Report: Lockerbie "Bomber" Could Go Free

(CBS)  Only one person has been convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 which crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. Now a three-year investigation into that conviction will reportedly say he did not have a fair trial and should be released.

CBS News correspondent Larry Miller reports that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is expected to say Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi may not have planted the bomb that brought down the 747, killing 259 people on board and 11 more on the ground when debris rained down upon the Scottish countryside.

The Observer newspaper cites senior legal and intelligence officials who say the commission will conclude that he may have been a victim of a miscarriage of justice, and could be released from jail.

Al-Megrahi's defense team raised concerns over the testimony of expert witnesses and evidence never aired at trial.

"'Contradictory forensic evidence' and 'hundreds of inconsistencies,'" are the basis for the ruling, according to Miller.

The report will go the Scottish High Court, which could uphold al-Megrahi's conviction, but sources say the weight of evidence that went into the commission's findings make it more likely that either the conviction will be thrown out or a new trial will be ordered.

Some have claimed that al-Megrahi was framed in a bid to get a conviction in the high-profile terrorism case.

The Observer quoted one legal source who has reviewed the evidence put together by al-Megrahi's legal team as saying, "The case was flaky and you only had to shake it a bit for it to start falling apart. A steamroller has been taken to it."

The commission's 500-page report names several individuals whom lawyers believe should have stood trial instead of al-Megrahi. They include Mohammed Abu Talb, a convicted Palestinian terrorist who was a member of the Syrian-led and Iranian-funded Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command.

[manierisme]

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Not by a long shot. But anyone, and I mean anyone, who actually followed this case knows that Al Megrahi is, in all probability, innocent. All the evidence pointed to Iran and Syria, and still does. Ask former CIA head of intelligence Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA Robert Baer, or former Mossad Juval Aviv (the real life Eric Bana from Munich). They've all made public statements to that effect.

[closethippy]

Just to show how Americans like to talk from their behind and are stinking up the air around the world because of it, let me point one one little fact that has been forgotten about Sirhan Sirhan:
Sirhan Sirhan is a freaking Palestinian CHRISTIAN.
Not a convert from Islam but actually born CHRISTIAN from a Palestinian CHRISTIAN family.

I don't know why Americans like to open their big freaking mouths about subjects they not only don't know about but really, don't care about.
And they go around the world preaching at people, and invading countries, and dividing countries and in the process killing hundreds of thousands of people and it hardly matters to them they know nothing about the countries they have affected so much.

Can't you guys just shut up for once and mind your freaking business? Just once, try it and see how it works.

[hmmagain]

' ... why is it that evil people almost always run around screaming 'thwart evil or else'? ... '

[themooniac]

Sirhan-Sirhan is a pig and got the sentence he deserved. He should have been executed by now except for the 1972 California Supreme Court decision that invalidated the death penalty in California. But he is still a pig. Never forget.

[fredgrad2000]

Of course, an anti-American government conspiracy theory from Prinzowales - I for one am SHOCKED!! You're ridiculous...go back to MoveOn.org

[prinzowhales]

If memory serves, even some of the investigators have come out and claimed that the Americans 'salted' the wreckage to help build the meagre case they had in the first place. A far more plausible case could have been built around the narcotics angle, the drug agents returning home with a politically unpopular tale to tell and those who didn't want it told.

[griezz]

Sirhan Sirhan was born in Jerusalem & raised as a Maronite (Jordanian Christian church); he also spent time with the Baptist and 7th Day Adventist churches. The confusion probably comes from Sirhan's claim that he shot RFK for supporting Israel.

[pete_in_az]

HamilitonGrad:

I thought Sirhan Sirhan was a christian?

[hamiltongrad]

Robert Kennedy - killed by Arab Terrorist


Less we forget --one of the first ISlamic terrorist act in America, was the brutal killing of Robert Kennedy .