What an excellent in-depth article on Douglas Kmiec, the US ambassador to Malta (31 January, 2010).
Malta’s neutrality exists despite her position at the cross roads of Mediterranean life, where the Lockerbie trial did suggest the transport of terrorist related materials into the island from Tripoli.
However no evidence led to support the view that Megrahi (the convicted Libyan), had breached security at your Luqa airport. Indeed all evidence supported the view that your security was far superior to that at Heathrow, whence the Lockerbie aircraft actually took off.
Concealed from the court till after the verdict was the fact that Heathrow airport had been broken into in the early hours of the day of the disaster at a point close to where the Lockerbie bags were to be loaded that evening. Had the court known of that, the verdict against the Libyan Megrahi could not I believe have been possible, and Malta would have been entirely out of the frame.
You can imagine that we need to know who concealed the Heathrow information and why. To that end, we are now considering legal action to force our government to divulge the truth about the whole case.
It appears that the truth would totally exonerate your island.
However for Douglas Kmiec or at least for his administration hitherto, there has been a blank refusal to consider whether the Lockerbie trial may have been a miscarriage of justice. That is why I have penned a letter to President Obama, who seems to me to have a great integrity and keenness to play straight and to follow truth and the use of reconciliation rather than the blind enraged use of force.
Dr Jim Swire
UK,
father of Flora, murdered at Lockerbie 21/12/88
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