As the appeal of the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 continued, his defense team attempted to expose holes in the logic of the original decision.

Lawyers for Abdel Basset Al Megrahi have spent the first five days of his trial refuting several key pieces of evidence as inconclusive. They lobbied the five High Scottish Judges who are presiding over the appeal to allow them to present evidence that they said shows a break-in at Pan Am’s baggage area at Heathrow airport in London the night before Flight 103 took off.

Police knew about the break-in at the time of the original trial but it was not mentioned during the proceedings, which confused Robert Black, a Professor of Scottish Law at the University of Edinburgh and a Lockerbie native. Black said that should the judges decide to allow the defense attorneys to present their findings, it would likely involve testimony from the security guard on duty the night in question and stretch the defense’s arguments into early February.

The security guard, Ray Manly, told The Mirror, a British newspaper, last September that he found a broken padlock on the luggage loading area that contained the bags from Pan Am 103. Manly said he informed police of his findings immediately afterward.

The defense is also questioning the clothes in the bag that contained the bomb, as well as the bag itself, Black said.

The clothes that surrounded the bomb were purchased in Malta, Black said. The shopkeeper who sold the items initially gave a statement to police describing the man who bought them as more than 6 feet tall and nearly 50 years old. At the time, Megrahi was 53 years old but only 5 feet 3 inches tall. It is difficult to fathom how someone who spends his days recommending clothing sizes could be wrong, Black said.

He is also skeptical about how the bag made its way from Malta to London.

Prosecutors in the first trial provided written evidence from a German airport that the bag in question was flown from Frankfurt to London, but no evidence was presented on how it got from Libya to Germany.

‘There is no evidence from the Maltese airport that the bag ever passed through,’ Black said. ‘All of the luggage was reconciled with the passengers.’

Some who were directly affected by the disaster are more than skeptical about the new revelations.

‘I have not seen anything new,’ said Judith O’Rourke, a vice president of undergraduate studies at Syracuse University who organizes the Remembrance Scholars program that allows two Lockerbie students to study at SU for a year.

‘It seems to me to be rehashed arguments,’ she said.

For Jeannine Boulanger, who lost her daughter Nicole in the bombing, even reading about the trial is something that she is trying to avoid.

‘It gets me upset,’ Boulanger said. ‘Thirteen years and we are still going at this, it just doesn’t end.’

Media speculation during the course of the trials and investigations have almost been too much to bear, Boulanger said. She added that although it would be nice to have the trial come to an end, she no longer holds out hope for everything to heal itself.

‘I have eliminated the word closure from my vocabulary,’ Boulanger said.

Published on January 29, 2002 at 12:00 pm