An open letter to Magnus Linklater

Posted on October 17, 2013 by John Ashton

Dear Magnus,

First of all, let’s keep this civil. People I respect assure me that you are a decent man. I don’t want to make an enemy of you, or things to get nasty.  I’m writing to respond to a few things that you have written, to put the record straight on certain matters and to invite your response. I would like a debate, not a row – shouting doesn’t win arguments.

The first matter I would like to discuss is your article of 13 August last year, which commented upon the Edinburgh book festival event at which, Jim Swire, Professor Hans Koechler and I spoke. Here is what you wrote:

A remarkable thing happened at the Edinburgh Book Festival on Saturday. Eight senior Scottish judges were accused of presiding over a major miscarriage of justice in the Lockerbie affair — and a packed Scottish audience applauded.

That trust in the judiciary should have descended to this level says much about the way that the long saga of this terrorist atrocity has evolved. A determined campaign to absolve the convicted bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, of guilt, has succeeded to the extent that not only does it appear to have swayed public opinion in his favour, it has also undermined confidence in the most important legal process Scotland has been involved in since the Second World War.

The man who lodged the accusation was Hans Köchler, the UN observer at the Lockerbie trial. He believes that the judges, both at the original trial, and the appeal, were prepared to overlook flawed evidence to ensure a conviction. His fellow panel members, Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the bombing, and the writer John Ashton, who has ghosted al-Megrahi’s own account of the affair, agreed.

They believe not only that the evidence was deliberately manipulated at the trial, but that, from the outset, there was a conspiracy to point the finger at Libya and divert attention from the real instigator, Iran.

Yet that contention has never been challenged in any detail. Because the trial judges and the Crown Office, Scotland’s prosecution service, are bound by convention to remain silent, the counter-argument has gone by default so that we have only heard one side of the case. The opportunity of a second appeal, which might have tested the allegations, was abandoned by al-Megrahi himself when he was released on compassionate grounds and returned to Libya.

But the case mounted by the pro-Megrahi campaigners is every bit as flawed as the one it seeks to dismantle. To demonstrate that Libya was framed, they have to prove that there was a calculated decision to do so. That decision would have had to lead to the planting or suppression of forensic evidence, the control of witnesses by intelligence services, the approval of senior politicians, the complicity of police officers, a prosecution team prepared to bend every rule to secure a conviction, and a set of senior Scottish judges willing to go along with that.

This last contention is perhaps the most controversial. As Brian McConnachie, a senior Scottish QC, puts it: “The idea that eight Scottish judges took part in a deliberate manipulation of evidence for political reasons is simply preposterous.” But for the conspiracy theorists, who have excluded reason and logic, the preposterous is all that remains.

This seriously misrepresented my position and, as far as I know, that of Dr Swire and Professor Koechler. I have never alleged that there was a grand conspiracy to frame Megrahi and Libya, in which the police, the Crown Office, witnesses, judges, senior politicians and the intelligence services were all complicit. You claim to have read my book, Megrahi: You are My Jury.  Perhaps, then, you had forgotten pp 371 to 373, which discuss the possible framing of Libya, either by the CIA, or by the real bombers. At no point do those page suggest that the Scottish authorities (the police, Crown Office and judges) were party to such a plot. You may also have forgotten this passage on p.376 in Megrahi’s words, which happens to mirror my own view:

I often wonder who is to blame for my ordeal. I doubt we’ll ever know who framed me and my country. The police cannot be blamed for following leads that fell into their laps. Together with the Crown, they stitched together a flimsy case based around a mercenary double agent, a highly unreliable identification, a hopeless CIA informant, some highly equivocal documents and overstated forensic conclusions, but, again, they were only doing their jobs.

My new book, Scotland’s Shame, is more explicit. Chapter 6 opens as follows:

Let us be clear, there was no grand conspiracy by the intelligence services, senior politicians, police officers, prosecutors and judges to subvert the Lockerbie investigation and frame Megrahi and Libya. Conspiracies, of course, do sometimes happen, but seldom ones involving so many diverse parties.

To digress for a moment, both books posit that there may have been a plot, hatched in the murkier recesses of the US intelligence world, to frame Libya. You can write this off as a crazy conspiracy theory if you like, but, remember, these are the people who spawned a far bigger conspiracies to sell arms to Iran in return for US hostages and to use the profits to illegally support Nicaraguan terrorists. They are also the people who spent the Eighties spreading disinformation about Libya; a fact reported by, among others, Bob Woodward and confirmed by US government documents (in case you think I am recycling old conspiracy theories). Remember also that one of the three key witnesses, Magid Giaka, was a CIA informant before Lockerbie. Another, Edwin Bollier, was also almost certainly a western intelligence asset (the Stasi, with whom he had been dealing since at least the early Seventies, kept close tabs on him and were convinced that he was). We now know that the famous fragment of circuit board, PT/35b, which the Crown claimed originated from one of the 20 timers supplied by Bollier to Libya, could not have done so. We don’t know its origin, but it’s not unreasonable to suggest that it was faked in order to lay a false trail to Libya. According to the head of the FBI investigation, Richard Marquise, the Swiss security police believed that it was a plant, and the same thought even crossed Marquise’s mind. He also revealed that an unnamed US intelligence agency (the NSA from his description) was aware that Megrahi was travelling around on a false passport. It is quite possible that the CIA identified Megrahi as a handy culprit and worked backwards to implicate him.

But this is to stray from the big issue, which is the very Scottish debacle of Megrahi’s conviction. Let’s start by considering the guilty verdict and the 80-page judgment upon which it was founded. As you know, the verdict was based on him buying clothes from the Maltese shop, owned by the Crown’s star witness, Tony Gauci, on 7 December 1988. According to the Crown’s evidence, this was his only window of opportunity, so, if it wasn’t 7 December, the case collapses. The court was told by Gauci that, as the man left the shop, he bought an umbrella because it was raining. The trouble is, the weather data for 7 December, recorded just a few kilometres away, show that it wasn’t raining.  The judges knew this, yet still concluded the clothes were bought on 7 December. We say this was unreasonable. Does that make us conspiracy theorists? If so, we’re in good company, because the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said it too; in fact it was one of the six grounds upon which they referred the case back to the appeal court. These are their exact words:

The Commission does not consider there to be any reasonable basis for the trial court’s conclusion that the purchase took place on 7 December 1988 and therefore for the inference it drew that the applicant was the purchaser of the items from Mary’s House.

This is devastating, because, given the centrality of 7 December to the conviction, the commission had come as close as it legally could to saying, not only that the judgment was unreasonable, but also the guilty verdict itself.

The other major concern of Megrahi’s supporters is with the conduct of the Crown. We say that they withheld numerous items of evidence that would have helped Megrahi’s defence.  Does that make us conspiracy theorists? No, it merely means that we have read the SCCRC’s report. Remember that no fewer than four of the SCCRC’s six grounds of referral concerned undisclosed evidence.

Remember also what happened at trial in relation to the CIA cables concerning Majid Giaka. The Crown originally disclosed only heavily redacted versions. The defence then got word that the Crown had secretly viewed largely unredacted copies at the US embassy in The Hague. When the defence raised this with the court, the lord advocate Colin Boyd offered the assurance that there was nothing in the blanked out sections that bore upon the defence case. When, under pressure from the judges, the Crown handed over less redacted versions, one close observer noted: ‘Some of the material which is now disclosed goes to the very heart of material aspects of this case, not just to issues of credibility and reliability, but beyond.’ In a pointed nod to the lord advocate’s earlier assurance, he noted ‘I frankly find it inconceivable that it could have been thought otherwise.’ In other words, he believed that the lord advocate, had seriously, if unwittingly, misled the court. Was this observer a crazy conspiracy theorist? No, actually it was defence counsel Richard Keen, the current dean of the faculty of advocates. And why did he say it? Because it was blindingly obvious that the redacted information cast Giaka in a very bad light and thus, contrary to the lord advocate’s claim, significantly undermined the Crown case.

We do not allege that the withholding of important evidence was part of a huge government and intelligence services inspired plot, rather we suggest that it resulted from a series of appalling failures that were specific to the Crown Office and its servants. The committee of Justice for Megrahi, of which I am not a member, has made allegations – which do not appear in either of my books – that some of these failures might amount to criminal conduct. Whether they do or not, as I have made clear in Scotland’s Shame, the failings almost certainly arose because those responsible wished to secure the conviction of people whom they sincerely believed to be guilty, and not because they wanted to protect the real bombers and see innocent people convicted.

Conspiracy theorist is a label that is often used by politicians and, I hate to say it, lazy journalists, who have run out of reasonable arguments, in order to denigrate and marginalise those who challenge the official line on controversial issues. Funnily enough, the current lord advocate, Frank Mulholland, uses it too.

Which brings me to your interview with Mulholland, published on the 21 December last year, under the headline Pro-Megrahi backers flayed. The article billed the interview as ‘the most detailed rebuttal yet made’ against the claims of Megrahi’s supporters, yet there was no detailed rebuttal at all, just general assertions, a bit a bluster and some serious distortions.

You reported that Mulholland had invited in an independent counsel to conduct a review of the evidence and that he or she had concluded that the conviction was sound. The truth was very different. As Mulholland later revealed in a letter to MSP James Kelly, the independent counsel was in fact brought in by his predecessor Elish Angiolini five years earlier at the time of the SCCRC’s referral of the case to the appeal court. The purpose of the review was to establish whether there was anything in the SCCRC report and its appendices that suggested that the Crown should not defend the conviction. Mulholland told Kelly: ‘The outcome of the review satisfied me that the Crown had a robust defence to the potential grounds of appeal identified by the SCCRC.’ This did not mean that the independent counsel had concluded that the conviction was sound. The review had not considered any of the important evidence that had emerged since 2007, in particular the forensic evidence, revealed in Megrahi: You Are My Jury, which showed that PT/35b could not have originated from one of the 20 Mebo timers supplied to Libya.

On the subject of the book, the article said that Mulholland had considered all of its claims and ‘finds no evidence to support them’. Did it not occur to you that this was rather an odd statement to make, given that the book’s assault on the Crown case was all based on Crown evidence – much of it previously undisclosed – and the word of Crown witnesses? And did you not think to ask him why the Crown had withheld so much important evidence? And why the Crown Office had allowed the police to seek a multi-million dollar reward for Tony Gauci from the US government, even though it was forbidden by its own rules from seeking or making such a reward itself? Isn’t the role of responsible journalism to ask awkward questions of those in authority, rather than amplify their defences?

And did you not think it rather inappropriate for the lord advocate to be denigrating as conspiracy theorists people such as Dr Jim Swire and the former parish priest of Lockerbie, Father Pat Keegans? The Crown Office claimed in a press statement that these same people had been ‘deliberately misleading’, in other words, that they were liars. What a truly appalling – and, for the record, untrue – thing to say about decent people who are simply concerned that justice has not been done. I can’t imagine the Director of Public Prosecutions and the CPS lashing out like that, can you?

You revived the ‘conspiracy theorists’ slur in a Times column on 4 October. This time you added two further claims. One was that Megrahi’s decision to drop his appeal ‘has never been properly explained’, which, in your view, is the weakest plank in his case.  If you had properly read Megrahi: You are my Jury, you would know that the explanation for Megrahi dropping his appeal is that the Libyan minister Abdelati al-Obedi told him that Kenny MacAskill had privately indicated to him (Obedi) that it would be easier to grant compassionate release if he did so.  I have spoken to all the witnesses to the conversation between Obedi and Megrahi and they all confirm the accuracy of the book’s account of it. Megrahi had advanced cancer and was desperate to get back to his family. He knew that he was not legally obliged to abandon the appeal, but, in the circumstances, felt that he had no choice. If you had been stuck in a foreign prison with advanced cancer, would you have reacted differently to such pressure? I doubt it.

Your other claim concerned the evidence about Heathrow airport. You wrote:

For all the many thousands of words that have been written suggesting that the prosecution case was flawed, and that the Scottish legal system presided over a spectacular miscarriage of justice, the alternative theories are well short of sustaining proof.
It is one thing to challenge the evidence on which al-Megrahi was convicted, another to sustain a case that is not, itself, threadbare.
Dr Swire believes that the bomb was not put on board Pan Am 103 on Malta, but that it was smuggled onto the plane at Heathrow Airport. This, along with other theories, was advanced at the time of the trial, examined, and dismissed for want of evidence.

You subsequently tweeted that Heathrow is the weak link in our argument, that the evidence suggesting that the bomb originated there ‘was tested to destruction’ at Megrahi’s trial and that ‘there’s simply no evidence to back it.’ Dear me, how misinformed can you be?

Before responding in detail, it’s worth pointing out that it is not incumbent upon us, Megrahi’s supporters, to prove an alternative case. It just so happens that we think that there is at least one alternative that stands up better than the prosecution case.

Anyway, about that Heathrow evidence. As you know, the bomb exploded in luggage container AVE4041. Most of the bags in there had been unloaded from the Frankfurt feeder flight, PA103A, including, according to the Crown, the brown Samsonite from Malta. However, there was some other luggage in there, which had been loaded before PA103A arrived. This was supposedly Heathrow interline luggage, meaning it had arrived at Heathrow on other flights. All of the loaders who were involved in packing AVE4041 confirmed something very significant: before the Frankfurt bags were loaded the entire floor of the container was covered with luggage. One of the loaders, John Bedford, recalled seeing something still more significant: a brown hardshell suitcase ‘the type Samsonite make’, positioned very close to where the explosion later occurred. He saw it when AVE4041 was in the interline baggage shed, well before the Frankfurt flight arrived. Bedford was clear that he hadn’t put it there and so too was the only other person on duty in the shed, Sulkash Kamboj.

The police produced a detailed schedule of all the baggage that could have found its way into AVE4041. It demonstrated that a maximum of six Heathrow interline bags could have been in the container before PA103A arrived, all of which were within the normal size range. However – and here’s the rub – covering the base of the container could have required seven or eight standard sized cases, just as in this photo:

 PZ345-P03-

The schedule showed something else very important: none of the six legitimate bags were brown, hard-shelled suitcases.

The loader who added the Frankfurt bags, Amarjit Sidhu, was sure that he did not move any of the bags that were already in AVE4041 when he added the Frankfurt bags, indeed, most of the loaders said that it was not their custom to rearrange bags. So, the Bedford case must have been very close to the explosion, indeed, according to the Crown case, it should have been immediately below the brown Samsonite suitcase from Malta. If that suitcase existed, then the police should have recovered fragments of two brown hard-shelled cases, but they only found fragments of one. So, what happened to the Bedford case? The obvious answer is that it contained the bomb and that the Malta case never existed.  Security around the interline shed was non-existent and, as Bedford acknowledged in evidence, anyone with airside access could have placed a suitcase into the container.

But wasn’t the bomb suitcase in the second layer of luggage, slightly overhanging the angled section of AVE4041 and Bedford’s in the first layer? That’s what the Crown claimed, but the scientific support for it is, to say the least, equivocal (see pp 395-404 of Megrahi: You are my Jury). And, if you look back at that photo, it’s clear that a suitcase could be in the bottom layer yet still overhang the angled section.

The Crown disclosed the police schedule to the defence early on during the trial preparations and notified them that they would be running an exclusion case, ie they would show that all the bags in AVE4041 were legitimate apart from the one allegedly from Malta. But, guess what, the schedule was not among the Crown productions that were later lodged with the court. Furthermore, the Crown didn’t run an exclusion case, probably because they couldn’t exclude the Bedford suitcase.

The Crown told the defence that the schedule contained inaccuracies, which may account for why the defence didn’t use it at trial. However, there is no evidence that its key finding – that there were only six legitimate items in AVE4041 when the Frankfurt flight arrived, none of which was a brown hard-sided case – was mistaken. If there was such evidence, the Crown would likely have used it to undermine the Bedford bag theory.

As for the evidence being ‘tested to destruction’ at the trial, this is simply wrong for two reasons. The first is that much of the key the evidence was absent. The Crown relied on the Maltese clothes and documents from Frankfurt airport to support their claim that the bomb had come from Malta, while the defence submitted that the Bedford case matched the bomb suitcase, that it was at, or could easily have been moved to, the location at which the explosion occurred, and that remains of only one brown hard-shelled case had been recovered. None of the following were not put before the court:

  • The crucial baggage schedule
  • The voluminious witness and documentary evidence upon which it was based
  • Detailed evidence forensic and witness evidence about the likely positioning of most of the blast damaged cases (a potentially crucial issue in determining the location and identity of the primary suitcase)
  • The evidence of Sidhu, who added the Frankfurt luggage, who was sure that he never rearranged any of the bags.

The defence’s reasons for not running an exclusion case based on the baggage schedule were articulated by John Beckett in a response to the appeal court and are summarised at pp335-6 of Megrahi: You are My Jury. Regardless of whether those reasons hold water – and one can make a strong case that they don’t – by not presenting the schedule and the other evidence listed above, both sides prevented the full picture from emerging.

The second reason is that the judges sidestepped the issue of the Bedford suitcase. To remind you, they acknowledged that Bedford was ‘a clear and impressive witness’ and that the evidence supported the defence submission ‘that a suitcase which could fit the forensic description of the primary suitcase was in the container when it left the interline shed.’ So, how did they get around the issues? By relying on evidence from another loader, Terence Crabtree, who was not involved in loading the Frankfurt bags into AVE4041, that luggage was sometimes rearranged. They acknowledged that, if this happened – and according to the actual loader of AVE4041, Sidhu, it didn’t – then the Bedford case could have ended up in the second layer, in exactly the position that the Crown claimed the primary suitcase was in. But, they then added: ‘if there was such a rearrangement, the suitcase described by Mr Bedford might have been placed at some more remote corner of the container, and while the forensic evidence dealt with all the items recovered which showed direct explosive damage, twenty-five in total, there were many other items of baggage found which were not dealt with in detail in the evidence in the case.’ So, it seemed that the judges believed that it for was the defence to run an exclusion case in order to prove the Bedford suitcase bomb scenario, not for the Crown to run one in order to prove the Maltese scenario. A novel reversal of the burden of proof, wouldn’t you say? And one that fell a long way short of testing the Heathrow evidence to destruction.

There is much more to be said about Heathrow, all of which goes to demonstrate that the Bedford suitcase contained the bomb. Dr Morag Kerr has written a book about it, due to be published soon, which I recommend that you read. She is no daft conspiracy theorist, indeed, before her involvement in the case she spent a lot of time taking on 9/11 conspiracists; she simply combines rigorous attention to detail with rigorous logic. I doubt that anyone, including the Crown and defence lawyers, has devoted so much time to the issue. Her aim has been to uncover the truth, not to win a tactical court battle.

If, as seems very likely, the Bedford case contained the bomb, then the evidence from Malta and Frankfurt becomes irrelevant, but let’s look at it anyway. First Malta. What evidence is there from Luqa airport, from where the bomb supposedly began its journey? None. That’s right, none. According to the Crown, Megrahi and Fhimah somehow – the advocate depute was not specific – smuggled the bomb suitcase onto Air Malta flight KM180 to Frankfurt. The airline had unusually strict baggage procedures, which meant that the head loader had to physically count the number of bags in the hold to check that the total tallied with the number of legitimate check-in bags. It did. What’s more, there is no evidence of any suspicious activity around the plane and no evidence that the pair had corrupted any Air Malta staff. The Crown case was that the difficulties of getting a rogue bag onto KM180 were such that Megrahi must have had assistance from Fhimah, ie they must both have been guilty. Fhimah was, of course, acquitted, which begs the question, which the judges failed to answer: how, and with whose help, was Megrahi able to get a suitcase onto KM180?

Another close observer of the case commented:

[T]here is considerable and quite convincing evidence that [the placing of an unaccompanied suitcase onto KM180] could not have happened … Now, it’s quite difficult rationally to follow how the Court can take the step of saying, ‘Well, we don’t know how it got on to the flight. We can’t say that. But it must have been there.’ On the face of it, it may not be a rational conclusion.

Was this person a deluded conspiracy theorist? No, he was Lord Osborne, one of the judges who heard Megrahi’s first appeal. (In view of this comment, one wonders if the outcome of that appeal might have been different had the defence submitted that the trial verdict was unreasonable.)

What other evidence is there from Malta? Only the clothes from Tony Gauci’s shop. Clearly, they do not prove the origin of the bomb. They were bought, according to the Crown, on 7 December 1988, so could have been anywhere by the day of the bombing two weeks later.

It was the documents from Frankfurt airport that proved to be the clincher. They supposedly showed the transfer of a bag from KM180 to PA103A, but they fell woefully short of proof. All they in fact showed that a luggage tray was dispatched through the airport’s automated luggage system from a particular input station to PA103A’s departure gate at a time when bags from KM180 were supposedly being processed at the station. We assume that there was a bag in the tray, but there’s no proof that there was, still less proof that it was a brown Samsonite from Malta. As the German police discovered, the Frankfurt evidence was incomplete and confusing. What evidence there was indicates that at least one other unaccounted for unaccompanied bag was on PA103A. The police produced a schedule of all the baggage found at Lockerbie, but the Crown did not see fit to disclose it. It’s likely that it included bags that the police were unable to link to their owners, any one of which could have been in the tray that supposedly contained the Maltese suitcase.

The officer who conducted the luggage transfer analysis at Frankfurt, Jurgen Fuhl, concluded after an 18-month investigation: ‘Throughout the enquiries in to the baggage for PA103A there was no evidence that the item of baggage containing the bomb had gone with the baggage from or via Frankfurt/Main to London. In connection with the information about the other contents of the bomb-case (textiles from a shop on Malta) and the possible transfer of a case in Frankfurt from KM180 this possibility can however not be excluded altogether.’ So, the Crown’s claim that the bag was transferred from KM180 to PA103 could not, in the words of the man who knew most about the Frankfurt baggage evidence ‘be excluded altogether.’ Hardly proof beyond reasonable doubt, eh?

Remember, no one at Malta or Frankfurt recalled seeing a brown, Samsonite type suitcase anywhere near the feeder flights KM180 and PA103A. Only one person recalled seeing such a case, John Bedford, furthermore, in contrast to much of the evidence of the Crown’s star witnesses Tony Gauci and Majid Giaka, his recollection was unprompted.

Finally, some questions for you.

1. Do you still say that we believe that the Scottish police, prosecutors and judges were party to a grand conspiracy?

2. Do you not think that the SCCRC’s findings that the trial court judgment was unreasonable, and that the Crown had withheld numerous items of exculpatory evidence, leave a terrible stain on Scottish justice?

3. Are you comfortable with the lord advocate and Crown Office branding their opponents as conspiracy theorists and de facto liars?

4. Do you really still believe that the Heathrow evidence was tested to destruction?

You can email me via this website. I look forward to your response.

Kind regards,

John.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Herald coverage of Gauci rewards documents – the Crown Office obfuscates again

Posted on October 9, 2013 by John Ashton

The Herald has today published an article by Lucy Adams, headlined ‘Rewards for key witness in Lockerbie trial discussed by officers’, about yesterday’s release of documents. The article follows in italics, with my comments in non-italics below.

NEWLY released intelligence reports show how the police secretly discussed the payment of large rewards to the key witness in the Lockerbie case.

Tony Gauci, the Crown’s key witness, expressed an interest in being rewarded nine years prior to giving evidence against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing, according to the documents.

They have been released by John Ashton, author of Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Matters.

The Crown Office last night said no witness was offered any inducement by the Crown or the Scottish police before or during the trial.

Last year, the 800-page report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission was published, but many of the accompanying documents have never been seen. Those released yesterday reveal that the FBI told the police that “unlimited money” was on offer for the witness. They indicate police believed paying Gauci and his brother Paul would ensure they would not embarrass the police or Crown.

A letter from a senior Scottish officer on the case, dated 1991, states Tony Gauci was interested in reward money and that “if a monetary offer was made to Gauci this may well change his view and allow him to consider a witness protection programme”.

After Megrahi’s conviction, the senior investigating officer lobbied the US Department of Justice to increase the previously discussed rewards of $2 million for Tony and $1m for Paul.

According to the intelligence report, the Crown Office was aware of the reward application after the first appeal, but did not become involved.

A Crown Office spokesman said: “No witness was offered any inducement by the Crown or the Scottish police before and during the trial and there is no evidence that any other law enforcement agency offered such an inducement. These documents relate to an issue which was before the Appeal Court in Megrahi’s second appeal against conviction.”

He added the Crown had been preparing to defend Megrahi’s conviction when he abandoned the appeal.

As the Crown Office well knows, the SCCRC referred the Megrahi case back to the appeal court on six grounds one of which concerned rewards. Gauci and his brother Paul, expected to be rewarded and were rewarded. His trial evidence was notably more helpful to the Crown than his original police statements. It is clear from the wording of the Crown Office statement that it cannot rule out that the FBI offered an inducement. One of the documents that I released yesterday states that, less than a month after the police found Gauci, FBI agent Chris Murray indicated to Detective Chief Inspector Harry Bell that he had the ‘authority to arrange unlimited money for Tony Gauci and … could arrange $10,000 immediately.’ It seems that neither the SCCRC nor the Crown Office every sought to establish from the FBI whether one of its agents had put the offer to Gauci.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Released today: the Gauci reward files

Posted on October 8, 2013 by John Ashton

I am today releasing a number of previously unpublished police documents concerning the discussion of reward payments to the Crown’s most important witness, Tony Gauci, and his brother Paul. I shall be releasing further documents on different subjects between now and the 25th anniversary of Lockerbie on 21 December.

The documents can be downloaded here, together with an explanatory note. An accompanying press release, issued by my publisher, Birlinn, reads as follows:

Intelligence reports and other previously unpublished papers released today show how the police secretly discussed the payment of large rewards to the most important witness in the Lockerbie case and his brother. The papers describe how Tony Gauci expressed an interest in being rewarded nine years prior to giving evidence against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and before he made the crucial partial identification of Megrahi, which became the cornerstone of the Crown case.

The documents, which are being published by the author of new book Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Matters, John Ashton, also show that:

  • Within weeks of the police finding Gauci, the FBI told the police that ‘unlimited money’ was on offer for the witness.
  • Although the police insisted that he was not motivated by money, he was under the strong influence of his brother Paul, who had ‘a clear desire to gain financial benefit’ from the case and who explored ‘any means he can to identify where financial advantage can be gained.’
  • The police believed that paying the brothers would ensure that they would not embarrass the police or Crown.
  • After Megrahi’s conviction the senior investigating officer lobbied the US Department of Justice to increase the previously discussed rewards of $2 million for Tony and $1 million for Paul.
  • The Crown Office did not object to this reward application, even though such payments were against its own rules.

 Mr Ashton said:

 ‘Tony Gauci’s evidence was central to Mr Megrahi’s conviction. The judges were clearly impressed by him, but were unaware of the rewards issue lurking in the background. No doubt Mr Gauci did his best to tell the truth, but there is also no doubt that honest witnesses can be unconsciously swayed by the expectation of rewards. Some of his evidence to the trial court was notably more helpful to the Crown than his original police statements.’

The documents were among the appendices to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission’s statement of reasons on Megrahi’s case. The statement of reasons was released last year, but the appendices have remained under wraps. The commission referred the case back to the appeal court on six grounds, one of which concerned Mr Gauci’s expectation of being rewarded. The commission established that the brothers received substantial reward payments from the Department of Justice.

Mr Ashton has promised to publish more documents in the run up to the Lockerbie 25th anniversary in December. He said:

‘I am releasing documents that the court should have seen, which the Crown failed to disclose. Lockerbie is the UK’s worse mass murder and the public has a right to know the truth, not just what the Crown wanted them to know. The Scottish government has consistently denied calls for a public inquiry in to Mr Megrahi’s conviction so it’s left to his supporters to keep the issue on the public agenda.’

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Magnus Linklater and the ‘conspiracy theorist’ slur

Posted on October 6, 2013 by John Ashton

Here we go again. In his column in last Friday’s Times, Magnus Linklater once again wrongly accused Abdelbaset’s supporters of alleging a grand conspiracy to convict him, involving judges, detectives and the intelligence agencies. As I’ve told Magnus before, that’s not what we (Jim Swire, Justice for Megrahi, I and others) are saying. The article follows in italics, with my comments in non-italics.

Jim Swire has been relentless, resolute, and single-minded in pursuit of his campaign for the truth about the Lockerbie atrocity that killed his daughter, Flora.

In all the 25 years that he has spent examining the case, travelling the world to track down evidence, he has never been less than dignified, or given way in public to the frustration and anger he must have felt towards those who stood in the way of his quest. He has dealt with inquiries from the media with patience and courtesy. Throughout, what has driven him is solely the need to find justice in the name of his daughter.

The reasons he now gives for stepping back from his cause are characteristically honest.

“My campaign has been my means of survival,” he says. “I think Flora would be saying ‘You’ve done your very best dad. It’s time to leave it to others, to younger men’.”

Such dedication is hard to challenge: taking issue with Dr Swire’s arguments is to venture into intensely personal territory. Yet his central contention — that Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi was innocent, and that Libya was not involved in the Lockerbie bombing — remains short of the kind of evidence that would stand up in court.

For all the many thousands of words that have been written suggesting that the prosecution case was flawed, and that the Scottish legal system presided over a spectacular miscarriage of justice, the alternative theories are well short of sustaining proof.

It is one thing to challenge the evidence on which al-Megrahi was convicted, another to sustain a case that is not, itself, threadbare.

Dr Swire believes that the bomb was not put on board Pan Am 103 on Malta, but that it was smuggled onto the plane at Heathrow Airport. This, along with other theories, was advanced at the time of the trial, examined, and dismissed for want of evidence.

As Magnus should know (because he claims to have read Megrahi: You are my Jury), key evidence regarding Heathrow was not disclosed to either Megrahi’s trial or his first appeal. As he should also know, the defence put forward compelling evidence that the bomb was contained in the mysterious suitcase seen by Heathrow loader John Bedford, yet it was dismissed by the judges, who, in effect, reversed the burden of proof on this matter.

It may, as Dr Swire, maintains, be the truth, but so far no reliable witness has come forward to confirm it. Yet surely this must be as important as challenging the prosecution case. After all, the al-Megrahi defence suggests that eight Scottish judges, five Lords Advocate, senior Scottish detectives and US intelligence agencies were involved in what must count as one of the most serious conspiracy theories of our time, to deflect blame away from Syria or Iran and point towards Libya.

For the avoidance of doubt, the opening of chapter 6 of Scotland’s Shame reads:

“Let us be clear, there was no grand conspiracy by the intelligence services, senior politicians, police officers, prosecutors and judges to subvert the Lockerbie investigation and frame Megrahi and Libya. Conspiracies, of course, do sometimes happen, but seldom ones involving so many diverse parties.

“There is, however, no doubt that important evidence was suppressed, that US intelligence agents interfered with the crash site and that some of the evidence against Megrahi was highly dubious. It can also be reasonably argued that the case against Libya was concocted in order to serve the agenda of the government of US president George H. W. Bush, who came to power less than a month after the bombing.

“In all these things the Scottish authorities were, very likely, no more than unwitting accomplices. There are allegations – not made by this book and so far unproven – that certain of their representatives acted illegally. If they did, it was almost certainly in order to secure the conviction of people they sincerely believed to be guilty, and not because they were party to a wider plot to protect the real culprits and convict innocents.”

Conspiracy theorist is a label used by politicians and lazy journalists who have run out of reasonable arguments, in order to denigrate and marginalise those who challenge the official line on controversial issues. Funnily enough, the lord advocate uses it too.

Of course, at one time that might have been achieved in the best forum of all, a court of law. Yet al-Megrahi chose to drop his appeal, a decision that has never been properly explained. It remains the weakest plank in the al-Megrahi campaign and for Dr Swire, it must, to this day, be a cause for anguish and frustration.

As Magnus well knows, the explanation for Abdelbaset dropping his appeal is quite simple: he had advanced cancer and was desperate to get back to his family. On 10 August 2009 he met with the delegation of Libyan officials who had just been to visit the justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, and some of his civil servants. Obedi told Abdelbaset that MacAskill had privately indicated to him (Obedi) that it would be easier to grant compassionate release if he dropped the appeal. If Magnus had been stuck in a foreign jail with advanced cancer, would he have reacted differently to such pressure? Answers on a postcard please.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Press coverage of ‘Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters’

Posted on October 5, 2013 by John Ashton

The Herald 3 October

The father of a young woman killed in the Lockerbie bombing warns the SNP’s hopes for the referendum will be adversely affected by Scotland’s failure to address major concerns about the prosecution and the trial.

Dr Jim Swire has written the foreword to a new book to be launched today called Scotland’s Shame. The book’s author John Ashton, biographer of the Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, brands the case the greatest scandal of Scotland’s post-devolution era.

Dr Swire, who was born and raised in Skye, argues that the case could have a bearing on next year’s independence vote. He writes: “Scottish justice survived the Act of Union with England with its independence intact: perhaps since then it has been a talisman of Scotland’s reputation as an independent nation capable of running its own affairs. If that is so, Scotland – my country – would do well to address the apparent problem of the impenetrable arrogance of her prosecuting authorities that seem to have blighted her justice system ever since it became clear that the Lockerbie trial had been defective.

“It is best addressed from within Scotland herself and may well be a factor which will block independence until it is resolved, for an independent community with an obscured and mistrusted justice system can never be a healthy community.

“We would wish healing, not harm, for Scotland and all her people, but the arrogant refusal to consider fault has dragged on so long that the cure is not likely to be found within the timescale now scheduled for the independence debate. It is to be hoped that the refusal of the current Scottish Government to intervene with an independent inquiry, despite clearly having the powers required to do so, is not driven by motives of party advantage.”

An SNP spokesman said: “We have enormous respect for Dr Swire, and hope he would accept that everything that has been done in Scotland in relation to the Lockerbie atrocity. In stark contrast, the Westminster Government based its stance on Mr al-Megrahi’s release on political and economic considerations.”

The Scotsman 4 October

THE father of one of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing has written to Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland criticising the investigation.

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora, 23, was among 270 who died in the 1988 atrocity, has questioned the original and current inquiry.

The late Abdelbaset al Megrahi was the only person ever convicted of the terrorist attack.

Dr Swire believes the original prosecution was flawed, that key evidence was withheld from the defence team, and that the Crown Office has refused to reinvestigate new evidence which has since come to light.

In particular, he points to John Ashton’s book Megrahi: You Are My Jury, which argued that the timer used in the explosion could not have come from Libya.

“Why did you state there is no evidence to support the book’s claims?” Dr Swire wrote to Mr Mulholland.

“Why have the three witnesses who attest to point three above (about the timer) 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 (Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission), is compatible with the United Nations International Association of Prosecutors’ standards of professional conduct?”

The letter coincides with the release of Mr Ashton’s new book Scotland’s shame: why Lockerbie still matters?

 The Herald 4 October

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in the Lockerbie tragedy, has written about the “painful task” of clearing out her room after her death and his struggle to avoid becoming bitter.

In the foreword to a new book by John Ashton, biographer of the Libyan convicted of the bombing, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, Dr Swire describes Flora as “our deeply loved elder daughter” slaughtered “a day short of her 24th birthday”. She was on flight PanAm103 because she wished to visit her boyfriend in Boston for Christmas. “If we had only said no…” he writes. “We would still have Flora with us.”

Yesterday, at the launch of the book, Scotland’s Shame, Dr Swire and Mr Ashton released an open letter to Frank Mulholland, the Lord Advocate, asking why he dismissed new evidence revealed in the [2012] biography of Megrahi, and why the witnesses relating to this evidence have not been questioned. Dr Swire said a public inquiry is the only way to answer the questions and concerns of the relatives of the 270 victims and the only way to hold the Crown Office to account.

The Scottish Government has repeatedly refused and instead called for Westminster to hold an inquiry or for the case to be tested with another appeal in the courts.

Dr Swire and Mr Ashton said an appeal, even if feasible, would not answer questions about the Crown Office’s failure to disclose key documents.

The Crown Office said the case is still live and it therefore cannot comment. 

The Times 4 October

Twenty five years after his daughter was killed by the Lockerbie bomb, Jim Swire is to step back from active involvement in the campaign to uncover the full facts about the atrocity.

Dr Swire, 76, a retired GP, is the most prominent spokesman for British families affected by the attack on Pan Am Flight 103. Among the 270 dead was Flora, 23, his daughter, a medical student. He hoped he might find closure when Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi came to trial in 2001.

Instead he was horrified by what he saw as the flimsy case against the Libyan, who was found guilty. Dr Swire redoubled his efforts to get to the bottom of the crime.

Yesterday, at the launch of a book entitled Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters, he said he was ready to “disappear from the battlements”.

“I think my campaign has been my means of survival, but I have got to a point where I really have to cut back on it, otherwise it will do harm,” said Dr Swire. “One of the parameters of doing it is what Flora would have thought. I think Flora would be saying, ‘You’ve done your very best dad. It’s time to leave it to others, to younger men.’

“I suspect I will be called in to make comments to the media from time to time. That’s OK. What I don’t think is OK is investing as much time as I have been doing. I’m going to try to find ways of trying to avoid spending as much time on it.” Dr Swire has already bought a computer programme which converts words to text, which he say will cut by two thirds the time he has to devote to writing. By the anniversary, December 21, he would be ready to move on. (…)

There was little immediate sign that he was ready to wind down. In the foreword to the book, Dr Swire says the country’s justice system had survived the act of Union with England intact, only to be blighted by “the impenetrable arrogance of her prosecuting authorities”, the Crown Office.

Together with John Ashton, the book’s author, he used a press conference to launch an outspoken attack on Frank Mulholland, the Lord Advocate. Dr Swire and Mr Ashton have also written an open letter to the Crown Office, questioning aspects of the al-Megrahi trial, including the alleged withholding of evidence and the payment of a key witness, Tony Gauci.

At a meeting London in 2011, Dr Swire said he had asked Mr Mulholland repeatedly why evidence of a break-in at Heathrow airport in 1988, the night before the bombing, had not been presented at the trial.

“We went through this routine four times,” recalled Dr Swire. “At the end of, Mr Mulholland said. ‘You know, I wondered why it wasn’t available, but I haven’t been able to find out’. An incredible statement.”

Mr Ashton added: “Frank Mulholland, with aspects of his behaviour … has really raised questions about whether he is fit to hold office.”

The Crown Office said that because the bombing was still a live case it could not comment on it. A spokesman said the remarks attributed by Dr Swire to the Lord Advocate at the meeting in London were “simply untrue”.  

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Birlinn blog post

Posted on October 3, 2013 by John Ashton

This is a post that I have just done for Birlinn’s blog.

Scotland’s Shame argues that Lockerbie is the biggest scandal of the country’s post-devolution era. It sets out the failures, distortions and evasions of both the country’s prosecution service the Crown Office and its government. At the heart of the scandal is a failure by the Crown to abide by basic standards of justice, in particular the principle that all relevant evidence to be disclosed to the defendants in criminal trials. Since the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission completed its review of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s conviction in 2007, it has become clear that the Crown Office failed to disclose numerous items of significant evidence. Indeed, on the basis of what it knew, or should have known, back in 1991, it should never have brought charges against Megrahi and his co-accused, Lamin Fhimah. As a consequence of these failings, the wrong man was convicted, the real killers went free and the Libyan people were made to suffer 7 years of sanctions, which destroyed their economy and threw millions into poverty.

Since the scale of the non-disclosure was revealed, the Crown Office has failed to account for its actions. Instead it has issued misleading public statements and smeared its opponents by calling them conspiracy theorists and de facto liars. Remarkably, the current lord advocate, Frank Mulholland, claims to have studied my last book Megrahi: You are my Jury, and found all its claims to be baseless – this despite the fact that all those claims were founded on the Crown’s own evidence (much of which the Crown Office had failed to disclose to Megrahi’s lawyers pre-trial).

It’s hard to imagine the Crown Prosecution Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions (who are their equivalents in England and Wales) behaving as the Crown Office and lord advocate have. Their behaviour has gone unchecked because successive Scottish government’s have turned a blind eye. In my view the current government has done so because it fears that public criticism of the criminal justice system would throw spanner in works of its independence project. Put simply, it fears that Scots will not entrust their country to an independent government if they perceive that its long standing and most powerful independent institution is such a mess. This, I believe, is why the government has produced a string of hollow excuses for not ordering an inquiry in to the Crown’s conduct. I also believe that the government’s view is thoroughly misguided: although a proper inquiry would reflect badly on the Crown Office, it would help restore public faith in the government.

To be clear, the book does not allege that police crown and judges were party to a grand conspiracy with the UK and US governments and their intelligence agencies to frame people whom they knew to be innocent. Rather, I argue, they are guilty of failures of judgement. Until those failures are explained and rectified, Lockerbie will remain Scotland’s shame.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New press release

Posted on October 3, 2013 by John Ashton

The following release has been sent out in the wake of this morning’s launch of Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters.

Lockerbie 25th anniversary:

Will Scotland head for independence with a justice system the country can’t believe in? Will the politicians of Scotland continue to ignore 270 innocent victims?

Leading author joins voices with bereaved father to accuse Crown Office and Scottish Government of protecting murderers

At a press conference this morning, Dr Jim Swire, the father of a woman killed in the Lockerbie bombing, made his most outspoken attack on the Scottish authorities over their handling of the case. Speaking at the launch of a new book Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters, which marks the 25th anniversary of the bombing, Dr Swire said:

“It is Scotland’s shame that our judicial prosecution system is cowering behind its privileges in a brazen attempt to continue to block all reasonable allegations of its previous failures. In doing so it destroys its own credibility, demeans our country, and protects those who really were responsible for the murders of our families almost 25 years ago.”

He added:

“… of course there is still time for the SNP to announce an enquiry before this scandal undermines the referendum assuming it has not already done so and threatens independence. But this is much more than party politics and the 270 victims deserve more from our politicians.”

John Ashton, biographer of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and author of this new book: Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters, brands the case the greatest scandal of Scotland’s post-devolution era.

At the press conference this morning he stated:

“The conduct of the Scottish criminal justice system – and the Crown Office in particular – in the Lockerbie case has hugely undermined the public’s trust in it. This raises a fundamental question: if people don’t trust Scotland’s foremost independent institution, will they trust an independent Scottish government? I believe that this is why the current government has tried to keep a lid on the scandal by refusing a public inquiry in to the Crown Office’s conduct. It’s a significant miscalculation by Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill, because they would only gain public trust by granting an inquiry.”

He also questioned Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland’s position:

“ Despite the fact that we now know that the Crown withheld numerous items of important evidence from Megrahi’s defence team, the current Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland has refused to acknowledge that anything went wrong. Furthermore, he has failed to order the police to follow up new witness evidence that undermines the prosecution case. Instead he has engaged in bluster and distortions and has smeared his critics by branding them conspiracy theorists. I believe that, if he continues in this vein, he will no longer be fit for office.”

In this new book, Ashton argues that the evidence against Megrahi was so weak that the charges should never have been brought and that the guilty verdict against him was blatantly unreasonable. It also describes how the Crown Office withheld crucial evidence from Megrahi’s defence team and how successive Scottish governments have turned a blind eye to the scandal. It demonstrates that, as a consequence of these failings, the real bombers went free and the Libyan people were unjustly subjected to seven years of biting UN sanctions.

John Ashton will also release documents hithero unseen over the next few weeks:

‘These are the documents that the Crown didn’t want you to see. I am making them public because, after 25 years, the authorities are still trying to keep a lid on this scandal.’

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Text of book launch press release

Posted on October 3, 2013 by John Ashton

Lockerbie 25th anniversary: Bereaved father accuses Crown Office and Scottish Government of protecting murderers

 The greatest scandal of the post-devolution era “could threaten Scottish independence”

The father of a woman killed in the Lockerbie bombing today makes his most outspoken attack on the Scottish authorities over their handling of the case. Speaking at the launch of a new book Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters, which marks the 25th anniversary of the bombing, Dr Swire will say:

“It is Scotland’s shame that our judicial prosecution system is cowering behind its privileges in a brazen attempt to continue to block all reasonable allegations of its previous failures. In doing so it destroys its own credibility, demeans our country, and protects those who really were responsible for the murders of our families almost 25 years ago.”

The book, by the biographer of the Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, John Ashton, brands the case the greatest scandal of Scotland’s post-devolution era. It argues that the evidence against Megrahi was so weak that the charges should never have been brought and that the guilty verdict against him was blatantly unreasonable. It also describes how the Crown Office withheld crucial evidence from Megrahi’s defence team and how successive Scottish governments have turned a blind eye to the scandal. It demonstrates that, as a consequence of these failings, the real bombers went free and the Libyan people were unjustly subjected to seven years of biting UN sanctions.

In his foreword to the book, Dr Swire writes:

“It has become increasingly difficult not to despise those who still try to defend the indefensible. Most of them do this out of ignorance, but some because they are told to do so, some to enhance their careers, some to conceal their own shame, some to seek greater power, some to make money, others because they genuinely see it as their duty to toe the official line.”

Dr Swire, who was born and raised in Skye, also argues that the case could have a bearing on next year’s independence vote. He writes:

“Scottish justice survived the Act of Union with England with its independence intact: perhaps since then it has been a talisman of Scotland’s reputation as an independent nation capable of running its own affairs. If that is so, Scotland – my country – would do well to address the apparent problem of the impenetrable arrogance of her prosecuting authorities that seem to have blighted her justice system ever since it became clear that the Lockerbie trial had been defective.

The problem must be addressed, and done so with transparency, for it will not just go away. It is best addressed from within Scotland herself and may well be a factor which will block independence until it is resolved, for an independent community with an obscured and mistrusted justice system can never be a healthy community. We would wish healing, not harm, for Scotland and all her people, but the arrogant refusal to consider fault has dragged on so long and is so great a threat now to her reputation in the world that the cure is not likely to be found within the timescale now scheduled for the independence debate. It is to be hoped that the refusal of the current Scottish government to intervene with an independent inquiry, despite clearly having the powers required to do so, is not driven by motives of party advantage. The terrible events of Lockerbie deserve far greater respect than that.”

John Ashton will also release documents hitherto unseen:

‘These are the documents that the Crown didn’t want you to see. I am making them public because, after 25 years, the authorities are still trying to keep a lid on this scandal‘.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

An open letter to the lord advocate

Posted on October 3, 2013 by John Ashton

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Press launch of Scotland’s Shame

Posted on October 2, 2013 by John Ashton

The press launch of my new book, Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters will be at the Dynamic Earth centre, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh at 10 am tomorrow, 3 October.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment