Lockerbie: A new truth

It was the latest groundbreaking story about the background to the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 unearthed by this paper. It was written by Marcello Mega, a journalist who has an unrivalled knowledge of the case.  His expertise, professionalism and extensive contacts list have enabled him to be first with new Lockerbie stories time and again. It was August 28, 2005, when Scotland on Sunday ran a front-page story headlined: 'Police chief - Lockerbie evidence was faked'.

It was picked up and followed by all of our rivals as well as making the news in papers and on TV stations across the world. Mega revealed how the unnamed officer had already given a statement to the Libyan's lawyers, outlining his concerns about the case.  And it is his testimony, along with many other new revelations that Megrahi and his lawyers hope will this week see his case referred back to the appeal court.

Evidence against the Lockerbie bomber was fabricated and manipulated on both sides of the Atlantic, according to leaked defence documents which appear to undermine the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

Investigators for Megrahi claim to have compelling new evidence of widespread tampering with evidence, missing or overlooked statements, and a concerted attempt to lead investigators away from the original Iranian-backed suspects and towards Libya.

Hundreds of new documents and photographs examined by Scotland on Sunday appear to show many aspects of the Lockerbie prosecution were at best incompetent and at worst amounted to an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

Last night, legal experts and families of the victims reacted with astonishment and outrage to the revelations. Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the disaster, said: "Scottish justice obviously played a leading part in one of the most disgraceful miscarriages of justice in history. The Americans played their role in the investigation and influenced the prosecution."

Megrahi, who was convicted in 2001 of the murder of 270 people in the Lockerbie bombing, will learn on Thursday whether his case will, as expected, be sent back to court by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC).

Megrahi was convicted for the December 1988 bombing on crucial evidence that he bought items of clothing packed into the suitcase containing the bomb and that he was closely associated with the firm that made part of the bomb timer. Evidence that a fragment of bomb timer was implanted in a shirt sealed Megrahi's fate.

But the defence papers to the commission, seen by this newspaper, appear to undermine that chain of evidence. Among the key findings are:

• Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold the clothes to the bomber, gave two earlier statements in which he identified convicted Egyptian terrorist Abu Talb;

• Gauci gave earlier statements saying he did not sell a shirt to the man but six months later remembered selling shirts and the price;

• Two of Gauci's statements are missing altogether;

• A babygro said to have been wrapped around the bomb and shown to the court blown to pieces was recovered intact, according to a statement from the woman who found it;

• A manual for the Toshiba radio containing the bomb was in pieces when shown to the court but was intact when recovered, according to statements from mountain rescuers;

• The discovery of the all-important shirt containing the bomb timer fragment was recorded in May 1989 by a UK forensic scientist and in January 1990 by German investigators. Examination of forensic records shows a "new" page on the discovery was inserted into the record of evidence.

• The same Slalom shirt was in a different condition when shown to the court than when photographed by German investigators.

The defence team believes it was necessary in 1990 for the prosecution to alter evidence, for political reasons. The Gulf War meant it was essential to keep Iran onside and Libya became a suitable scapegoat. Investigators switched from the current known suspects, a Palestinian terror group, the PFLP-GC, and Abu Talb, an Egyptian currently serving life in Sweden.

While the main perpetrators appear to have been CIA officers, according to the defence papers, there is also damning evidence suggesting police officers and other investigators took part in preparing false evidence.

It can also be confirmed today that a former senior Scottish police officer, who worked at a high level on the Lockerbie inquiry, has given statements to the SCCRC in which he is understood to support claims of planted evidence.

A document seen by this newspaper reveals the officer - codenamed "Golfer" - believes "labels and productions from the locus have been interfered with". Golfer also reveals there was no "investigative or operational" reason for the inquiry to switch the inquiry to Libya.

Last night, retired MP and Lockerbie campaigner Tam Dalyell said: "It is time we tried to put right the wrongs that have been perpetrated. This was the most high profile trial internationally that there has ever been, and the conduct of it and the verdict were simply outrageous."

The evidence of Tony Gauci has long been one of the most important - and controversial - elements of the Lockerbie prosecution. The shopkeeper, according to the Crown, sold clothes to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi that could be proved to have been in the same suitcase as the bomb.

But the defence, in key new submissions seen by this newspaper, argues that close examination of Gauci's testimony shows it to be so contradictory that it fatally undermines the case.

In their 82-page judgment asserting Megrahi's guilt, 18 pages were devoted by the judges to Gauci's evidence. They acknowledged on more than one occasion that his identification was "not absolute", but they turned Gauci's doubt into a virtue by emphasising that it underlined his honesty.

The Crown said the purchase of the clothing took place on December 7, 1988, when Megrahi was known to have been in Malta. Gauci later made qualified identifications of Megrahi as the purchaser by means of photographic, ID parade and dock identification. Although Gauci always said Megrahi "resembled" the man, he never categorically identified him. In his initial description, he said the buyer was six feet tall and in his 50s. Megrahi is 5ft 8ins and was 36 at the time.

Megrahi's defence has closely examined every one of Gauci's statements and two earlier ones, apparently overlooked by the court, tell a very different story. Although he remains uncertain, Gauci identifies convicted Egyptian terrorist Abu Talb as the purchaser.

On October 2, 1989, Gauci was shown a photograph of Talb taken from a video. His statement says: "I can state that the photograph I was shown is similar to the man that came to my shop, although I am unable to say that it is definitely the same person."

In his statement, numbered S4677O, given on March 5, 1990, Gauci says that six or eight weeks previously he is shown a copy of an English newspaper by his brother Paul. He says: "He [Paul] came to me and showed me a page of the paper where a picture of a man was printed."

The detective taking the statement then asked if it was Abu Talb and the statement reads: "The witness very positively agreed that it was."

Investigators had to establish a link between Megrahi and a Slalom shirt because the single most important piece of forensic evidence in the case - a fragment of the bomb timer - was said to have emerged from the remnants of the collar of such a shirt.

We can now reveal that Gauci repeatedly insisted he had not sold any shirts to the man. On January 30, 1990, he told Scottish officers: "That man didn't buy any shirts for sure."

But by September 10 that year Gauci remembered finding two empty boxes in his storeroom that had contained Slalom shirts, and he recalled selling shirts to the man. Not only that, he could now remember the exact prices.

In all, 19 of Gauci's statements were disclosed. However, the defence team has closely examined the numbering of the documents and believe two are missing. Gauci's very first statement is numbered S4677, and all subsequent statements are numbered S4677a, S4677b and so on. But S4677J and S4677S are missing.

The babygro and the Toshiba manual

The defence has highlighted bizarre inconsistencies relating to the state of key evidence between discovery and presentation in court. How could a babygro shown in fragments to the court have been intact when discovered? And how could a paper manual for the radio cassette recorder used to hide the bomb have been in tiny pieces when shown to the court but whole when recovered from the Northumberland countryside?

Both items were crucial in building the circumstantial case against Megrahi. The disturbing questions raised about what happened to them could go a long way to undermining the prosecution.

At the trial in the Netherlands, forensic scientist Dr Thomas Hayes spoke of having identified the charred remains of a babygro, in the suitcase containing the bomb, from its label, which was sufficiently intact to lead investigators to Malta.

Megrahi's defence team has submitted statements to the commission from the finders of the babygro, two members of a mountain rescue team on an organised search of their area for debris and evidence from the explosion. In their statements, they say that what they found was not a fragment, but an intact garment.

In the application to the commission, the defence team indicates that it has noted a statement from the finders of the item designated PK/669. The report says: "In the statements noted from these witnesses, they are both adamant that they remembered finding an intact babygro."

The Toshiba BomBeat radio was vital to the prosecution because fragments of the device were found with a tiny piece of bomb mechanism later pinned on Megrahi. But there is troubling new evidence that the accompanying manual was intact when discovered, not in tiny fragments as claimed by the prosecution.

A 70-year-old Northumberland women, who gave evidence at the trial, and her husband, found the manual and handed it to police.

In her statement to the defence team she says: "It seemed to be a manual, ie an instruction manual or part of it. It was one sheet as I recall.

"It was intact. I did not recall seeing any burn marks. There were no tears and it definitely was intact."

Some time later, she recalls, two Scottish detectives visited her with the sheet from the manual, but it was charred at one corner. They told her it was an important piece of evidence and had been close to the explosion.

She goes on: "Because I obviously trusted the police I was able to say at the time that what they were showing me must have been what I had found...

"One thing I am absolutely positive about and that is that the paper that I have found was whole and intact. It did not represent various bits and pieces."

The mystery of Page 51

The scientist Hayes kept a detailed record of his forensic examination of the wreckage but that is also the subject of new and troubling evidence before the commission. It appears a "new" page 51 was inserted to his records at some stage, possibly to give the impression the work had been carried out earlier.

The "old" page 51, dated May 15, 1989 contained little of interest. But the "new" page 51, now dated May 12, 1989 details the all-important discovery of Slalom shirt fragments containing the bomb timer mechanism. The evidence for the addition lies in the pagination of pages 52 to 56, which all show that the numbers have been overwritten.

To make matters worse, the defence say they have evidence from German police files that the timer fragment was discovered in the shirt on January 22, 1990.

The shirt

The state of the shirt is also being used by the defence to try to undermine the prosecution case. German police files contain photographic records that show a fragment of the Slalom shirt with most of the breast pocket intact.

But images of the shirt seen at the trial appear to show it in a different condition, with a deep triangular tear extending well into the pocket. Other experts have given statements to the defence that the shirt had the "wrong" label: a Slalom label on an authentic blue shirt would have had blue writing, but the label matched to the shirt by investigators and later presented to the court had brown writing.

It is also claimed that the shirt was a boys' shirt, not an adult size. This was pointed out by shirt-makers who assisted the defence team and explained that the breast pocket was 2cm narrower than that on an adult-sized shirt.

The report submitted to the commission suggests: "There has been a co-ordinated effort to mislead the court in relation to this item, amounting to a perversion of the course of justice.

"It will be asserted that the item [the shirt collar] could not have been examined ...on 12 May 1989 and that the items of evidence were not extracted from it at that time as claimed by him in his evidence."

ABU TALB emerged soon after the Lockerbie bombing as a key suspect in the atrocity. Talb, an Egyptian, belonged to a splinter group of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC).

Shortly after the focus of the inquiry switched to Libya, Talb demonstrated his murderous talents with a bomb attack on a Danish airline office that left one dead. Jailed for life, he caused enormous controversy by appearing at the Lockerbie trial as a prosecution witness, earning lifetime immunity in return.

But defence documents sent to the commission, and seen by Scotland on Sunday, once again support the theory that it was Talb and his associates, not Megrahi, who blew Flight 103 out of the sky.

New information about Talb and his activities in Europe has been presented to Megrahi's defence team by Robert Baer, a retired CIA agent, who has provided evidence and made statements that are now before the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Baer's evidence, based on sightings of top-level intelligence information and backed up by documentary records he has seen, indicates Iran was behind the bombing and paid the PFLP-GC to carry it out.

The report to the commission says: "Both Talb and the PFLP-GC received substantial payments after the bombing - [Baer] has details of the bank accounts: $11m to the PFLP-GC in Lausanne on 23.12.88 [two days after the bombing]; $500,000 to Talb 25.4.89 in Frankfurt. Both Talb and [Hafez] Dalkamoni [leader of the PFLP-GC cell in Germany] appeared in the Iranian Role [sic] of Honour in 1990 for great service to the Iranian Revolution."

Baer, who was directly involved in the Lockerbie investigation until 1991, has assured the defence team that the payments were made by the Iranian government.

Baer had previously offered to meet the defence team leading Megrahi's first appeal, the same lawyers who represented him at his trial, but his offer was rejected and the new evidence he was offering was not raised at that time.

Baer has been able to give a unique insight into the internal views and discussions of senior US investigators on Lockerbie. He has made it clear to the defence team that even after the focus shifted in public to Libya, agents remained convinced of involvement by the PFLP-GC and Talb.

Baer says the $11m paid to the PFLP-GC in Lausanne, Switzerland, was transferred to another account held by the terrorists at the Banque Nationale de Paris and was later moved to the Hungarian Trade Development Bank.

Baer has also revealed the CIA had intelligence from totally reliable sources that Talb and Dalkamoni were Iranian agents who earned their places on the government roll of honour for their services to the "Islamic revolutionary struggle against the west".

The defence also has evidence that American agencies regarded Talb and his associates as the real bombers, long after a warrant was issued for Megrahi's arrest in 1991.

Confidential documents from the US Defence Intelligence Agency, dated January 1993, were still describing the PFLP-GC as the Lockerbie bombers. What the agency discussed in private was very different from what it was telling the world. It has also emerged that, as recently as 2002, a year after Megrahi was convicted and just a few weeks before his appeal was dismissed, CIA internal documents named Talb as the bomber.

It's well known the very first suspects in the days after the bombing were members of the PFLP- GC, led from Damascus by a former army officer, Ahmed Jibril, and funded by Iran.

Jibril's right-hand man, Dalkamoni, was a frequent visitor to Europe. In 1988, Dalkamoni had a cell operating in Germany. Among them was the group's master bomb-maker, Marwan Khreesat.

According to the theory, Talb was dealing with the cell from his base in Sweden and travelled to Frankfurt on more than one occasion, as well as visiting Malta where he may have bought clothes from shopkeeper Tony Gauci that were later found amid the Lockerbie wreckage.

In October, an intelligence operation codenamed Autumn Leaves led the German secret police to raid the flat in Neuss where Khreesat was making his bombs, concealed within Toshiba radio-cassette recorders. Four devices were recovered, but Khreesat, a Jordanian, revealed later that a fifth device had been taken away by Dalkamoni before the raid and was never recovered. It is believed Dalkamoni passed the bomb to Talb, who had the airline contacts that allowed him to get it on to Flight 103.

Iran had instructed the group to avenge the deaths of 290 people caused when an American vessel shot down an Iranian Airbus over the Gulf six months before Lockerbie.

Khreesat revealed in a remarkable interview with John F Kennedy's former press spokesman, Pierre Salinger, that he always believed it was his bomb that had been used to bring down Pan Am 103.

His bombs were operated by a barometric pressure device that triggered a simple timer with a range up to 45 minutes. Each of the devices recovered in the raid were set to run for about 30 minutes after being triggered. On a jumbo jet, the pressure change would have occurred seven minutes into the flight and an explosion would have followed some 30 minutes later.

Pan Am 103 blew up 38 minutes into its flight. Yet if the explosion had been triggered by the sophisticated MeBo timer, the device would have had a range of 99 hours. Any bomber who wanted to get away with the crime would surely have triggered the explosion at a time when the plane was bound to be over the Atlantic Ocean.

Conspiracies

The bombing was carried out by the CIA and the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) to cover up a drug-trafficking network they had created to fund the release of six US hostages held in the Lebanon.

The plan is said to have been organised with the help of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, which used its contacts in Hezbollah, the pro-Palestinian group behind the Americans' kidnapping, to arrange heroin shipments.

The narcotics, paid for by the White House, would be shipped out of Lebanon on Pan Am flights by couriers into America, and the money subsequently gleaned from its sale was then used to pay the kidnappers' ransom demands.

But during one of these 'runs', one of the bags containing the drugs was swapped for one containing a bomb, planted by a group on behalf of the Iranian government, which wanted revenge for the downing of an Iran Air jet in 1988.

• It has been alleged the US government allowed the bomb plot to go ahead, because on board was Major Charles McKee, a US intelligence expert who had discovered the drug-trafficking scam.

• The US government had been tipped off about an attack prior to Flight 103 happening. Some claim a secret memo, passed to American embassy staff, warned of a threat to bomb a Pan Am flight returning to the US 10 days before Lockerbie.

This led a number of senior US personnel to change their travel plans and switch from Pan Am 103 to other flights.

• Rescue volunteers discovered a large red tarpaulin on the ground shortly after the crash, but when they approached, armed men in a US helicopter warned them off. Likewise, local farmer Innes Graham was reportedly told by American-sounding individuals to stay away from a copse on the outskirts of Lockerbie.

• Two coachloads of American investigators arrived at the scene the day after the crash and among their luggage was a single coffin. Labour MP Tam Dalyell later alleged they had stolen a body. A local doctor is said to have labelled and tagged 59 corpses only to return the following day to find the US authorities had re-tagged all of them, but now there were only 58 bodies.

• Some say there was not even a bomb, and the explosion was by an electrical fault or decompression.

A retired Scottish police officer who worked at a senior level on the Lockerbie case has made a series of astounding allegations against his fellow investigators, accusing them of tampering with evidence.

The detective, who is not named but is given the codename Golfer throughout the defence submission to the SCCRC, makes a number of dramatic claims. Foremost among them is his contention that bogus evidence became central to the case against Megrahi, 55.

If they are proved to be true, his astonishing claims that evidence was fabricated and planted to create the Maltese chain of evidence linking to Megrahi will cause irreparable damage to a Scottish justice system already tarnished by its handling of the case.

Golfer alleges pieces of supposedly bomb-damaged clothing, parts of a timer circuit board and an instruction manual for a Toshiba radio-cassette recorder were added to the evidence to lay a trail that would lead to the 'bomber'.

In a damning indictment of Scottish justice, he claims senior members of the Lockerbie investigating team agreed to manufacture and manipulate evidence to help secure a suspect and conviction.

He has also claimed that police statements from the key prosecution witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci - the only man to [partially] identify Megrahi in the chain of events outlined by the Crown - either went missing or were altered before the Libyan's trial.

In particular, he says that Gauci's first statement was altered, as he was shown the original version by a colleague, and that when Gauci was first shown photographs of both accused, he had failed to identify either of them.

His evidence also casts fresh light on one of the unresolved conflicts during the trial of Megrahi at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2000-01.

During the trial, a detective attracted criticism from the judges for failing to explain why he had altered the label on the bag holding the single most vital piece of evidence.

The officer had initially labelled the bag 'cloth (charred)' but had later overwritten the word 'cloth' with 'debris'.

The bag contained pieces of a shirt collar and fragments of materials said to have been extracted from it, including the tiny piece of circuit board identified as coming from an MST timer made by the Swiss firm MeBo.

The judges said in their judgement that his evidence had been "at worst evasive and at best confusing".

Golfer has now told Megrahi's legal team that the detective had told him he had not been responsible for changing the label. If this were true, questions would have to be asked about why the officer did not explain this to the court.

Golfer also claimed that the detective knew he would be questioned about the label change, the only one in the entire case of thousands of productions, and was so nervous about it that he had trouble sleeping the night before he gave evidence.

Golfer has also revealed that an undeclared American passport was found among the masses of debris recovered after the atrocity. He said it had been issued to Khaled Jafaar, known to have been involved in controlled drug runs that the CIA was allowing to happen.

There were early suggestions that he may have unwittingly carried the bomb on board, believing that he was carrying a suitcase concealing drugs. But it emerged later that he was in the service of the CIA.

Golfer makes it clear that most of his colleagues were entirely committed to pursuing a case against the first suspects, the PFLP-GC, and could see no reason to deviate from that path when they were instructed to look to Libyan involvement.

The report to the commission says: "When this happened, many senior officers were unhappy."

The identity of Golfer remains a highly guarded secret. The defence report says he is an "ex-police officer who worked at a senior level in the Lockerbie investigation". It cautions that his evidence is sensitive and requires investigation.

Golfer will be seen as having betrayed his former colleagues. Paradoxically, if his claims are thoroughly investigated and prove to be true, they could yet be crucial to providing the relatives of the dead with the truth they have been craving for almost 19 years.

Within two hours of Flight 103 disintegrating over Lockerbie, American search teams had descended on the scene.

On any given day in Lockerbie, four police officers would be on duty in the immediate area. The day after the explosion there were 1,100, along with a further 1,000 military personnel.

Officially at least, the search for the bombers was headed by Dumfries and Galloway Police. But behind the scenes, both MI5 and MI6 had been tasked with using their own people and a network of informers to unmask the killers.

One Lockerbie family came to symbolise the tragedy more than any other when a row of neat houses in Sherwood Crescent was turned into an inferno by the falling wing of the Pan Am plane.

Steven Flannigan, aged 14, lost his parents and his 10-year-old sister Joanne in the disaster when the wing crashed onto their home.

His brother David, then 18, was living in Blackpool at the time.

No trace was found of the boys' parents, Tom, 44, and Katherine, 41, but their sister's body was discovered in the rubble. The only tangible reminder of the home was a plastic watering can, which somehow survived the inferno.

Minutes before the tragedy, Flannigan had gone to a house two doors away so a neighbour could inspect his sister's bicycle, which was believed to have a puncture.

For years afterwards Steven was said to be troubled by the quirk of fate that saved his life and gave him the label 'Orphan of Lockerbie'.

When compensation payments were awarded, the Flannigan brothers shared £3.1m but five years after the bombing David died in Thailand at the age of 23, drinking his way through his fortune.

Steven was adopted by a family in Lockerbie and a few years later he met and fell in love with Lisa Gregory, a Buckinghamshire girl who had moved to the town with her family.

The pair were together for two years and had a son, Luke, in 1997, before splitting up. However, Steven was still close to his former girlfriend and his son and kept regular contact after he moved south of the Border to start a new life.

But that too ended in tragedy. In August 2000 he was hit and killed by a train near Trowbridge, Wiltshire, after drinking 14 pints of lager at a celebration for his 26th birthday.

The week before he died he was in Scotland to celebrate Luke's third birthday.

Initially there was speculation that his death might have been suicide, a claim refuted by the inquest which found the cause of death to be accidental.

He was buried alongside his brother at Lockerbie's Dryfesdale Cemetery overlooking the Garden of Remembrance where their sister is buried.

Afterwards Luke's mother commented that the terrorist bomb had eventually "got them all - first Kath, Tom and Joanne, then David, and finally it caught up with Steven. Lockerbie has claimed its last victim."

Luke, now nine, recently received £6.25m compensation from the Libyan government. The money went to the child because he is the last in the line of Flannigans affected by the tragedy. On his father's death Luke inherited shares said to be worth £1.5m from earlier compensation paid to Steven by the airline Pan Am.

The Flannigans at number 16 were among 11 locals killed in their homes as they were preparing for the forthcoming Christmas festivities. Yet 19 years on few relatives of the victims remain in the town.

The Flannigans' neighbours at number 15, John and Rosalind Somerville and their two children Paul, 13, and Lyndsey, 10, were all killed in the disaster. The family were incomers and had no relatives in the town.

At number 13, Dora and Maurice Henry were waiting for a visit from the local priest, Father Patrick Keegans, when their house was flattened. Their relatives have since moved away.

Jean Murray, an 82-year-old spinster who lived at number 14, was also killed by falling wreckage. Her home was destroyed and her body was never found. She had a nephew who later moved out of the area.

Molly Oliver is the only close relative of a Lockerbie victim still living in the town and is also understood to have been awarded a compensation payout by the Libyan government. Her mother Mary Lancaster lived at number 11 and was 81 at the time of her death. Nothing remained of Lancaster but an artificial kneecap, which was identified by the doctor who had implanted it.

Oliver has said in the past that she felt the trial was "a waste of time and money". Speaking in January 2001, shortly before the verdict was delivered, she said: "It really doesn't mean anything to me. All the trials in the world can't bring her back. I'm happy if it gives some comfort to those poor people who lost someone on the plane, but I was there that night and I feel those who were closest to it want to manage it quietly, in their own way.

"I always believed that if these two men had any part at all, they were only lowly minions. The trial has probably achieved no more than give a feeling of security to the real perpetrators."

The Lockerbie bombing was not just the biggest mass murder in British history, it was a horrific crime committed against the people of the western world by extremists. As such, more than 18 years on, the pain remains acute for thousands of people on both sides of the Atlantic. Its particular significance in Scotland can never be overstated: the day that Pan Am 103 was brought down, killing 259 on board and 11 on the ground, was "our" 9/11.

As such, it was to great national relief that someone was brought to justice for the atrocity. After an eight-month trial, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was found guilty on January 31, 2001, and sentenced to life imprisonment. His co-accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was acquitted. It was one of the most challenging trials in Scottish history, made all the more distinctive by being held in a special court in the Netherlands.

It is difficult today to appreciate just how much work had gone into the effort to bring Megrahi to trial. The investigation, led gallantly by Dumfries and Galloway Police, involved fingertip searches in harrowing conditions which turned up more than 10,000 pieces of debris - all of which had to be tagged and analysed as evidence. It seemed a miracle that a successful case could be built, and a credit to the Scottish justice system that it was.

Sending Megrahi to Barlinnie, and then onto Greenock Prison, was not the end of the matter, of course. He continued to protest his innocence, notably through an unsuccessful appeal in 2002. And then there were some of the more lurid theories about what really happened to Pan Am 103: rumours about the involvement of Iran, of South Africa, or of the CIA - stoked by unsubstantiated tales of money and drugs being found in the aftermath of the crash. There is no reason to take any of these versions seriously, and British intelligence and the Scottish justice system have been right not to do so.

But it would be as perverse to keep a closed mind on the matter of the guilt of Megrahi. Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died on the airplane, has said that he went to the trial sure of Megrahi's guilt but left it convinced of his innocence. Legal experts such as Professor Robert Black remain critical of the safety of the Libyan's conviction.

Scotland on Sunday makes no definitive claims for the evidence we present today, which was gathered by Megrahi's defence team in their efforts to launch another appeal. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission will on Thursday reveal the findings of its own inquiries, and then it will be for the authorities to determine what happens next. In publishing details of the defence case, we are not saying that Megrahi is innocent or guilty.

What is clear, however, is that there are question marks over some aspects of his conviction, which was based on circumstantial evidence. His defence team have identified at least five serious anomalies, some of which suggest that evidence was wrongly handled and even manipulated. Some appear to give foundation to serious allegations that senior Scottish policemen colluded to frame Megrahi while preventing the true mastermind behind the disaster from being held to account.

If this sounds like yet another mad conspiracy theory, remember that the evidence in this newspaper today will form the basis of a case for an appeal which Megrahi's lawyers are convinced they can win. And the witness statements and photographs we reproduce - including that heartbreaking scorched fragment of a babygro - are the real thing, reproduced from the actual files on the case compiled by investigators.

Faced with such evidence, it is clear that Megrahi's conviction merits further attention. There is sufficient doubt for there to be another appeal - and only an appeal can end that doubt.

Lockerbie was a terrible crime that brought a small town in South West Scotland to the notice of the world, ended 270 lives and destroyed many more. Today, 18 years on, we still cannot be certain that the right man is locked up in a Scottish jail for committing the worst crime in our modern history.

Authorities knew they had enough evidence to prosecute Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi when an FBI expert identified a minute piece of circuit board found in the collar of a Slalom shirt recovered from the bomb scene.

That discovery allowed forensic scientist Thomas Thurman to state it had been manufactured by the MeBo company, a Swiss firm which claimed it only supplied such material to Libya and the East German Stasi. Finding that piece of plastic was the breakthrough investigators on both sides of the Atlantic had been craving.

Some of the bomb-damaged clothing discovered amid the wreckage - including the shirt containing the vital clue - was traced to 'Mary's House', a small store in the Maltese seaside town of Sliema run by Tony Gauci.

He would eventually identify Megrahi - an alleged Libyan intelligence agent - as the individual who bought the very same clothes on Wednesday, December 7, 1988.

This added another piece to the jigsaw, as the Americans had documentary proof Megrahi - who worked for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA) at Malta's Luqa Airport - was on the island that day. The Americans further alleged they could link Megrahi to MeBo because he was such a regular visitor to the firm's Zurich HQ he had his own office there.

He and his co-accused, Ali-Amin Khalifa Fhimah - a fellow LAA worker, who was later acquitted of murder - are believed already to have been under observation by the CIA because they were thought to be working to try to circumvent recently imposed UN sanctions.

The fact Megrahi worked at Luqa Airport was the icing on the cake for the Americans. It was from here they claimed the brown Samsonite suitcase bomb had been loaded onto Air Malta flight KM180 to Frankfurt before being transferred to Pan Am flight 103A.

If all that was not enough, the Americans had a star witness, a Libyan double agent, Abdul Majid Giaka, who would testify he saw Megrahi at Luqa Airport struggling with a brown case hours before the tragedy unfolded.

When the trial of Megrahi and Fhimah eventually began on May 3, 2000, it was the culmination of nine years of intensive diplomatic negotiations.

It had involved such diverse political figures as Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan and Robin Cook, each using their own personal skills and influence to coerce the Libyans into handing over the two defendants.

After suspicion fell upon the regime run by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the United Nations, under fierce pressure from the Americans, imposed a series of sanctions against the North African state when it refused to give up the two suspects.

The political situation initially appeared gridlocked, though, because Gaddafi was adamant he would not hand over the pair to stand trial in Britain.

Realising the impasse, it was Cook, then Foreign Secretary, who contacted Mandela, who was on good terms with the Libyan leader, and asked him to help.

The former South African president did just that, but also recruited Kofi Annan, at the time UN chief, to negotiate with him.

The main stumbling block was the location of the trial.

Eventually, with the help of Scottish law expert Professor Robert Black, it was mooted the proceedings could take place in the Netherlands.

This was more suitable to Gaddafi

and the suspects were handed over to the British in Holland on Monday, April 5, 1999, hours before UN sanctions were lifted.

The trial was held at Camp Zeist, a former Nato airbase situated near the Hague.

It took a total of 84 days of evidence, spread out over eight months, during which 230 witnesses were called, 10,232 pages of transcript compiled, as well as 621 exhibits, before the judges came to a decision on Wednesday, January, 31, 2001.

But almost immediately, there was uproar in certain legal circles at Megrahi's conviction and despite it being Britain's most expensive murder trial - a conservative estimate puts the cost at £80m - and one that was years in the planning, the case of the Lockerbie bomber remains even more controversial today than it was back then.

Jim Swire called on Alex Salmond last night to make use of Scotland's devolved powers to order the "full, powerful and independent inquiry" the relatives of those who died desperately want.

He said: "I attended every day of the trial at Camp Zeist and saw every moment of evidence. In that time, I was converted from believing the two Libyans must be guilty to believing they were scapegoats in an international game. Somehow, listening to the same evidence, the judges managed to bring in a verdict of guilty against Megrahi.

"Scottish justice played a leading part in one of the most disgraceful miscarriages of justice in history. The Americans played their role in the investigation and influenced the prosecution, but it was led by the Scottish legal system.

"These revelations, if they are proved to be true, are potentially so serious the legal system could go belly up. My fear is that if that happens, we will again be defrauded of the right to know what we need to know.

"We need the politicians in the new Scottish government to take the lead and I am optimistic. Successive Westminster governments have denied us the right to know what happened to our loved ones. There are already signs that Alex Salmond wants to undo some of the malpractices of the past, and the Lockerbie investigation is clearly one of them.

"The Executive has the power to order an inquiry with the power to summon people to give evidence under oath, whether they want to or not, and we will call on Mr Salmond to use those powers to give us the answers we need."

The retired MP Tam Dalyell, who has campaigned tirelessly on Lockerbie for many years, immediately lent his support to Swire. He said: "It's long overdue that we should know the truth. I would support his plea without reservation."

Dalyell added: "On Wednesday, June 6, I went to see Megrahi in prison. He told me, as he has told me in the past, that he has never met Tony Gauci, and he told me he was not a terrorist but a sanctions buster for Libyan Arab Airlines and the oil industry, securing parts and equipment they could not easily buy because of sanctions. I believe him.

"It is time we tried to put right the wrongs that have been perpetrated. This was the most high-profile trial internationally there has ever been, and the conduct of it and the verdict were simply outrageous."