Global Policy Forum

By Donald G. McNeil Jr.

All that can be fairly predicted about the trial of two Libyans accused of blowing Pan Am Flight 103 out of the skies above Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 is that it may take less time -- and be somewhat less painful -- than expected. Beyond that, the only clear feature of the little-watched proceedings at this military camp an hour outside Amsterdam is that not all has gone as the prosecution might have hoped. Some witnesses have failed to appear, and the testimony of others has been less than crystal clear.

One expert from the University of Edinburgh law faculty has confidently predicted that the trial will be over by November and that the defense may not have to present a case. Another from the University of Glasgow suggests that the prosecution is making methodical progress and that April is a likely target.

Clare Connelly, leader of the Glasgow law school's Lockerbie trial team, said that the prosecution seemed "meticulously prepared" and that the evidence was being carefully presented. Robert Black, a professor of Scottish law at Edinburgh, seemed to view the situation more pessimistically, saying that so far "there is no evidence that is positively incriminatory of either accused."

The prosecution and defense cut at least two months from the proceedings here by agreeing not to argue over the discovery of each bit of wreckage found scattered over 850 square miles of Scotland. They also agreed that the 270 victims had all died in the crash, meaning that a relative of each did not have to take the stand as Scottish law -- under which the case is being tried -- usually requires.

Meanwhile, there have been minor delays over the sound system and translation and the dismantling of a blown-apart luggage container so it could fit through the door of the high-tech courtroom here, where bewigged judges inspecting exhibits on desktop monitors make the trial look like "Rumpole of the Bailey" shot in a high school computer lab.

More of a problem is that the prosecution is having some trouble producing its witnesses as it would like. They have to be flown here from Malta or Germany or Scotland or the United States, and some have proved uncooperative. Just this week a prosecutor, Alan Turnbull, had to apologize for the refusal of some Maltese witnesses to appear or testify on a live television link, and expressed his frustration at being unable to subpoena witnesses as he would in Scotland.

The trial began May 3 and is approaching its planned summer break, from July 29 to Aug. 22. The caravan of reporters and photographers that mobbed families in the first week has dwindled to a half-dozen toiling quietly in the cavernous media center. The most eagerly anticipated witness is said to be a turncoat Libyan intelligence officer now in a witness-protection program in the United States. There is much speculation about how he will be delivered to this well-protected camp and how his identity will be kept hidden.

This week, for the first time, a witness pointed out one of the defendants in court. Toni Gauci, the owner of Mary's House, a clothing store in Malta, said Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi resembled the man who bought a jacket, pajamas, trousers, shirts, sweaters, a baby sweater and an umbrella, all without trying anything on. The singed remnants of such items from Mr. Gauci's store were found in the wreckage, and the prosecution says they were used to pad out the brown Samsonite suitcase that contained the bomb.

But in the years since the bombing, Mr. Gauci has been asked many times to look at photo displays and lineups and has seen articles with photos, which have blurred his memory. The defense got him to admit that he once told investigators that a newspaper picture resembled the man he had seen. That picture was of Muhammad Abu Talb, a member of a Palestinian group. The defense is expected to argue that Palestinian terrorists in Frankfurt slipped a bomb just inside the plane's fuselage, and that it was not placed on board in a suitcase by the Libyans. Mr. Gauci was touching in his honesty about his confusion: "Yes, yes, 11 years, so many years," he said. "I would like to have a computer in my head, but. . . ."

Professor Black said Mr. Gauci's testimony could not have helped the prosecution, which now must hope for convincing identification from the defector. "If they don't get damning evidence from him, then there's nothing else," he said.

Most of the earlier testimony has been about forensic evidence, with experts analyzing where in the plane the bomb exploded and how one pound of Semtex could have torn apart a 747. Most insisted that the blast emerged from inside the damaged baggage container and blew a 20-inch hole in the fuselage "as if a shotgun had been fired at close range," as one put it.

A witness who elicited open criticism was the co-owner of the Swiss electronics company, Mebo, that supplied bomb timers to Libya. Edwin Bollier, 62, spent a week on the stand in May. The Glasgow team updating the trial's progress on its Web site (www.law.gla.ac.uk/lockerbie/) commented that he "is not a credible and reliable witness," and had "repeatedly changed his story and indeed changed it in court as he was examined." (Professor Black has his own Web site at www.thelockerbietrial.com)

A defense lawyer, Richard Keen, accused Mr. Bollier of being "mired completely in a web of deceit, cunning and lying of your own invention," and the prosecution admitted it had considered charging him as a co-conspirator.

Certainly, according to his own contradictory accounts, Mr. Bollier has led a checkered life. He began, he says, running offshore pirate radio stations, then developed Libya as his best customer for timers, antennas, listening devices and other electronics. He said he once supplied electronic detonators to Stasi, the East German intelligence agency. He helped the Libyans test his timers on an aircraft at a desert military base. But in late 1988, two days before the Lockerbie bombing, he said he got into a dispute over paying for timers he supplied. He admitted that in January 1989, a month after the bombing, he wrote to the C.I.A. blaming specific Libyan officials, including Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, for ordering the destruction of Pan Am 103.

In 1991, he wrote to a Libyan intelligence officer saying he had gone to authorities, but had told them that he had sold timers to someone in Beirut. On the stand, he denied that this letter was a veiled blackmail threat. Some time later, he testified, Libya paid him 23,000 Swiss francs to do his own "investigation" of the Lockerbie bombing, and a lawyer for the two Libyan defendants met with him in 1993 to discuss a $1.8 million loan. He concluded that a bomb placed against the fuselage had been responsible and could have been constructed with a timer like those he had supplied to the Stasi in 1985.

On the witness stand, he said he had himself been blackmailed into writing the 1989 letter to the C.I.A. by a man who visited his Zurich office and ordered him to write it on a Spanish typewriter. In a 1991 interview, confronted by prosecutors, he said he had written the letter, which he now says was "pure fantasy," to throw investigators off the track.

Mr. Bollier was also confronted with various versions of what he said was in a brown suitcase he admits taking from Zurich to Libya. At different times, he has claimed he took with him a blue baby sweater, a present for his Libyan driver. At different times, he has said the other clothes were for different people. The prosecutor suggested he had been lying all along, changing his story as different facts emerged from the investigation. He also suggested that an invoice found in Mr. Bollier's desk saying he sold timers to the Stasi in 1985 had been fabricated and backdated.date