In a dramatic legal reversal, a US federal court judge in Houston, Texas, has overturned the conviction of a former CIA agent who has spent 20 years in jail for trafficking high explosives to Libya, it emerged on Wednesday.
US District Court Judge Lynn Hughes, in a ruling highly critical of the government on Monday, said the then administration of President Ronald Reagan had used false information to secure Edwin Wilson’s conviction.
”Because the government knowingly used false evidence against him and suppressed favourable evidence, his conviction will be vacated,” the judge ruled.
The one-time Central Intelligence Agency agent, now 75, was convicted in 1983 of shipping some 20 ton of C-4 plastic explosive to Libya, considered by the United States as a regime that supported terrorism.
Wilson had sought sanctuary in Libya when the charges against him were initially brought by US prosecutors in 1980.
However, US agents lured him out of Libya in 1982 and brought him back to the United States, where he was tried and convicted of conspiring to ship explosives to Libya.
During his trial, Wilson claimed he had only arranged the arms shipments to Libya, which occurred during the 1970s, in order to curry favour with Tripoli at the CIA’s request.
Hughes said the government had refused to disclose records of Wilson’s continued work for the spy agency during the former agent’s trial.
The government had convinced the judge in Wilson’s trial that the ex-spy had virtually no contact with the CIA following his supposed retirement from the agency in 1971.
However, Hughes said ”there were, in fact, over 80 contacts.”
”Confronted with its own internal memoranda, the government now says that, well, it might have misstated the truth, but that it was Wilson’s fault, it did not really matter, and it did not know what it was doing,” Hughes wrote in a scathing ruling quashing Wilson’s Texas conviction.
”The government’s preparation, presentation and preservation of false evidence are not the process that is due from the government,” said Hughes, who presides in the US Southern District of Texas.
Wilson is serving a 52-year sentence in a federal prison in Pennsylvania. – AFP
