EDINBURGH (Sputnik) – Lord Advocate of Scotland Frank Mulholland, the country’s most senior state prosecutor, will be deemed "unfit to hold office" if he does not pass a report into alleged criminality involving his office’s personnel to an independent prosecutor, spokesman for a justice campaign group considering the case told Sputnik on Wednesday.
After a three-year criminal investigation, Police Scotland are now set to pass a report to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), Scotland’s prosecution service. It follows allegations that senior prosecutors, police officers and prosecution witnesses acted with criminal intent during the trial of Libyan Abdelbaset Megrahi who was convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. The claims against prosecutor's office include perversion of the course of justice and perjury.
It is vital that Mulholland avoids a conflict of interest between himself and his duty to the Scottish public, Robert Black of the Justice for Megrahi committee said.
"If the Lord Advocate and COPFS do not recognize and appreciate this, then the Lord Advocate is unfit to hold office and COPFS has lost its moral compass," Black said.
The 1988 Lockerbie bombing that claimed 270 lives remains the worst terrorist attack ever perpetrated in the United Kingdom. A total of 189 of the victims were US citizens.
In 2001, Libyan Abdelbaset Megrahi was convicted of the bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment in Scotland, but campaigners, including some British relatives of victims, believe Megrahi was innocent and have sought a public inquiry into the bombing and a review of the conviction.
In 2009, the Scottish government released Megrahi, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, back to Libya on compassionate grounds. He died in May 2012 in Tripoli.
