Lockerbie bombing: Libyans asked for help by Scottish prosecutors

Assistance sought from National Transitional Council after senior defectors from Muammar Gaddafi's regime claimed he was implicated in 1988 atrocity

Scottish prosecutors have formally asked Libya's interim government to help uncover fresh evidence and witnesses in the Lockerbie bombing case.

The Crown Office said it had approached the National Transitional Council (NTC) for help in its reopened investigation into the atrocity, when a bomb in the cargo hold brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over the town of Lockerbie in December 1988.

The inquiry was reopened after former Libyan intelligence agent Abdelbaset al Megrahi, the only person convicted of the bombing, was released from prison on compassionate grounds two years ago.

Senior lawyers are sceptical about the decision to approach the NTC but the Crown Office said the trial court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, which acquitted Megrahi's alleged accomplice Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah, had ruled that Megrahi had not acted alone.

Its hopes that further evidence could emerge were strengthened after senior defectors from the Gaddafi regime claimed the former Libyan leader had been implicated in the bombing.

Legal sources with knowledge of the case pointed out that the Crown Office was also braced for the publication in the next few months of a report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) stating that Megrahi may have been wrongly convicted.

The SCCRC's new evidence led to Megrahi's appeal, which was halted when he was released early after his prostate cancer became terminal. The Scottish government has promised legislation allowing the SCCRC's report to be published.

The report will be censored to remove a secret intelligence report from another government believed to be Germany which raises significant doubts about the prosecution case against Megrahi. The then foreign secretary, David Miliband, issued a public interest immunity certificate banning its publication in 2008.

"Locker bie remains an open inquiry concerning the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi in the murder of 270 people," a Crown Office spokesman said.

"The Crown will continue to pursue lines of inquiry that become available and, following recent events in Libya, has asked the national transitional council, through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, for assistance with the investigation."

A legal source said he would be "extremely surprised" if any new prosecution was ever mounted, because of the time since the attack, the reliability of the evidence and the difficulties in apprehending any new suspects. "I can't imagine for a moment that there's going to be prosecutions," the source said. "This is posturing for the relatives in America."


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