Split verdict in Lockerbie trial

By TRACY SUTHERLAND
01feb01

MORE than 12 years after Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland, a specially convened court in The Netherlands has found a Libyan man guilty of the murder of the 270 people killed in the disaster.

In what has been described as the longest and most expensive murder trial in British history, a panel of three Scottish judges sitting at a former US airbase known as Camp Zeist, last night unanimously found 48-year-old Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, guilty of murder.

His co-accused, 44-year-old Libyan Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was unanimously found not guilty and escorted from the court.

Both men had pleaded not guilty and Megrahi -- who now faces a mandatory life sentence under Scottish law, to be served in Glasgow's Barlinnie jail -- will appeal.

Under Scottish law, the only basis for an appeal is that there has been a miscarriage of justice.

The long-awaited verdict raises major questions about who else in the Libyan Government, including Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, knew about the bombing -- although neither Mr Gaddafi nor anyone in his regime was named in the charges.

Acting deputy US Attorney-General Bob Mullen congratulated the court on the ruling and said the investigation into the bombing would continue in an effort to establish who else was involved.

Relatives of the victims watched the verdict on specially erected screens in the US and in Lockerbie.

In emotional scenes following the verdict, Jim Swire, who lost his 23-year-old daughter Flora in the tragedy and has spoken on behalf of the British relatives during the trial, collapsed in court and was taken away by ambulance.

Dr Swire and other relatives have called for an independent inquiry into the disaster, regardless of the trial outcome.

The verdicts follow 84 days of evidence and lawyers' submissions at the special trial, which began on May 3 last year and is estimated to have cost about $90 million so far.

The defence closed its case abruptly earlier this month after calling only three witnesses compared with 227 for the prosecution. The judges, who had a trial transcript topping 10,000 words to consider, took less than two weeks to reach a verdict.

The in-flight explosion on Pan Am flight 103, which disintegrated over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, killed all 259 people on board and another 11 on the ground.

Charges against the accused of conspiracy to murder and breaching the 1982 Aviation Security Act were dropped during the trial.

The prosecution told the court it had proved beyond reasonable doubt that the men in the dock were guilty.

However, the defence described the evidence against the two accused as "unreliable" and "circumstantial" and blamed Palestinian terrorists for the incident.

Megrahi and Mr Fhimah were accused of planting a bomb -- packed in a radio cassette recorder and put inside an unaccompanied suitcase -- that blew up the London-to-New York airliner over Lockerbie.

Prosecutors claimed the bomb was sent via Frankfurt airport from the Mediterranean island of Malta, where the defendants were seen around the time of the bombing. They said the suitcase was then transferred to the doomed flight 103, exploding after the plane had left Heathrow and was about to head out over the Atlantic.

Under Scottish law, the judges had three verdicts to choose from for each defendant: guilty, not guilty or not proven.

Not guilty or not proven would have seen the accused walk free and would have confronted Washington and London with an embarrassing failure after years of diplomatic investment to erect a wall of sanctions around Libya, some of which were lifted in an effort to bring the accused to trial.

The defence suggested Palestinian extremists carried out the bombing, probably on behalf of Iran in revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian civilian Airbus earlier in 1988 by the US missile cruiser USS Vincennes.

A Libyan Foreign Ministry spokesman said last night: "Libya respects the decision of Scottish justice and the verdict handed down."

Despite a plea from Libya last night, many of the sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council nine years ago are unlikely to be lifted in the wake of the guilty verdict.

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