‘No reasonable jury could convict’ Lockerbie bomber
Third appeal hears trial’s testimony was ‘muddled’
NO “reasonable jury” could have convicted the late Abdelbaset alMegrahi of the Lockerbie bombing, appeal judges heard yesterday.
The bombing of Pan Am flight 103, travelling from London to New York on December 21, 1988, killed 270 in Britain’s largest terrorist atrocity.
Libyan ex- intelligence officer Megrahi, who was found guilty in 2001 of mass murder and jailed for life with a minimum term of 27 years, was the only person convicted of the attack.
As a third appeal against his conviction began at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, Claire Mitchell
QC said evidence that convicted Megrahi was flawed.
The bomb that downed the plane was found to have been in a Samsonite case, and the clothes in that case identified.
Ms Mitchell said the link between Megrahi and those clothes, bought in Malta, was that a shopkeeper recalled a
man resembling Megrahi had bought them – but the ID was not definite.
She said prosecutors had proved Megrahi was in Malta on December 7 1988 but that Mary’s House shopkeeper Tony Gauci could not be sure that was the date he had sold those clothes. Ms Mitchell highlighted confusion over whether Christmas lights were up the day the clothes were sold and said testimony was “so muddled that no evidence could be... relied upon to bear the weight of any conviction”.
The QC added: “It is submitted in this case that no reasonable jury, properly directed, could have returned the verdict that it did, namely the conviction.”
Megrahi’s first appeal was refused by the High Court in 2002. He abandoned his second appeal in 2009, shortly before his release due to being terminally ill with cancer.
Megrahi died in Libya in 2012.
Testimony so muddled no evidence could be... relied upon
CLAIRE MITCHELL QC ON WITNESS TESTIMONY