Main Menu
Lockerbie Bomber Wins Right To Appeal
Thursday, 28 June 2007
A former Libyan intelligence agent has been granted the right to a second appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said it was referring Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi's case to the High Court, a step it takes in cases where it believes there may have been a miscarriage of justice.
Megrahi was convicted of killing 270 people by blowing up a Pan Am jumbo jet over the town of Lockerbie in 1988.
His lawyers claim the evidence against him was fabricated although a previous appeal was thrown out in 2002.
The SCCRC spent three years examining the evidence against Megrahi.
Its report questioned the reliability of the evidence used to convict the Libyan and recommended he be allowed an appeal.
"The Commission is of the view, based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence we have found and other evidence which was not before the trial court, that the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice," the report said.
The Commission said it had identified six grounds where it believed "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred".
Commission chairman, the Very Rev Dr Graham Forbes, said the case had been difficult to deal with.
"Some of what we have discovered may imply innocence, some of what we have discovered may imply guilt. However, such matters are for a court to decide," he said.
Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died at Lockerbie, said the decision opened a "new chapter" in the quest for the truth for the victims' families.
"Though the question of the guilt or innocence of Mr Megrahi is only one part of what we need to know, for his sake it is the most urgent," he said.
"But if today's SCCRC decision does indeed lead to the overturning of the verdict, we hope that at that point an immediate, independent and fully empowered inquiry into how the judicial failure came about would be launched and relentlessly pursued."
Megrahi was found guilty of mass murder at Camp Zeist in Holland in 2001.
He was later told he must serve at least 27 years in jail.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1272667,00.html
Discuss this article on the forums. (0 posts)