One might assume that the truth about the bombing might finally emerge - but that hope could be premature
The death on Sunday of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person to be convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, removes one running sore in relations between London and Washington. There was fury in the US when the former Libyan intelligence officer was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government three years ago after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. There was outrage when Megrahi returned to Tripoli to a hero's welcome, escorted by Saif al-Islam, and renewed charges that it was all part of another dirty piece of British realpolitik with the Gaddafi regime, involving lucrative oil and gas deals. There is no room in this anger, for the thought that the Scottish legal process could act independently of London or that doctors genuinely thought that Megrahi had only months to live.
In reality, the death of the man who pleaded his innocence right up until the very end changes little. The horrific crime of Pan Am Flight 103 leaves the families of the victims as cruelly divided today as they have always been. Some, like Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, believe Megrahi is an unrepentant murderer who is finally seeing justice (presumably in hell). And others, just as bereaved, like Jim Swire, who saw Megrahi in Tripoli last year, believe evidence yet to be released will prove his innocence.
It is undoubtedly the case that question marks linger over the evidence provided to the original trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands: differences were found in the metal coatings and the circuit board of the timer fragment used in the bombing and ones supplied to the Libyans; the only person to identify Megrahi, the Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, was offered a reward of $2m by the US, changed his story many times and his evidence could well be unreliable. If the evidence provided at the trial is correct, Megrahi carried out the attack using his own passport, staying in his regular hotel, using regular flights to and from Malta, and a timer the Libyans believed was made exclusively for them. The court's inference that the bomb was transferred from a feeder flight from Frankfurt was also challenged by a security guard at Heathrow who revealed a break-in to Pan Am's baggage area 17 hours before the bombing. Little of this has been tested in court, because Megrahi dropped his appeal just before he was released. Other significant doubts about the conviction have been raised by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which spent three years studying the evidence. Officially the case remains open and the lord advocate Frank Mulholland and the FBI chief Robert Mueller travelled recently to Tripoli as an advance party for Scottish investigators from the Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway police. Between them, and the Libyans who have suffered as much as anyone from Gaddafi's regime, one might assume that the truth about the bombing might finally emerge. But that hope could be premature.
First, with local elections in Benghazi and national elections in a month's time, the Libyan authorities have other things on their minds and Lockerbie is not top of their list of Gaddafi's crimes – the massacre at Abu Salim prison is. Second, there is little political incentive for either Britain or the US to go where the evidence on this leads them. Far better to let the investigation continue to an inconclusive end, in the knowledge that there were few members of the Gaddafi regime in on the secret and fewer still will be alive to tell the tale.
There are many reasons for delaying an independent judicial inquiry, not least the distant prospect of more criminal trials. But if ever a crime of this magnitude warranted an independent review it is this. Even if it is eventually found that Megrahi's conviction was safe, it would provide a forum for making all the evidence public, including the SCCRC's report, and for putting to rest all doubts. Nor is there any comfort to be obtained from the $2.76bn Libya paid to the victims' families. In the end Megrahi outlived his leader by seven months, but both may well have taken the truth of what happened to their grave.