FISHERMAN James Carlyle is planning a quick return to sea to forget
the four months during which he had been branded a ''ghoulish looter''
in the aftermath of the PanAm Jumbo jet disaster at Lockerbie.
He was cleared yesterday, at the end of a four-day trial, of stealing
a sheepskin jacket from a field next to the crater where many of the 270
victims died when the airliner crashed.
After the jury had returned a majority verdict of not guilty at
Dumfries Sheriff Court, his solicitor, Mr Joe Beltrami, said: ''He was
delighted with the verdict . . . this has been hanging over him for four
months and he is going back to sea to forget it.''
But Carlyle, 28, was convicted on two charges of shouting at police
and committing a breach of the peace in Annan two days after the
disaster as well as two charges involving breach of bail, and was
sentenced to six months' imprisonment, backdated to his first court
appearance on December 28.
Mr Beltrami added: ''He will be free in a week and return to a fishing
job in Kirkcudbright.''
Carlyle, who claimed in evidence that he was now of no fixed address
as his council home in Wood Avenue, Annan, had been taken from him while
he was in custody, denied stealing the jacket, identified as having been
salvaged along with a few other possessions by a survivor before his
home in Sherwood Crescent, Lockerbie, went up in flames.
He had also denied assaulting and struggling with police and breach of
bail conditions.
Carlyle had lodged a special defence of impeachment, naming his
''mate,'' Mr William Dobbie, 42, of Fernlea Crescent, Annan.
At the conclusion of evidence, Mr Beltrami told the jury that for
someone to have something stolen in such circumstances as the Lockerbie
tragedy was ''monstrous, ghoulish, and repulsive.'' But he pled with the
jury not to let sympathy for the victims blind it to having a proper
look at the evidence before it.
The jury took just 40 minutes to return its majority verdict.
Mr Beltrami said that Carlyle, who admitted 20 previous convictions,
had already served 117 days, and asked Sheriff Lewis Cameron to allow
him to return to sea.
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