“Good God…This isn’t the Sunday Times!”

As noted in Back Towards… passim (oh, okay, in this post) Richard Marquise, the FBI investigator into the Lockerbie distaster, has spent the past few years promoting discredited smears against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. He’s defended notions of his guilt in the Sunday Times and Christian Science Monitor but recently ventured into the lower-key yet more enlightening pages of Robert Black’s blog.

It’s worth pausing to remember that Marquise has claimed there’s  “nobody else that [he's] aware of anywhere in the world that has such evidence pointing to their guilt“. If this was sincere I’d humbly suggest that it reflects more on his own awareness than the case against Megrahi. I’ve yet to see compelling evidence against the man and, indeed, Marquise didn’t take the chance to offer it. Instead, he wrote that he…

…remain[s] amazed that so many seemingly intelligent people would continue to support someone who claimed to not be a member of Libyan intelligence…

It seems Megrahi told a journalist that he was not a member of the secret services. I’ve no wish to lecture Marquise on his own profession but if every agent who’s dishonest to a hack is an international terrorist — well, there aren’t enough planes in the world for them to bomb. The wily insinuation that sceptics “support” Megrahi is the acid drop on a rotten cake. I don’t think that Barry George killed Jill Dando but I’ve no real desire to go paintballing with the man.

Marquise made several other dubious assertions that are worth countering. Do remember that this isn’t just some guy with a website, it’s the FBI’s chief flippin’ investigator…

We know what we did– the facts were obtained in a righteous manner and in accodance with the laws of the US and Scotland.

Two reports by experts Steven Clark and Timothy Valentine concluded that the handling of witnesses was “unfair“, suggestive of “bias” and likely to create “a serious risk of a mistaken [ID]“. That’s just one example of the investigators’ less than angelic behaviour.

It is my belief that all the witnesses told what they believed to be the truth at trial (except for one–not Giaka) and what they said was consistent with what they had always said.

This is flatly wrong: the evidence of Tony Gauci – a key witness against the Libyan – was pockmarked by contradictions. The Giaka testimony, which the Court dismissed, was no more reliable.

I have –many times addressed the issue of payments to witnesses–none–none–including Bollier–ever requested, or were offered or paid any money in exchange for them to tell investigators what we wanted to hear.

Denying that they requested or received money “in exchange for them to tell investigators what [they] wanted to hear” is a crafty one as it is near-impossible to falsify. Evidence suggests, however, that witnesses “clear[ly] desired” a reward, that the possibility was floated by investigators and that they were offered one. This is likely to have been a reason why the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the whole shameful business for a new appeal.

Ah, that reminds me: a new appeal! Please sign if you’d fancy one.