A Scottish judicial commission yesterday found the reliability of the Maltese evidence used to convict a former Libyan intelligence agent of carrying out the 1988 bombing of a Pan American plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, which claimed 270 lives, to be highly questionable and recommended he be granted an appeal.
The report, drawn up by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, will now be submitted to the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh, which will decide whether an appeal is warranted.
The court could turn down the request for an appeal, order a retrial or dismiss the conviction and free Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi (photo) without further investigation.
Since his conviction, Al-Megrahi’s lawyers have made numerous submissions for an appeal, all of which have been dismissed, with the exception of their objections to the Maltese evidence.
Al-Megrahi had been convicted largely on the basis of evidence supplied by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci of Mary’s House, Tower Road ,Sliema. In his evidence, Mr Gauci had identified Al-Megrahi as the purchaser of articles of clothing and an umbrella found in the suitcase – placed on an Air Malta flight and transferred to the Pan Am flight in Frankfurt – containing the bomb.
The Commission, however, found “there is no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgment for its conclusion that the purchase of the items from Mary’s House, took place on 7 December 1988”, an argument that had sealed the indictment against Al-Megrahi.
The Commission noted that although it had been proven that Al-Megrahi had been in Malta on several occasions in the month in question, it was determined through new evidence submitted that 7 December 1988 was the only day during which he would have had the opportunity to make the purchases from Mary’s House.
New evidence in the Commission’s hands, not heard at the trial, concerned the date on which Christmas lights had been switched on in Sliema near Mary’s House which, taken with Mr Gauci’s evidence at trial and the contents of his police statements, indicates that the purchase of the incriminating items had taken place before 6 December 1988 – when no evidence had been presented at trial to the effect that the applicant was in Malta before 6 December.
Yet more new evidence given to the Commission indicates that, four days before the identification parade at which Mr Gauci had picked out Al-Megrahi, he had seen a photograph of Al-Megrahi in a magazine article linking him to the bombing.
The Commission found that Mr Gauci’s exposure to the photograph, so close to the date of the identity parade, “undermines the reliability of his identification of the applicant at that time and at the trial itself”.
Without going into extensive detail, the Commission also cited that other evidence the Commission found further undermines Mr Gauci’s identification of Al-Megrahi as the purchaser, as well as the trial court’s finding as to the date of purchase.