Libyan bought items in Lockerbie suitcase — witness

"It was slightly before Christmas, I can’t remember the exact date, maybe a fortnight before Christmas," Gauci, who worked at his family’s shop Mary’s House in the Maltese town of Sliema, told the special Scottish court set up on neutral territory in the Netherlands.

Suspect Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi is named in the indictmentas having bought "a quantity of clothing and an umbrella" on December 7, 1988, from Mary’s House.

Prosecutor Alistair Campbell was beginning to address theidentity of the man before the court adjourned for lunch.

Prosecutors aim to prove that Al-Megrahi and co-accused Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima worked for Libya’s secret service and, posing as Libyan Arab Airlines employees, they placed the bomb concealed in a radio-tape recorder inside a suitcase and loaded it onto a plane in Malta.

The suitcase was then allegedly transferred from Frankfurtto London and onto the doomed New York-bound jet in London. The Libyans deny the charges.

Gauci said he sold a Libyan man two pairs of winterYorkie-branded trousers, two Slalom-branded shirts, a tweed jacket, two pairs of pyjamas, a blue baby-grow, two cardigans and an umbrella with a curved handle.

"It wasn’t important to him what he was buying," Gauci said."When I asked if he wanted to try on the trousers especially he said it wasn’t for him."

Last month, senior forensic scientist Alan Feraday told thecourt his research had identified fragments of clothing, of the type sold in Mary’s House and said by Gauci to have been bought by a Libyan, from among the crash site debris.

Feraday said the damage to these items was consistent withclose contact with an explosion and they had most likely been in the suitcase-bomb.

The Defence, which need only raise "reasonable doubt" in the minds of the three Scottish judges to secure an acquittal, is seeking to incriminate Palestinian extremists operating in Frankfurt. Defence counsel had not begun cross-examining Gauci.

The trial of the two Libyans resumed on Tuesday after aweek-long break to allow prosecutors to examine last-minute Defence witness statements. REUTERS