Tony Gauci
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Tony Gauci (6 April 1944 – 29 October 2016) was the proprietor of Mary's House, a clothes shop in Sliema, Malta,[1] who was a witness in the prosecution of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in relation to the Lockerbie Bombing.[2]
According to evidence given at the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial in 2000, Gauci sold clothing that was found among the wreckage, and determined by investigators to have been in the same suitcase as the improvised explosive device (IED) that brought the aircraft down.[3] Gauci's account as a witness linked Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi directly to the explosion, and was therefore important in the conviction of Megrahi on 31 January 2001.[4] Gauci died on 29 October 2016, in Swieqi, Malta at the age of 72.[5]
At the trial, Gauci appeared uncertain about the exact date he sold the clothes in question and was not entirely sure that it was Megrahi to whom they were sold. Nonetheless, Megrahi's initial appeal against conviction was rejected by the Scottish Court in the Netherlands in March 2002. In 2007, a Scottish judicial review panel raised concerns about the trial and Gauci's testimony, including that in the days prior to picking Megrahi in a lineup, he had seen a picture of him in a magazine article on his suspected role in the bombing.[6]
Five years after the trial, former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, publicly described Gauci as being "an apple short of a picnic" and "not quite the full shilling".[7]
Since Fraser had been responsible for the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and for indicting Megrahi in November 1991, he was called upon to clarify his remarks about Gauci by Colin Boyd, the Lord Advocate who was chief prosecutor at the Lockerbie trial.[citation needed]