A top-secret document in the Lockerbie bombing appeal that has confirmed beyond doubt that the bomb timer had been supplied to countries other than Libya, and that the attack was more likely the work of Palestinian terrorists, has once again raised questions on the testimony of Malta key witness Tony Gauci.
Gauci’s testimony at the Lockerbie trial was crucial for former Libyan secret agent Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s conviction. He told the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands that the Libyan had bought clothes from his shop which the prosecution claimed were packed into the suitcase bomb that exploded over Lockerbie on December 21 1988.
Megrahi’s lawyer claim Gauci was allegedly offered a $2 million reward in return for giving evidence, and say they have evidence that detectives investigating the bombing recommended that Tony Gauci, a shopkeeper from Malta, be given the payment after the case ended.
Megrahi is serving life for his part in the bombing of the Pan-Am airline over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, and the murder of 270 people.
But the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission’s three-year investigation into whether Megrahi suffered a miscarriage of justice sent the case back into appeal.
The document, passed to the Commission by a foreign power, gives “considerable detail” on how the use of a small bomb concealed inside a radio-cassette recorder was consistent with Palestinian terrorists rather than Libyans.
Scotland’s senior judge Lord Hamilton is now calling on the British government to provide him with the documents, which are crucial to the appeal by Megrahi against his conviction.
British Foreign Secretary David Milliband has declared the documents secret under a Public Interest Immunity (PII) order. The UK attorney general is arguing the disclosure of the documents would result in “real harm to the UK national security and international relations.”
A source to Scotland on Sunday claimed the documents contain considerable detail about the method used to conceal the bomb, which is linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), the first suspects in the case.
The newspaper also claims the document was provided by Germany.
It is believed the Semtex bomb used in the bombing had been stolen from a PFPL-GC cell operating in Neuss, Germany. The cell was cracked by German secret police, who were told by the Jordanian bomb maker Marwan Khreesat, that a fifth device had been removed from the flat.
Iranian defector Abolghasem Mesbahi, who provided Germans with intelligence, had already claimed in 1996 that the bombing been ordered by Tehran, not Tripoli.