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Matthew Vella
Jim Swire, the father of a Lockerbie bomb victim, is urging investigators to consider new evidence which could help clear the man convicted of the 1988 atrocity, Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.
Megrahi was jailed for 27 years when 270 people died as an American passenger airliner blew up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
He was positively identified by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, whose testimony was the key factor in the conviction of Megrahi, after he recognised the suspect in a photo shown to him by detectives at Mary’s House, claiming he had sold him clothes that were later found wrapped around the bomb.
According to a book by a British diplomat’s wife and journalist Brigid Keenan, along with husband Alan Waddams it is claimed they had dinner with an ex-Interpol agent in Gambia during which the agent claimed the bombing was carried out to avenge the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by the US five months earlier.
He alleged the bombers knew the plane’s cargo would go unchecked because of a drug smuggling agreement between the US and a terror group linked to Lebanon.
Swire has written to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which has been reviewing Megrahi’s conviction since 2003, to alert them to the new revelation. “I think it could be a very significant story because it relates to events that occurred within weeks or a months or two of the disaster.”
Tony Gauci’s own testimony has been doubted by the very man who admitted him as a key witness. In a startling revelation in October 2005, Lockerbie’s prosecutor Lord Fraser of Carmyllie described Gauci as “not quite the full shilling” and “an apple short of a picnic” to the Sunday Times of London.
Tony Gauci has claimed he is not interested in the disparaging comments by Lord Fraser, and has been keen to move on since the termination of the court case.
Fraser’s admissions attracted grave reactions from parties who seriously doubt the involvement of Megrahi. Megrahi’s defence William Taylor QC, had described Fraser’s comments as “scandalous” given that Fraser had presented a witness whose credibility he doubted:
“A man prosecuting in the criminal courts in Scotland has a duty to put forward evidence based upon people he considers to be reliable. He was prepared to advance Gauci as a witness of truth in terms of the identification and if he had these misgivings about him, they should have surfaced at the time.
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