Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial

2000 trial in the Netherlands

The Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial began on 3 May 2000, more than 11 years after the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988. The 36 week bench trial took place at a specially convened Scottish Court in the Netherlands set up under Scots law and held at a disused United States Air Force base called Camp Zeist near Utrecht.

Upon the indictment of the two Libyan suspects in November 1991, the Libyan government was called upon to extradite them for trial in either the United Kingdom or the United States. Since no bilateral extradition treaty was in force between any of the three countries, Libya refused to hand the men over but did offer to detain them for trial in Libya, as long as all the incriminating evidence was provided. The offer was unacceptable to the US and UK, and there was an impasse for the next three years. In November 1994, President Nelson Mandela offered South Africa as a neutral venue for the trial but this was rejected by the then British prime minister, John Major. A further three years elapsed until Mandela's offer was repeated to Major's successor, Tony Blair, when the president visited London in July 1997 and again at the 1997 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Edinburgh in October 1997. At the latter meeting, Mandela warned that "no one nation should be complainant, prosecutor and judge" in the Lockerbie case. The eventually agreed compromise solution of a trial in the Netherlands governed by Scots law was engineered by legal academic Professor Robert Black of the University of Edinburgh and, in accordance with the Labour government's promotion of an "ethical" foreign policy, was given political impetus by the then foreign secretary, Robin Cook. The Scottish Court in the Netherlands, a special High Court of Justiciary, was set up under Scots law in a disused United States Air Force base called Camp Zeist in Utrecht, in the Netherlands. Facilities for a high security prison were also installed there. Under a bilateral treaty between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, these premises were, for the duration of the trial and any subsequent appeal, under the authority and control of the Scottish Court. Dutch law still theoretically applied to the area, but, barring an emergency, the Dutch authorities were banned from entering the premises and the Court had the authority to enact regulations that superseded Dutch law when necessary for the execution of the trial, and to jail people for contempt of court. The court itself, as well as people involved in the trial also enjoyed total or partial immunity from Dutch law.

Two Libyans, Abdelbaset al Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, were accused of the crime. In the run up to the trial, the prosecution considered bringing charges against Swiss businessman, Edwin Bollier, of the electronics firm that made the timer for the bomb Mebo AG, but decided that, unless evidence to incriminate Bollier were to be introduced during the trial, he would not be included as a co conspirator in causing the bombing. Libya made three stipulations, when agreeing to hand over the two accused to the Scottish police: that they would not be interviewed by the police; no one else in Libya would be sought for the bombing; and, that the trial should be before three Scottish judges, sitting without a jury. On 5 April 1999, over a year ahead of the start of the trial, Megrahi and Fhimah arrived in the Netherlands.

Five different Lords Advocate were in post from the 1991 indictment of the two accused Libyans until their trial in 2000 – three Conservative: Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, Lord Mackay of Drumadoon, and two Labour: Lord Hardie and Lord Boyd of Duncansby. Lord Boyd led the prosecution on behalf of the Crown Office. Assisting him were Advocate Deputes Alastair Campbell QC and Alan Turnbull QC. Alongside the prosecution were seated U. S. Department of Justice representatives Brian Murtagh, who had helped draw up the indictment against the two accused, and Dana Biehl. Five years after the trial, former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser, who issued the arrest warrants in 1991, was alleged to have said that he was not entirely happy with the evidence presented against Megrahi during his trial in 2000, and in his subsequent appeal in 2002. However, he made it clear that this did not mean that he believed Megrahi to be innocent. According to The Sunday Times of 23 October 2005, Lord Fraser allegedly cast doubt upon the reliability of the main prosecution witness, Tony Gauci.

Representing Megrahi were solicitor, Alistair Duff, and advocates William Taylor QC, David Burns QC and John Beckett. Fhimah was represented by solicitors and by advocates Richard Keen QC, Jack Davidson QC and Murdo Macleod. Both defendants also had access to Libyan defence lawyer Kamel Maghur.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which was established by Act of Parliament in April 1999, has wide ranging powers to investigate cases where a miscarriage of justice is alleged, and reviewed Megrahi's case from September 2003. Although the Commission normally expects to review a case and announce its decision within 12 months, it took nearly four years to complete the Megrahi review. On 28 June 2007 the SCCRC published a summary of its 800 page report and referred Megrahi's conviction to the Court of Criminal Appeal for a fresh appeal. The SCCRC's findings were examined in detail by Al Jazeera in two episodes of the network's People & Power series in July 2007.

On 20 August 2009, Scotland's Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill, announced the release of Megrahi under terms of Scottish laws permitting the early release on compassionate grounds of prisoners with terminal illnesses. He had terminal prostate cancer. After his release from Greenock Prison in Scotland, Megrahi travelled in a white police van flanked by police cars to Glasgow Airport, where he boarded a special flight from Libya's Afriqiyah Airways. Megrahi flew home to Tripoli, Libya, accompanied by Saif al Islam Gaddafi, son of the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi and to a hero's welcome. He died in 2012. In May 2014 a group of relatives of the Lockerbie victims continued to campaign for al Megrahi's name to be cleared by reopening the case. In December 2014 the Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland, said no Crown Office investigator or prosecutor had ever raised concerns about the evidence used to convict Megrahi. He also pledged to continue to track down Megrahi's accomplices.

Professor Robert Black of the University of Edinburgh, one of Scotland's top legal experts and the person who devised the non jury trial that saw the Lockerbie case heard in 2000, has called al Megrahi's murder conviction "the most disgraceful miscarriage of justice in Scotland for 100 years". Prof. Black said he felt "a measure of personal responsibility" for persuading Libya to allow Megrahi and his co accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhima, who was acquitted, to stand trial under Scots law. Blockquote|text=I have written about this and nobody is interested Every lawyer who has read the judgment says 'this is nonsense'. It is nonsense. It really distresses me; I won't let it go. In August 2011, Black claimed that the three judges at the trial of the Lockerbie bomber reached a guilty verdict "contrary to the evidence" because, "consciously or subconsciously", they were under pressure to convict from the then Lord Advocate (Scotland's leading legal official), Lord Boyd of Duncansby. Lord Boyd declared the allegations "ludicrous".

Professor Hans Köchler, who was appointed as one of the UN observers by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, criticised the trial in his report and evaluation. Köchler observed that the trial had been politically influenced in breach of legal traditions and principles, such as the Rule of law. In an interview for the BBC on the day the first appeal was rejected, he described the court's decision as a "spectacular miscarriage of justice". In a radio programme entitled Politics and justice: the Lockerbie trial, which was broadcast on 9 September 2007 by Australia's ABC Radio National, Köchler, Robert Black and Jim Swire expressed their views on the Lockerbie trial and the first appeal, and suggested what should happen next. In the June 2008 edition of the Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm, Köchler referred to the 'totalitarian' nature of the ongoing second Lockerbie appeal process saying it "bears the hallmarks of an 'intelligence operation'."