Culprits of Lockerbie a treatise Concerning the Destruction
The customer’s physical descriptions
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- 10 September, 1990
- Precognition and trial: “under sixty”
- 13 September
- Precognition
- 2. Sketch and photo composite of the purchaser
- 3. Competing candidates for resemblance, Abu Talb or al-Megrahi
- 4. Introducing al-Megrahi’s image to Gauci (a)
1. The customer’s physical descriptions and inconsistencies (a) Age Statements to police: purchaser “about fifty” When first spoken to by police on 1 September, 1989, Gauci gave a physical description of the purchaser but did not estimate his age. However, throughout a number of subsequent statements to police he was consistent in estimating the customer’s age as about fifty. By contrast, at the end of 1988 al-Megrahi was 36 years old. On 13 September, 1989, Gauci participated in the composition by two BKA officers of a photofit of the customer and an FBI artist’s impression (see Ashton, Megrahi, p.379) and in an accompanying statement he said that the customer was about fifty and that he thought the age of the man depicted in the photofit was between 45 and 50, “which is just about right.” Also on 13 September he stated that he remembered that around three months earlier he had seen someone resembling the customer at Tony’s Bar on the Strand in Sliema. Although he could not be sure it was the same man he described him as “very similar” and repeated that he was around fifty. Next day, 14 September, he was shown two photospreads and picked out as similar a 33-year old man (by the name of Mohamed Salem) and stated that if he had been 20 years older he would look like the purchaser. (At his precognition in 1999 he stated that when first shown photographs he picked out two people, who he considered “more or less looked like the person”.) On 26 September, 1989, he told police that he believed the customer had visited the shop the previous day and described him as about fifty. He gave a description of the man on the basis of which a Maltese police officer thought it matched a certain Libyan journalist based in Malta, who would have been 46 at the time of the purchase. Next day, 27 September, Gauci was shown photographs of twelve men, including that of the journalist (the statement he made about this was incorrectly dated 26 September). Although he said none resembled the purchaser he did pick out another man who he said was “too young”. Since that man was in fact the same age as the journalist the remark was consistent with the purchaser being around fifty. (One week later he told DCI Harry Bell that he was only 50 per cent sure it was the same man in the shop, leading the officer to question whether in view of Gauci’s ability to remember detailed events a year before he was reacting to pressure from his father and brother not to co-operate; conversely the SCCRC queried whether he could be so sure of those events when he was only 50 per cent sure of a sighting he had made a mere seven days earlier: see Ashton, Megrahi, p.316, citing a report discovered by the SCCRC, not disclosed to the defence.) Two years later he gave a statement purporting to agree that he had originally told the police it was in fact the 21nd or 22rd September, dates which just happened to coincide with al-Megrahi’s presence in Malta between 21st and 24th: see ibid, p.219. It would surely be a monstrous calumny to suggest that there was any element of prompting behind this revision. In any event, inconsistencies in Gauci’s estimation of the age of the customer soon began to emerge. On 2 October, 1989, he was shown by police a video freeze frame image of a man named Mohamed Abu Talb taken from a BBC TV Panorama programme about Lockerbie. Abu Talb, an Egyptian who lived in Sweden and enjoyed residential status there, had fallen under intense suspicion of involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. Viewing the image, Gauci was unable say that it was “definitely” the clothes purchaser but he described him as similar. Six months later, on 5 March, 1990, he told police that about a week earlier his brother Paul had shown him a Sunday Times article from 5 November, 1989, featuring a photograph of Abu Talb. (The picture had been captioned “Bomber”.)Although stating that the man “looks like the same as the one who bought the clothing” he significantly made no comment on Talb’s age, even though Talb was only 34 at the end of 1988 and far younger than the estimate which Gauci had given repeatedly up to that stage. On 31 August, 1990, he was shown two photospreads, each of twelve men, and although he made no positive identification he drew attention to three men as being the “correct age.” (Reproducing them in Megrahi, at p.385, Ashton describes them, at p.384, as “at least in their forties.” At a casual glance their appearance would by no means be inconsistent with their being about fifty.) On 10 September, 1990, he said that the picture of a man named Salem Mohammed Abdel Hady Taha looked “similar” but was not old enough. On 15 February, 1991, Gauci was for the first time shown a photospread which included al-Megrahi and said that they were “all younger” than the customer and although number eight (al-Megrahi) was “similar to the man who bought the clothes” he was “in my opinion in his thirty years” and “would perhaps have to look about ten years or more older and he would look like the man.”This crucial episode is considered in more detail later. Precognition_and_trial:_“under_sixty”'>Precognition and trial: “under sixty” In October 1999, in preparation for the trial at Camp van Zeist, Gauci was “precognosced” by the defence in Dumfries. When asked about the customer’s age he stated that “[h]e was younger than 60. It is difficult to tell age.” In evidence in chief at the trial he repeated his precognition statement that the man was “under sixty” but added that he had “no experience” or expertise on age. With some justice it has been pointed out that as Al- Megrahi was 36 at the time of the purchase and Gauci was 54 it would have been rather surprising for him to have mistaken someone so many years younger than he was with someone older than himself by almost as many years (see Ashton, Megrahi, pp.100 and 235). In cross-examination he agreed with the stock proposition that his memory of events would have been fresher at the time he first spoke to police than in the witness box and he acknowledged that in his original statements he had consistently given the purchaser’s age as around fifty. He also agreed that when, on 15.02.91, he had selected al-Megrahi’s picture on the photospread as “similar” to the customer he also stated that the man was 10 or more years older. (b) Height and build Statements to police: six feet and large In his statement to police of 1st September 1989 Gauci described the customer as “about six feet or more in height [with] a big chest and a large head. He was well-built but was not fat or with a big stomach.”Although the jacket purchased was a 42 inch size it was too small for the man, said Gauci. On 13 September, 1989, he estimated the man’s collar size as 16½ or 17 inches. On 25 September, 1989, having, he said, seen the man again the day before, he gave the height as around six feet or just under, broad built, not fat and having a 36-inch waist. It has already been noted that on 2 October, 1989, he was shown the freeze-frame photograph of Mohamed Abu Talb taken from the Panorama programme and stated that he was similar to the purchaser. It is noteworthy that Talb was less than well-built. On 31 August, 1990, he was shown two photospreads, each of 12 men, and picked out one man as “similar in the shape of face and style of hair.” The image is reproduced in Ashton, Megrahi, at p.384, and is plainly suggestive of a heavy cast of build. Precognition At his precognition Gauci was not specific about the man’s height but described him as “tall.” Trial In contrast with his statements to the police, in which he had described the customer as six feet or more in height and well-built, on examination in chief at the trial he described the customer as “below six feet” and of “normal stature.” The adjustment is clearly explained, at least in part, by his having seen al-Megrahi, 5 ft 7 or 8 inches tall and fairly slim, at close quarters on the identification parade at Camp Zeist on 13 April, 1999. (Another factor in the adjustment was later revealed when he was interviewed by the SCCRC: see below.) Gauci obviously appreciated he had to offer some explanation for the change and so he stated, as with the topic of age, that he had no experience or expertise on height. That assertion has rightly been ridiculed given that most of his working life had been spent selling clothes and that he might have been supposed to be better equipped than most to judge a customer’s size (Ashton, Megrahi, pp.100 and 235.) His inconsistency was underscored during cross-examination by leading counsel for al-Megrahi when, reminded that in his original statement of 1 September, 1989, he had described the man as “six feet or more in height,” he claimed inaccurately, “I always said six foot, not more than six feet.” When reminded that in that first statement he had said that the 42-inch size jacket that the man brought was too small for him he stated, for the first time, that the jacket was Italian-style, “a bit tighter on the waist – not like the English.” He appeared to have forgotten that he had originally described the jacket as “tweed” and was labelled “Anglia” and under cross-examination stated that Harris tweed jackets were looser than the Italian style. SCCRC The further factor which may explain the change in Gauci’s description of the customer’s height and build was revealed when, interviewed by the SCCRC, he stated that he recalled someone reading him an article about the Lockerbie case in the Il Torca newspaper for 7 March, 1999. The article had noted that the description he had given to police contrasted with al-Megrahi, who was not well-built, not six feet tall and not fifty. He would have known to whom this was a reference because the edition of 28 February, 1999, also carried a photograph and Gauci said that he recalled seeing that edition. (c) Hair In his first statement to police (that of 1 September, 1989) Gauci described the purchaser’s hair as “very black.” The photofit and the artist’s sketch produced with his help on 13 September, 1989 (of which see more below), both depicted a full head of hair, seemingly of the “afro-textured” tightly curled variety. What was implicit in Gauci’s contribution to the constructs on 13 September, 1989, became explicit on 2 October. When on that date he was shown the freeze-frame image of Mohamed Abu Talb from the BBC Panorama programme about Lockerbie he said that “the hairstyle of the man who came into the shop was more full and rounded and did not recede at the temples.”Photographs of al-Megrahi show his hair to have been curly though perhaps not as tightly curled as that depicted in the constructs. What is more important, however, is that by the end of 1988 his hair was noticeably thinning and receding. The heavy set man whom Gauci picked out from the photospread shown to him on 31 August, 1990, and whom he described as “similar [to the clothes purchaser] in the shape of the face and style of hair,” had a very full head of thick curly hair, with no trace of a receding hairline, indeed a hairline notably low on the brow. (d) Facial skin tone Statements to the police In his first statement to place (1 September, 1989) Gauci described the purchaser as having “dark coloured skin.”As noted by Ashton (Megrahi, p.381) this would seem to tally with the afro-textured hair in the constructs prepared with Gauci’s assistance on 13 September, 1989. In terms of general appearance the faces depicted in the photofit and the sketch are rather dissimilar to each other although the skin tone in the photofit and that in the version of the sketch exhibited in court (Crown production 427) are no more than sallow in their hue (reproduced in Ashton, Megrahi, p.380). The original version of the drawing was never disclosed but two copies discovered in BKA and Maltese police files by al-Megrahi’s legal team during the preparation of his second appeal suggested that the original sketch might well have depicted a significantly darker skin-tone than production 427, the court version. Expert examination of the two copies revealed fine, dark hatching lines – not visible in 427 – which almost certainly ruled them out as the products of photocopying or faxing (see Ashton, Megrahi, p.331 and p.381, where the two versions are reproduced). Trial When invited at the trial to make a dock identification Gauci stated that al-Megrahi “resembled [the purchaser] a lot, saying further, “Not the dark one [Fhima]. . . the one next to him.”This was starkly self-contradictory of his original description. (e) Facial features When first spoken to by police on 1 September, 1989, Gauci described the customer as having a large head. The photofit and sketch made on 13 September are not inconsistent with that description. However, the face he picked out from one of the two photospreads he was shown two weeks later (14 September), that of 33-year-od Mohamed Salem (reproduced in Ashton, Megrahi, at p.382) is rather delicate and chiselled and hardly suggests a large head. Yet he stated that the eyes, nose, mouth and facial shape were like those of the customer. When, on 2 October, 1989, Gauci was shown the freeze-frame portrait photograph of Abu Talb taken from the Panorama programme he stated that the customer’s face was broader than Talb’s, which was rather narrow, but that the “eyebrows upwards on the photograph are the same.” The man he selected as facially similar when he was shown two photospreads on 31 August, 1990, had a broad and fleshy face, low forehead, and a noticably thick neck (see Ashton, Megrahi, p.384). (f) Ethnicity On the first visit by police to his shop (1.09.89) Anthony Gauci stated that the purchaser spoke “Libyan,” was “clearly from Libya” and had “an Arab appearance.” In a psychological assessment of Gauci’s evidence commissioned by al-Megrahi’s legal team for his second aborted appeal, Professor David Canter of the University of Huddersfield International Research Centre for Investigative Psychology observed that while Libyans may have been the most common Arab ethnic group to visit Malta and in particular Mary’s House it was not clear why Gauci assumed, or was otherwise led to state, that the customer was Libyan as distinct from some other North African country and that his assumption, if it was no more than an assumption, seems never to have been explored (commissioned by Taylor & Kelly, al-Megrahi’s solicitors, completed October 2006 but never served on the Crown Office, available on-line from 2009 via http://www.david canter.com, p.61). Gauci claimed he could “tell the difference between Libyans and Tunisians when I speak to them for a while,” explaining that “Tunisians often start speaking French if you talk to them for a while” (see Ashton, Megrahi, p.86). However, if it was the transition to French language which might have caused him to identify Tunisian ethnicity the absence of such a transition would hardly prove Libyan nationality by way of the converse. The explanation is rather lame, although it is perhaps difficult to see how it might usefully have been explored further. Moreover Gauci said that the customer had failed to resort to the peculiar method of measuring trousers which he claimed was typically employed by Libyans (see below) so perhaps that factor, for what it was worth, was one which further undermined what was already a rather weak expression of confidence over the customer’s supposed Libyan ethnicity. Of similar, negative, effect may have been his subsequent viewing of images of Mohamed Abu Talb and assertions that Talb, an Egyptian, resembled the customer. On 29 October, 1989, the Sunday Times reported that the Maltese shopkeeper recalled selling the clothes to a man he believed to be Libyan. This was the first time Libya had been publicly linked to Lockerbie (Ashton, Megrahi, pp.94-95) and on 30 January, 1990, Gauci told the police he was being watched by a man from the nearby Libyan Cultural Centre. On 31 August he reported being kept under watch by more men from the Centre. Reference will be made later in this monograph to the statement of an English witness by the name of David Wright, recalling Gauci evincing evidence of prejudice against Libyans. 2. Sketch and photo composite of the purchaser It has already been mentioned that Anthony Gauci assisted in the construction of the police sketch and a composite photograph on 13 September 1989. Self-evidently the accuracy of sketches and photographic composites will vary and an unworthy construct can nonetheless blend itself into the witness’s mental image of the person and reinforce the original distorted memory. A number of research projects have demonstrated that accuracy of selection from a photographic array will tend to decrease significantly following participation in the making of a sketch or composite (cited by Prof Steven E. Clark of the University of California, Riverside, Report on Identification Procedures: Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi v. H.M. Advocate, 18.12.08, and by Professor Tim Valentine of Goldsmith’s College, University of London, Report on the eyewitness evidence in the case of al Megrahi v HMA, Faversham: Valentine Moore Associates, 19 December 2008, both reports also commissioned for the second appeal by defence solicitors Taylor & Kelly and served on the Crown Office; now hosted at http://www.megrahimystory. net,p.19). It has already been mentioned that there appears to be a significant difference as to skin tone between what may have been the original sketch (noticeably darker) and a copy exhibited in court (production 427). If, subsequently to the making of the original sketch, Gauci was exposed to a copy depicting a lighter complexion it is easy to appreciate how that could have interfered with his original memory. As well as being reproduced in Ashton, Megrahi (at p.381) the sketch and the composite can be viewed at http://www.vetpath.co.uk/lockerbie/photoid.pdf. Strikingly, they look very different from each other, which speaks volumes for their accuracy in depicting the purchaser. Equally striking is the fact that neither of them looks anything like al-Megrahi or Abu Talb (whose portrait can also be viewed at http://www.vetpath.co.uk/lockerbie/ photoid.pdf and in Ashton, Megrahi (central plates). Nor is there any noticeable resemblance between Talb and al-Megrahi.
In the light of intelligence made available to the W. German Federal Criminal Police Office – the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) – and of their consequent operations in the months preceding Lockerbie and afterwards (of which more will be written later) suspicion quickly focused on the West German cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command (PFLP-GC), a Syrian-based splinter group of the original PFLP. Those who were either members of or otherwise connected with the cell included Mohammed Abu Talb, an Egyptian member of the Palestine Popular Struggle Front (PPSF), an organisation affiliated to the PFLP-GC. Resident in Sweden Talb was arrested in Stockholm on suspicion of involvement in the bombing of a train in Denmark (of which he was subsequently convicted) and from his home police seized a selection of brand new items of clothing. Some of these were supposedly traced to a Maltese manufacturing company which had also supplied clothes to Mary’s House. As already mentioned, Gauci was shown his photograph on 2 October, 1989, freeze-framed from a TV broadcast. There is no record of the freeze-frame so it is impossible to judge how distinct the facial features were (Clark, p.38). Unable to identify him positively he described the face as “similar”. In an article in the Sunday Times of 5 November, 1989, it was stated on the basis of information reportedly furnished by the investigators that Abu Talb had gone to Malta with a senior PFLP-GC operative named Hafez Dalkamoni (whom the BKA arrested prior to Lockerbie) to instruct a PFLC-GC cell there to send a Toshiba radio cassette bomb by an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt. The article contained Abu Talb’s photograph. In the following week’s edition (12 November, 1989) it was reported that the Scottish police were about to travel to Sweden to interview Abu Talb in prison. On 5 December, 1989, the newspaper noted that Abu Talb had been positively identified as the man who bought the clothes from the shop in Malta and that he was about to be extradited to Britain to stand trial for the Lockerbie bombing. Plainly Talb had not been positively identified and, ironically, the very next day, the 6th December, Gauci failed to pick out his image from a photospread (Ashton, Megrahi, p.91, pointing out that this was hardly surprising, given that Talb was 36 at the time, did not match Gauci’s “well-built” description, and had an unusual gait resulting from a battle injury sustained in the Lebanon in 1976, which Gauci might have been expected to notice; no statement was ever taken from Gauci to confirm his non-identification on that date but the police prepared one for him dated 8 October, 1991, which was endorsed with a note explaining that he had not in the event been re-interviewed to verify it: see ibid, p.316). In the event, Abu Talb was not extradited to Britain because the investigators decided to move away from blaming Iran and the PFLP-GC and to cast the blame instead on Libya. Abu Talb was brought from prison in Sweden to be called as a witness for the Crown at Camp Zeist in 2001 and we return briefly to discuss his evidence later. There was evidence that he could have been present in Malta on 23 November, 1988, the date which the Scottish police originally favoured as the date of purchase of the clothes. On 5 March, 1990 (having been shown by his brother Paul “six or eight weeks” previously the Sunday Times article of 5 November, 1989, featuring Abu Talb’s picture captioned “Bomber”) Gauci told police, “I think the photograph printed in the newspaper may have been the man who bought the clothing. He looks like him. . . . That was the name, Abu Talb. All I can say about the photograph printed in the newspaper is that I think the man looks the same as the one who bought the clothing.” As already mentioned, significantly he said nothing about Abu Talb’s age in the photograph. In a statement Gauci made on 10 September, 1990, he said of the freeze-frame photograph of Abu Talb shown in the Sunday Times of 5 November, 1989, that the hair style and appearance were similar to the man who had bought the clothing but that he could not identify the face. At trial DCI Henry Bell stated that Abu Talb’s picture was included in an album shown to Gauci but not identified by him. However, the notes of interview are sketchy and actually make no mention of Gauci being shown the photograph album containing Abu Talb’s picture.
Since September 1989 Gauci had been asked by police to look at photographic arrays on several occasions. It was on 15 February, 1991 that he was first invited to examine an array of photographs of twelve men which included al-Megrahi’s image. As already mentioned, Gauci described him as similar, though subject to the caveat that he would have to be rather older. Ashton colourfully notes the jubilation of the officers and their bacchanalian celebrations which followed but that although it was the “crowning glory” of their investigation “the crown proved to have many thorns” (Megrahi, p.96). Directory: docs docs -> Application for acem docs -> Observational Assessment of Teaching Practices Teaching Assessment Initiative Proposal Submitted to The Teachers for a New Era project docs -> Traditional British values docs -> From Warfighters to Crimefighters: The Origins of Domestic Police Militarization docs -> Borzoi Club of America Register of Merit Program I. What is a Register Of Merit docs -> Protecting the rights of the child in the context of migration docs -> United Nations E/C. 12/Esp/5 docs -> 9th May 1950 the schuman declaration docs -> Getting To Outcomes® in Services for Homeless Veterans 10 Steps for Achieving Accountability Download 0.96 Mb. Share with your friends:
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