Lockerbie bombing appeal hears new evidence

New evidence over the Lockerbie bombing is to be heard at the appeal of the Libyan convicted of causing the explosion aboard …

New evidence over the Lockerbie bombing is to be heard at the appeal of the Libyan convicted of causing the explosion aboard Pan Am Flight 103.

Defence lawyers representing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi are calling on a former security guard at Heathrow airport.

He is to tell the court that there was a break-in at a baggage-handling area hours before the aircraft took off for New York on December 21st, 1988.

Mr William Taylor QC, representing Megrahi, has already told the appeal Mr Raymond Manly's evidence supports defence claims that a suitcase containing a bomb was likely to have been loaded on the doomed plane in London and not, as the original trial found, in Malta.

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The five judges at Camp Zeist in Holland, where the appeal is being heard under Scottish jurisdiction, agreed last week to hear Mr Manly's evidence, and that of his boss at the time, Mr Philip Radley.

Megrahi was found guilty of murder in January last year after the three trial judges accepted prosecution evidence that the bomb in the suitcase originated in Malta - where Megrahi worked at the airport - and was then transferred at Frankfurt to Flight 103, destined for New York via London.

Evidence pointing to the possible loading of a "rogue" suitcase onto the flight in London is central to Megrahi's appeal against a life sentence for the murder of the 259 aircraft passengers and nine people on the ground in Lockerbie where the destroyed aircraft fell.

PA