Lockerbie appeal to focus on witnesses' credibility

Lawyers for the Libyan agent found guilty of the Lockerbie bombing will begin their efforts to destroy the credibility of two prosecution witnesses at his appeal today.

The defence team of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, convicted last year of the bombing that killed 270 people in 1988, will argue in the hearing at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands that the evidence of Tony Gauci and the double agent Abdul Majid Giaka is unsafe. They will also argue that the attack on Pan Am flight 103 to New York was likely to have been launched out by a rogue Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command.

Lawyers for Megrahi lodged the grounds for their appeal with a Scottish judge last summer. Under Scottish law, the details of those grounds, which were approved by the judge, have remained private. But a source close to the defence said that the team would focus on the credibility of Mr Gauci and Mr Giaka. They may also introduce new evidence from a Heathrow employee suggesting that the bomb might have been introduced at London rather than on a feeder flight from Malta.

During the nine-month trial at the specially constructed court at Camp Zeist, Mr Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper, identified Megrahi as a man who bought clothing from his store shortly before the bombing. Remnants of that clothing were found scattered around Lockerbie after the disaster, and there was evidence that the clothes were packed around the bomb.

Mr Giaka, who was paid an estimated $8m for his testimony and who is living under a witness protection scheme in the United States, said he saw Megrahi arriving at Luqa airport in Malta with a Samsonite suitcase said to have containing the bomb.