Tony Gauci

Tony Gauci (6 April 1944 – 29 October 2016) was the proprietor of Mary's House, a clothes shop in Tower Road, Sliema, Malta, who was a witness in the Lockerbie Bombing investigation.

According to evidence given at the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial in 2000, Gauci sold the clothes allegedly wrapped around the improvised explosive device (IED) that brought the aircraft down. He was the only witness to link Abdelbaset al-Megrahi directly to the IED, and was therefore instrumental in convicting Megrahi on 31 January 2001. Gauci died on 29 October 2016 in Malta at the age of 75.

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 appeal against conviction was rejected by the Scottish Court in the Netherlands in March 2002.

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".

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.

After conducting a four-year review of the case, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) reported on 28 June 2007 that there may have been a miscarriage of justice in Megrahi's case, and granted him a second appeal against conviction.

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