A key witness in the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber was secretly paid up to US$2 million (1.4 million euros) in a deal approved by the US government, legal papers released on Friday showed.
The claims were made in new documents published by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, which he maintains prove he is innocent of the 1988 bombing of a passenger jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people.
Megrahi abandoned an appeal against his conviction for the bombing after the Scottish government released him from prison last month on compassionate grounds because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer.
His lawyers said the documents released on the Web site www.megrahimystory.net were not produced at the trial but would have been used in an appeal.
Megrahi, who is being treated in a Libyan hospital, said: “I continue to protest my innocence — how could I fail to do so?”
The documents show that the US Department of Justice was asked to pay US$2 million to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold clothing found to have been in the suitcase that contained the bomb.
US authorities were also asked to pay Gauci’s brother Paul US$1 million for his role in identifying the clothing, although he did not give evidence at the trial.
The previously secret payments were uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which investigates possible miscarriages of justice.
The SCCRC found the information about the request for payments in the private diaries of detectives in the case, but not in their official notebooks.
It was unable to establish exactly how much the brothers received under the Department of Justice’s “reward-for-justice” program, but records show they received “substantial payments” after Megrahi’s trial.
Megrahi was convicted in January 2001 at an extraordinary Scottish court convened in the Netherlands. He mounted an unsuccessful appeal in 2002 and in 2007 the SCCRC sent his case for a subsequent appeal.
He said on Friday: “The commission found documents which they concluded ought to have been disclosed to my defense.”
The papers also cast doubt on evidence relating to Megrahi’s visit to Tony Gauci’s shop days before the bombing.
New evidence suggested the clothing had been bought before Dec. 6, at a time when there was no evidence that Megrahi was in Malta, the SCCRC said.
It also emerged that Scottish police failed to tell Megrahi’s lawyers that another witness, David Wright, had seen two different Libyan men buying similar clothes in Malta on a different day.
Psychologists believe this may have confused Gauci and impaired the prosecution case.
A spokesman for the Scottish government said Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill “supports” Megrahi’s conviction but stood by his decision to free him.
Relatives of the US victims of the bombing were furious at Megrahi’s release, while US President Barack Obama expressed his “disappointment” at the decision.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia