Michael Scharf

Michael Scharf had to 'lie' to the UN Security Council about Libya

Michael Scharf is a renowned American law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and is the co-founder of the Public International Law & Policy Group. In April 1989, attorney Michael Scharf joined the US State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence, just four months after Pan Am Flight 103 was downed on 21 December 1988 and at the height of the CIA's Lockerbie bombing investigation.

In November 2006, five years after Abdelbaset al-Megrahi had been convicted at the Lockerbie trial, Professor Scharf admitted he had been misled by the CIA and that the case against Libya "was so full of holes it was like Swiss cheese."

UN Security Council

In response to information supplied by the CIA, which accused two Libyans of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, the UN Security Council imposed international sanctions on Libya in 1992. Michael Scharf was the US State Department attorney who was responsible for drafting UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR)s 731, 748 and 883, which were designed to force Colonel Gaddafi to hand over the accused Libyans, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, for trial.

Case against Libya

The case against the two Libyans involved three highly contentious elements:

• A printed circuit board fragment from a Swiss MEBO timer that allegedly detonated the Lockerbie bomb;
• A Libyan informer, Abdul Majid Giaka, who told the CIA that he could incriminate the two accused; and,
• A Maltese shop-owner, Tony Gauci, who would identify al-Megrahi as resembling the person that purchased clothing which was allegedly packed inside the bomb suitcase.

It was not until May 2000 that the Lockerbie trial eventually began. The trial ended on 31 January 2001 with the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and a not guilty verdict for Lamin Khalifa Fhimah.

"Lockerbie trial was a CIA fix"

Five years after the Lockerbie trial, Professor Scharf made some astonishing claims to a Scottish newspaper:

"Lockerbie trial was a CIA fix, US Intelligence insider claims" (By Liam McDougall, Home Affairs Editor, Glasgow Sunday Herald, 12 November 2006)

The CIA manipulated the Lockerbie trial and lied about the strength of the prosecution case to get a result that was politically convenient for America, according to a former US State Department lawyer.

Michael Scharf, who was the counsel to the US counter-terrorism bureau when the two Libyans were indicted for the bombing, described the case as "so full of holes it was like Swiss cheese" and said it should never have gone to trial.

He claimed the CIA and FBI had assured State Department officials there was an "iron-clad" case against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, but that in reality the intelligence agencies had no confidence in their star witness and knew well in advance of the trial that he was "a liar".

Scharf branded the case a "whitewash" and added: "It was a trial where everybody agreed ahead of time that they were just going to focus on these two guys, and they were the fall guys." The comments by Scharf are controversial, given his position in US intelligence during the Lockerbie investigation and trial. It also comes at a crucial time as the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is to report in the coming months on whether it believes there was a miscarriage of justice in the case.

In January 2001, following a trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, Fhimah was acquitted and al-Megrahi was sentenced to life in a Scottish jail for his part in the December 1988 bombing.

Scharf joined the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence in April 1989, just four months after Pan Am Flight 103 was downed and at the height of the CIA's Lockerbie bombing investigation. He was also responsible for drawing up the UN Security Council resolutions that imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992 in order to force Tripoli to hand over al-Megrahi and Fhimah for trial.

He added: "The CIA and the FBI kept the State Department in the dark. It worked for them for us to be fully committed to the theory that Libya was responsible. I helped the counterterrorism bureau draft documents that described why we thought Libya was responsible, but these were not based on seeing a lot of evidence, but rather on representations from the CIA and FBI and the Department of Justice about what the case would prove and did prove. It was largely based on this inside guy Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka. It wasn't until the trial that I learned this guy was a nut-job and that the CIA had absolutely no confidence in him and that they knew he was a liar. It was a case that was so full of holes it was like Swiss cheese."

Scharf, now an international law expert at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said he was convinced that Libya, Iran and the Palestinian terrorist group the PFLP-GC were involved in the bombing, which killed 270 people. But, he said, the case had a "diplomatic rather than a purely legal goal".

"Now Libya has given up its weapons of mass destruction, it's allowed inspectors in, the sanctions have been lifted, tourists from the US are flocking to see the Roman ruins outside of Tripoli and Gaddafi has become a leader in Africa rather than a pariah. And all of that is the result of this trial. Diplomatically, it has been a huge success story. But legally, it just seemed like a whitewash to me," Scharf said.

Robert Black, professor of Scots law at Edinburgh University and the principal architect of the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist, described the Lockerbie case as 'a fraud'. "That the trial at Camp Zeist resulted in a conviction is a disgrace for Scottish justice," Black said. "I think this [Scharf's comments] indicates that a growing number of people on both sides of the Atlantic now believe they were used in this case."

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing, said: "Myself and Michael Scharf are coming from exactly the same position. I went to the trial and became convinced after watching it unfold that the case was full of holes."

Tony Kelly, al-Megrahi's solicitor, said he would not comment while the SCCRC was still examining the case.

No-one at the CIA in Washington was available to comment.

"The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie"

Seven years after the Lockerbie trial, on 31 August 2008, BBC Television broadcast an hour-long documentary "The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie" which carried a ten-minute interview with Professor Scharf (42 mins et seq). This is what Michael Scharf told the BBC:

"There was this great celebration that we have the smoking gun and it was the Libyans, and everybody was convinced it was going to hold up in court." Scharf was tipped off about a secret CIA informer at the heart of the plot to blow up Pan Am 103. "He was the one that could go into the courtroom and say I was the one who worked with these individuals. They were ordered to blow up Pan Am 103. I saw them with the explosives and I saw them put it on the plane."

In June 1988, six months before Lockerbie, Giaka walked into the American embassy on Malta and offered his services for a fee. He said he was an agent in the feared Libyan External Security Organisation and boasted of having been trained by the KGB. The CIA were impressed and gave him the codename ‘puzzlepiece’. We can reveal what the CIA tried to keep secret: Majid Giaka was not so much 007, more WD40! This secret agent had started out in the car pool, and that was the nearest he had ever got to driving an Aston Martin. Giaka had never been a staff member of the Libyan ESO. He has been a ‘shirker’ while in Malta, generally dodging ESO assignments. This informer was being paid $1,000 a month rising to $1,500 to meet his CIA handlers in a Malta safehouse. But Giaka never delivered the goods.

"My moment was like wow, they didn’t tell us anything like that. The CIA knew all along that this guy was a liar; that this guy was just out for money. They didn’t believe half of what he said – of anything of what he said, and yet they were presenting him as the star witness in a case that is of such importance. So for me that was an eye-opening moment, a shocking moment."

When Giaka took the stand behind a screen to protect his identity, he described how he had seen al-Megrahi and Fhimah at Luqa airport with a brown suitcase. Apparently, Giaka had first recalled this ‘handy lead’ three years after the event, and after the CIA had whisked him away from Malta in a speedboat, given him and his wife a new identity and a new life in America under the witness protection programme. The Judges were not impressed nor was the man who had been told to put his faith in the CIA’s secret Libyan agent:

"We have to take it as a matter of trust and we go into the Security Council and we make the case, and they trust us because they have no reason to think that we’re lying. And I have to say that years later that I played a role similar to that of Colin Powell after the invasion of Iraq. He went in and said that we had open and shut evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and now today he feels that ruined his career. It didn’t ruin my career, but it’s a moment I’m not proud of."

"When we were presented with the Gauci evidence they said that there was a shop-keeper who could do a definitive eye-witness account placing the defendant at the scene buying the clothes that were found in the suitcase that contained the bomb."

Police visited Gauci nineteen times, and he gave self-contradictory evidence about the shirt and about al-Megrahi.

"It was very clear at that point that he was not a definitive eye-witness; that he had thought that other people may have bought the clothes; that he was never sure that the defendant was the guy. In fact, the most definitive statement he had was that the guy sort of resembles the person who bought it. That’s the kind of exculpatory evidence that is required to be turned over to the defence counsel. And I think that the investigation now is right to be very concerned about why that evidence was not in fact turned over. Because that’s the kind of evidence that the whole case can turn on."

External links

• "Lockerbie: CIA made US State Department attorney ‘lie’ to UN Security Council"
• "Comments by Michael Scharf's friend Mark Zaid"
• "Lockerbie: CIA ‘fitted up’ Gaddafi at the United Nations"
• "Lockerbie Conspiracy by Thatcher and Reagan"