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Lockerbie judges consider verdict
CAMP ZEIST, Netherlands -- Judges at the Lockerbie bombing trial have begun deliberating their verdict -- and will not return to court for almost two weeks. Presiding judge Lord Sutherland said they would reveal their progress on reaching a verdict -- but not the actual verdict -- when they return to court on Tuesday, January 30. He said the three judges needed the time to study all the information presented in the case. He was speaking after lawyers for Libyans Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima finished their closing submissions. The Libyans face life imprisonment if convicted of murdering the 270 people killed when New York-bound Pan Am flight 103 exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988. The three-judge panel has three verdicts to choose from for each defendant: guilty, not guilty or not proven. A verdict of not guilty or not proven would mean acquittal. Earlier in the day the lawyer for one of the two Libyans on trial said prosecutors had failed to prove his client Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima was a mass killer. Lawyer Richard Keen argued in summing-up the case against his client, accused of co-plotting the Lockerbie airline bombing, that the prosecution had piled "inference upon inference." He said prosecutors had failed to prove his client was willing or able to plot and commit mass murder to further the purposes of Libyan intelligence, as the indictment asserts. Fahima and fellow Libyan Abdel Basset al-Megrahi are charged with masterminding the Lockerbie disaster. "In my submissions, it has not been established by coherent, reliable or compelling evidence that (Fahima) was party to any plot to destroy a civil aircraft and murder its occupants," Keen said. Keen added that the Scottish Crown prosecutors' case required far too many leaps of faith on the part of the judges sitting at a special Scottish court in the Netherlands.
"We have an inference upon an inference upon an inference upon an inference, leading to an inference," he said. The prosecution alleges that Megrahi was a Libyan secret agent who along with Fahima used cover as Libyan Arab Airlines employees in Malta to plant the improvised bomb on a Frankfurt-bound flight at Malta's Luqa airport, using stolen baggage tags. In Frankfurt, the suitcase bearing the bomb was allegedly transferred to a Pan Am flight to Heathrow, where it was loaded on to the doomed Pan Am flight 103. Keen said it was unclear why Fahima, a former station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa, would want to further the interests of Libyan intelligence. Even if he did, it was deeply questionable that he had the expertise to ease the passage of the bomb bag onto the Frankfurt-bound flight, he added. Libyan intelligence had its own personnel, not only in Malta but within the staff of Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa, he added. "Even if he had possessed the sort of expertise the Crown attributes to him, the Libyan Intelligence Services would not have gone to him for the furtherance of the alleged plot," he told the court. The onus of proof is on the prosecution, with the defence required only to create "sufficient doubt" to secure acquittal. 'Unusual to put in diary: 'bomb plane''Keen said the fact Fahima maintained his airport pass even after he stopped being station manager proved nothing.
He simply used it as an identity card for everyday business and did not try to pretend he was still station manager, he said. Keen contended that there was not even any evidence Fahima was at Luqa on December 21, 1988, when prosecutors say he helped Megrahi get the bomb bag on to the Frankfurt-bound flight. He argued against the prosecution's contention that Fahima and Megrahi were constantly in each other's company in the days leading up to the Lockerbie bombing. Nor could any decisive proof be drawn from a diary allegedly belonging to Fahima, he said. Numerous entries in the diary, heard in evidence at the trial last October, mentioned Megrahi and an entry made just days before the bombing read: "Take/collect tags from Air Malta" followed by the note "O.K.." "One might write in one's diary 'bomb plane on Tuesday' but it's unusual in a criminal case to record events of a crime in one's diary," Keen said. Keen last November unsuccessfully requested judges throw out the case against Fahima, arguing he had no case to answer. The defence argues that German-based Palestinian radicals with links to the former East German Stasi secret police could have been the true Lockerbie culprits. They have named two groups, the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command and the lesser-known Palestinian Popular Struggle Front. Copyright 2001 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press & Reuters contributed to this report. RELATED STORIES: Lockerbie bomb route questioned RELATED SITES: Scottish Courts | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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