Megrahi by John Ashton

Author:John Ashton [Ashton, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857902320
Publisher: Birlinn

The friction barely subsided throughout the cross-examination. When Keen attempted to again explore Talb’s training in the Soviet Union he refused to answer questions. Talb was ordered to leave the court while Keen appealed to the judges to compel him to answer. In truth there was little the judges could do; as he fell under Swedish jurisdiction, it was unclear whether they had any power to punish him for contempt of court, and, even if they did, since he was already serving a life sentence, any such punishment would be meaningless. On his return to the witness box, Talb was warned by Lord Sutherland that he must answer Keen’s questions. He confirmed that he understood the warning, but the subsequent exchanges were barely less rancorous.

Returning to the subject of Talb’s false passports, Keen described his Crown evidence as ‘a misleading mix of half-truths and omissions’. He accused him of replacing his Egyptian passport in 1980 in order to conceal the record of his movements over the previous four years. Talb denied it, claiming the original passport was accidentally washed along with his trousers. He also denied deliberately losing his Swedish travel documents in order to conceal his movements at the time of the Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Stockholm bombings.

He again claimed not to have instructed his brother-in-law Mahmoud to learn bomb-making in Syria. Keen suggested the trainer was a Lebanese or Syrian man called Abnan Abu Sultan, who was in Uppsala in the mid-1980s and had paid Talb 2,000 Swedish kronor. Talb said the Abnan Abu Sultan he knew was a Palestinian who had lived in Sweden for 30 years. He also denied that Mahmoud had returned from Syria with concealed detonators, $5,000 and instructions to bomb Jewish and American targets.

When asked about the Copenhagen attack, Talb’s response was markedly different to the one he’d given Taylor. While not directly admitting his involvement, he gave the curious answer, ‘I have no explanation to give. I am saying I was convicted, and I am not innocent.’ He claimed he’d acted at his own initiative, rather than at the instruction of any particular group.

Keen reminded Talb of objects that were seized during the 18 May 1989 raids on his and his brother-in-law’s houses, including his burnt passport, the tampered-with watches and the barometer missing its barometric mechanism. Asked about the 85,000 kronor that he had received in five instalments in 1988, he maintained that 45,000 of it comprised a bank loan. The other instalments, he said, were repayments of loans that he had made to various people, but he could not adequately explain how he had found 40,000 kronor to lend in the first place. He denied Mahmoud’s claim that he had made regular trips to Cyprus to collect funds from the PPSF.

Talb admitted to making various foreign journeys with Martin Imandi, including one to Berlin. He insisted that they visited the Western part of the city, but Keen pointed out that Imandi’s passport for the relevant period included numerous East German stamps.

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