Peter Fraser, Baron Fraser of Carmyllie

He was born in Luanshya, Zambia, where his father, George Robson Fraser, served as a Church of Scotland minister. He attended preparatory school in Grahamstown, South Africa, until the age of 12, when his mother, Helen Jean Meiklejohn, died. Prime Minister Anthony Eden intervened at the request of family friend Brendan Bracken to help Fraser obtain a scholarship to Loretto School, Musselburgh, East Lothian, the private school where Eden was a trustee. The couple had three children: Jane, Jamie, and Katie, as well as 8 grandchildren. ==Conservative politician==

Fraser campaigned for British entry into the European Economic Community in 1973. He was secretary of the Conservative backbench Scottish Committee (1980–1982) and Parliamentary Private Secretary to George Younger, Secretary of State for Scotland (1981–1982). and was appointed a member of the Privy Council in the same year. ==Lockerbie bombing==

During his time as Scotland's senior law officer, he was directly responsible for the conduct of the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Lord Fraser drew up the 1991 indictment against the two accused Libyans and issued warrants for their arrest. But five years after the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, when Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of 270 counts of murder, he cast doubt upon the reliability of the main prosecution witness, Tony Gauci. According to The Sunday Times of 23 October 2005, Lord Fraser criticised the Maltese shopkeeper, who sold Megrahi the clothing that was used to pack the bomb suitcase, for inter alia being "not quite the full shilling" and "an apple short of a picnic". Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd, who was chief prosecutor at the Lockerbie trial, reacted by saying: "It was Lord Fraser who, as Lord Advocate, initiated the Lockerbie prosecution. At no stage, then or since, has he conveyed any reservation about any aspect of the prosecution to those who worked on the case, or to anyone in the prosecution service." Boyd asked Lord Fraser to clarify his apparent attack on Gauci by issuing a public statement of explanation. William Taylor QC, who defended Megrahi at the trial and the appeal, said Lord Fraser should never have presented Gauci as a crown witness: "A man who has a public office, who is prosecuting in the criminal courts in Scotland, has got a duty to put forward evidence based upon people he considers to be reliable. He was prepared to advance Gauci as a witness of truth in terms of identification and, if he had these misgivings about him, they should have surfaced at the time. The fact that he is coming out many years later after my former client has been in prison for nearly four and a half years is nothing short of disgraceful. Gauci's evidence was absolutely central to the conviction and for Peter Fraser not to realise that is scandalous," Taylor said. Tam Dalyell, former Labour MP who played a crucial role in organising the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, described Lord Fraser's comments as an 'extraordinary development': "I think there is an obligation for the chairman and members of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to ask Lord Fraser to see them and testify under oath – it's that serious. Fraser should have said this at the time and, if not then, he was under a moral obligation to do so before the trial at Zeist. I think there will be all sorts of consequences," Dalyell declared. ==Later career==

Fraser appeared for the United Kingdom in both the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Baron Fraser was elected President of the charity Attend (then National Association of Hospital and Community Friends) and held the position from 1989 until his passing in 2013. He held ministerial appointments in the second government of John Major (1992–1997). From 1992 to 1995 he was Minister of State at the Scottish Office covering Home Affairs and Health. He was then Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry with a responsibility for export promotion and overseas investment with particular emphasis on the oil and gas industry. In 1996 he became Minister for Energy at the same department. He was active through friendship societies in the Caspian region, promoting business links with Kazakhstan (as the founder of Kazlink Ltd. in 2002 and director of the British-Kazakh Society from 2003 Among other duties, he served as an independent adviser on the Scottish Government's committee on the ministerial code. He was a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and lived at Regent Terrace in Edinburgh. Under the premiership of David Cameron (2010–2016), he served on a commission that investigated the European Court of Human Rights with a view to establishing the British Bill of Rights. He died on 22 June 2013. ==References==