Today marks the grim 30th anniversary of the Lockerbie atrocity, 30 years of undeserved global infamy for Malta and 30 years of injustice suffered by families of 270 people from both sides of the Atlantic who lost their lives when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December 1988.
And for the last 30 years Malta’s name has been tarnished as the terrorist attack’s point of departure.
Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan Arab Airline employee in Malta at the time of the attack, was, so the court case went, able to exploit security holes at Luqa airport. He was the only person convicted of the attack, erroneously so it would appear as many a legal and layman’s mind are of the opinion that the real truth behind the Lockerbie bombing died along with al-Megrahi in May 2012.
Were that to be the case, this would also be a gross injustice to the victims, their families and to Malta.
Al-Megrahi died of terminal cancer still protesting his innocence, despite having dropped a planned appeal against his conviction so as to clear the way for his release and return to Libya under Scottish law, which grants compassionate release for the terminally ill.
Al-Megrahi, some say, was Lockerbie’s 271st victim but that will perhaps never be ascertained beyond any reasonable doubt unless a fully-fledged inquiry is held. Nor will Malta’s name ever be cleared by a court of law for its apparent role, as the bomb’s point of departure, in the tragedy. The country has been dogged over the last 30 years by the Lockerbie prosecution’s contention that the bomb responsible for one of the most heinous terrorist acts in history began its deadly journey on an Air Malta flight out of Luqa.
Indeed, the only hope of answers for the families on both sides of the Atlantic, which hold very different views on the guilt of the convicted bomber, of learning the truth lies in the possibility of an independent inquiry into the case.
A comprehensive review of the case is currently being carried out by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to determine whether or not a fresh appeal against the conviction should proceed. The review comes after al-Megrahi’s family pushed for a posthumous appeal and handed files over to the SCCRC last year.
Announcing last May that it would look fully at the case once more, the commission - which has the power to refer cases back before senior judges - said it believed Megrahi had abandoned a previous appeal because he had ‘a genuine and reasonable belief’ that doing so would help him return home to Libya when he was suffering from terminal cancer.
The evidence of the late Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, which was critical in the case against Megrahi, is one of the issues expected to be looked at, as well as the actual dates when al-Megrahi was in Malta and new evidence about the manufacturing date of the microchip connected to the bomb presented that was in court as evidence.
Moreover, in 2015 Scottish prosecutors identified two Libyans as suspects in the ongoing investigation into the bombing, although violence in Libya since the ouster of Moammar Gaddafi is thought to have made progress in this area difficult.
Malta also deserves some concrete answers about its alleged role in the tragedy as the point of origin, and it should be lobbying at all levels for an inquiry that would, albeit outside a court of law, at least hear the new evidence and arguments that were to have been presented by the defence team at the appeal, which mainly dealt with the weaknesses in the Maltese testimony that led to the conviction.
While there are still so many doubts lingering over the Lockerbie case, what is beyond doubt is that the tragedy has left an indelible stain on Malta’s reputation – a stain that will remain, possibly irrespective of whether an inquiry into the Lockerbie case and the evidence that was to be heard during al-Megrahi’s appeal is undertaken or not.
Malta, for many, will always be the place from where the Lockerbie bomb started its fateful journey, and the country must seek, where possible, the ways and means with which to clear its name. It is only such an inquiry that could, perhaps, allow al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie victims, their families and the truth to rest in peace at long last.