Police investigating the Lockerbie bombing left Malta after they were
words: Neil Mackay, Joe Mifsud,It took no more than a minute of court time. Just a few more words among the hundreds of thousands that are being churned out daily at the Special Scottish Court in the Netherlands hearing the trial of the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing. But that handful of words, uttered just before noon on Wednesday, has seriously damaged the reputation of the Scottish police and left both the Holyrood and Westminster governments facing an embarrassing international scandal.
One of Scotland's most senior detectives admitted under cross- examination that an international team of officers under the command of the Scottish police were illegally tapping phones on the Mediterranean island, as part of the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing. The entire investigation - conducted by a team including Scottish, American and German police - was suspended when the island's government uncovered the covert operation. In effect, Scottish police officers were in charge of an operation which broke the law in a foreign but friendly country.
Last week the Lockerbie prosecution admitted that it has failed in protracted efforts to persuade important witnesses employed at Malta Airport - where the prosecution claim a bomb was put on board Pan-Am Flight 103 - to give evidence at the Camp Zeist court. Fourteen witnesses refused to travel to the court or to give their evidence elsewhere, and the court has no power to compel them to do so. The question now being asked is: did the conduct of the operation in Malta influence the decision by these witnesses to snub the court?
Last night, the Home Office, Foreign Office, Scottish Executive and the Scottish Police refused to comment on the phone-tapping incident, claiming to do so would be prejudicial to the Lockerbie trial. But behind closed doors a major damage limitation exercise was swinging into operation. Crown Office officials - breaking their golden rule about never speaking to the press over Lockerbie - attempted to deflect blame from Scottish police officers to police from America and Germany.
Last night, a Crown Office official said Scottish police did not themselves place wire-taps on the Maltese telephone lines. However, the statement avoided saying that, as the Scottish police were leading the Lockerbie inquiry, any activity undertaken on the island by other police forces was still under their command, and the buck stopped with them.
The wire-tap revelations were made by Detective Chief Superintendent Harry Bell, current director of the Scottish Criminal Record Office - one of the highest ranking positions in Strathclyde Police. He admitted under cross-examination that unauthorised wire- tapping was carried out in Malta during an operation under the command of Scottish police.
Bell said in court that police were not expelled from Malta, but admitted that the investigation team was told to suspend its operations by the Maltese government. Investigations by the Sunday Herald in Malta, America and Britain have uncovered that the police only returned after a flurry of diplomatic activity, involving the UK's Foreign Office, the German Chancellor's Office and the Office of the US Attorney General. The illegal wire-taps on Malta were conducted sometime between late 1989 and the summer of 1990. At least one phone, belonging to a Palestinian, was being eavesdropped on. Palestinian terrorists were the main suspects at the time .
The phone taps were uncovered by telecom workers, in the island town of Sliema, carrying out routine maintenance on parts of the island's telephone network. Suspicion fell on US involvement when the equipment used was found to be American-made. The Telemalta workers notified their superiors and the island's police. At a hastily convened meeting between the island's home affairs minister and deputy prime minister, Gwido Demarco - now President of Malta - the decision was taken to suspend the entire Lockerbie investigation. Representatives of the Malta government summoned members of the FBI, the Scottish Police and the German Federal Police, the BKA, to the meeting.
One former Malta police officer, who investigated the illegal wire- tapping, said he was disgusted by the behaviour of the investigation team under the command of Scots police. Having provided the foreign officers with back-up and support, he was stunned that Lockerbie investigators were carrying out illegal operations on the island. "Telephone tapping is illegal," the former Malta officer said. "Authorisation from the island's home affairs minister is needed to carry it out." The Maltese government did not publicly reprimand Britain at the time, but privately their leaders were furious.
The investigators left the island on the next available flight and only returned to the country after several weeks, following assurances to Malta from the UK, Germany and American governments of the future "good behaviour" of investigators. A senior source in the Maltese government said: "We were appalled at this arrogant behaviour. They treated us like a tin-pot banana republic instead of a sovereign country."
Exactly who takes responsibility for the wire-taps is unclear. Within the UK, prior to devolution, a wire-tap in Scotland could not have been carried out without the consent of the Scottish Secretary. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who was the Conservative Scottish Secretary at the time of the illegal telephone-tapping, was unavailable for comment last night. If other officers from the UK were involved, the power to grant the wire-tap could also have come from the Home Secretary, who decides on covert bugging throughout the rest of Britain. However, the conduct of British agents overseas is the responsibility of the Foreign Secretary. The Crown Office will only say that no Scottish minister would have had the power to order the bugging.
The Home Office said it could not comment and passed responsibility to the Scottish police. The Foreign Office said it was under strict instructions from Colin Boyd, the Scottish Lord Advocate, to pass the inquiry on to Scottish Police. Strathclyde Police said it was a matter for Dumfries and Galloway Police as the Pan-Am plane came down in its jurisdiction, but Dumfries and Galloway said it could not comment as the Lockerbie trial was active and all matters surrounding it were sub judice.
The Scottish Executive also refused to comment, again on the grounds that the trial was on-going and doing so would be improper. However, the government and the police are now under intense pressure to explain the scandal. The SNP's shadow home affairs minister, Roseanna Cunningham, said: "This is very disturbing and alarming. If the Scottish police were commanding an operation in a foreign country which was carrying out illegal wire-taps, what on earth are they doing here? We need to be told if the government, and particularly the then Scottish Secretary, was informed. And if he was informed, what action did he take? There can be no legitimate reason for wire- tapping the phones of a foreign country if the government of that country is unaware of what is going on. The government cannot avoid responsibility in this matter. Answers must be given immediately about what was going on in Malta in 1990.
"If no action was taken either by the police or the government to rectify this behaviour then it is an utter disgrace. We can't excuse this on the grounds that it happened 10 years ago. However, the passage of time is an obvious means of hiding from the issue. What would our government do if a foreign police force arrived in the UK and then started wire-tapping our citizens. I don't want to believe the government could support this behaviour."
Professor Bob Black, the architect of the Lockerbie trial and Scotland's most distinguished legal scholar, called for an immediate investigation into the conduct of the British government and the Scottish police. "If the Scottish police were overseeing methods of investigation overseas which they knew to be improper, then an inquiry is clearly called for and as a result heads should roll. We know the wire-taps weren't authorised by Malta. But were they authorised by Britain? It's a nasty mess. You either have the police acting outwith the power of the state or we have our police encouraged into illegal operations by the government."
It is not certain if the conduct of the Scottish police in Malta in any way influenced the decision by the Malta witnesses last week to refuse to attend the court in Camp Zeist. What is known is that the lawyer representing the Malta witnesses in negotiations to persuade them to attend was the former Maltese prime minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. The 14 witnesses who refused to attend would have been giving testimony relating to activity in Malta in December 1988 when the bomb was allegedly placed onboard Pan- Am 103 at the island's Luqa airport. They included check-in clerks, loaders and other Air Malta staff, some of whom were colleagues of Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, one of the two Libyan accused, when he was Libyan Arab Airlines station manager on the island.
The decision not to attend was taken sometime on Monday, and passed almost immediately to the British High Commissioner, Howard Pierce, by Emanuel Micallef, secretary of the Port and Transport Section of the General Workers Union, the island's largest trade union, which was also involved in talks over whether the Maltese witnesses would attend. On the Friday before the decision was taken, a meeting was held at the General Workers Union HQ in Valletta, between High Commissioner Pierce and the airport staff. Pierce impressed upon the workers how important their testimony would be, and asked them to take the weekend to make up their minds. On Monday, they declined. Only one witness decided to attend, but he was not a member of airport staff - but an airline passenger who happened to be going on holiday at the time the bomb was allegedly planted.
A series of other bargaining meetings had been carried out in an attempt to persuade the workers to go to Zeist. It had been agreed that the workers could be accompanied by their lawyer and a union representative, and clear assurances were given that none of the airport staff were under suspicion. There were also attempts to set up a video-link by satellite which the Maltese could use to give evidence. Even one of the trial's key prosecutors, Alistair Campbell QC, admitted that negotiations had been "delicate".
One witness gave as their reason for snubbing the court the fact that, early on in the investigation, they were treated badly by Lockerbie investigators. The witnesses were ordered to attend a local hotel, kept waiting for hours on end, given nothing to eat, questioned and forced to go over and over the contents of their statements. It was after this that the airport staff witnesses contacted their union to ensure they had someone to represent them in any future contact with investigators.
The witnesses also claim they passed large amounts of information to police and gave many statements - even though, to the best of their recollection, the day the bomb was alleged to have been placed on board was routine and they believe they have nothing to say which could help the prosecution. A few of the witnesses were also friendly with Fhimah. One source said: "These people have families now. They don't want to speak about their private lives in the past, and they certainly don't want their faces splashed across TV screens and newspapers in connection with Lockerbie."
www.thelockerbietrial.com The Lockerbie trial was adjourned for two days last week when a group of witnesses from Malta refused to testify. Prosecutor Alistair Campbell told the court that the airport staff were not prepared to give evidence - the crown cannot compel non-British witnesses to testify. A spokesperson said that their lack of evidence would not harm the case.
Detective Chief Superintendent Harry Bell, director of the Scottish Criminal Record Office, of Strathclyde Police, answering questions under cross-examination, last week, by Richard Keen QC, barrister at the Lockerbie trial sitting in Camp Zeist, Holland, for Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, one of the two Libyan accused.
Q Do you recollect the time arrived, during your inquiries in Malta, when a number of police officers, British, American, and German, were expelled from the island of Malta by the Maltese authorities?
A We weren't expelled. The inquiry was suspended, yes.
Q You were asked to leave?
A The inquiry was suspended, as far as I can recollect, sir. We were never the Maltese never asked us to leave. They suspended the inquiry at various times.
Q Was that related to the discovery of unauthorised telephone tapping on the island? When I say "unauthorised", I mean unauthorised by the Maltese authorities.
A That was one occasion, yes.
Q And did the Maltese authorities take it rather amiss that the policing methods being employed by the foreign police forces did not in fact accord with the requirements of Maltese law and the requirements of the Maltese authorities?
A The Maltese authorities were clearly annoyed that such action had been taken.
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