ANALYSIS Fresh doubts cast over identification process. It all revolves around what happened on a winter's night.
It all revolves around what happened on a winter's night in Malta back in 1988.
What is not contested is that Tony Gauci was getting ready to close up Mary's House, his shop on Tower Road in Sliema, a town on the north-east coast.
At around 6.30pm a stranger entered the shop and bought a list of items so long and unlikely for conditions on the Mediterranean island that it became engraved in Mr Gauci's memory. The purchases included a baby sleepsuit, a tweed jacket and an umbrella.
The burned remnants of these articles were later found inside a brown hardshell Samsonite suitcase that contained the bomb that blew up over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people.
Police believed if they could trace the clothes from the suitcase they would find their man and, once they linked the items to Mary's House, they began to feel optimistic.
But who was the stranger? The Crown has always alleged it was Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, who was known to be in Malta around the time and was subsequently convicted at Camp Zeist.
The trial court referred to Mr Gauci as an "important witness" and said his identification of the Libyan as the clothes purchaser "should be treated as a highly important element in this case".
The trial and world's media was told that the first "photoshow" with Mr Gauci took place on September 14, 1989. However, new evidence yesterday revealed that it actually took place on September 8, yet no record of this meeting or what it uncovered has been shared with the defence team.
A new document unearthed during the three-and-a-half-year investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, and not previously discussed in public, alerted commission members and defence lawyers to the fact this photoshow had taken place.
Maggie Scott, Megrahi's QC, said yesterday: "This is part of the history of what happened, which goes to the centre of the reliability of evidence."
Ms Scott said: "No further information in relation to this photoshow has been disclosed. All we know is that is that he does not make a positive identification but that there is a reference to hairstyles and features.
"The whole process of selection is important and that is why this background history is so necessary."
She also revealed that the commission's report said it was a "matter of some concern" that a police statement about the September 8 event had never been recorded.
Despite the inconsistencies in his 19 statements to the police, even the appeal court described Mr Gauci as reliable.
However, the commission found that just four days before an ID parade at which he picked out Megrahi, Mr Gauci saw a photograph of the Libyan in a magazine article linking him to the bombing.
