Lockerbie bomber ‘never met Sliema shopkeeper’

The Libyan national convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie said he had never seen the Maltese shopkeeper whose identification was the prosecution's key plank for his conviction.

Tony Gauci had identified Abdelbaset al-Megrahi as the man who had purchased clothes from his shop Mary's House, in Tower Road, Sliema, fragments of which were later found among the plane wreckage and said to have been wrapped around the bomb.

"I never bought clothes from him," Megrahi said in an interview filmed by the investigator and former policeman George Thomson after a Lockerbie memorial.

"He dealt with me very wrongly. I have never seen him in my life before he came to court."

270 people were killed in the bombing. Eventually, former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi extradited Megrahi - a Libyan Arab Airlines official who worked in Malta - and Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah to the Scottish court at Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, for prosecution.

Megrahi was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah stood trial with Megrahi, but was acquitted of any involvement.

"I am an innocent man," Megrahi said. "I am about to die and I ask now to be left in peace with my family."

Megrahi had won the right to for a new appeal to his case after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission looked into the evidence, describing the key testimony against him by Maltese witness Tony Gauci as "unreliable".

Cancer-stricken Megrahi was then released from incarceration in 2009 on humanitarian grounds and is now residing in Libya.

Gauci claimed to have recognised Megrahi as the man who bought clothes in his shop Mary's House on Tower Road, that were linked to the suitcase carrying the bomb that blew up Pan Am flight 103.

The SCCRC said: "The effect of all of these inconsistencies is powerful. The court was left with a distorted and different impression of the witness. In this way Megrahi was denied a fair trial."

The SCCRC also found that police said in evidence they first showed Gauci photos of Megrahi on September 14, 1989 - when he had in fact also been shown them on September 8. The report said: "This was not disclosed to the defence. There is no statement from Gauci produced, no police witness statements produced."

The SCCRC also obtained evidence from police memos that Gauci was made aware from his first contact with investigators that his testimony could be worth millions: one undisclosed memo reveals the FBI discussed with Scots cops an offer of unlimited cash to Gauci - with "$10,000 available immediately".

A big mystery surrounding key witness Tony Gauci is whether it was true that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) paid him and his brother Paul $2 million over the course of his testimony.

The Herald Scotland had claimed recently discovered papers show Scottish police officers investigating the 1988 bombing were aware the US intelligence service had discussed financial terms and witness protection schemes with Tony Gauci and his brother.

It has not been confirmed that the brothers accepted any money, but the fact that an offer was made is directly relevant to the credibility of Tony Gauci, who became the lynchpin of the case. Paul was never called as a witness.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found that document, thought to be from the CIA, during its three-year investigation, which concluded that Megrahi should have a fresh appeal.