Lockerbie - The Lost Evidence BBC Scotland Investigates

At the end of Faith's regime a means that Libya is no longer a

secret state. If that is why a George Thomson has come to Libya to

say his last their well to a dying man. A man convicted of mass murder.

The internationally notorious Lockerbie Bonner, Abdelbaset al-

Megrahi. This could be George Thomson's last chance to uncover

his secret, a secret that has been George Thomson is allowed into

Megrahi's combined. A former detective, he previously went for

Megrahi's defence team. Megrahi only agrees to talk to him as a

personal friend, refusing to allow mainstream media in the tenth.

George brings a small camera to record the first and only TV

interview in English Megrahi will only give about his case. It will

almost certainly be his last. In the final stages of terminal cancer,

Megrahi believes there is evidence that will finally prove his

innocence. It is from an expert's theory on criminal cases. It will

be very good because it will clear my name. George's visit would last

over 60 minutes. They talk as friends, not interviewer and

interviewee. He is very sick. Anybody who tries

to say that he is not dying just needs to go and see the man. I

would say he is on his deathbed. I was shocked when I saw him. Quite

upset. But after a wee while, he came around and he told me certain

things. He showed me certain things. He has given me permission to

It is an emotional experience for George, but he believes it is worth

it. I can reveal that they have When Pan Am flight 103 was brought

down by a terrorist bomb, 270 innocent people were killed in

Scotland. John Ashton has been investigating the Lockerbie case

for more than 20 years. Lockerbie disaster was Europe's

worst terrorist attack. More American civilians died in that

attack than in any other terrorist events before or 9/11. But John

believes it is more than just a terrorist attack. It is also

Britain's worst miscarriage of justice. The wrong man is convicted

and the real killers are still out John there may be onto something.

In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission conducted a

thorough investigation into Megrahi's conviction. But their

full report has never seen the light of day. John is one of the

few to have read it. That report has never been made

public. It contains the evidence that should have overturned his

conviction. In that the Scottish Parliament,

the convenor of the just as committee and a member of the

justice for 152-154 Marine Parade, Brighton campaign, Christine

Grahame, is pushing to get the report public's -- published. --

Christine Grahame. That report says there could very well have been a

miscarriage of justice, but it has never seen the light of day. If we

can see that, my committee and the public at large, then we could

begin to understand what really happened that night at Lockerbie.

The report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, also known

as the SCCRC, was only ever given to a handful of people. One of them

led the defence team. Have you seen the SCCRC report? Yes. The good you

show it to us? Know. Could you explain why? I have no instructions

to release that report, so I am not in a position to do so. This

document has very limited circulation. Can I read it?

simple answer is no, not at the moment. It is a criminal offence

under the Criminal Procedure of Scotland Act, 1995, for any member

of the Commission to publish or release information contained

within the document. Could you make it a document of the report

available to us? I have not seen the copy and I do

not have it. It is with SCCRC. We are seeking to bring in legislation

that will give them the authority to decide whether or not they can

publish more information. We think it is in the interests of everybody

that as much information as possible is out there in the public

domain. Although the Government clearly

want the report published, there is no guarantee that will ever happen.

But as just a secretary Kenny MacAskill has a clear view of

Megrahi's case. I stand behind the conviction in the Scottish court

and a pay tribute to all those involved and the justice system in

Scotland who still seek to bring to justice those who were involved in

the atrocity. Working for Megrahi's legal team and as his biographer,

John Ashton has given us rare access to the full 821 page report

that casts serious doubt on the case against the Lockerbie bomber.

And he has forensic evidence which questions whether Libya was even

involved in the bombing. To fully comprehend the impact of the report

and the forensic evidence, we first have to understand what happened on

that fateful night. December 21, 1988. The night of the

winter solstice. The longest night in the year. At 6:30 Pan Am flight

103 took off from London Heathrow. Next stop - JFK, New York.

In the cargo hold was a brown Samsonite suitcase, packed with new

clothes and a Toshiba radio cassette player. Hidden in the

Toshiba were some 450 grams of high explosive and a detonator. At three

minutes past seven, 31,000 feet over Scotland, the bomb exploded.

46.5 seconds later, 200,000 pounds of kerosene ignited as the wings

and part of the fuselage crashed On the morning after the crash,

human remains and plane wreckage lay scattered over 850 square miles.

And every shard of metal, every scrap of flesh or bone was now a

clue in a murder enquiry. For months, Scottish police

conducted painstaking finger-tip searches for evidence. The

breakthrough came when they found fragments of clothing that had been

in the suitcase with the bomb. The labels read, "Made in Malta". Using

the labels, police traced the damaged clothing back to a clothes

shop in Malta called Mary's House. It is in the fashionable shopping

area of Sliema, owned by a man called Tony Gauci.

He was seen here last year going into a police station in Malta.

On September 1, 1989, almost nine months after the Lockerbie atrocity,

Tony Gauchi made a statement to the police about the man who bought the

clothes packed with the bomb. It was around 6.30pm, just before

closing time. A man had entered the shop and he started to look at

various garments. The man's behaviour was strange, that is why

I can now remember. He asked for a gent's jacket and when I asked him

for his size he just said, "It's not for me". It was as if anything

I suggested he buy, he would take it. I even showed him a black

coloured umbrella and he bought it. He then walked out the shop with

the umbrella, which he opened up as it was raining.

Gauci's evidence was crucial to Megrahi's conviction as the

Lockerbie bomber. But the dying man Megrahi, who has

always protested his innocence, When the Megrahi talks about black

and white, this is what he means. We got disclosure of some documents,

but you just wait so that are blacked out. We do not know what

lies under these black sections. The SCCRC had access to all the

same evidence as the defence. They also had access to some of the

unprotected documents. Once the commission had investigated, they

referred the case based on six grounds of review.

According to the report, the six grounds point to a possible

miscarriage of justice. Three of them stand out.

One ground for a possible miscarriage of justice for the

SCCRC is in Chapter 21 and focuses on the weather on December 7, 1988.

As a former head of security for Libyan airlines, Megrahi had been a

frequent visitor to the island. He had flown in on December 7, 1988,

and stayed at The Holiday Inn. At trial, Megrahi was meant to have

bought the clothes on seventh December. But according to the

report, proving that could all depend on whether it rained on that

day. Tony Gauci said it did. He picked up the umbrella and said

he would come back shortly. He then walked out with the umbrella, which

he opened, because it was raining. In the debris, the police believe

they discovered the umbrella in Tony Gauci's statement. On Ashton's

drive across the Scottish lowlands, he looks for all the places were

key evidence was blind. One of the consistent elements of Tony Gauci's

account was that as the customer who bought the clothes left the

shop, it started to rain and the customer bought an umbrella. Back

in Malta, having worked on the Megrahi's defence, George Thomson

knows how important the weather is improving Megrahi's innocence.

Hiring out his services to people interested in his case, he is

looking for the meteorologist quoted in the report to could tell

us whether it had rained on December 7th, 1988.

I want to trace the meteorologist at the time the plane went down.

Find him. Flat 3. Major Misfud. How certain can you

be about rainfall on Malta, say, between 5pm and 7pm on the night of

7 December, 1988? Between 5pm and 7pm... Well, the

records that I have here on the seventh of December, no rain fell

at Luqa. And how far away from Luqa is

Sliema? About roughly about five km as the

crow flies. And if you asked now about the

rainfall on the 7 December, 1988, what could you say?

Well, at that particular time in the evening on the seventh, I am

100% certain of the records that I have. Sliema being only about five

km away from Luqa, I would actually again say that the percentage for

no rain would be very high. Say, about 90%.

If it was dry on seventh December, but could not have been the day the

clothes were bought. The one-day the prosecution says Megrahi

visited the shop. They do it is crucial, but for December seventh,

there was no evidence Megrahi was even in Malta. Does that prove his

innocence? The SCCRC report says the evidence that it did not rain

raises serious doubts on the safety A second key finding of the

commission's report revealed a previously unheard evidence a. It

casts even more doubt on whether December 7th could have been the

day the clothes or were sold and whether Megrahi is guilty. The clue

was to be fought in the Christmas lights. Tony Gauci said he liked so

were not switched on the day he sold the clothes. At Christmas time,

we put up the decorations about 15 time it -- 15 days before Christmas.

The decorations were not up. The Christmas decorations were not up.

Also contradicting himself at other times, the commission felt Tony

Gauci's earlier statement was the more reliable. George Thomson has

tracked down the man who should know exactly when the Christmas

lights were on. These are the Christmas lights. It is practically

5:30pm now, the same time as I remember turning them on that all

those years ago. 23 years ago, he was down here at the ferry terminal.

He was then the local MP and minister for tourism. Wendy's which

these lights on? I switch them on 6th December 1988. If I was to tell

you that a prosecution case was focused on 7th December, you would

say that time he had already performed their switching on of the

likes? Yes. The lights were switched on the 6th. I have no

doubt. This is my diary. It says Tuesday December 6th and then here,

5:30pm, Christmas lights. The SCCRC report concluded that the date to

the Christmas lights were turned on casts serious doubts on the safety

of Megrahi's conviction. So, if Tony Gauci does it sell clothes to

the Lockerbie bomber, he sold them on a day that it was raining and

when the Christmas lights were not let, not 7th December when Megrahi

was there. The date of purchase is crucial to the whole case and as

soon as you place doubt upon that, you basically remove really the

whole underpaying of the case against Megrahi. The report

revealed that Megrahi had previously said he was able to

enter a Malta without a passport. The prosecution focused on the 7th

December as that was the date the could prove that Megrahi was in the

country. Another key finding in Chapter 22 of the report went to

the heart of the case. The report said that the identification of

Megrahi was flawed. On 5th April 1999, Megrahi was arrested here in

Holland. We have the actual footing -- footage of where Tony Gauci

identified Megrahi as the person he sold close to, in affect condemning

him as the Lockerbie bomber. Shortly after he arrived in Holland,

at there was an identification proved a -- parade to which Tony

From a separate room, Tony Gauci picked out Megrahi. What the

British does not show you is that Tony Gauci already had a picture of

Megrahi. At trial, it emerged that he had a copy of this magazine. It

had a small photograph of Megrahi in that, under the caption, who

planted the bomb? The impression given at trial was that he had had

this magazine for a short period, but what of the Review Commission

established is that he had this a magazine for many months before the

trial and the Commission concluded that it rendered the picking out of

Megrahi unsound. We could all the pounds raised in our programme to

Tony Gauci, but he refused to talk to us. On the point of the

identification he had previously said he did not believe the

photograph affected his ability to identify the purchaser. So do the

Crown Office believed the SCCRC undermine their case? Our request

was -- for an interview was declined, however they gave us the

There will never be an appeal testing the commission's report

findings and whether Megrahi was a victim of a miscarriage of justice

and that is because his appeal was dropped before he was released --

release from prison on compassionate count --

compassionate grounds. At his home in Tripoli, Megrahi talks about the

SCCRC report. But did it go far Megrahi could be referring to fresh

evidence that could not only clear his name but raises questions about

Lippiett's involvement. -- Libya. This evidence came in a series of

documents from the UK Government centre for a forensic science.

Buried in those files was information that has never been

disclosed for four. The clue was discovered in the beautiful hills

around Lockerbie. The case against Libya can be summed up like this.

The bomb that exploded over Lockerbie was supposedly set off by

a timer. A tiny fragment of that timing device survived. It is that

fragment that links the bomb to Libya. During the original trial,

prosecution lawyers persuaded the court that the fragment matched the

circuit board in this time. The time I was made by a Swiss company.

According to the CA, the company had supplied 20 of this specially

made timers to Libya. -- CIA. So when it came to trial, what we had

was a country which supported terrorists, a country which ordered

timers that could be used to set off bombs, and a fragment that

appeared to match these timers. The evidence linking Libya to the

timers and therefore to the bomb may have been circumstantial, but

it was highly persuasive. One man who was not persuaded was John

Ashton. As he read Government files, he stumbled across to documents and

a puzzling discrepancy. The handwriting belonged to Alan

Fereday, one of the British Government's chief forensic

scientists. In these notes, Alan Fereday describes the plating as

pure tin. Alan Fereday was given several and damage to timers of the

type cent to two Libya. He tested one of these and came up with a

different result from the fragment. Here he describes the plating as an

alloy of 70% tin and 30% lead. This difference could be important.

Megrahi's defence team enlisted the help of Dr Jess colleague. -- Dr

Cawley. I also deal with ceramics and polymers as well as metals.

am a materials scientist. We are going to the Advanced Manufacturing

Research Centre at Sheffield University. With respect to some

work credit on a fragments and samples that relate to the

Lockerbie bombing -- some work I did. Dr Cawley used the same sample

that Alan Fereday used and confirmed that the fat -- that the

sample was 30% tin and 70% lead. But the fragment had been in an

explosion and the sample had not. So Dr Cawley also tested the

possibility that the explosion could have melted off the lead and

therefore account for the difference. For this experiment, he

used samples made up to the same specification. I exposed to the

circuit board's to very high temperatures. Around 1000 degrees

Celsius or so. A great deal more energy than would have been caused

by an explosion. When I came to analyse those samples, there was no

loss of any alloy content, at no loss of lead. The hypothesis that

because of the explosion in, let had evaporated from this alloy, it

was not substantiated by the experiment. Let had evaporated.

these tests raided doubt -- raise doubts? This led me to conclude

that this control sample was manufactured by a different process

to the original fragment but I analysed. Megrahi's solicitor asked

the company Thuring that made it their circuit board about the

difference between lead and tin. They said there was no way it had

come from the same production process. The set at the time it

could not have been manufactured by them. We asked the defence, Science

and Technology Laboratory of the could explain the difference in

that the samples. In a statement, Colonel Gaddafi accepted

responsibility for Lockerbie. Many thought this was a cynical move to

get Britain and America to lift economic sanctions against Libya.

There are still unanswered questions about Gaddafi's role in

the Government and -- Megrahi role in the Government. Who now that

Gaddafi has gone, is it time to re- examine all the evidence

surrounding Lockerbie? In Tripoli, a dying man still wants his name

cleared. But he had this to say to Tony Gauci, the person who

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 63 seconds

It is doubtful Megrahi will live to see the evidence raised in this