16. Above all, the relatives of the victims deserve to know the full and uncensored truth about the Lockerbie crime. This is their inalienable right as well as an indispensable requirement of the international rule of law. For the above-described reasons, the undersigned international observer renews his call of 23 August 2002 for an independent public inquiry into the Lockerbie case. Because the case is related to the foreign affairs of the UK (in particular in the framework of Security Council resolutions), such an inquiry would have to be mandated by the British Parliament (irrespective of whether the Scottish judicial authorities will order a review of Mr. Al-Megrahi's case, upon the latter's request, or not). There is no reason why an independent judicial inquiry similar to the one conducted in connection with the death of Dr. Kelly (in relation to the Iraq war of 2003) should not be undertaken in the case of the Lockerbie bombing. The fact that the government of the United Kingdom has repeatedly rejected an independent inquiry creates the impression that the British administration is not interested in a transparent judicial, but in a political settlement based on the specific constellation of interests between the three parties to the dispute, the US, UK and Libya.
17. The chapter of the Lockerbie investigation can only be closed when the full truth will have been established and when the question will have been satisfactorily answered why only a lone individual has been sentenced in a case that relates to a terrorist crime the commission of which required a vast and sophisticated operational network (most likely involving more than one country and/or terrorist organization) and huge financial resources. An ambiguous declaration of "state responsibility" such as the one deposited with the UN Security Council does in no way answer the urgent and legitimate question as to personal criminal responsibility of individuals other than Mr. Al-Megrahi (and eventually also from other countries) for the Lockerbie crime. A political deal such as the one concluded last week between the US, UK and Libya linking individual compensation with the lifting of multilateral and subsequently unilateral sanctions does not advance the cause of justice in the present case, but is part of the politics of national interest of the countries involved in the present dispute. The intelligence cooperation established between the three countries since September 11, 2001, in the area of counter-terrorism must not come at the expense of the search for truth in the Lockerbie case. The doubts and misgivings about the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands will only disappear when a full investigation of the crime by an independent commission will have been undertaken. Up to this moment the undersigned will maintain his doubts about the Lockerbie verdict and will consider the judgment concerning Mr. Al-Megrahi -- on the basis of an Indictment that was substantially modified in the course of the trial and altered by the judges as part of the Verdict -- as a miscarriage of justice. Dr. Hans Koechler
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