Alistair John MacKenzie Duff (born 1954) is a former Scottish solicitor and sheriff who qualified as a solicitor-advocate in 1993, and later became Director of the Judicial Institute of Scotland before resigning after being arrested and charged with undisclosed offences.
Duff was born in Kirkcaldy, Fife in 1954 and moved to Glenrothes where he attended secondary school at Glenwood High School, Glenrothes then to Glenrothes High School where both his father and uncle were teachers. In 1971 he went to Edinburgh Law School where he graduated with first class honours. He married Carol Ferguson in April 1978 in Edinburgh, with whom he had four children. They divorced in 2007 and in the same year he married his current wife Susan Duff. [1]
Susan Duff was a defence advocate at Compass Chambers in Edinburgh, subsequently appointed a Sheriff in October 2021 for Tayside, Central and Fife regions. [2]
In December 2021 he abruptly retired from the Judicial Institute for Scotland following his arrest in October 2021.
He was arrested and charged in December 2021 following a complaint made in October 2021 and appeared in court on 6 November 2023, charged with 'sexually aggravated breach of the peace'. The offence consisted of being overheard, whilst watching a video, making sexual and a racial remark to another man during the break in an online training session for justices of the peace, two of whom reported him to the police. [28] He was fined £1275 . [29] [30] [31]
Concerns about the apparent secrecy surrounding the case were expressed in various quarters, [32] including Member of Scottish Parliament Russell Findlay who submitted two written questions to the Scottish Parliament asking for the publication of ministerial correspondence relating to Duff's arrest and resignation [33] and legal advice received in ruling against the MSP, all of which were rejected. Some information, excluding court records and personal information, was released on 9 November 2022. [34]
On 22 November 2022, following further police investigations, Duff was arrested and charged with a further offence. [35] Further information following a freedom of information request was withheld by Police Scotland in May 2024 on the basis that investigations were on-going. [36]
A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland, the sýslumaður, which is commonly translated to English as sheriff.
Kenneth Wright MacAskill is a Scottish politician who was Member of Parliament (MP) for East Lothian from 2019 to 2024. He previously served as Cabinet Secretary for Justice from 2007 to 2014 and was a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) from 1999 to 2016. A former member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), he defected to the Alba Party in 2021 and currently serves as the party's acting leader, following Alex Salmond's death.
The Scottish court in the Netherlands was a special sitting of the High Court of Justiciary set up under Scots law in a former United States Air Force base, Camp Zeist near Utrecht, in the Netherlands, for the trial of two Libyans charged with 270 counts of murder in connection with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988. A school on the former base was converted into a judicial court for the trial.
The High Court of Justiciary is the supreme criminal court in Scotland. The High Court is both a trial court and a court of appeal. As a trial court, the High Court sits on circuit at Parliament House or in the adjacent former Sheriff Court building in the Old Town in Edinburgh, or in dedicated buildings in Glasgow and Aberdeen. The High Court sometimes sits in various smaller towns in Scotland, where it uses the local sheriff court building. As an appeal court, the High Court sits only in Edinburgh. On one occasion the High Court of Justiciary sat outside Scotland, at Zeist in the Netherlands during the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, as the Scottish Court in the Netherlands. At Zeist the High Court sat both as a trial court, and an appeal court for the initial appeal by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service is the independent public prosecution service for Scotland, and is a Ministerial Department of the Scottish Government. The department is headed by His Majesty's Lord Advocate, who under the Scottish legal system is responsible for prosecution, along with the sheriffdom procurators fiscal. In Scotland, virtually all prosecution of criminal offences is undertaken by the Crown. Private prosecutions are extremely rare.
Colin Boyd, Baron Boyd of Duncansby, is a former Scottish judge who was a Senator of the College of Justice from June 2012 to June 2024. He was Lord Advocate for Scotland from 24 February 2000 until his resignation on 4 October 2006. On 11 April 2006, Downing Street announced that Colin Boyd would take a seat as a crossbench life peer; however, he took the Labour whip after resigning as Lord Advocate. He was formally introduced in the House of Lords on 3 July 2006. On the day SNP leader Alex Salmond was elected First Minister of Scotland, it was reported that Boyd was quitting the Scottish Bar to become a part-time consultant with public law solicitors Dundas & Wilson. He told the Glasgow Herald, "This is a first. I don't think a Lord Advocate has ever done this—left the Bar and become a solicitor."
Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi was a Libyan who was head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli, Libya, and an alleged Libyan intelligence officer. On 31 January 2001, Megrahi was convicted, by a panel of three Scottish judges sitting in a special court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, of 270 counts of murder for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. His co-accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was found not guilty and was acquitted.
A procurator fiscal, sometimes called PF or fiscal, is a public prosecutor in Scotland, who has the power to impose fiscal fines. They investigate all sudden and suspicious deaths in Scotland, conduct fatal accident inquiries and handle criminal complaints against the police. They also receive reports from specialist reporting agencies such as His Majesty's Revenue and Customs.
The Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial began on 3 May 2000, more than 11 years after the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988. The 36-week bench trial took place at a specially convened Scottish Court in the Netherlands set up under Scots law and held at a disused United States Air Force base called Camp Zeist near Utrecht.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government, established by the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995.
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James Alexander Mackay QPM retired as Deputy Chief Constable of Tayside Police in 2001. He has had considerable experience of criminal investigation and major inquiries. He is especially interested in forensic science and has served on national committees particularly in the field of DNA in police investigation.
Tony Gauci was the proprietor of Mary's House, a clothes shop in Sliema, Malta, who was a witness in the prosecution of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in relation to the Lockerbie Bombing.
Pan Am Flight 103 (PA103/PAA103) was a regularly scheduled Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit via a stopover in London and another in New York City. The transatlantic leg of the route was operated by Clipper Maid of the Seas, a Boeing 747 registered N739PA. Shortly after 19:00 on 21 December 1988, while the aircraft was in flight over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, it was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing. Large sections of the aircraft crashed in a residential street in Lockerbie, killing 11 residents. With a total of 270 fatalities, it is the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United Kingdom.
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Hans Köchler's Lockerbie trial observer mission stemmed from the dispute between the United Kingdom, the United States, and Libya concerning arrangements for the trial of two Libyans accused of causing the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.
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The judiciary of Scotland are the judicial office holders who sit in the courts of Scotland and make decisions in both civil and criminal cases. Judges make sure that cases and verdicts are within the parameters set by Scots law, and they must hand down appropriate judgments and sentences. Judicial independence is guaranteed in law, with a legal duty on Scottish Ministers, the Lord Advocate and the Members of the Scottish Parliament to uphold judicial independence, and barring them from influencing the judges through any form of special access.
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