Lockerbie: Will key players be censured in cover-up probe?
POLICE have confirmed that a four-year investigation into claims of a criminal ‘cover-up’ during the trial of the Lockerbie bomber has been completed.
The report by officers will shortly be passed to prosecutors who will decide if anyone should be charged over the way the landmark case was handled.
Any suggestion that evidence was fabricated or suppressed during the trial would profoundly damage the international reputation of the Scottish justice system.
The Scottish Mail on Sunday understands that not all those investigated by the police emerge with a ‘clean bill of health’.
In 2001, after the most high-profile trial staged by a Scottish court, Libyan intelligence agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was found guilty of the 1988 atrocity when an explosion aboard Pan Am flight 103 claimed 270 lives.
Despite the unanimous verdict of three High Court judges, campaigners for Megrahi – including relatives of those who died in the bombing – have always maintained that he was innocent and that evidence was fabricated while evidence that didn’t fit the Crown case was suppressed.
Police Scotland was ordered by the Scottish parliament to investigate claims that police, prosecutors and expert witnesses had been involved in misleading the court.
On Friday the force confirmed that their ‘extensive’ investigation had been completed and their report was now being scrutinised by an independent QC before being passed to the Crown Office.
Superintendent Stuart Johnstone said: ‘It is anticipated we will be in a position to share the findings with the Crown sometime this month.’
The Scottish Mail on Sunday understands from informed sources that not all the allegations have been easy to dismiss. One source added: ‘The evidence gathered will be passed to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) and it should, at the very least, assist them in referring the case back for appeal.’
In 2001 Megrahi was convicted of the mass murder and sentenced to life.
From prison, he referred his case to official watchdog the SCCRC, which ruled in 2007 that there were six grounds for considering there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
Two were never published on the grounds of national security but the others were damning for the official verdict. Overall, the SCCRC concluded that no reasonable court could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence that was led in court.
But Megrahi, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, dropped his appeal in 2009. He was freed from jail on compassionate grounds and flown back to his native Libya, where he died in May 2012.
Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora on the doomed Pan Am jet, said he
‘It’s taken a long time but I sense a shift’
believes the truth is ‘about to blow up in the faces of the Scottish establishment’.
Dr Swire, 82, who believes in Megrahi’s innocence, said: ‘It’s taken a long time but I sense a shift. The commission, having referred the case back to appeal in 2007 on six grounds, some of them damning for the Crown case, can hardly conclude now that the conviction was safe.’
Megrahi’s younger son Ali said: ‘We want to thank everyone who continued to support my father. We know he was innocent, but we can’t rest until the world knows it, and that time is coming.’