The Representative Of The Late Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Megrahi v Her Majesty’s Advocate & The Advocate General

The Representative Of The Late Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Megrahi v Her Majesty’s Advocate & The Advocate General [2020] HCJAC 54

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who died in 2012, was the only person to have been convicted over the bombing of the Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988. The family of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi had submitted his third appeal against conviction on the basis there had been a miscarriage of justice.

The Court of Criminal Appeal upheld the verdict of the original special trial from 2001. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi had lost his first appeal shortly after his conviction and had abandoned his second appeal shortly prior to his release from prison in 2009 on compassionate grounds due to being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The third appeal brought by the family through the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission was on the basis that the verdict was one in which no reasonable jury properly directed could have come to. The second ground of appeal was that the failure to disclose information to the defence led to the trial being unfair and a subsequent miscarriage of justice.

Whilst the court hearing the appeal called in question parts of the disclosure not received by the Crown, the court ultimately rejected both grounds of appeal.

It is understood that the family are seeking to pursue the matter to the UK Supreme Court.

This comes amid the USA bringing fresh charges against a Abu Agila Mohammad Masud who is alleged to have been responsible for making the bomb used.