Al-Megrahi: The dying breath of a moribund justice?

Al- Megrahi former head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and former director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli was convicted of 270 counts of murder for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Megrahi was freed on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Government on 20 August 2009 following doctors reporting on 10 August 2009 that he had terminal prostate cancer and was expected to have around three months to live.

The trial

During the trial the UN appointed observer and distinguished Austrian philosopher Koechler dinounced the procedure saying that "there seemed to be considerable political influence on the judges and the verdict." Koechler queried the active involvement of senior US Justice Department officials as part of the Scotch prosecution team "in a supervisory role". 

The case was based (a) on the presumption that the bomb timer on the PanAm plane was from a batch sold by a Swiss firm to Libya; (b) that fragments of clothing retrieved from the crash site and identified as having been in the suitcase that contained the bomb had been bought by the accused Megrahi from a shop in Malta; and (c) that a "secret witness," Abdulmajid Gialka, a former colleague of the accused pair in the Libyan Airlines office in Malta, would testify that he had observed them either constructing the bomb or at least seen them loading it onto the plane in Frankfurt. 

Ulrich Lumpert, the Mebo AG engineer who testified to the validity of the first key piece of evidence, namely the bomb timer, lastly admitted in an affidavit to lying in court and stealing the object from his employer after the attack whereupon it was planted. By the time of the trial, Gialka had been living under witness protection in the US. He had received $320,000 from his American hosts and, in the event of conviction of the accused, stood to collect up to $2 million in reward money. He had CIA connections, so the defense lawyers learned, before 1988. 

Tony Gauci, the owner of the shop in Malta from where Megrahi had allegedly bought the clothes not only failed to recognize him in 19 separate statements to the police prior to the trial, but later in Megrahi's second appeal and trial's review (Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) was proved that he could not be at this shop on the alleged Christmas time. Megrahi prior to his release had dropped his second appeal raising questions about pressures he had come under. 

Upon his release suspicions were raised about alleged secret negotiations between the oil giant BP and the British government while others pointed to the pressure of a Libyan investment company, the Dalia Advisory Limited, supposed to be a front company of the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) threatening to withdraw her huge investments if Megrahi died in jail. 

The aftermath

Recently, Jalil the chairman of the Transitional National Council (TNC) the Libyan rebel's government during the first days of the rebellion pointed his finger to Gaddafi claiming that he hold evidence that he was the brains behind the bombing which didn't disclose till now, apparently in a gesture to the West powers for support.

After many false rumors by the media claiming that Megrahi was not ill at all but alive and Kicking, finally he was found on his death bead in Tripoli. On Monday, it was discovered a private letter that he wrote  while serving his life sentence in the U.K back in 1988 to the Libya's intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi maintaining his innocence saying: "I am an innocent man".

His son, Khaled al-Megrahi, told CNN: “We just give him oxygen. Nobody gives us any advice. There is no doctor. There is nobody to ask. We don’t have any phone line to call anybody. We just sit next to him … he has stopped eating and sometimes he goes into coma.”

Mohammed al-Alagi, the National Transitional Council’s justice minister, dismissed suggestions that he may be extradited saying:

“We will not give any Libyan citizen to the West,” he said. “Al-Megrahi has already been judged once and he will not be judged again ... We do not hand over Libyan citizens.”

Perhaps Megrahi's death will be very convenient as in a new trial he could probably be found to be innocent...