Lawyers for two Libyans charged with the 1988 Lockerbie bombing demanded yesterday to see the full text of top-secret CIA cables that refer to a star prosecution witness. The trial, which began in May, reopened at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands yesterday after a three-week break. After a long day of complicated procedural wrangling, judges instructed the prosecution to ask their US contacts to come up with fuller versions of the 25 censored documents.
"It is right to invite the Lord Advocate to use his best endeavours to ensure that all material in these cables be disclosed," said Lord Ranald Sutherland, presiding over the special Scottish trial in Holland.
Lord Colin Boyd, who as lord advocate is Scotland's top prosecutor, pledged to "certainly" do his best after confirming that US officials let two of his team see uncensored versions of the cables on June 1st. He contended that nothing blacked out in the cables was deemed to be important to the case.
The cables refer to Mr Abdul Majid Giaka (40), a Libyan spy turned CIA informer, now living under witness protection in the US. He was due to testify this week, possibly in disguise.
The cables had been sent to CIA headquarters from Malta, where Mr Majid made contact with US agents a year before the Lockerbie bombing.
Lawyers for the accused - Mr Basset Ali al-Megrahi (48) and Mr Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah (44) - argued yesterday that blacked-out sections of the cables could be "very pertinent" to their case.
Citing Scottish law and the European Convention on Human Rights, defence lawyers Mr William Taylor and Mr Richard Keen said there could be no "level playing field" if they had no prior access to the full cables.
Mr Megrahi and Mr Fhimah have pleaded not guilty to charges that they were Libyan agents who put a time-bomb on a flight out of Malta, tagged for transfer in Frankfurt to its intended target, Pan American flight 103.
The New York-bound Boeing 747 blew up over Lockerbie, southern Scotland, on December 21st, 1988, killing all 259 people on board, mostly Americans, plus 11 on the ground.
Defence lawyers have suggested the bomb may have been planted by Palestinian extremists, identified by police in earlier testimony as possible suspects.