Clarification

If I thought for one moment that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi had been in any way involved whatsoever in the murder of 270 innocent people in the Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, I would not have agreed to pen an article - let alone an article sympathetic to al-Megrahi. My deep conviction, as a “professor of Lockerbie studies” over a 20-year period is that neither al-Megrahi nor Libya had any role in the destruction of Pan Am 103.

I believe they were made a scapegoat in 1990-91 by an American government that had decided to go to war with Iraq and did not want complications with Syria and Iran, which had harboured the real perpetrators of the terrible deed. Libya and its “operatives”, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah (al-Megrahi's co-accused) and al-Megrahi, only came into the frame at a very late date. In my informed opinion, al-Megrahi has been the victim of one of the most spectacular (and expensive) miscarriages of justice in history.

It is an opinion shared by those who have come to know al-Megrahi, the man - his two excellent solicitors, Eddie McKechnie, who successfully defended Mr Fhimah and who took on al-Megrahi's case after the decision that he was guilty, and Tony Kelly, the enormously hard-working and thorough solicitor who is now acting for al-Megrahi. It is an opinion shared by the Rev John Mosey and Dr Jim Swire, who both lost much-loved daughters and who attended virtually every day of the trial in the Netherlands. I must also add that it is an opinion shared by one of the staff at Barlinnie who met al-Megrahi when he was a prisoner there and whom I knew in another context as member of parliament for West Lothian.

Visiting him in prison, I was struck by his self-possession - a self-possession that had struck many people at his trial, possibly because it never occurred to him that he would be found guilty. It explains my passionate involvement over 20 years, as well as that of Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh. It was on our say-so that Libya ever surrendered its citizens to Scottish justice. Whatever happens to al-Megrahi, faced with advanced terminal cancer, the case will continue because on trial is the international reputation of Scottish justice and particularly of the Crown Office, which not only suppressed information that it knew should have been given to the defence, but told an outright lie to the heavyweight distinguished judge, John Lord Coulsfield, when he asked whether they had confidence in their leading witness, Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper.

The Crown assured him that they did have such confidence. Years later the lord advocate of the day said in public that Mr Gauci was not the full shilling. If they did that, how could they have given their word to Coulsfield?

It was a colossal error of judgment not to allow al-Megrahi to speak for himself in the dock at his trial at Camp Zeist. Had he done so, the judges would surely have had a flavour of the type of man he was and might have jaloused that he was not likely to be a mass murderer. Some of us said then that there ought to have been a Muslim judge and al-Megrahi has often said to me since and to his lawyers that it would have been fair to have an international tribunal rather than one country acting as prosecutor, judge and executor of the punishment.

Al-Megrahi was born into the same tribe as one of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's most trusted lieutenants. He was educated at Benghazi University at the engineering school held in high regard by the engineers of Brown and Root and their chairman, the late Sir Dick Morris. Al-Megrahi was proud of the traditional skills associated with his people.

Had the judges had the opportunity to get to know the man, they would never have arrived at the verdict that he was guilty of mass murder. He is a civilised, intelligent, caring man. At the very least, the judges would have arrived at the verdict of “not proven”.

Almost the last thing that al-Megrahi said to me was: “Yes, of course I want to go back to Tripoli. I have my wife and my five children are growing up, but I want to go back an innocent man.”

Some of us are determined to find the truth and justice that we believe will find him innocent.

The author is a former Labour MP for Linlithgow and Father of the House of Commons