand to buttress Giaka. Perhaps an even greater surprise—and irony—was that the 75-page opinion attempting to justify the court’s guilty verdict for Megrahi seemed to argue for the Scottish “not proven” rather than for the “guilty” verdict. In other words, the case they tried to make against Megrahi seemed to acquit him.

Dr. Black reiterated to the Washington Report on April 16 that the appeals court will find it very difficult psychologically to overrule fellow Scots on the lower court. New evidence, however, could provide a “hook” on which to hang a reversal and, Professor Black added, new evidence was coming forth “even as we speak.”

At a recent conference in Cairo Dr. Swire defended the role of the Lockerbie court. According to London’s The Independent, however, his wife, Jane Swire, said, “Vital warnings were mishandled at the time of Lockerbie, in the field of intelligence and security.”

Just what Swire, both a physician and an engineer who specialized in explosives, had in mind is another unanswered question. Due to the continuing widespread doubt about Megrahi’s guilt, the conviction brings no closure to the Pan Am tragedy. A key element of that doubt is the belief by many, including Black and Swire (and the relatives for whom he is the spokesman), that the bomb destroying Pan Am 103 was put aboard the plane not in Malta, as maintained in the prosecution’s Libya-did-it scenario, but in London.

Underlying all the other surprises is that Pan Am 103 crashed on land, rather than at sea where it “should” have crashed—leaving no evidence of criminality. On Dec. 21, 1988, however, gale force winds drove the pilot north to try to get above the tempests, and to be over Lockerbie when the crash occurred. That means that the real criminals who destroyed Pan Am 103 must still tremble with fear that eventually their guilt will be uncovered.

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