US paid reward to Lockerbie witness, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi papers claim

Scottish detectives discussed secret payments of up to $3m made to witness and his brother, documents claim

 

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's documents would have formed part of an appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

Two key figures in the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber were secretly given rewards of up to $3m (£1.9m) in a deal discussed by Scottish detectives and the US government, according to legal papers released today.
The claims about the payments were revealed in a dossier of evidence that was intended to be used in an appeal by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of murdering 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988.

Megrahi abandoned his appeal last month after the Libyan and Scottish governments struck a deal to free him on compassionate grounds because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer. Now in hospital in Tripoli, Megrahi said he wanted the public to see the evidence which he claims would have cleared him.

"I continue to protest my innocence – how could I fail to do so?," he said. "I have no desire to add to the upset of many people I know are profoundly affected by what happened in Lockerbie. My intention is only for the truth to be made known."

The documents published online by Megrahi's lawyers today show that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) was asked to pay $2m to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who gave crucial evidence at the trial suggesting that Megrahi had bought clothes later used in the suitcase that allegedly held the Lockerbie bomb.

The DoJ was also asked to pay a further $1m to his brother, Paul Gauci, who did not give evidence but played a major role in identifying the clothing and in "maintaining the resolve of his brother". The DoJ said their rewards could be increased and that the brothers were also eligible for the US witness protection programme, according to the documents.

The previously secret payments were uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which returned Megrahi's conviction to the court of appeal in 2007 as a suspected miscarriage of justice. Many references were in private diaries kept by the detectives involved, Megrahi's lawyers said, but not their official notebooks.

The SCCRC was unable to establish exactly how much the brothers received under the DoJ's "reward-for-justice" programme but found it was after Megrahi's trial and his first appeal in 1992 was thrown out.

A memo written by "DI Dalgleish" to "ACC Graham" in 2007 confirms the men received "substantial payments from the American authorities".

The inspector claims the rewards were "engineered" after Megrahi's trial and appeal were over, but said there was "a real danger that if [the] SCCRC's statement of reasons is leaked to the media, Anthony Gauci could be portrayed as having given flawed evidence for financial reward." Instead, he claimed, the reward was intended to ensure the Gaucis could afford to leave Malta and start new lives "to avoid media and other unwanted attention".

However, the documents disclose that in 1989 the FBI told Dumfries and Galloway police that they wanted to offer Gauci "unlimited money" and $10,000 immediately. Gauci began talking of a possible reward in meetings with Dumfries and Galloway detectives in 1991, when a reward application was first made to the DoJ.

The evidence, which was due to be heard by the appeal court next month, also discloses that Gauci was visited 50 times by Scottish detectives before the trial and new testimony contradicting the prosecution's claims that Megrahi bought the clothes on 7 December 1988 – the only day he was in Malta during the critical period.

In 23 police interviews, Gauci gave contradictory evidence about who he believed bought the clothes, the person's age, appearance and the date of purchase. Two identification experts hired by Megrahi's appeal team said the police and prosecution breached the rules on witness interviews, using "suggestive" lines of questioning and allowing "irregular" identification line-ups.

Two new witnesses also disproved the prosecution claim that Megrahi was in Gauci's shop on 7 December, his lawyers said. Gauci said the area's Christmas lights were not on when the clothes were bought. The current Maltese high commissioner to the UK, Michael Rufalo, then the local MP, told the SCCRC the lights were switched on on 6 December, raising further inconsistencies in the prosecution case.

It has also emerged that Scottish police did not tell Megrahi's lawyers that another witness, David Wright, had seen two different Libyan men buying very similar clothes on a different day; evidence that psychologists believe may have confused Gauci and again clouded the prosecution case.

Dumfries and Galloway police said only a court could properly consider this material, and supported previous criticism of Megrahi's decision to release his appeal papers by Elish Angiolini, the lord advocate. "We will not be taking part in any discussion or debate concerning the selective publications made by Mr Megrahi," a statement said.

"We have nothing more to add other than to echo the lord advocate's recent comments pointing out that Mr Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior judges and his conviction was upheld unanimously by five judges, in an appeal court presided over by the lord justice general, Scotland's most senior judge. Mr Megrahi remains convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity in UK history."

A spokesman for the US Department of Justice also refused to comment, since Megrahi had voluntarily withdrawn his appeal. He said: "None of the allegations in the SCCRC referral, or the grounds of appeal filed by Megrahi, were finally adjudicated by the Scottish High Court of Justiary (the appropriate judicial forum) because Megrahi withdrew his appeal before the court could rule. Consequently, the U.S. Department of Justice will not comment further on his aborted appeal."

See also – Megrahi: 'A convenient scapegoat?'

 From The Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/02/lockerbie-documents-witness-megrahi

More on this story

Timeline: The Lockerbie bombing

 

For further enlightenment enter a word or phrase into the search box @  New Illuminati:

 http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

And see

The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com

 New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

 New Illuminati on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Illuminati/320674219559  

The Prince of Centraxis – http://centraxis.blogspot.com

This material is published under Creative Commons Copyright (unless an individual item is declared otherwise by copyright holder) – reproduction for non-profit use is permitted & encouraged, if you give attribution to the work & author - and please include a (preferably active) link to the original along with this notice. Feel free to make non-commercial hard (printed) or software copies or mirror sites - you never know how long something will stay glued to the web – but remember attribution! If you like what you see, please send a tiny donation or leave a comment – and thanks for reading this far…

From the New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

Megrahi: 'A convenient scapegoat?'

.

Some people fear the full truth about the Lockerbie bombing will never emerge

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi has left Scotland to return to Libya.

With his departure, a lengthy chapter in Scots legal history has closed.

But many questions remain - and they will not disappear along with the flight to Tripoli.

BBC Scotland's Home Affairs Correspondent Reevel Alderson has been looking at the mystery which still surrounds the 1988 bombing. The collection of evidence from Britain's worst act of terrorism began immediately - and within a week detectives announced it had been caused by a bomb in a radio cassette player.

Throughout the subsequent weeks whole sections of the jumbo jet were recovered to help investigators literally piece together the cause. 

Although they knew it was a bomb they needed to find out who had placed it, why they had done so, and how?
Early suspicion fell on Ahmed Jibril, leader of Palestinian terror group the PFLP-GC, who intelligence sources suggested may have been working for Iran.

Dick Marquise believes there was no evidence to implicate Ahmed Jibril

West German police mounted Operation Autumn Leaves, raiding flats near Frankfurt where the group was preparing bombs in radio cassette players.
They were similar to that used to blow up Pan Am flight 103. 

But Dick Marquise, chief of the FBI "Scotbom Task Force" from 1988-1992, said investigators could find nothing later to link this plot with Lockerbie.
"We never found any evidence," he told the BBC. "There's a lot of information, there's a lot of intelligence that people have said there were meetings, there were discussions. 

"But not one shred of evidence that a prosecutor could take into court to convict either an official in Iran or Ahmed Jibril for blowing up Pan Am flight 103." 

There were also suggestions that Jibril's group put the bomb onto a Pan Am feeder flight from Frankfurt Airport to Heathrow, switching the suitcase for one containing drugs being run by another Palestinian group. 

But another airport has also come under suspicion - Heathrow in London, from where the doomed jumbo jet took off.

Pan Am Flight 103 was ripped apart by the bombing

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was one of the victims of the atrocity, said a break-in the night before near the Pan Am secure baggage area was not fully investigated by police, who he claims concealed the evidence. 

"I wrote recently to the Crown Office (which handles Scottish prosecutions) asking why that had been concealed for 12 years, and if they knew about it all along," he said. 

He said they would not answer his question, which he said meant there must now be a thorough inquiry into the incident. 

During Megrahi's first appeal, held at Kamp van Zeist in the Netherlands, his counsel raised the matter, saying it cast doubt on claims that the fatal bomb must have been loaded in Malta. 

But the five appeal judges rejected the suggestion. 

Malta had become crucial once police found a fragment of the bomb timer wrapped in a piece of clothing in a Dumfriesshire forest. 

The clothes had Maltese labels - but question marks remain about how this discovery was made several months after the disaster, and also over how the material was handled. 

The original trial heard labels on police evidence bags containing the fragment had been changed: the evidence of the officer who had done this was heavily criticised by the trial judges. 

Worldwide terrorism

There were question marks too over Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who was the only man to identify Megrahi.
His evidence was that the Libyan, whom he picked out at an identity parade, had bought the clothes at his shop. 

But his police statements are inconsistent, and prosecutors failed to tell the defence that shortly before he attended an identity parade, Mr Gauci had seen a magazine article showing a picture of Megrahi, and speculating he might have been involved. 

Mr Gauci now lives in Australia, and according to defence claims is believed to have been paid several million dollars by the Americans for his evidence. 

It may be that we will never know exactly what happened in December 1988. 

Secret documents before the Appeal Court - which even the defence has not seen - might have provided new information. 

They will now remain undisclosed, after the foreign secretary issued a Public Information Immunity certificate stating that to publish them would be to the detriment of UK national security.
Megrahi was charged as a member of the Libyan Intelligence Services - acting with others. 

If he was involved, the Libyan government, once a sponsor of worldwide terrorism, including support for the IRA, must have been involved too. 

But with Britain and America doing big business with Libya now, perhaps it is in no-one's political interests to have the truth emerge. 

Megrahi is now dying, but he may have been a convenient scapegoat for a much bigger conspiracy.”

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/8211596.stm

via http://federalism.typepad.com/crime_federalism/2009/08/abdelbaset-ali-almegrahi.html

New Illuminati comments: Those who truly recall the times and events that surrounded the bombing will recognise that Libya was in a ripe position, ready to be set up to take the fall for the bombing; a Muslim nation that was paradoxically also a ‘socialist paradise’ compared to most surrounding countries, where no-one went hungry and all were securely housed. You may also recall the local jet airliner that was ‘accidentally’ shot down by US forces a few months before Lockerbie.
Colonel Gadaffi was a hero to many in that downtrodden region and earned much opprobrium for his vocal views in that fractious time. He was certainly no saint and Libya was hardy a democratically run nation. Furthermore, his brother in law headed the notorious Libyan intelligence organization; but the Colonel certainly wasn’t another Saddam Hussein, except for the fact that he controlled vast oil reserves.
However - the fact that a so-called ‘terrorist’, who was nothing more than a convenient scapegoat, spent years in a foreign jail for a crime he did not commit (who, even as a sick man quite possibly approaching his death still denies having committed the dastardly crime, despite receiving a ‘hero’s welcome’ on return to his homeland) should at least be ringing alarm bells with those who wish to know who REALLY murdered all those Americans, Brits and other poor innocent people.
When you hear someone labeled a ‘terrorist’ and presumed responsible for heinous acts before any evidence has been heard (or even discovered, as in the case of the World Trade Centre bombings), thank your lucky stars that YOU have not been picked from the crowd to pay for someone else’s sins.

- R.A.

For more enlightenment see

The Her(m)etic Hermit - http://hermetic.blog.com

 New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

 New Illuminati on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Illuminati/320674219559  

The Prince of Centraxis – http://centraxis.blogspot.com

This material is published under Creative Commons Copyright (unless an individual item is declared otherwise by copyright holder) – reproduction for non-profit use is permitted & encouraged, if you give attribution to the work & author - and please include a (preferably active) link to the original along with this notice. Feel free to make non-commercial hard (printed) or software copies or mirror sites - you never know how long something will stay glued to the web – but remember attribution! If you like what you see, please send a tiny donation or leave a comment – and thanks for reading this far…

From the New Illuminati – http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com

.