I.P.O. Information Service
LOCKERBIE CASE
Declassified documents reveal doubts about Maltese key witness
Statement by Dr Hans Köchler
International Observer, appointed by the United Nations, at the
Scottish Court in the Netherlands (2000-2002)
Vienna,
Austria,
21 December 2021
The recently disclosed documents from the Chambers of the Lord Advocate
and the Crown Office fully confirm the doubts I raised in my original
reports on the Lockerbie trial and appeal in 2001 and 2002.
In my report of February 3, 2001, submitted to the
Secretary-General of the United Nations, I stated, inter alia,
that the only guilty verdict in the case “is particularly
incomprehensible in view of the admission by the judges
themselves that the identification of the (…) accused by the Maltese
shop owner [Tony Gauci] was ‘not absolute’ (…) and that there was a
‘mass of conflicting evidence’.” In this report, I also shared my
concerns about political interference into the investigation. Again, in
my report of 26 March 2002 on the appeal proceedings, I raised further
doubts about the “trustworthiness and reliability of the prosecution
witness [Gauci], on whose testimony the verdict substantially depended.”
Also, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) on 28 June
2007 stated “that there is
no reasonable basis in the trial court's judgment for its conclusion
that the purchase of the items [clothes that were found in the wreckage
of the Pan Am plane] from Mary's House [Mr. Gauci’s shop in Malta] took
place on 7 December 1988.”
In light of the new revelations, I am even more convinced that a
miscarriage of justice occurred and the only convicted Libyan national
was not guilty as charged. For me it is beyond comprehension how – in a
case almost entirely based on circumstantial evidence, with the key
witness having received huge amounts of money for his testimony –
Scottish judges could repeatedly reject an appeal. The additional
evidence that has now become available further strengthens the case for
a new posthumous appeal to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
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