Pressure mounts for McKie inquiry as US announces FBI investigation

FBI agents have been accused of trying to silence forensic experts in the case of the Scottish policewoman accused of leaving a fingerprint at a murder scene to secure a clean reputation for the Scottish criminal justice system in the run-up to the Lockerbie trial.

McKie family campaigners welcomed the move yesterday and said Scotland must follow with an inquiry of its own.

Earlier this month, The Scotsman reported allegations by Juval Aviv, Pan Am's Lockerbie investigator, that two members of the Scottish Criminal Records Office, who had misgivings over the McKie evidence, were visited by FBI agents in 1999 or 2000 and pressured to "fall in line with the evidence" against Ms McKie.

In another allegation, a fingerprint expert for the Illinois state police, Dave Grieve, said an FBI official pulled him aside at a forensics conference in 1999 and told him not to speak out about the McKie case. At the time, Mr Grieve was the editor of an international forensics journal and was planning an editorial criticising the SCRO, which had incorrectly identified the fingerprint of Ms McKie at a murder scene.

Another US forensic expert who spoke out about faults in the SCRO's investigation, Pat Wertheim, has said he was pulled aside by an FBI agent at the same conference in 1999 and warned to keep quiet about the case, although Lockerbie was not mentioned.

The FBI confirmed last night it was investigating the allegations. A bureau spokesman, Paul Bresson, said: "We have been fact-finding and interviewing relevant people to find out what happened.

"To date, the FBI has not been made aware of any information that would substantiate the allegations that an FBI employee tried to interfere with the publication of an article about the SCRO as it relates to the Shirley McKie case or any other case."

Mr Bresson added that the investigation was headed by the FBI's public affairs team and was not being treated as a criminal investigation.

In 1999, Ms McKie was put on trial for perjury after denying she had left a fingerprint at the scene of a crime. However, scores of international fingerprint experts said the disputed print was not hers and she was acquitted.

Last month, she received a 750,000 settlement from the Scottish Executive after a nine-year legal battle over the false accusation. But ministers have remained under opposition pressure to mount a full inquiry into the mishandling of her case.

Last night, Mr Grieve said he had been contacted by an FBI official about his claims. He said: "The FBI officer was surprised and found what I had to say hard to believe. I said, 'Sorry, but it's true. It happened'."

But a retired FBI officer, Richard Marquise, who headed the Lockerbie investigation from 1988-92, said he had no knowledge of any meddling and while he could not rule out the accusation, he found it "highly unlikely".

He said: "I can't imagine that anyone in the FBI would have directed [the accused agent] to speak to a fellow law enforcement officer, nor can I imagine why [the agent] would have done so herself. [The agent] had nothing to do with the Lockerbie investigation."

The SCRO has said publicly it had nothing to do with preparing evidence for the Lockerbie trial, so there would have been no reason why Mr Grieve's scathing editorial or a scandal within the organisation would have damaged the prosecution of Libyan suspects Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah.

Campaigners for the McKie family have pointed out that the director of the SCRO at the time of the McKie affair, Harry Bell, was one of the key police officers whose evidence led to the conviction of Megrahi.

Buck Revell, who, as executive assistant director, was the third in charge of the FBI during the Lockerbie investigation,

said: "I can't imagine this would happen. Any agent who even inferred that another law enforcement officer should stay quiet because of Lockerbie would be subject to severe discipline and possible prosecution. It could have been an obstruction."

Ms McKie's father, Iain McKie, said: "We welcome the FBI carrying out this fact-finding. It's extremely important to understand why officers were warned off. It may help us understand if there are in fact any links to the Lockerbie investigation."