Afore I delve much further into all that’s Lockerbesque it is perhaps worth taking stock. The fundamental question is whether the judges at Camp Zeist were right to find Megrahi guilty. If they were then, well – we could do something less important like discuss football or whether BP had a hand in his release. Let’s take a shufti at the most important questions for a prosecution…

Has anyone confessed? No. (Some nut or famewhore might have done but they’re not our – or anyone’s – concern.)

Is there any direct evidence? No. (According to Richard Marquise, the FBI’s investigator, “there was a lot of circumstantial evidence…and that’s all.”)

So how about that circumstantial evidence? What evidence? Al Megrahi was linked to the bomb by clothes found wrapped about it, which it’s claimed he’d bought in Malta weeks before the tragedy. The witness, however – Tony Gauci, a shopkeeper – offered no clear identification and was doubtful and conflicted. His statements implied he’d seen the man at a date when Megrahi wasn’t even on the island. Professor Steven Clark, an expert on witness identifying, said this part of the inquiry “define[d] precisely the conditions which research and past wrongful convictions show to be the cause of mistaken identifications“. An unreliable witness then, who wasn’t sure he’d seen the suspect and by his own evidence could likely not have done. Convinced? The judges also ruled the bomb was planted at Luqa airport where Megrahi’s co-accused, Al Amin Fhimah, had worked. There’s no real evidence of this, however, and even the judges shiftily admitted to an “absence of any explanation of the method by which the…suitcase might have been placed on board“; a “major difficulty” for their case. In 1993 Air Malta sued Granada Television for asserting that the bomb had slipped through their controls at Luqa. It was settled out of court, thus saving the defence from having to present a case as limp as the judge’s 8 years later.

And that’s it, more or less. Verdict: not proven, at least. I’d say not guilty if I could believe I haven’t missed something. All the judgement proves is that it’s best to avoid Scottish courts (why, it seems like they can be almost as bad as ours!).