[This is the headline over a report on the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It reads in part:]
The Crown Office have released a statement criticising the BBC after it broadcast an investigation on Newsnight across England and Wales reporting that the UN's European consultant on explosives, John Wyatt, found that the circuit board “evidence” relied upon in the discredited Crown case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi could not have survived a semtex explosion as claimed in the trial. (...)
The Crown statement repeats the fact that Megrahi was convicted of the Lockerbie atrocity, but omits the later development that the conviction was thereafter under appeal before being dropped to facilitate Megrahi's return to Libya, following the finding of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission that a miscarriage of justice may have occured.
The statement also highlighted what it described as “errors” in the BBC report and lists details regarding a series of test explosions undertaken as part of the Lockerbie proceedings. However the statement does not address Wyatt’s central claim about the ability of a fragment of circuit board to survive a semtex explosion.
[The full report, including the complete text of the Crown Office statement, can be read here.]
I noticed the error too about the label on the clothing. I think the label was actually on the blue Babygro. Typical obfuscation - pick up on a small unimportant error and imply that invalidates the entire thesis.
ReplyDeleteI'm noticing a lot of errors in presentations about this case, though. I've made a fair number myself, but only in forum posts. I wish people intending to publish on the subject would take the trouble to get their facts right. However, there are many errors that are quite pervasive, and I suspect professional investigative journalists, under time pressure, can't afford to give it the care it needs.
So the fragment was found in a field at Newcastleton now? I've seen several different versions about where it was found, you'd have thought it would have been well documented. Probably just more accidental errors being repeated (Kielder Forest, which was never a likely hunting ground for Scottish police....) but it shakes confidence.
I note Tom Thurman's tale was subtly different yet again. I suppose, it's been nearly 20 years.... I'd have expected a more consistent story though.
I don't know what the BBC is suggesting here. That the fragment wasn't part of an MST-13 timer? Seems far-fetched. That it just happened to be near the explosion but had nothing to do with it? What, a timer produced specifically for ordnance purposes and "only sold to Libya"?
This is the trouble with a lot of this. It's easy to cast doubt, but it's a lot harder to make the doubts stick, or turn them into a coherent narrative of either mistake or deiberate misdirection. And when that fails, the supporters of the conviction of Megrahi feel vindicated.
The Crown Office statement claims that one objective of the test explosions was to ascertain "what part of the IED and its contents it was possible to recover and identify."
ReplyDeleteAs the Indian Head tests (supervised by Thurman, Feraday and Korsgaard) took place once a day over a period of five days I doubt they would have time to spend identifying the debris. The tests used the "wrong" model of radio-cassette and the contents of the "primary suitcase" were largely unknown. While Leppard notes not Feraday used a distinctive circuit board at the time the "investigators" didn't know the bomb incorporated a circuit board.
Leppard also notes that "pointedly the Germans were not invited to the tests."
It would appear that the purpose of these tests was to provide some scientific basis to CSP Orr's deduction that the primary suitcase had arrived at Heathrow from Frankfurt and to "eliminate" the two "Kamboj" bags. According to Leppard the result of the tests was that "Kamboj was in the clear."
As I have pointed out before the only way to "eliminate" the two suitcases was to recover them, examine their contents and link them to a particular Interline passenger. As the brown/maroon Samsonite seen by baggage handler John Bedford was not recovered (unless it was the "primary suitcase") it had to be eliminated in theory rather than in reality.