An open letter to the lord advocate

Dr Jim Swire and I have today sent the following open letter to the lord advocate, Frank Mulholland QC.

Dear Lord Advocate,

Lockerbie

In February 2012 John Ashton’s book Megrahi: You are my Jury was published. It revealed, inter alia, that:

1. The Crown had withheld numerous items of exculpatory evidence from Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s legal team prior to his trial.

2. The most important Crown witness, Tony Gauci, had expressed an interest in being rewarded for his evidence before picking out Mr Megrahi’s photograph from a photospread, and that, subsequent to Mr Megrahi’s conviction, he was paid over $2 million by the US Department of Justice.

3. That the bomb-damaged piece of circuit board, known as PT/35b, which, according to the Crown, was from a batch of 20 timers that had been supplied to Libya by the Swiss company Mebo, could not have been from one of those timers.

These revelations were based on Crown evidence, much of it previously undisclosed, and, in the case of 1 & 2, the findings of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. Point 3 was also supported by independent scientists.

In view of the above, we are writing this open letter to ask you the following:

Why did you state that there is no evidence to support the book’s claims and how do you refute points 1 to 3 above?

Why have the three witnesses who attest to point 3 above not been interviewed by the police?

Do you consider that the Crown’s withholding of evidence favourable to Mr Megrahi, as documented by the SCCRC, is compatible with the United Nations International Association of Prosecutors’ standards of professional conduct?

We look forward to your responses.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Jim Swire, father of Flora, murdered at Lockerbie
John Ashton, author.