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Lockerbie bomber launches fresh appeal

Source ITN

Updated on 28 April 2009

Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi is launching a second appeal against his conviction for blowing up a PanAm flight above Scotland 21 years ago.

A hearing is getting under way in Edinburgh nearly two years after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) referred the case to the appeal court.

The commission rejected some of the arguments put forward by Megrahi's defence team but said there were grounds - some put forward by the defence, others arising from its own investigations - where it believed a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

Its findings cast doubt on some of the evidence that helped convict the Libyan agent, in particular evidence relating to a visit to a Maltese clothes shop in December 1988.

Meghrahi was convicted in January 2001 of carrying out the atrocity in which Flight 103 from Heathrow to New York was blown out of the sky in December 1988 with the loss of 270 lives.

Much of the trial focused on forensic evidence linking blast-damaged clothing to the suitcase which contained the bomb that destroyed Flight 103.

The SCCRC said new evidence cast doubt on the date in December 1988 of the visit.

Meghrahi was said to have visited Tony Gauci's shop on December 7, but the commission said new evidence indicated the clothing was bought at an earlier date - and there had been no evidence at the trial that Megrahi was in Malta on that date.

Last October it emerged that Megrahi had been diagnosed with prostate cancer which had spread to other parts of his body, and the disease was said to be at an advanced stage.

The following month, his lawyers sought his interim release from jail pending the outcome of the appeal.

But judges rejected the application, saying they were "not persuaded" that he should get bail on compassionate grounds "against the background of the atrocity of which the applicant stands convicted".

Megrahi said later: "I wish to reiterate that I had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing and that the fight for justice will continue regardless of whether I am alive to witness my name being cleared."

© Independent Television News Limited 2009. All rights reserved.

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