(The following article is from the September 16-30, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Kimball Cariou

Since the release from prison of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the man accused in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, U.S. politicians and the corporate media have been in a frenzy. This manufactured outrage is based on the claim that al-Megrahi was found guilty of the bombing after a fair trial. But the case is far more complex than this simplistic argument suggests. Many observers believe that al-Megrahi's release had less to do with compassionate treatment due to his terminal illness, than with fears in high circles that uncomfortable truths could emerge from this case.

     In a revealing article published in December 2008, author Hugh Miles urged readers to "spare a thought for the victim of the biggest miscarriage of justice in Scottish legal history, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi."

     For years, noted Miles, it looked as if there would be no trial over Lockerbie: "British and US governments believed Colonel Gaddafi would never hand over the two Libyan intelligence officers accused of the bombings, which some regarded as fortunate as they believed the evidence against Libya would not stand up in a court of law."

     But a trial did finally take place, thanks largely to the  efforts of Nelson Mandela. In exchange for lifting international sanctions which had inflicted billions of dollars worth of economic damage to Libya, Gaddafi handed over the accused. In January 2001, Megrahi was convicted, while Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah was acquitted. Accepting responsibility for the bombing, without admitting guilt, Libya paid $2.7 billion in compensation to the victims' families.

     As Miles points out, no material evidence was presented linking al-Megrahi to the bombing, or that he put the bomb on the plane or handled any explosives.

     The prosecution's case was that Megrahi wrapped the bomb in clothes before checking it on to a plane in Malta without boarding it himself. Two years after the bombing, Granada TV aired a "dramatic reconstruction" in which a bag containing a bomb was loaded on an Air Malta flight by a sinister-looking Arab. When the airline sued, evidence demonstrating that all the bags for that flight were accompanied by passengers was so convincing that Granada TV settled out of court.

     The prosecution's star witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, owned the store where the garments were allegedly bought. Al-Megrahi's lawyers were due to claim that Gauci was paid over a $2 million reward by U.S. investigators for his evidence, which followed more than 20 police interviews, and that many of his wildly conflicting statements were withheld from the defence. A few days before he picked al-Megrahi out of a line-up, Gauci had seen a magazine article showing a picture of the accused, and speculating he might have been involved, but this information was not passed on to the defence.

     Miles points out that "Since the Crown never had much of a case against Megrahi, it was no surprise when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) found prima facie evidence in June 2007 that Megrahi had suffered a miscarriage of justice and recommended that he be granted a second appeal."

     Earlier, the British government argued that a public inquiry into Lockerbie would prejudice legal proceedings. After the conviction, it said that no public inquiry was necessary.

     Last September, al-Megrahi was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, which Miles speculated could give the option of transferring him to Libya for the rest of his sentence, avoiding the risk of an acquittal and lessening the chance of a subsequent inquiry: "Letting Megrahi die a condemned man reduces the chance of Scottish prosecutors, the police, various UK intelligence services plus many American and other foreign bodies being asked a lot of difficult questions."

     "The Crown and the prosecution are using every delaying tactic in the book to close off every route available to Megrahi except prisoner transfer, as this means he has to abandon his appeal," said Robert Black, the Scottish lawyer who was the architect of the original trial but feels partly responsible for the miscarriage of justice. "It is an absolute disgrace. It was 27 June 2007 when the SCCRC released its report ... and the Crown has still not handed over all of the material that the law requires it to hand over and it is still making every objection conceivable."

     Referring to the 2001 conviction, Black wrote: "I thought this was a very, very weak circumstantial case. I am absolutely astounded, astonished. I was extremely reluctant to believe that any Scottish judge would convict anyone, even a Libyan, on the basis of such evidence."

     As Ian Ferguson, author of The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie, pointed out: "From the start, there was a determination to try to prevent the appeal being heard. It opened but never got off the ground, with stall after stall, as each month al-Megrahi weakened with the cancer that was killing him. There was rejoicing in the Crown Office in Edinburgh when he was released and the appeal abandoned."

     There has been widespread speculation on the identity of the real perpetrators of the bombing. Miles writes: "Some time ago suspicion fell on a gang headed by a convicted Palestinian terrorist named Abu Talb and a Jordanian triple agent named Marwan Abdel Razzaq Khreesat. Both were Iranian agents; Khreesat was also on the CIA payroll. Abu Talb was given lifelong immunity from prosecution in exchange for his evidence at the Lockerbie trial; Marwan Khreesat was released for lack of evidence by German police even though a barometric timer of the type used to detonate the bomb on Pan Am Flight 103 was found in his car when he was arrested."

     In fact, three months after the bombing, Scottish police had published a report pointing to Khreesat as a possible suspect. And in its appeal submission, al-Megrahi's legal team reproduced a memo dated September 24, 1989, from the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency, stating: "The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, Iran's former Interior Minister."

     Many theories related to the case have emerged. As Miles says, "Some believe that the CIA deliberately framed Libya so Syria would fight in the first Gulf War. Others suspect Lockerbie to be linked to drug smuggling, arms shipments and Iranian hostage negotiations..."

     Maltese commentator Joseph M. Cachia wrote recently that "The outrage at the release of al-Megrahi should not overshadow the memory of the trial that condemned and sentenced him."

     Al-Megrahi's legal team had fought to see the secret papers which could help overturn his conviction. However, Foreign Secretary David Miliband signed a "public interest" immunity certificate, claiming that making the document public could cause "real harm" to national security and international relations.

     As Cachia concluded, "when only selected evidence is available and the defence does not even get to see parts of it, then the conviction becomes unsound. Does anyone seriously believe that a Scottish Government would release a man convicted of murdering innocents, unless there was good reason for considering that conviction to be more than a manipulated conspiracy?"

     There is also the matter of the U.S. government's blatant hypocrisy. The U.S. military personnel responsible for shooting down Iran Air Flight 655 on July 3, 1988, killing 290 people including 66 children, later received medals. Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carrilles, who bombed a Cuban plane in 1976 killing 73 people, was paroled by George W. Bush, although Venezuelan and Cuban authorities have repeatedly requested his extradition.

     There is good reason for outrage over the Lockerbie bombing, but fingers should be pointed first at top leaders of Britain and the United States.