The Libyan leader, Col Moammar Gadafy, said yesterday the world had been deceived over the Lockerbie airliner bombing, defying US and British demands that Tripoli accept responsibility for the attack.
He repeated that neither the Libyan state, nor Libyan secret agent Abdel Basset al-Megrahi who was convicted last week of the 1988 bombing, bore any guilt for the attack which killed 270 people over the Scottish town.
Col Gadafy, embracing Megrahi's acquitted co-accused on his homecoming yesterday, had announced he would produce evidence showing Megrahi's innocence.
But in a lengthy speech to journalists in Tripoli, the Libyan leader attacked the prosecution evidence against Megrahi, but presented no specific new revelations on the case.
He called Megrahi a "hostage, not a convict" but also dismissed rival theories that it was Syrian or Palestinian agents who carried out the Lockerbie bombing.
Much of Col Gadafy's speech was spent quoting commentators and analysts sceptical over the results of the Lockerbie trial, held under Scottish law in the Netherlands.
"Libya was innocent of Lockerbie," said Col Gadafy, dressed in flowing blue African robes and speaking to reporters at the Tripoli residence bombed by US warplanes in 1986 in revenge for a bomb attack on a Berlin nightclub used by US soldiers.
"But Libya had to be accused, otherwise America and Britain would be embarrassed in front of the whole world and then would face huge compensation bills from the Libyan people," he added in a reference to the 1986 Anglo-American raid, which killed several people including Col Gadafy's daughter.
Behind his podium were photographs of corpses left by the 1986 raid and the slogan: "This is the result of American terrorism".
US investigators had manipulated the evidence put before the Lockerbie trial, Col Gadafy said. Megrahi's co-accused, Mr Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, had been deliberately acquitted "to give some credibility to the Western Christian justice system".
"The Western public should know this, because it is being misled," he said.
"We want to inform Western public opinion and I don't care if they send Western warplanes to attack my family," he said. "If they want confrontation we have nothing to lose, we are ready to go to the battlefield."
Col Gadafy said the case against Megrahi had required that he take the bomb bag to Malta, Germany and Britain all in one day. "How is it possible for one person do all these things in one day and in three different places?" Col Gadafy said.
He said witnesses in the case had been shown to be untrustworthy and said the United States and Britain had brought political pressure to bear on the court. "The world will laugh at components [of evidence] which are very silly and not based on proof."
In answer to journalists' questions, he said it was these points which constituted the "new evidence" he had promised.
"Look at the arguments I have produced," he said. "The world was not aware of them before."
Libyans aged 18 and over deserted schools, universities, factories and offices on Monday to attend "popular basic committees" to discuss government policy for 2001. But the overwhelming theme at the meetings was the Lockerbie verdict, which has already brought large-scale popular protests.
Speaker after speaker at the conferences said Col Gadafy would reveal evidence proving the innocence of the convicted man. The daily Al Mountijine wrote: "What the leader will reveal today will put the truth in front of everybody throughout the world about the innocence of the Libyan."
Meanwhile Russia said yesterday that the end of the Lockerbie bombing trial opened the way for sanctions against Libya to be dropped. The Kremlin expressed this view in a statement and the Foreign Ministry said Russian and Libyan diplomats had consulted each other on the sanctions issue.
"We view with understanding an appeal from the League of Arab Nations to the UN Security Council to lift sanctions against Libya," the Kremlin said in its statement, referring to a call made last week by the Arab League chief, Mr Esmat Abdel-Meguid.
Britain and the United States have insisted the UN sanctions, which were suspended two years ago, must remain formally in place until Libya accepts responsibility for the bombing and pays compensation to victims' relatives.