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Continued: Lockerbie - and those doubts

The debate about the soundness of the finding of guilt of the Lockerbie bomber - or the alleged one - continues, and it looks like it will do so for quite some time.

consortiumnews.com has a piece which details the myriad of doubts cast over the verdict of guilt of one of the two presented for trial. That in itself, as the author points out, is more than curious, given that essentially the same evidence was led against both accused.

"The truth about what happened at Lockerbie appears quite a bit more complex than the cookie-cutter version presented by the mainstream media. Several longtime observers of the al-Megrahi case have concluded that it has always been weak, at best.

According to British journalist Hugh Miles in a 2007 article for London Review of Books, many “lawyers, politicians, diplomats and relatives of Lockerbie victims now believe that the former Libyan intelligence officer is innocent.”

Miles quoted Robert Black QC, an Edinburgh University professor emeritus of Scottish law, as saying, “No reasonable tribunal, on the evidence heard at the original trial, should or could have convicted him and it is an absolute disgrace and outrage what the Scottish court did.”

Al-Megrahi was tried along with fellow Libyan intelligence officer Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. With distraught relatives of victims filling the courtroom, the Scottish judges understandably feared the reaction to two not guilty verdicts. Instead, the judges acquitted Fhimah and found al-Megrahi guilty.

A U.N. observer to the trial, Austrian philosophy Professor Hans Koschler, noted, "You cannot come out with a verdict of guilty for one and innocent for the other when they were both being tried with the same evidence.”

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