Lord Fraser's Remarks
As reported in The Sunday Times of 23 October 2005, the former Lord Advocate Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, who initiated the Lockerbie prosecution, said of the main prosecution witness at the Lockerbie trial, Tony Gauci:
- "Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say (that he) was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy. I don't think he was deliberately lying but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer."
Fraser added:
- "I wasn't particularly impressed with his (Abdelbaset al-Megrahi) defence: their techniques of muddle and confusion can work for a jury but it doesn't work for three judges."
Asked for his reaction, William Taylor said Fraser should never have presented Gauci as a Crown witness:
- "A man who has a public office, who is prosecuting in the criminal courts in Scotland, has got a duty to put forward evidence based upon people he considers to be reliable. He was prepared to advance Gauci as a witness of truth in terms of identification and, if he had these misgivings about him, they should have surfaced at the time. The fact that he is coming out many years later after my former client has been in prison for nearly four and a half years is nothing short of disgraceful. Gauci's evidence was absolutely central to the conviction and for Peter Fraser not to realise that is scandalous."
Read more about this topic: William Taylor QC
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