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Lockerbie appeal case puts Malta back in spotlight

Defence failed to produce important evidence – Joe Mifsud

By Miriam Dunn

The rejection last Thursday of an appeal launched by the Libyan jailed for life in connection with the Lockerbie bombing has once again put Malta back in the spotlight as top of the list of likely places for the bomb to be placed on the aircraft.

But both Robert Black, a Scottish professor of law who worked to bring the case to trial at Camp Zeist and Maltese investigative journalist Joe Mifsud expressed scepticism at the decision and pointed out that appeals tend to be decided upon points of law rather than evidence.

Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi lost his appeal against the conviction for the Lockerbie bombing on Thursday and will now be taken to a jail in Scotland to begin a sentence of at least 20 years.

He was jailed for life in January 2001 for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie in December 1988, leading to the deaths of 270 people. Megrahi lodged grounds for his appeal a week after the guilty verdict, which followed an 84-day trial under Scottish law at Camp Zeist in Holland.

Dr Black, a native of Lockerbie who is based at Edinburgh University and has followed the Lockerbie case closely, stressed that the appeals court has not endorsed and added its weight to the findings of the trial court.

"It is not its job as an appeals court to agree or disagree with the trials court," he said. "The function of the appeals court is simply to decide whether or not a trial court was entitled to do what it did, and in this respect they decided in the court’s favour.

"A lot of people are now saying that there is the weight of eight judges behind this verdict, but that is simply not true. Instead the appeals court has said that the trial court judges were entitled to focus on the evidence that was at hand."

Dr Black believes that the trial was a fair procedure, and the appeals court procedure was fair – it is the outcome that is unjust.

"My heart bleeds for Megrahi, but Malta also has a right to feel aggrieved," he added. "During the trial, the judges raised the issue of how good Malta’s airport security was in 1988 and said there was a lot evidence showing it was unlikely that unaccompanied baggage was put on in Malta."

During the appeal, Megrahi's defence team had asked the appeal judges to declare his conviction a "miscarriage of justice".

Bill Taylor, QC, defending Megrahi, argued that new evidence presented to the appeal pointed to a miscarriage of justice.

He said it raised the possibility that the bomb had been placed on board the aircraft at Heathrow and not in Malta, as the trial judges had concluded.
However, Alan Turnbull QC, for the prosecution, said the new evidence was weak and flawed, and did not affect the original case.

The judges spent exactly a month considering the evidence before announcing their verdict on Thursday.

Local investigative journalist Joe Mifsud had words of criticism for Megrahi’s lawyer, saying that he had much more evidence in his possession than he presented.

"For example, he failed to produce documents from Enemalta which showed that the Christmas decorations were already up on 30 November, while Tony Gauci had said they were not yet up on 7 December when it is alleged that Megrahi bought the clothes at Mary’s House," he said.

Mr Mifsud supported Dr Black’s view that the outcome of the appeal is unfair for Malta, since it still lays blame on the island, even though the airport security systems were praised.

"I am convinced that it was impossible that the bomb was planted in Malta, when you think of all the stops and changes of aircraft that followed," he said. "It is much more likely that the bomb was planted further on."

Dr Black said that Megrahi can now take his case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which sits in London, and has a supervisory jurisdiction over constitutional matters within the UK, under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Asked what he believed to be the reaction of the families who lost loved ones in the Lockerbie tragedy, Dr Black said he thinks the American families are mostly convinced the verdict was right.

"They are now examining the hierarchy of responsibility, as to whether the bombing was people acting alone or went further up the echelons of power in Libya," he said. "But I believe a substantial number of the British families are not convinced, even now, that the verdict was right."