Scotland’s top prosecutor Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland insists that there is no evidence to put in question the conviction of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing.

He insists that Scottish legal authorities will work with their equivalents in England, the US and Libya to bring to justice Megrahi’s supposed collaborators.

Mulholland’s assertion that his ongoing investigation relies on “evidence and not on speculation and supposition” flies in the face of a conviction that exhibited utter contempt for norms of legality and due process.

The Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands that convicted Megrahi was sceptical about the quality of evidence placed before it but, in the final analysis, it swallowed the entire whale placed on a plate before it.

And what a whale of bribery, lies and deceit it was, confected to meet US political needs.

The bombing of Pan Am flight PA103 from Frankfurt to New York on December 21 1988 took the lives of 259 passengers and crew, together with 11 residents of Lockerbie killed by falling debris.

Six months earlier, the US cruiser Vincennes, on patrol in the Persian Gulf, blasted an Iranian civilian aircraft out of the sky, slaughtering 290 passengers, including 66 children, many of them on their way to Mecca for the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

There was no apology. No-one was put on trial. Indeed, trigger-happy Vincennes captain William Rogers was later awarded the Legion of Merit.

Iranian president Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed revenge and US security services initially identified the Palestinian group PFLP (General Command) as having perpetrated the Lockerbie bombing at Iran’s behest.

However, as time passed, Washington needed Iran’s assistance in building an international coalition to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, which it invaded in 1990.

All change was the order. For Iran read Libya. A fit-up of classical proportions was concocted to switch responsibility to Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi, who, by chance, had supported Iraq’s seizure of Kuwait.

One key secret witness, who was promised $4 million in the event of conviction, recalled seeing Megrahi and co-accused al-Alim Khalifa Fahimah carrying a bomb onto the Pan Am flight at Frankfurt.

Fahimah was acquitted because he could prove that he was not in Germany at the time, which should have rendered the secret witness’s evidence inadmissible.

Another star witness, Tony Gauci, who was paid $2 million for his evidence, claimed to have remembered clearly Megrahi coming into his shop to buy clothing even though he wasn’t interviewed by police until eight months after the bombing.

He gave a description of the suspect that was entirely at odds with Megrahi’s appearance — over six feet tall as against Megrahi’s five feet eight inches, well-built rather than slight and about 50 as against 36.

Yet, after being shown pictures of Megrahi just before the trial, Gauci was capable of identifying him as the man in his shop, securing his conviction and with it his $2m payoff.

Jim Swire, whose daughter was murdered in the Lockerbie bombing, has never accepted that Megrahi was guilty of this atrocity.

He has, with the support of other bereaved families, campaigned for an inquiry into the case, because logic dictates that, if the wrong person has been convicted, those responsible have gone free.

Mulholland’s attempt to sweep the issue under the carpet is unacceptable.

The battle for truth and justice for all Lockerbie victims, including Megrahi, continues.