Libyan suspect Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, cleared of bombing in 2000, could face fresh trial – but victims' families are sceptical
The new Libyan government has given British police the green light to mount fresh investigations into the Lockerbie bombing and the shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher, the British foreign minister Alistair Burt has said.
In an interview with the Guardian, Burt said on Thursday he had been told officially during a two-day visit to Tripoli that Libya's interior minister in the new government, sworn in last weekend, had promised to co-operate by allowing detectives into the country to reopen their investigations.
The interior minister, Fawzy Abdel Aal, had agreed to "the early return of the Dumfries and Galloway police in relation to Lockerbie", Burt said.
The country's interim government, the National Transitional Council, had previously given out conflicting signals and appeared to stall on earlier requests to allow Scottish and Metropolitan police detectives into Libya to continue investigations into both cases. Some British officials believe Burt was speaking prematurely and that the deal has yet to be nailed down.
But the comments will give fresh impetus to the Metropolitan police investigation into the unresolved murder of PC Fletcher, who was shot dead outside the Libyan embassy in St James's Square in 1984 as she helped marshall angry protests by Libyan dissidents.
Although sources in the force said they had no direct confirmation from Libyan officials about the new offer, the Met is convinced the fatal shots came from within the embassy and is understood to have specific suspects on the former embassy staff in mind.
Two men were tried and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing after they were surrendered by Colonel Gaddafi's regime. But the Fletcher investigation had been repeatedly thwarted and blocked.
Burt said the Libyan foreign minister had given the same promise on Fletcher."We are very keen that the Metropolitan police should return to continue their investigation," Burt said. "The Libyan government is aware of how important it is."
Libyan officials have given no dates for the visits, but Burt said he expected dates to be confirmed soon. "This is a new government, I think they have a lot on their plate," he said. "They [UK investigators] will be allowed to return, I have no doubt about this."
The new Libyan government's undertaking will also hearten Frank Mulholland, the lord advocate and chief prosecutor for Scotland, who announced several months ago he was reopening prosecution files on Lockerbie.
New laws on double jeopardy in Scotland, which will allow previously cleared suspects to be tried again, came into force in late November. That would allow prosecutors to attempt a fresh trial of Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who stood trial with Megrahi in 2000 in the Lockerbie case but was cleared by the court.
In August, Fhimah denied any links to the atrocity and insisted he too was a victim of Gaddafi, but some US relatives have pressed for both men to be handed over to the US for a fresh trial – moves the Libyans have brushed away.
Mulholland said yesterday: "The trial court held that the bombing of Pan Am 103 and the murder of 270 people was an act of state-sponsored terrorism and that Megrahi did not act alone. This is a live inquiry and Scottish police and prosecutors will continue to pursue the evidence to bring the others involved to justice."
Megrahi's family insisted he was too ill to meet British officials. Nasser al Megrahi, his brother, said he was being cared for by relatives. "He is really ill," he said. "He is in his room, I have not seen him today. He's too tired to see anyone, even us, his family."
He also questioned why Scottish police and prosecutors would want to reopen the case or interview his brother, since the UK authorities had previously agreed to release Megrahi, who is terminally ill with advanced prostate cancer, on compassionate grounds. "Why would they want to reopen the case? That doesn't make sense, it was not the Gaddafi government that made the judgment, it was the Scottish [government]."
At Megrahi's home, a plush villa in a tree-lined street in Tripoli's Damascus district, three men sitting in a blue pick-up truck said they were guards posted there by the family to keep outsiders away. A woman inside the house refused to talk.
"He's not here, he's at his parents old house," said one of the truck's occupants, a bearded middle aged man who said he was a relative but gave no name. "He's very ill, he can't move, he can't speak, he can't even watch TV, so what do they want to talk to him about? There is no case, they closed the case. The guy is too ill to go through all that again."There is also scepticism among British relatives of the 270 victims of the Lockerbie bombing and among legal experts that the Scottish police investigation will lead to new trials, partly because it is now 22 years since the bombing.
Jean Berkley, convenor of the UK Families of Flight 103, said she was pleased that there was renewed interest in the case, but she was not optimistic that a police visit to Tripoli would uncover significant new information. But she said: "We would welcome any attempts to find out more of the truth because we feel that there's a lot we don't know."
Professor Robert Black, the Scottish lawyer who proposed trying Megrahi and Fhimah on neutral ground in the Netherlands, was sceptical that the initiative would lead to a fresh trial. He said if detectives tried to interview Fhimah as a suspect, they would need to apply new Scottish rules requiring his lawyer to be present.
"If they've now got permission to go and look at Libyan archives to see what they can find, fine, but I'm amazed if they think they can go and interview Megrahi: the position of the Crown Office has been we've got Megrahi, we're now looking for others," he said. "I suspect they'll be talking to people who now head the various ministries in Libya to see whether they can find any archives on Lockerbie when it was under the Gaddafi regime."