Lockerbie judges agree to hear fresh evidence

The judges in the Lockerbie appeal trial have agreed to hear fresh evidence which could exonerate the former Libyan intelligence agent convicted last year for mass murder.

The judges at the specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands agreed to allow Ray Manly, a security guard from Heathrow Airport in Britain, to testify.

Mr Manly claims he found evidence that a door in Heathrow’s baggage area was forced open on the night of December 20, 1988, 16 hours before a suitcase bomb exploded on board Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland.

The luggage on board the Pan Am flight would have been in the Heathrow baggage area at the time of the suspected break-in.

This evidence was not presented to the initial trial last year, when Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was found to have planted the bomb on Pan Am flight 103.

The prosecution in the trial based their case on the presumption that the explosives were planted in luggage at an airport in Malta before being transferred to Frankfurt and then Heathrow.

Al Megrahi’s lawyer has argued that the evidence of a break-in at Heathrow raises "a reasonable doubt" about his client’s alleged involvement in the bombing.

All 259 people on board the doomed flight died in the 1988 attack, as did 11 people on the ground in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie.