Jimmy McDougall was Procurator Fiscal in Dumfries when Pan Am Flight 103 crashed at Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988 killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew on board, as well as 11 people in the town of Lockerbie .
In Scotland, responsibility for the investigation of sudden deaths rests with the Procurator Fiscal, who will attend the scene and may direct the police in the conduct of their inquiries. The Procurator Fiscal holds a commission from the Lord Advocate who is a government minister. At the time of the bombing the Lord Advocate was a member of the UK government but, since devolution, is now a member of the Scottish Executive.
On 28 December 1988 – just a week after the crash – air accident investigators were able to announce that they had found traces of high explosive and that there was evidence that PA 103 had been brought down by an improvised explosive device. The prime responsibility for the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 fell to Jimmy McDougall, the Procurator Fiscal in the nearby town of Dumfries, and to the Dumfries & Galloway police force – the force with the fewest officers in Britain. The police effort was augmented by officers from all over Scotland as well as the north of England. McDougall was given support from the Crown Office in Edinburgh and in particular from Norman McFadyen, then head of the Fraud and Specialist Services Group and now Procurator Fiscal covering the Edinburgh area but also with special responsibility for the Lockerbie case.
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 area 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 Scottish judge who has been a Senator of the College of Justice since June 2012. 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."
Peter Lovat Fraser, Baron Fraser of Carmyllie, PC, QC was a Scottish politician and advocate.
Andrew Rutherford Hardie, Baron Hardie, is a former Senator of the College of Justice, a judge of the Supreme Courts of Scotland, and a former Lord Advocate, the country's senior Law Officer. He led the prosecution team in the preparation of the original Lockerbie bombing trial, but resigned as Lord Advocate shortly before the trial commenced in 2000.
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, 11 years, 4 months and 13 days 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.
A fatal accident inquiry is a Scottish judicial process which investigates and determines the circumstances of some deaths occurring in Scotland. Until 2009, they did not apply to any deaths occurring in other jurisdictions, when the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 extended the Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths Inquiry (Scotland) Act 1976 to service personnel at the discretion of the Chief Coroner or the Secretary of State. The equivalent process in England and Wales is an inquest. A major review of the fatal accident inquiries was undertaken by Lord Cullen of Whitekirk, at the request of the Scottish Government, which resulted in the passing of the Inquiries into Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths etc. (Scotland) Act 2016.
The investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 began at 19:03 on December 21, 1988 when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The perpetrators had intended the plane to crash into the sea, destroying any traceable evidence, but the late departure time of the aircraft meant that its explosion over land left a veritable trail of evidence. The investigation led to the prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories suggest a number of possible explanations for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on December 21, 1988. Some of the theories preceded the official investigation by Scottish police and the FBI; others arose from different interpretation of evidence presented at Libyan agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's 2000–2001 trial; yet others have been developed independently by individuals and organisations outside the official investigation.
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.
Edwin Bollier and his partner, Erwin Meister, founded Mebo Telecommunications AG in Zürich, Switzerland in 1969.
Robert Black is Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh. He has been an Advocate in Scotland since 1972, was in practice at the Bar and became a QC in 1987.
Herbert Swire, best known as Jim Swire, is an English doctor best known for his involvement in the aftermath of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, in which his daughter Flora was killed. Swire lobbied toward a solution for the difficulties in bringing suspects in the original bombing to trial, and later advocated the retrial and release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the originally convicted suspect in the case.
Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary was the territorial police force responsible for Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland until 1 April 2013.
Tony Gauci was the proprietor of Mary's House, a clothes shop in Tower Road, Sliema, Malta, who was a witness in the prosecution of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in relation to the Lockerbie Bombing.
James, Jim or Jimmy McDougall or MacDougall may refer to:
Pan Am Flight 103 (PA103/PAN103) 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 747-121 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 that had been planted on board, 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, as well as its deadliest aviation disaster.
Lockerbie is a small town in Dumfries and Galloway, south-western Scotland. It is about 120 kilometres from Glasgow, and 25 km (16 mi) from the border with England. The 2001 Census recorded its population as 4,009. The town came to international attention in December 1988 when the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 crashed there following a terrorist bomb attack aboard the flight.
"Lockerbie Revisited" is a 52-minute episode of the Dutch VPRO documentary television series Backlight which was broadcast in the Netherlands on the eve of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's second appeal against his conviction of multiple counts of murder for his connection to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that started at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh on 28 April 2009. The film's director, Gideon Levy, narrates in Dutch and conducts interviews in English with retired FBI officer Richard Marquise, Detective Chief Superintendent Stuart Henderson of the Scottish police, ex-FBI laboratory official Thomas Thurman, UN Observer at the Lockerbie trial Hans Köchler, author and journalist Ian Ferguson, former CIA agent Robert Baer, ex-FBI laboratory scientist Fred Whitehurst and former Lord Advocate Lord Fraser of Carmyllie.
Events from the year 1988 in Scotland.