Lockerbie Trial in Recess AgainThe Lockerbie trial, that was adjourned for a week, went into recess again Tuesday, December 5, after hearing a couple of witnesses.The recess was proposed to wait for the arrival of new evidence from Syria to prove the defense case that alleges it was the extreme Palestinian activists rather than the two accused Libyans who bomb-attacked Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. On Tuesday when the trial resumed following a week of adjournment, defense lawyers called in a Maltese meteorologist to determine whether it rained on December 7, 1988, in their bid to establish reasonable doubts in the case of the prosecution. The prosecution team previously called a Maltese shopkeeper to suggest Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, one of the two accused, resembles the man who bought some items from his shop a few weeks before the mid-air bombing that killed 259 people aboard the New York-bound plane over Lockerbie and 11 more on the ground. Shopkeeper Anthony Gauci told the court that the purchaser had walked out of his shop and promptly opened his newly bought umbrella. Joseph Mifsud, chief meteorologist at Malta's Luqa airport at the time of the bombing, told the court that his records showed only a trace of rain in the morning of December 7, 1988, but non later on in the day. The prosecution argued that Mifsud's records provided no evidence of precise weather conditions throughout the island state and brought out police weather reports to highlight differences in Malta. The prosecution ended its case two weeks ago. The Scottish court on Dutch soil last week rejected a motion to acquit Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima from the prosecution case. The defense team promised to bring after the new recess evidence indicating Palestinian terrorists were responsible for the Lockerbie attack. The defense case is expected to last several months. The Lockerbie trial went underway on May 5 this year after almost 12 years of investigation and preparation. It is expected to last up to a year before the three Scottish judges can give their verdict of either guilty, not guilty and not prove. |
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