Lockerbie documents legal order

PROSECUTORS were ordered yesterday by three appeal judges to produce any undisclosed documents about a key witness whose evidence helped to convict the Lockerbie bomber.

Lawyers for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, 56, the former Libyan intelligence officer serving a life sentence for the bombing, believe that information about the witness could help in their fight to have the conviction overturned.

The Crown says it has responded to informal requests from the defence and has conducted exhaustive searches and handed over as much material as it could. Now Megrahi's team has been given the backing of a court order to ensure that everything possible is revealed.

Lord Hamilton, the Lord Justice-General, said: "Without expressing any view on the adequacy of the steps already taken by the Crown to satisfy the claims for recovery, we consider that the appropriate course at this stage is to identify the classes of document which the appellant is, in our judgment, entitled to recover."

Those classes included any payment of a reward or offer of a place on a witness protection programme to Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper.