The Libyan man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing yesterday rejected the testimony of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci in an appeal dossier he believes would have proven his innocence.
In the 300-page dossier released yesterday, the first such disclosure since he was controversially released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government last month, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi attacks key planks of the prosecution case against him, especially Mr Gauci's evidence.
The shopkeeper had identified Mr al-Megrahi - who at the time worked for the Libyan Airlines in Malta - as the man who had bought clothes from his shop, Mary's House, in Sliema, and which were later found wrapped around the bomb.
According to the version of events accepted by the judges who had sentenced Mr al-Megrahi to life in prison in 2001, the bomb left Malta in a suitcase, which was transferred onto the ill-fated Jumbo Jet, operating Pan Am flight 103, in Frankfurt.
The explosion over the Scottish town of Lockerbie had killed 270 people.
This version of events hinges on the testimony of Mr Gauci whose credibility has been questioned time and again even by Scottish relatives of victims of the tragedy.
In his dossier yesterday, Mr al-Megrahi, who is terminally ill with prostate cancer, said: "I have returned to Tripoli with my unjust conviction still in place. As a result of the abandonment of my appeal, I have been deprived of the opportunity to clear my name through the formal appeal process. I have vowed to continue my attempts to clear my name".
He said that Mr Gauci had originally rejected his photograph in a spread of 12 images shown to him on February 15, 1991 because they showed men who were younger than the purchaser. He was then asked to discount age and to look again and it was then that he picked Mr al-Megrahi, saying he looked "similar" but "younger".
Later, during an identification parade on April 13, 1999 at Kamp Zeist in the Netherlands, Mr Gauci pointed at Mr al-Megrahi, saying: "Not exactly the man I saw in the shop..."
Mr al-Megrahi also berated the fact that Mr Gauci had been shown a photo of his in the press identifying him as the bomber before he was asked to make a formal identification in court.
Mr al-Megrahi raises further concerns about the amount of time that had lapsed between the purchase from the shop and the identification process: 27 months before the first identification took place and 12 years before the trial was held.
The dossier also challenges the trial's conclusion that the purchase of the clothes took place on December 7, 1988, describing the evidence as "hopelessly confused".
It also says there were "significant problems" with the inference that the suitcase containing the bomb was loaded at Luqa airport, pointing out there were opportunities to do so at Frankfurt and Heathrow and that documents and witnesses contradicted computer records suggesting that an unaccompanied bag was on the flight from Luqa to Frankfurt.
Most of this and other new evidence had surfaced in recent years, in fact, after Mr al-Megrahi had won the right to a second appeal after he convinced a Scottish legal review board that he might have suffered a miscarriage of justice.