Key witness who sealed Lockerbie bomber’s fate dies
Maltese shopkeeper Gauci, 72, was paid $2m by the FBI for testimony
THE key witness in the Lockerbie trial has died in his homeland of Malta at the age of 72.
Shopkeeper Tony Gauci was paid $2 million by the FBI for his crucial testimony that led to the conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.
He had plans to emigrate to Australia with the bounty but remained in Malta and has now died there, reportedly of natural causes.
Famously described by the late Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, as ‘an apple short of a picnic’ and ‘not quite the full shilling’, Gauci became the key to Megrahi’s conviction.
Clothing in the suitcase that carried the bomb on to Pan Am 103 on December 21, 1988, was traced back to Gauci’s shop, Mary’s House, in Sliema, Malta.
Gauci gave Scottish investigators numerous witness statements over many years, claiming that the man who bought the clothes resembled Megrahi but never going further than that, even when he gave evidence at the trial in 2000.
The judges acknowledged his lack of certainty several times in their judgment, delivered in January 2001. But at the final mention they turned it into a virtue, suggesting it underlined the fact that Gauci was an honest witness.
The judges stated that Gauci was ‘100 per cent reliable’ on two matters – that the buyer was a Libyan, and on the list of clothing bought and the prices paid.
Yet in 1999 Gauci had produced an entirely different list for investigators when they were preparing him to testify at the trial. This would have undermined the judges’ faith in his reliability, but that statement was kept from Megrahi’s defence.
Since the trial, numerous doubts have emerged regarding Gauci’s testimony. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the case to the appeal court on six grounds, two of them relating to the weight attached to Gauci’s evidence.
Megrahi died in May 2012 with his family around him in Tripoli, almost three years after his compassionate release following his cancer diagnosis. Many of the British relatives of the 270 who died never believed in his guilt and continue to campaign for a full inquiry.
Former policeman and Scottish investigator George Thomson, who was part of Megrahi’s defence team, reflected last night on his final visit to his Libyan friend.
He said: ‘When I last spoke to Baset on his deathbed, he spoke of the day he and Tony might meet in another place, where Tony would have to answer for his lies. I hope Tony is now at peace because he must have led a tortured life knowing that he had jailed an innocent man for money.’
‘He must have led a tortured life’