[What follows is from an article by Marcello Mega in today’s issue of the Sunday Mail. The full text can be read here. Two other short articles in the same newspaper dealing with aspects of the evidence in the case can be accessed here and here.]
Secret testimony by Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Al Megrahi which he claims proves his innocence can today be revealed by the Sunday Mail.
In two dramatic statements NEVER read out during his trial for mass murder, he: Admits he was a secret agent who illegally bought plane parts, police cars and food which Libya could not import due to sanctions.
Insists he needed a fake passport for his wheeling and dealing - not to slip into Malta to plant a bomb in the suitcase which blew up Pan Am Flight 103.
Claims he went to Malta to buy carpets and find a carpenter willing to supply materials unavailable in Libya at the time.
Critically, the judges who convicted him of killing 270 people did not hear this explanation.
His false passport carrying the name Abdusamad was cited as damning proof by prosecutors that he worked for the Libyan secret service and was trying to cover up his trips.
In the judgment that condemned him for mass murder, they said: "There was no evidence as to why this passport was issued to him."
But terminally ill Megrahi said he needed the passport to do his job for Libyan Arab Airlines.
This allowed him to beat sanctions when trading with other countries for new parts for his bosses. (…)
He said: "I am told that I used the Abdusamad passport when I went to Malta on December 20. This was not for any clandestine reason.
"In order to travel from Tripoli to Malta I do not need to use a passport at all and can simply use an identification card issued by the Immigration Department in Libya.
"All Libyans could do this, although it applied only for trips to and from Malta.
"Secondly, as an Libyan Arab Airlines employee and as someone well known in Tripoli and at the airport in Malta, I could get away without using a passport or an identification card but simply by wearing my LAA uniform. This may sound ridiculous but it is true. If I wanted to do something clandestine in such a way, there would be absolutely no record at all of me going from Tripoli to Malta and back again."
Megrahi wanted to take the stand at his trial in 2000 and 2001 but his legal team, headed by Bill Taylor QC, opted to rely on their belief that the Crown had failed to prove their case.
Without hearing his account, three judges, sitting without a jury, found Megrahi guilty of the worst terrorist act ever perpetrated in Europe.
They attached considerable weight to his short trip on December 20 and 21, 1988, accepting the Crown's argument that Megrahi played a central role in getting the bomb on to a flight at Luqa Airport.
Megrahi's … statement was taken after he and his co-accused, [al-Amin] Khalifa Fhimah, had submitted to the Scottish authorities for trial under Scots law in the Netherlands. (…)
Megrahi's account will lend further weight to the arguments of people who believe in his innocence.
They include Professor Robert Black QC, the architect of the trial in a neutral land, and Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing.
Because of the wrong passport haven the accusation derived from it:
ReplyDeleteThe Crown's jugdgement was based on manipulated circumstantial evidence saying that Mr. Megrahi had smuggled in a "Bomb-Bag" on Air Malta, flight KM-180. This was a deliberate wrong assumption by the Scottish Justice with the known fatal consequences for the Libyan Official Mr. Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi and Libya ...
The alleged "BOMB-BAG" on AirMalta was a PHANTOM!
On the feeder flight PA-103/A from Frankfurt to London-Heathrow not one Samsonite suitcase - the alleged bomb suitcase, from AirMalta, flight KM-180 to PanAm flight PA-103/A - was loaded, but 3 unknown and unaccompanied luggage items from Lufthansa, flight LH-631 from Kuwait, ex tray no. B-4809, B-6001, B-7418!
see: http://www.lockerbie.ch
It is not clear up today whether this mysterious baggage items were loaded in London-Heathrow on the mainflight, PA-103 to NewYork (JFK). Commissioner Hans Jürgen Fuhl (Crown Witness no. 566) from the German Federal Criminal Investigations Bureau (BKA) testified at Camp van Zeist: "in Heathrow documents were destroyed"…
Summary of the original testimony of Commissioner Hans Jürgen Fuhl from BKA (Crown Witness 566):
"Other organisations who were investigating the bombing had taken some of the documentation before the BKA could get their hands on it. Fuhl also testified that PanAm had apparently instructed staff at Heathrow to destroy documentation". (Ref. Doc.1 Chapter 13 page 38)
Douptful at Heathrow: Totally 3 luggage items (2+1) planned for that far transport, were never loaded onto PanAm Main flight PA-103. unaccompanied on-line luggage item, a brown Samsonite suit-case with rush tags, of PanAm copilot John Hubbard, was never loaded onto PA-103. inter-line luggage items of Daniel O'Connor (A State department official) were never loaded onto PA-103.
All 3 bags were found after the attack on PA-103 into the baggage room at airport Heathrow...
Questions: How could the load list of the Boing 747, PA-103 to New York be correct, if 3 luggage items were missing?
Were the 3 luggage items in Heathrow exchanged with the mysterious 3 luggage items from flight LH-631/PA-103/A from Kuwait to Frankfurt to Heathrow, with the 3 luggage items of Daniel O'Connor (2M) and John Hubbard (1M)?
Had therefore in Heathrow the documents of the PanAm-103 to be destroyed?
Therefore the security observation visit, of Mr Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, alias Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad, to Malta (ordered by his chief Ibrahim El Bishari) from the 20th to the 21th of December 1988, and his alleged infiltration of a "bomb bag" has no probative force any more!
The de-conspiracy of the conspiracy against Libya can begin…
by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd Switzerland
In english language:
ReplyDeleteThe other side of the "Lockerbie affair"
The Sottish advocates, the so called defense team (2000-2005), chosen to represent Libya's interests in the "Lockerbie case" are responsible for the worldwide financial and political damage for Libya and the loss of its international prestige !
Libyan Official Mr Abdelbaset al Megrahi was found guilty for the attack on PanAm 103 and was sentenced for life by a panel of Scottish judges on January 31, 2001. On March 14, 2001 his appeal against conviction was rejected.
Mr Megrahi is jailed innocently in a Scottish prison near Glasgow and continues to assert his innocence ...
The Scottish ex Defense Team created the possibility to open the blocked account of US$ 2.7 billion at the Bank For International Settlements (BIS) at the damage of Libya through careless and badwillingly judicial conditions in the settlement agreement for the compensation of the dependants of the victims:
The compensations for the dependants of the victims leaned solely on the highly questionable and scandalous judgement in the "Lockerbie case" and the first appeal which had sentenced Mr Megrahi unjustly for life for purely political reasons.
The precipitated and by coercion enforced pay out of US$ 2.7 billion by the Bank For International Settlements (BIS) was specially displeasing in the settlement agreement elaborated by the Defence Team.
Very strange as well is the fact that the responsible advocate at the BIS conducted the pay out of the blocked account precipitated and did not wait until the second appeal granted by the SCCRC was held and all remedies in Scotland were exhausted. Further on various inconsistencies (manipulation of evidence) were well known to the crown, the judges and the Defence Team!
The blocked and interest-bearing account of US$ 2.7 Milliarden in favour oft the dependants of the victims would judically not have prevented the lifting of UN sanctions against Libya.
The precipitated payment of the compensations - some bereaved called it blood money - and the untrue news coverage of the world media lead to the wrong notion that Libya had taken responsibility for the attack on PanAm 103. Libya's prime minister Ghanem rejected this assertion immediately and said that the Libyan state had been blackmailed to make the payments.
The same delaying tactics are apparent in the procrastinated petition for Megrahis second appeal by the Defence Team. The last remedy in Scotland was omitted and Megrahis second appeal was directly sent to the European Court For Human Rights in Strassbourg who rejected the appeal as impermissible.
Every first-year student of law knows that the European Court For Human Rights in Strassbourg can only be appealed if all remedies of the national - in this case of the Scottish law - have been exhausted.
The outcoming delay was intended. Because Mr Megrahi was legally convicted since March 14, 2002 and with the help of the patchy settlement conditions for the compensation of the victims the pay out of the blocked account in the amount of 2.7 billion US$ for the dependants could be advanced without Libiya's possibility for objection.
In September 2003 Mr Megrahi demanded the reopening of his proceedings. As expected by MEBO the High Court in Edinburgh on June 28, 2007 after four yerars of inquiries of the SCCRC, granted a second appeal to Mr Megrahi.
The second appeal will start early in 2009 because of a possible miscarriage of justice in at least 6 points.
by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd, Switzerland
In the UK in government sensitive trials it is well-known that on occasions defence teams, whether it be the solicitors or barristers, work with the prosecution. In VAT and excise frauds certain firms of solicitors and chambers are to be avoided at all costs.
ReplyDeleteI am baffled how "forensic investigators" have determined Abu Talb sailed to London on the 21st December 1988. Leaving things to the last minute!
ReplyDeleteIn 1996 I tested to PM's claim the investigation was "open" by writing to No.10 pointing out the obvious, that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow not Luqa or Frankfurt. The response was to draw my attention to the conclusion of the Fatal Accident Enquiry, based on the "evidence" of the Lord Advocate's Deputy and successor that the primary suitcase arrived unaccompanied from Frankfurt. It didn't. (see my article Lockerbie - the Heathrow Evidence at http//; e-zeecon.com )
In my letter to the PM I also suggested that the suitcase arrived on England on the Gothenburg Ferry! (David Leppard's "On the Trail of Terror" contained the interesting detail Martin Imandi travelled to the UK to avoid the Swedish Police, an unlikely place to lie low!)