Truth may emerge at last over Lockerbie bombing trial brokered by Mandela

Acouple of weeks ago a process was quietly set in motion to correct one of the most cynical miscarriages of justice in modern times. After the bombing of a Pan-Am flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, which killed 270 people, the UK and US colluded to manipulate the investigation to suit their own crude Western realpolitik.

Now a Scottish review commission has allowed a fresh appeal on behalf of the late Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan, whose 27-year sentence, it said, may have been “an unreasonable verdict” due to “nondisclosure” by the prosecution. Megrahi died in 2012, still officially guilty.

But almost from the start evidence indicated that he was a victim of the US need for new Middle Eastern allies during the first Gulf War.

SA has a strong interest in seeing the truth exposed as it was former president Nelson Mandela who brokered the 1999 deal that allowed Megrahi to be tried by a specially created court in the Netherlands. Prof Hans Köchler, the legal observer nominated by the then UN secretary-general to monitor the trial, concluded that it took place “in a context of power politics”, and that “there is not one single piece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime. In such a context, the guilty verdict ... appears to be arbitrary, even irrational.”

At first it was thought the Lockerbie bomb was revenge for the shooting down, six months earlier, of a civilian Iranian airliner by a US warship, resulting in 290 deaths, including 66 children. The US said this was a “mistake”, but never formally apologised. For nearly two years the US and UK claimed Iran had paid the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was supported by Syria, to carry out the attack. Leaks identified the bomber as Abu Talb (by then in a Swedish prison for other terrorist offences), as having been in Malta at the time that clothes were bought that were later found to have been wrapped around the device that blew up Flight 103. This approach, however, was abruptly dropped on the eve of the first Gulf War.

What had changed was international politics. During the Iran-Iraq war, the West backed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. In August 1990, however, Iraq invaded Kuwait and the West urgently needed new partners in the region. “The US, UK and their allies started to negotiate with their former enemies,” wrote the late British investigative journalist Paul Foot. “All this was completed quickly — in November 1990 new deals were signed to neutralise Iran and bring Syrian forces into the combined operation against Saddam, already known as Desert Storm.” Suddenly neither Syria nor Iran continued to be fingered as the terrorist masterminds. Another version was called for — and supplied.

“In October 1990, a series of newspaper reports indicated that the guilty country responsible for Lockerbie was not Iran or Syria or even Palestine,” wrote Foot in his forensic 31-page special report for Private Eye, titled “Lockerbie: The Flight From Justice”.

“The guilty country was Libya. These new suspicions were not reflected in either of the two official inquiries into the Lockerbie disaster.”

So where did Megrahi’s name surface?

At his trial, it emerged that it was suggested by an unreliable Libyan informer — but only when his frustrated CIA handlers threatened to cut him off unless he provided something useful.

THERE IS NOT ONE SINGLE PIECE OF MATERIAL EVIDENCE LINKING THE TWO ACCUSED TO THE CRIME. THE GUILTY VERDICT ... APPEARS TO BE ARBITRARY

Now, when investigators showed a photo of Megrahi to the Maltese shop owner, he changed his evidence and agreed that Megrahi could have been the man to whom he had sold clothes. Lawyers representing the Libyan subsequently alleged this shopkeeper had been paid a $2m reward by the US. These devastating charges may finally be tested in court.

Köchler pointed out that, inexplicably and improperly, two representatives from the US justice department were seated next to the prosecution team, giving the impression of being “supervisors”. He concluded that foreign governments may have been allowed to determine what evidence was made available, adding: “virtually all people presented by the prosecution as key witnesses were proven to lack credibility, in certain cases even having lied openly to the court”.

The sister of one victim told me years ago how angry she felt that this massacre had been hijacked out of crude political expedience. What might she feel today knowing, as with all miscarriages of justice, that the real perpetrators got away with mass murder?