Courtesy Of: The Sunday Herald
By Liam McDougall,
Home Affairs Editor
12 November 2006
SundayHerald
THE CIA manipulated the Lock erbie trial and lied about the strength of the prosecution case to get a result that was politically convenient for America, according to a former US State Department lawyer.
Michael Scharf, who was the counsel to the US counter-terrorism bureau when the two Libyans were indicted for the bombing, described the case as “so full of holes it was like Swiss cheese” and said it should never have gone to trial.
He claimed the CIA and FBI had assured State Department officials there was an “iron-clad” case against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and al-Amin Khalifa Fimah, but that in reality the intelligence agencies had no confidence in their star witness and knew well in advance of the trial that he was “a liar”.
Scharf branded the case a “whitewash” and added: “It was a trial where everybody agreed ahead of time that they were just going to focus on these two guys, and they were the fall guys.”
The comments by Scharf are controversial, given his position in US intelligence during the Lockerbie investigation and trial.
It also comes at a crucial time as the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is to report in the coming months on whether it believes there was a miscarriage of justice in the case.
In January 2001, following a trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, Fimah was acquitted and al-Megrahi was sentenced to life in a Scottish jail for his part in the December 1988 bombing.
Scharf joined the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence in April 1989, just four months after Pan Am Flight 103 was downed and at the height of the CIA’s Lockerbie bombing investigation.
He was also responsible for drawing up the UN Security Council resolutions that imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992 in order to force Tripoli to hand over al-Megrahi and Fimah for trial.
He added: “The CIA and the FBI kept the State Department in the dark. It worked for them for us to be fully committed to the theory that Libya was responsible. I helped the counter- terrorism bureau draft documents that described why we thought Libya was responsible, but these were not based on seeing a lot of evidence, but rather on representations from the CIA and FBI and the Department of Justice about what the case would prove and did prove."
“It was largely based on this inside guy [Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka]. It wasn’t until the trial that I learned this guy was a nut-job and that the CIA had absolutely no confidence in him and that they knew he was a liar."
“ It was a case that was so full of holes it was like Swiss cheese. ”
Scharf, now an international law expert at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said he was convinced that Libya, Iran and the Palestinian terrorist group the PFLP-GC were involved in the bombing, which killed 270 people. But, he said, the case had a “diplomatic rather than a purely legal goal”.
“Now Libya has given up its weapons of mass destruction, it’s allowed inspectors in, the sanctions have been lifted, tourists from the US are flocking to see the Roman ruins outside of Tripoli and Gaddafi has become a leader in Africa rather than a pariah. And all of that is the result of this trial,” Scharf said.
“Diplomatically, it has been a huge success story. But legally, it just seemed like a whitewash to me.”
Robert Black, professor of Scots law at Edinburgh University and the principal architect of the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist, described the Lockerbie case as “a fraud”.
“That the trial at Camp Zeist resulted in a conviction is a disgrace for Scottish justice,” he said. “I think this [Scharf’s comments] indicates that a growing number of people on
both sides of the Atlantic now believe they were used in this case.”
Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing, said: “Myself and Michael Scharf are coming from exactly the same position. I went to the trial and became convinced after watching it unfold that the case was full of holes.”
Tony Kelly, al-Megrahi’s solicitor, said he would not comment while the SCCRC was still examining the case.
No-one at the CIA in Washington was available to comment.
Source:
http://SundayHerald.com/59005
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---------------------Police Chief- Lockerbie Evidence Was Faked
By MARCELLO MEGA
Sunday 28, August 2005
ScotsMan
A FORMER Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated.
The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.
The police chief, whose identity has not yet been revealed, gave the statement to lawyers representing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, currently serving a life sentence in Greenock Prison.
The evidence will form a crucial part of Megrahi's attempt to have a retrial ordered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). The claims pose a potentially devastating threat to the reputation of the entire Scottish legal system.
The officer, who was a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland, is supporting earlier claims by a former CIA agent that his bosses "wrote the script" to incriminate Libya.
Last night, George Esson, who was Chief Constable of Dumfries and Galloway when Megrahi was indicted for mass murder, confirmed he was aware of the development.
But Esson, who retired in 1994, questioned the officer's motives. He said: "Any police officer who believed they had knowledge of any element of fabrication in any criminal case would have a duty to act on that. Failure to do so would call into question their integrity, and I can't help but question their motive for raising the matter now."
Other important questions remain unanswered, such as how the officer learned of the alleged conspiracy and whether he was directly involved in the inquiry. But sources close to Megrahi's legal team believe they may have finally discovered the evidence that could demolish the case against him.
An insider told Scotland on Sunday that the retired officer approached them after Megrahi's appeal - before a bench of five Scottish judges - was dismissed in 2002.
The insider said: "He said he believed he had crucial information. A meeting was set up and he gave a statement that supported the long-standing rumours that the key piece of evidence, a fragment of circuit board from a timing device that implicated Libya, had been planted by US agents.
"Asked why he had not come forward before, he admitted he'd been wary of breaking ranks, afraid of being vilified.
"He also said that at the time he became aware of the matter, no one really believed there would ever be a trial. When it did come about, he believed both accused would be acquitted. When Megrahi was convicted, he told himself he'd be cleared at appeal."
The source added: "When that also failed, he explained he felt he had to come forward.
"He has confirmed that parts of the case were fabricated and that evidence was planted. At first he requested anonymity, but has backed down and will be identified if and when the case returns to the appeal court."
The vital evidence that linked the bombing of Pan Am 103 to Megrahi was a tiny fragment of circuit board which investigators found in a wooded area many miles from Lockerbie months after the atrocity.
The fragment was later identified by the FBI's Thomas Thurman as being part of a sophisticated timer device used to detonate explosives, and manufactured by the Swiss firm Mebo, which supplied it only to Libya and the East German Stasi.
At one time, Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was such a regular visitor to Mebo that he had his own office in the firm's headquarters.
The fragment of circuit board therefore enabled Libya - and Megrahi - to be placed at the heart of the investigation. However, Thurman was later unmasked as a fraud who had given false evidence in American murder trials, and it emerged that he had little in the way of scientific qualifications.
Then, in 2003, a retired CIA officer gave a statement to Megrahi's lawyers in which he alleged evidence had been planted.
The decision of a former Scottish police chief to back this claim could add enormous weight to what has previously been dismissed as a wild conspiracy theory. It has long been rumoured the fragment was planted to implicate Libya for political reasons.
The first suspects in the case were the Syrian-led Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), a terror group backed by Iranian cash. But the first Gulf War altered diplomatic relations with Middle East nations, and Libya became the pariah state.
Following the trial, legal observers from around the world, including senior United Nations officials, expressed disquiet about the verdict and the conduct of the proceedings at Camp Zeist, Holland. Those doubts were first fuelled when internal documents emerged from the offices of the US Defence Intelligence Agency. Dated 1994, more than two years after the Libyans were identified to the world as the bombers, they still described the PFLP-GC as the Lockerbie bombers.
A source close to Megrahi's defence said: "Britain and the US were telling the world it was Libya, but in their private communications they acknowledged that they knew it was the PFLP-GC.
"The case is starting to unravel largely because when they wrote the script, they never expected to have to act it out. Nobody expected agreement for a trial to be reached, but it was, and in preparing a manufactured case, mistakes were made."
Dr Jim Swire, who has publicly expressed his belief in Megrahi's innocence, said it was quite right that all relevant information now be put to the SCCRC.
Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the atrocity, said last night: "I am aware that there have been doubts about how some of the evidence in the case came to be presented in court.
"It is in all our interests that areas of doubt are thoroughly examined."
A spokeswoman for the Crown Office said: "As this case is currently being examined by the SCCRC, it would be inappropriate to comment."
No one from the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland was available to comment.
Web Links:CIA 'Was Monitoring Drugs Man Whose Bag Held Bomb'
By EBEN HARRELL
Wed 8, March 2006
ScotsMan
MEETINGS between the FBI and the SCRO were part of a larger effort by US intelligence officials to cover up the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing, according to Juval Aviv, Pan Am's senior Lockerbie investigator.
Mr Aviv's investigation into the bombing claimed US intelligence was indirectly involved in the 1988 attack.
In 1987, the report says, US agents discovered and began monitoring a heroin smuggling route from the Middle East to the United States, run by drug dealers with ties to Hezbollah terrorists holding western hostages in Beirut.
US agents allegedly agreed to let the dealers run their heroin operation through Germany's Frankfurt airport and London's Heathrow in return for a promise they would help free hostages.
Mr Aviv claims Khalid Jaafar, a young Lebanese American killed on Pan Am 103, was a regular courier for the operation. On the flight that exploded, Jaafar's heroin-loaded suitcase was switched for one with a bomb and given a free pass through security as an "official" bag.
An Iran-sponsored terrorist group likely orchestrated the switch in retaliation for a US navy cruiser mistakenly shooting down an Iranian passenger jet in July 1988, killing 290 pilgrims on their way to Mecca.
According to Mr Aviv, the fact that US intelligence agencies were monitoring the smuggling ring would have been a huge embarrassment - and one worth covering up.
"Conviction of the Libyans was very important because they had to cover up the truth," Mr Aviv told The Scotsman.
"America allowed a civilian airline to run drugs and risk innocent people. That looks very, very bad."
The report has repeatedly been denied by both British and US governments, but has gained the support of several family members of British victims in the crash.
Mr Aviv said: "There is a history in this case of whistle-blowers ending up in jail. They have put such a huge effort into covering everything up and getting consensus."
Scottish Courts - Lockerbie trial
http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/library/lockerbie/index.asp
Wikipedia - alternative theories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_theories_into_the_bombing_of_Pan_Am_Flight_103
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