Lawyers for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah 
finished their closing arguments on the 84th day of the hearing at 
the Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.

But it will be a while before the trial ends. The judges Lord Sutherland,
 Lord Coulsfield and Lord Maclean adjourned the case until 30 January 
when they will set a further date for their verdict to be announced.

The trial, the most expensive in British legal history, has cost pounds 
60m. Any appeal would raise it to an estimated pounds 100m.

Yesterday, families bereaved by the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 
103, in which 207 people died, were more concerned about coping with 
the immediate future.

";It will be quite difficult living with the uncertainty... but having 
waited 12 years what's another few days?"; said Jim Swire, who lost 
his daughter Flora on the flight. ";I'm very relieved I'm not a judge 
because the weight on their shoulders is sogreat now."

The Rev John Mosey, who also lost a daughter, Helga, added: "I have 
total amazement at the amount of work and the shrewdness of the judges. 
We are confident this is a court without strings and an independent 
tribunal. I have a great deal of trust in thejudges."

The families of the defendants said they too were content with the 
trial. A brother of Mr Al Megrahi said: ";We are very happy and quite 
confident about the outcome."

The verdict will have far-reaching diplomatic and political reverberations. 
To get the trial in place took tortuous manoeuvrings, involving the 
former South African president Nelson Mandela. The Libyans agreed 
to hand over the accused men only on anumber of pre-conditions, including 
that the Scottish court sat in a third country and that a UN embargo 
on Libya was lifted.

The prosecution case is that the two Libyans were responsible for 
the bombing, as members of the Libyan secret service. The name Mummmar 
Gaddafi, the Libyan President, was not in the indictment. But there 
is speculation that the attack was approved byhim.

Alistair Campbell QC, for the prosecution, maintained that the Crown 
had proved "beyond reasonable doubt" that the two Libyan men were 
guilty of masterminding the disaster. He drew together evidence from 
235 witnesses since the trial opened on 3 May lastyear.

Mr Campbell said it clearly showed that Mr Al Megrahi and Mr Fhimah 
had worked together to plant an unaccompanied suitcase containing 
a bomb packed inside a Toshiba radio cassette recorder, on board an 
Air Malta flight at Luqa airport. The bomb wasallegedly transferred 
at Frankfurt airport to a Heathrow-bound airport.

In its final submission, the Crown dropped two alternative charges 
of conspiracy to murder and a breach of the 1982 Aviation Security 
Act, deciding to leave the "all-or-nothing" charge of mass murder.

The defence case is that the charges are fatally flawed, and that 
there is nothing to prove the bomb originated in Malta. The defence 
barristers, William Taylor QC, and Richard Keen, have concentrated 
on the shortcomings of Abdul Majid Giaka, the chiefprosecution witness.

Mr Giaka is the only witness to link the defendants to the bomb placed 
in a Samsonite suitcase. He was such a prized intelligence asset that 
he was guarded in court by no fewer than 30 US marshals. He gave his 
evidence bewigged, he was screened off, andhis voice was electronically 
distorted.

It was revealed during cross-examination that Mr Giaka had only produced 
"evidence" about the Lockerbie bombing the day after his CIA masters 
threatened to cut him off without a penny unless he came up with useful 
information. By giving evidence hebecame eligible for up to pounds 
2.7m reward offered by the US government.

Until his sudden revelations about the bombing, one of Mr Giaka's 
contributions had been to claim that Colonel Gaddafi was involved 
in a Masonic conspiracy with the President of Malta to destabilise 
the West. CIA papers produced at court showed that MrGiaka had told 
his handlers he was related to Idris, the deposed king of Libya. In 
fact, he had no connection with the late king.

The defence had intended, at one stage, to say that the real bombers 
were from the terrorist organisation the Popular Front for the Liberation 
of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). But they did not proceed with 
this. The motive, it was claimed, wasrevenge for the shooting down 
of an Iranian airbus by the the US Navy battle-cruiser, Vincennes,
 killing all 290 on board.

Some of the bereaved family members, including Dr Swire, have themselves 
expressed scepticism in the past about the evidence against the accused. 
Dr Swire had stressed that unravelling the truth about the bombing 
was as important as the verdict. "By notinvestigating why it wasn'
t prevented, and by not getting justice brought on the heads of the 
accused, you are in fact demeaning the memory of those who died," 
he said.
 
 

Kim Sengupta, Lockerbie trial judges consider their verdict. , Independent, 01-19-2001, pp 4.