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.
