CAMP ZEIST, Netherlands — Defense lawyers demanded full access to a batch of classified CIA cables as the trial of two Libyans accused of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 resumed Tuesday following a three-week summer recess.
But Scotland's chief prosecutor insisted that information censored from the cables was not relevant to the 1988 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people, including 189 Americans.
"The United States considers all of this material highly confidential," said Lord Advocate Colin Boyd. He added that Scottish prosecutors were shown the full text last June "in conditions where copies could not be made and would not be allowed."
Boyd said the deleted text referred to CIA agents' real and code names, as well as locations and methods of intelligence gathering.
The 25 cables, dated Aug. 10, 1988, to Aug. 31, 1989, were sent to Washington by CIA agents who interviewed a Libyan spy who has since defected to the United States.
The defector, identified as Abdul Majid Giaka, walked into the U.S. Embassy in Malta in August 1988 — four months before the Lockerbie bombing — and offered his services to the CIA, Boyd said.
The defector is expected to take the stand this week as a key witness. He lives in the United States under the federal witness protection program and has asked to be hidden from the court by screens and electronic voice distortion.
Bill Taylor, a Scottish attorney for Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, showed the court copies of the documents as provided to the defense. Large segments were blacked out.
"It is vital to the securing of a fair trial for these accused that the defense is not disadvantaged vis-a-vis the crown when Giaka is cross-examined," the attorney said. "I emphatically do not accept that what lies behind that blanked-out sections is of no interest to a cross-examiner."
Giaka reportedly saw one of the defendants place the suitcase containing the bomb on an airport conveyor belt in Malta, where all three worked for Libyan Arab Airlines allegedly as cover for their espionage activities.
According to the indictment, the defendants sent the suitcase bomb onto a flight from the Mediterranean island to Frankfurt, Germany, where it was transferred as unaccompanied luggage onto a feeder flight connecting with Flight 103 in London.
Giaka is considered the closest the prosecutors have to a witness who can directly link the defendants to the crime.
After the court recessed on July 27, Scottish legal experts said the case had been meticulously assembled from reams of forensic evidence compiled during an 11-year international investigation and did not hinge on one or two eyewitnesses.
Prosecutors expect to wrap up their evidence in September, handing the floor to the defense lawyers, whose case is expected to last several months.
The trial began May 3 at a special Scottish courthouse on this former U.S. air base in the Netherlands.
Al-Megrahi and co-defendant Lamen Khalifa Fhimah face up to life in a Scottish prison if convicted on charges of murder, conspiracy to murder and contravention of the British Aviation Security Act in the downing of Flight 103 on Dec. 21, 1988.