The secretary of the Justice for Megrahi Committee, who currently have a petition before the Justice Committee calling for an inquiry into the Pan Am 103 event, has derided the Crown Office's attempts to advance the investigation by interviewing Libyan intelligence chief Moussa Koussa as a sham.

Robert Forrester, writing exclusively for The Firm argues that the whole exercise has been undertaken in the knowledge by the Crown that the Libyan regime were not responsible for the Lockerbie event.

"It is extremely unlikely that anything was learned in the interview that wasn’t already known, namely: that Libya didn’t do it," he says.

"Nevertheless, representatives of the Crown and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary were put up in a hotel in London for a week before eventually meeting Mr Koussa. Having concluded their interview they refused to divulge its content since to do so might compromise their on-going investigation. One must bear in mind here that, despite Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini’s persistent abuse of the word ‘team’ to describe the number of officers working on the on-going Lockerbie case, until the arrival of Mr Koussa, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary had allocated an entire ‘team’ to the job consisting of just one officer."

Forrester argues that Koussa appears to have travelled to the UK as a negotiator with diplomatic protection in place before the trip was made.

"This appears to be confirmed as he has now departed the UK for a conference in Qatar completely unhindered. The UK authorities say that he is welcome to return when ever he wishes," Forrrester says.

"Where then does this leave the talk of interviewing him on the subject of Lockerbie by the Crown and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary? It is all looking very embarrassing.

"The Crown will maintain that to talk publicly about the interview could damage the ‘investigation’. The long and the short of it is that if they had had any road to Damascus experience in London, they’d have been singing it from the roof tops."

Forrester adds that the Crown Office had expended a great deal of effort into "obfuscation and the blocking of any moves to have Mr al-Megrahi’s conviction independently investigated", leading Forrester, Dr Jim Swire, Robert Black QC, Iain Mckie and others to form the Justice for Megrahi committee.

"[It] was founded around the back end of 2008 precisely because it was felt that it was no longer sufficient to depend solely on applying judicial pressure in the hope of addressing this problem, particularly given the way in which the Crown had planned to hear Mr al-Megrahi’s second appeal. In short, it was time to become more political."

Forrester's remarks can be read in full, here.

The Crown Office have been asked for their input to this story.