(15 Oct 2001)
1. Exterior wide shot of court
2. Police officers standing in front of court
3. Close-up of police officers
4. Defence Lawyer Bill Taylor arriving at court
5. Relatives arriving at court
6. Pan from court building to prison building
7. Prison car carrying Al-Megrahi driving from prison building to court building
8. Car carrying judges arriving at court
9. Set up of Jim Swire
10. SOUNDBITE: (English) Jim Swire, victim’s father
"What people have to remember is that the plane that blew up on 21st December 1988 at Lockerbie had been loaded from empty at Heathrow Airport. There’s been one obligatory inquiry in Britain into what happened and that inquiry – called a fatal accident inquiry – found that every single bag that was loaded into the aircraft that was destroyed had been loaded on board at Heathrow. It appears that the new evidence that the defence mentioned today has to do with security at Heathrow."
11. Cutaway of Swire being interviewed
12. SOUNDBITE: (English) Jim Swire, victim’s father
"The deficiencies in security and intelligence in the United Kingdom in 1988 have never been objectively examined. That means, in our book, that the British government is unable to offer the protection it should offer to its citizens against attacks such as those launched by bin Laden today, because it has not looked to see what lessons should be learnt from the appalling failures in 1988."
13. Set up of Marina De Larracoechea
14. SOUNDBITE: (English) Marina De Larracoechea, victim’s sister
"There are many things that have not been presented or have been presented partially. At the origin of this case I think, this case is heavily political. The nature is totally political and political interests have limited the presentation."
15. Wide shot of court
STORYLINE:
Defence lawyers said on Monday that new evidence will be disclosed during an appeal of the conviction of a Libyan intelligence agent for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
The appeal opened with a preliminary hearing on Monday that set the latter half of January for substantive arguments, nearly one year after Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted of planting the bomb.
Al-Megrahi was sentenced January 31 to life imprisonment for killing 270 people, 179 of them Americans, in the December 21, 1988 explosion.
His co-defendant, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted.
Since then, Al-Megrahi has been the only occupant of a prison compound near the Camp Zeist former air force base in the Netherlands that was converted into a Scottish court facility for the trial.
Scottish law allows for an appeal only where there’s been a miscarriage of justice or where new evidence has come to light.
Jim Swire, father of one of the victim’s of the atrocity, said he believed the new evidence in question concerned security deficiencies at Heathrow Airport in London.
Marina De Larracoechea, another victim’s sister, said that some evidence was omitted during the trial for political reasons.
The appeal comes at a time when the world is confronted anew with the problem of capturing terrorists and bringing them to justice in response to the September 11 attacks in the United States.
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