Lockerbie lawyers demand secret foreign evidence

By Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) - Lawyers for a Libyan man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie airline bombing demanded access on Thursday to evidence from an unnamed foreign state which they believe could undermine the case against him.

Maggie Scott, representing former Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, made the request at the first court hearing in the case since an independent commission decided in June that he should be granted a new appeal.

She said one of the documents the defense is seeking is related to the type of timer used in the bomb, which blew up a Pan Am airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people including 189 Americans.

Media reports had suggested the missing document, which has never been shown to the defense, was supplied to the prosecution by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and its disclosure could help clear Megrahi, serving a life sentence in a Scottish jail.

But prosecuting counsel Ronnie Clancy said the document had not come from the United States or its agencies, although he did not disclose the country involved.

He said it had been handed to Scotland's Crown Office, the public prosecuting authority, on the basis that it should remain confidential, and the Crown had always tried to respect this. He asked to be given six weeks to respond to the defense request.

Jim Swire, a Briton whose daughter Flora died at Lockerbie, told Reuters after attending the hearing in Edinburgh: "I'm horrified to hear of these refusals to divulge information."

Megrahi was convicted of the bombing in 2001, but the review commission said in June it believed he may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.