Saturday 7 August 2010

My family's Lockerbie rage

[This is the headline over an article in The Daily Beast by Brian Flynn, brother of one of the US victims of the destruction of Pan Am 103. It reads in part:]

During the next two decades [after the disaster] , we lobbied to hold responsible the companies that could have prevented the attack: Pan Am was convicted of gross negligence and willful misconduct. My mother served on both presidential commissions that investigated the causes of the bombing and improved airline security, and I helped her as a researcher. We lobbied Congress to enact the Iran Libya Sanctions Act, which ultimately put enough pressure on Libya to hand over the indicted Libyan agents who perpetrated the crime. And, we sat in that courtroom listening to months of damning—and conclusive—evidence. Eventually, Abdel Baset al Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. And although he would be the only man to pay for the atrocity, we felt in a small way that some justice had been served.

Little did we know, we would be betrayed. Out of the blue, I got a phone call from the British Embassy, telling me that Megrahi was being considered for release. Days later, we found ourselves in a surreal argument via videoconference with the minister of justice in Scotland. We thought we made inarguable points: “You cannot release an unrepentant mass murder for any reason, especially to the people and government that paid him to do it,” I told him. “Releasing him would make a mockery of the justice system and embolden terrorists around the world. It doesn’t matter if he is sick. He can get palliative care in prison like the dozens of people that die of natural causes in Scottish prisons every year.”

How could they not know that Megrahi would receive a hero’s welcome in Libya? How could they not suspect that he might miraculously be cured and live for years?

When Megrahi was released days later, this blatant act of betrayal robbed us of that one shred of justice. It made us feel that our decades of effort were worth nothing. As we have now learned, the Scots did it for the least surprising reason: money. The deal seemed to have been a perfect storm of ulterior motives: BP was directly lobbying the UK government to get Megrahi released so they could win oil contracts while, at the same time, Scotland’s first minister, Alex Salmond, was traveling around the Middle East raising capital from sovereign wealth funds there. One of them, the Qatar Investment Authority, directly stated that it would “not be good for Megrahi to die in prison.” This was two months before we met with the Scottish minister.

Since Megrahi’s release, we have demanded to see proof that he was to die in three months. It seemed all too convenient and, as we now know, the reason given was inherently fraudulent. The Scottish justice department ignored specific medical evidence about life expectancy. In fact, not ONE cancer specialist consulted would give the three-month death sentence required for compassionate release.

So, it seems I am not done pursuing justice for my older brother as people continue to dishonor the 270 victims. Our mission now is to hold these charlatans responsible. The Scottish ministers should be forced to resign, and then tried on corruption charges. Megrahi should be returned to prison.

Daniel Webster said justice is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together. Through the years, I often thought: Am I really just seeking revenge, veiled in a cloak called justice? But I don’t think so. Justice—in and of itself—is worthy of relentless pursuit. If we let convicted mass murderers out of prison, or allow our public servants to sell prison releases, then we tear at that ligament apart, and threaten the very fabric of civilized society itself.

[It is sad to see such a passionate article ignoring completely the fundamental aspects of justice (a) that accused persons should be convicted only where the evidence warrants it and where evidence that might cast doubt on guilt is not withheld by the prosecution and (b) that when miscarriages of justice occur and are detected they should be speedily rectified.]

101 comments:

  1. MISSION LOCKERBIE:
    only a computer "Babylon" translation in german/english language:

    Is the final of big 'BP--NOISE' of four senators (Democrats) a fiasco for their US-election ?

    Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg (New Jersay), as well as the two senators from New York, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillebrand have only one chance for their face loss and a large Fiako escape, by stopping the investigations against BP and require immediately the opening the documents of the Scottish Criminal Cases Reappeal Commission (SCCRC) !
    In 2007, the Reappeal Commission examined the possibility of a miscarriage of justice in six grounds to refer the conviction back to the Court of Appeal.

    Mr. Abdulbaset Al-Megrahi is the political victim of a conspiracy against Libya and has obviously nothing to do with the Lockerbie-Tragedy.

    The truth is to be read into the secret SCCRC documents.

    by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
    URL: www.lockerbie.ch

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  2. The hurt this man feels about the loss of his brother is painful to read. Perhaps though, since he has invested so much of his emotional energy over the years into believing that Megrahi is guilty, it has become too hard to ever consider an alternative explanation of what happened on the 21st of December, 1988 - and that he too is actually a victim (like his brother was a victim of the bomb) of a miscarriage of justice.
    If Megrahi/Libya are indeed innocent, there must be tens of people out there who know the truth. I wonder how they live with that lie, especially when they see the families involved are still hurting so badly.

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  3. The comment from JAZZTHEDOG at the end of the article by Brian Flynn is ace! (especially the last paragraph)

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  4. Counter question to blogiston:

    As you can live, if it becomes fact that Al-Megrahi is victim of a Miscarriage of justic and was innocently suffering into Scottish prisons locked up over 9 years ?

    Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd.

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  5. I know it's not the nicest thing to say, but Mr. Flynn isn't very well-informed. He says he helped his mom with research. I believe his emotions are genuine, and clearly strong, but shaped and limited by his limited/stunted understanding of this complex situation. He should ask questions about why he's been boxed in like that.

    I agree that jaathedog's comment is surprisinglygood, if with some parts I can't vouch for (Tony Gauci claiming he made a mistake after? )

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  6. I don't think Tony Gauci ever claimed he made a mistake. Of course he never claimed Megrahi was the man who bought the clothes, either!

    I suspect Jazz is getting mixed up with Tony's comment after he picked Megrahi out of the photospread in February 1991, that he was the one who most resembled the purchaser (if he'd been ten years older) apart from the picture of Abu Talb that Paul had shown him.

    Tony and Paul got a lot of money for saying approximately the right thing, and they haven't said a word to anyone about it since.

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  7. Caustic Adam,
    You accuse Brian Flynn of not being very well informed, yet you yourself post on June 24, 2010 on your blog "I first learned about it [the lockerbie bombing case]in detail only late last year..." You were obviously not involved with the trial, the families, the governments, etc. And have ZERO basis for criticizing Brian Flynn and or his very close and personal involvement with the Lockerbie case.
    Brian Flynn has been involved with the case since day ONE, when his brother was murdered on PA 103 over Lockerbie. Apparently you did not read his full article which outlines his involvement with not just research, but lobbying efforts, the families, the trial, the loss of his brother, and much, much more over the past TWENTY TWO YEARS. He has more knowledge of this case than you will ever come to know or understand.
    Shame on you, your criticism of Brian Flynn, and your ill advised, late comer conspiracy theorist, self proclaimed “I wouldn't mind some fame, or some money. The high profile of the issue is part of why I'm interested in it” media whoring.

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  8. Bunntamas my goodness what a shocking post.

    For what its worth I share Caustic's view that while this man has undoubtedly been hurt he is, with his mother and many others incidentally, alarmingly uninformed about the fact that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found SIX grounds suggesting there had been a miscarriage of justice at the original trial. That is no mad conspiracy theory, we deal in fact.

    Many in Scotland want the truth about Lockerbie including the people behind it. The involvement of the US in paying their star witness many millions of pounds for testimony is, in this country, sometimes known as bribery and is a very serious criminal offence.

    The role of many US organisations in tampering with various things and people in the course of this investigation is perhaps THE reason why there are doubts. Because frankly very few countries in the world actually trust the US. These senators indeed illustrate beautifully what they are about: and they are about NOT looking at the whole issue of Lockerbie but one small part they want to look at for their own shameful political interests. And in their recent actions they have BREACHED international protocol by DARING to summon elected politicians from another country to the US to account to them. They do not have that right and they show not only stupidity in their dealings with this matter until now but they also show a lack of basic intelligence when they have to date got so much wrong.

    That such demands come from a nation whose then president, when asked about the deliberate shooting down of an Iranian Airbus, with the killing of nearly 300 people, declared that "I will never apologise for anything the United States of America does. I don't care what the facts are." would be amusing if it wasn't so horrifying.

    Yes indeed. Let's hear it for the sort of justice the US represents. It involves double standards, hypocrisy, arrogance and most of all yes, the very misinformation Caustic mentioned earlier.

    We want to know here who did it, we are not satisfied that doubts over the guilt of the man convicted can be buried. We want the truth. But then let's go to a line uttered by another American, in a move, Jack Nicholson in the firm. "The truth?" He screamed? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!" And yes it was just a movie but sometimes when I think of Lockerbie that line from America would be just as appropriate!

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  9. "The Scottish ministers should be forced to resign, and then tried on corruption charges. Megrahi should be returned to prison."

    Who is going to force our government ministers to resign? The Americans? Who is going to try them on corruption charges, and on what grounds? The Americans?

    Who is gong to return Megrahi to prison? Are the Americans going to send a gunboat for him? Maybe they could have sent the USS Vincennes if it had still been in service! Whose jurisdiction is this anyway? Are they going to usurp the local jurisdiction every time an American is murdered abroad? That'll go down well in China and Russia and Saudi Arabia I expect....

    Mr. Flynn had undoubtedly suffered great hurt, which I well believe has not been assuaged by the great riches this brought him. However, he is both ill-informed and arrogant.

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  10. Jo G:
    My point was that Caustic has ZERO basis of experience, compared to Brian Flynn, and ZERO position for making such a criticism about Brian Flynn.

    Regarding your comments - The family members are WELL aware of the SIX grounds submitted by the SCCRC. Conspiracy theorists on the other hand, whilst droning on about the SCCRC and the SIX grounds that they concluded MAY have been a miscarriage of justice (and by the way, (MAY, does not mean a miscarriage of justice DID occur) conveniently forget about the multitude of other grounds that were submitted to the SCCRC that were refused. Other conveniently overlookded FACTS and EVIDENCE that conspiracy theorists refuse to acknowledge in their lack of in-depth knowledge about the case are a GUILTY verdict, a FAILED first appeal,(and please spare me the "stitched up" theories) Megrahi’s unexplained travel to Malta on a false passport under the name of Abdusamad, and his presence on Malta on the day of the bombing... Oh, right, he was looking for mechanical parts. And he’s a self proclaimed “simple man”. A simple man who lies on camera in an interview w/ Pierre Salinger, denying his presence in Malta that day, and says he has no knowledge of anyone named Abdusamad. Right. Add to that Megrahi’s relationship with Bollier, The space Megrahi rented from Bollier for an alleged travel business. But wait, he is a simple man who was "simply" looking for parts. Oh, no, he’s a scholar, no a member of the JSO, distant relative Ghadaffi, member of an esteemed tribe, WITH MILLIONS IN A SWISS BANK ACCOUNT... And speaking of Bollier, how about that event in the desert, testing of MEBO timers? Tests designed to blow up an airliner.
    Megrahi is a simple man my Arse.

    Regarding "bribary", the US posted very clearly an award for justice and information leading to arrest and conviction – THAT IS NOT A SECRET. It was posted on the FBI web site, among other public venues. It is NOT bribery. Even if it were bribary, the heinous murder of 270 innocents is a far more serious offense than any “alleged” bribary.

    Regarding US political corruption, I don’t disagree. Sadly, however, there is plenty to go around. The US was absolutely in the wrong for shooting down that Iranian airliner. George Bush (both of them) and Dick Cheney are just as much scum as MacAskill, Blair, "Little Lord Fauntleroy", Thatcher and the rest of the UK players in this atrocity.

    By the way, not that any amount of money imaginable is going to bring back the loved ones who were brutally murdered in both accounts, but The families of the Iranians were compensated at the same time the PA103 families were. I make no excuses for George W. Bush not accepting responsibility or appologizing. As I said. He is scum. As an American, I apologize for my country and its act upon the Iranian airliner. If there were some way that I could, I would apologize to the Iranian families. As a family member of one of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, I know their grief all too well.

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  11. Jo G:
    My point was that Caustic has ZERO basis of experience, compared to Brian Flynn, and ZERO position for making such a criticism about Brian Flynn.

    Regarding your comments - The family members are WELL aware of the SIX grounds submitted by the SCCRC. Conspiracy theorists on the other hand, whilst droning on about the SCCRC and the SIX grounds that they concluded MAY have been a miscarriage of justice (and by the way, (MAY, does not mean a miscarriage of justice DID occur) conveniently forget about the multitude of other grounds that were submitted to the SCCRC that were refused. Other conveniently overlookded FACTS and EVIDENCE that conspiracy theorists refuse to acknowledge in their lack of in-depth knowledge about the case are a GUILTY verdict, a FAILED first appeal,(and please spare me the "stitched up" theories) Megrahi’s unexplained travel to Malta on a false passport under the name of Abdusamad, and his presence on Malta on the day of the bombing... Oh, right, he was looking for mechanical parts. And he’s a self proclaimed “simple man”. A simple man who lies on camera in an interview w/ Pierre Salinger, denying his presence in Malta that day, and says he has no knowledge of anyone named Abdusamad. Right. Add to that Megrahi’s relationship with Bollier, The space Megrahi rented from Bollier for an alleged travel business. But wait, he is a simple man who was "simply" looking for parts. Oh, no, he’s a scholar, no a member of the JSO, distant relative Ghadaffi, member of an esteemed tribe, WITH MILLIONS IN A SWISS BANK ACCOUNT... And speaking of Bollier, how about that event in the desert, testing of MEBO timers? Tests designed to blow up an airliner.
    Megrahi is a simple man my Arse.

    Regarding "bribary", the US posted very clearly an award for justice and information leading to arrest and conviction – THAT IS NOT A SECRET. It was posted on the FBI web site, among other public venues. It is NOT bribery. Even if it were bribary, the heinous murder of 270 innocents is a far more serious offense than any “alleged” bribary.

    Regarding US political corruption, I don’t disagree. Sadly, however, there is plenty to go around. The US was absolutely in the wrong for shooting down that Iranian airliner. George Bush (both of them) and Dick Cheney are just as much scum as MacAskill, Blair, "Little Lord Fauntleroy", Thatcher and the rest of the UK players in this atrocity.

    By the way, not that any amount of money imaginable is going to bring back the loved ones who were brutally murdered in both accounts, but The families of the Iranians were compensated at the same time the PA103 families were. I make no excuses for George W. Bush not accepting responsibility or appologizing. As I said. He is scum. As an American, I apologize for my country and its act upon the Iranian airliner. If there were some way that I could, I would apologize to the Iranian families. As a family member of one of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, I know their grief all too well.

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  12. Sorry for the double post. My browser crashed...

    Continuing On:
    As for the Scots, I have traveled to Lockerbie and have been welcomed by some of the most kind people I will ever know. A friend of mine once mentioned to me the idea of boycotting Scotland. I find this idea preposterous. It is not every Scot's fault that their governmnent is screwed up. Similarly, it is every American's fault that they had idiots; the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney "attempting", poorly, to run the US, whilst shaking their fists at the rest of the world. I am ashamed of them and their acts.

    But for the MacASSkill to release Megrahi without ALL of the facts, with lack of thorough medical information, the influence of a Dr. paid by the Libyans and coerced into a 3 month advisement, no chemo treatment prior to release, obvious cow towing to the UK / BP pressure to release, allowing Megrahi to return to Libya, as opposed to starting chemo in a Scotland hospital; that, in my (obviously not so humble) opinion is THE most horrific illustration of corrupt, not to mention lack of an ounce of moral fiber – in the name of “decency” and “compassion” no less. Pardon me whilst I take a break from writing to vomit.

    The families and the US want to get to the bottom of why MacASSkil released Megrahi with so little information. We want to know what influence the UK and BP had on his decision. We’re not “buying” that it was his decision alone.
    Tell me something, if it were your father, mother, child, spouse or friend who were so viciously murdered, wouldn’t you want your government to stand up for you and demand answers??????
    I do wish this were some stupid Hollywood, Jack Nicolson movie, about which you so sickeningly jest.
    The fact is the families have been fighting for the truth for twenty one years. We’ve handled it so strongly so far. And we’ll continue handling and fighting for it.
    Oh, and speaking of handling the truth, I was sitting directly in front of Jim Swire at the Zeist trial when he "feinted" (pun intended) at the
    verdict.

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  13. Correction to the above:
    similarly, it is NOT every American's fault that they had idiots; the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney "attempting", poorly, to run the US

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  14. Bunntamas:

    Long time no hear! I'm not stung by your criticism, but rather tickled. It's true I'veonly been researching for just under a year, while Mr.Flynn has been looking at something, off-and-on, for at least most of the past two decades. I did not miss that.

    But I am an obsessive learner and have the best information. And more importantly, I'm not afraid to follow all evidence where it leads without constantly returning to the same tenuous construction laid out in the indictments and partially confirmed at Zeist.

    If he's such agood researcher, why in all this time has he not run across enough questions to give him even the slightest inkling that Megrahi might not be guilty? He's absolutely sure, it seems, and that's not a sign of careful, perceptive research into a wide body of evidence.

    He's full of hurt, but that doesn't always make one's thinking clearer and better-informed. He's righteously angry, apparently extremely angry, but badly confused like soooo many others. The most important among them were also given riches, predicated on Libyan guilt, and coincidentally (?) they continue to believe in Libyan guilt.

    As you quote, Bunntamas, I wouldn't mind making money off my project here, but that's a hypothetical. You might also quote the next comment after that:
    Who I am is someone who, on review of the evidence, truly believes that Megrahi is probably innocent and the real killers of those 270 people have never been caught. Now, as a person who believes that, what kind of person would I be if I didn't get involved and alert people of the alarming possibility?
    http://lockerbiedivide.blogspot.com/2010/07/frank-duggan-for-families.html

    As if I'm in this for money and fame, just making things up. I'm crap at figuring out how to cash in, which is why I'm still so poor and obscure. Look to the people who have been paid big bucks and are making one-sided declarations with little regard to facts if you want to find evidence of "whoring" or pimping.

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  15. Bunntamas: "MAY, does not mean a miscarriage of justice DID occur"

    Where in the SCCRC's remit were they ever supposed to make a decision what DID happen? This is, I think, as hard core as they're allowed to get. Do you see how that point, back in context, falls apart for you?

    How about "ZERO position?" You have zero basis for typing or capitalizing such a bold statement. You could have just said "very limited," which is subjective and unable to be proven false.

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  16. Caustic,

    I detect a bit of "have not" in your comments about "people who have been paid big bucks making one sided delarations with little regard to the facts..."

    What price would you think to put on the life of your mother, father, brother, sister, child.
    How would you feel looking at your dead relative following a fall from 30,000 feet? IF, you were able to even see said relative. Some victims' families never even got a body back. Some only a hand.
    Answer: as noted in my previous post, there is no amount of money imaginable. It will not bring them back, or ever change what happened.

    Nevertheless, it does seem your a bit bummed out about your place in life. Having to slog along, re-posting articles on your blog, trying to give them your own one sided slant, ambulance chasing and hoping to cash in on the blood and sorrow of others. Sorry about that, dude.
    I doubt you will make any money or fame in your media whoring.
    Suggest you get a mirror and look at yourself and YOUR one sided perspective and motives.

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  17. Caustic:
    you comment: "Where in the SCCRC's remit were they ever supposed to make a decision what DID happen? "

    Just goes to show your continued ignorance of facts and process.

    I never said the SCCRC were supposed to make a decision on what DID happen.
    That's the point.
    They weren't supposed to make a decision, with the exception of referral of the case back to the court on the basis of miscarriage of justic MAY have occurred. Perhaps supposed too much in your understanding of the process. I forgot, you're new at this.
    Go back to studying. You clearly have a lot to learn.

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  18. Bunntamas, your ourburst displays knowledge of the periperals of the evidence, but utter ignorance of the core issues.

    First, it is quite unnecessary for the SCCRC to have upheld every defence point that was put to them as regards grounds for appeal - some of which were pretty blatant kite-flying. One point is enough, and they recorded six.

    We all know about the guilty verdict, and the rejection of the first appeal. We can also read the court judgments of both hearings, and see for ourselves that the verdict was perverse and flew in the face of reason. The amount of "reasonable doubt" kicking around there would have sunk the case against any other defendant.

    You trot out a lot of peripheral points which have absolutely nothing to do with proving Megrahi actually did what he was alleged to have done.

    He was on Malta that day, under cover. If the bomb didn't go on the plane at Malta that morning (which it didn't), that may suggest he was up to something - but whatever it was, it wasn't bombing Pan Am 103. And the other stuff. He was a JSO officer, he knew Bollier, he had access to a lot of money, he told some lies to a reporter (when he was being accused by Amerians of a capital crime) - oh, spare me the rest, it's pathetic.

    If you're looking to frame someone for a heinous crime, you're probably not going to pick a Sunday School teacher. It's the same almost every time. Someone with form, with a history, with the sort of background that will make people instinctively turn against him - that's who to pick. Nobody is suggesting that Megrahi was a plaster saint. Only that, on the evidence, he didn't put that bomb on that aircraft. And that's something you simply haven't addressed at all.

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  19. Bunntanas, the only two things of any importance as regards Megrahi's culpability for the Lockerbie atrocity (as opposed to anything else he may or may not have done, or any involvement of Libya in general in the bombing), are the purchase of the clothes from Tony Gauci, and the presence of an unaccompanied bag on KM180 out of Malta on the morning of 21st December 1988.

    If he bought the clothes, that would be damning. However, there's no evidence he did buy the clothes. Tony Gauci, at his very best, could do no better than say that he resembled the buyer, but with a lot of caveats. His original description of the purchaser was of a man 14 years older than Megrahi, and taller and more heavily built. Can you really read through Tony's statements to the police, especially the early ones when his memory would have been clearer, and imagine for a second that we have any idea who that man was?

    The one thing we can be certain of, though, is that it wasn't Megrahi. Not because of Tony's failure to identify him, but because the ony day he could have bought the clothes was 7th December, and Tony's memory of the day simply doesn't match with 7th December.

    He was at Luqa airport on the morning of 21st December. However, he did nothing at all suspicious, never went airside, he was just passing through. This was agreed at the trial. He was never convicted of putting the bomb on the plane, merely of being an accessory in some way, because he bought the clothes (except he didn't), and because he was passing through the airport when the bomb was alleged to have gone on board.

    Except it didn't.

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  20. Rolf: "And the other stuff. He was a JSO officer, he knew Bollier, he had access to a lot of money, he told some lies to a reporter (when he was being accused by Amerians of a capital crime) - oh, spare me the rest, it's pathetic." I agree. Pathetic. If Megrahi is so innocent, why would he lie? What IS the origin of those millions in his bank account? Why are all you conspiracy theorists so quick to brush these matters off? Why didn't he testify? Do YOU have details on Megrahi's innocence? So far, all I've seen in blustering on YOUR fringe "information" and NO evidence of Megrahi's innocence. What PROOF do you have that the bomb was not planted on Malta, besides a lock that was cut on a door at Heathrow? What PROOF do you have about the "other stuff" noted above?

    Yes, it is pathetic. Megrahi is no Sunday School teacher. That's a lot of EVIDENCE. Do you have any EVIDENCE AND FACTS that can explain it?

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  21. Bunntamas, again I'm sorry you feel the need to make such sweeping statements about our government being screwed up. It is not true.

    People associated with your government are currently using the issue of Megrahi to notch up votes in your elections later this year. That is disgusting and dishonest.

    What I cannot quite forgive however is their arrogance in "demanding" so much from another country which is completely independent of them. The US has no authority to behave like this, far less four insignificant senators from there. And the fact they have allowed almost a year to pass to simply exploit the Megrahi issues in the BP business beggars belief. I would say that they actually insult the dead by doing that.

    On the issue of the grounds under which the SCCRC returned Megrahi's case to the Court of Appeal, if even ONE of those grounds is upheld the conviction is unsafe and he would have been freed. Your country doesn't want that appeal heard: neither does mine actually because they want the truth buried.

    There are serious doubts about the testimony of the Maltese shopkeeper. There is also evidence that your country paid millions of dollars to that man for testimony. He allegedly did not accurately describe Megrahi but a younger, lighter man. He also got the dates wrong and the time Megrahi was in Malta did not match with the dates the clothes were bought. There is also other evidence to suggest the bomb did not go on the plane at Luqa. There is further evidence of a break-in at Heathrow Airport. There is an issue with "evidence" from the crash which according to experts, should not have survived the crash. And there is more still.

    This Iranian Airbus: America shot it down and killed nearly 300 people. Why? And they paid public tribute to the guy in charge. What is it about Americans that when American blood flows it is so much more valuable than the blood of those in the Middle East (or anywhere else for that matter)? Can't they see we all bleed, that there were husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and little children on that flight too? And I think it is very brave of you to apologise, seriously, and I respect that you did this here. Because it was wrong and it was another example of mass murder of exactly the same kind committed over Lockerbie. Links have also been drawn between the bringing down of the airbus and Lockerbie. But those links couldn't be followed, again because it would hurt other matters going on. Enter Libya. I think Libya was a patsy.

    What should matter to everywhere who genuinely cares about what happened at Lockerbie is the truth behind it. The doubts should be tested so that we get to that truth. Those who don't wish to take that route but who instead wish to focus on their own version of it do not follow my idea of justice because for me justice and truth are inextricably linked. I don't want to get to the bottom of the release. I want to get to the bottom of the whole Lockerbie atrocity. I believe that would serve justice better.

    You say even if it was bribery....wow! That's quite a statement. Says it all.

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  22. Bunntamas........you are on the blog of a man whose archives here could answer many of your questions about all that was wrong with the trial. I suggest you get reading. He is no conspiracy theorist. He deals in fact.

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  23. Everybody imagines that security at a small airport like Luqa would have been relatively lax, but this was not so. The security regimens were tight, the bags were counted several times, and there was a complete chain of supervision of the luggage from check-in to take-off. There simply was no unaccompanied bag.

    The only evidence to the contrary was a computer printout at Frankfurt airport, found by chance after all the baggage records there had vanished from uner the noses of the police immediately after the disaster. A technician saved a printout of PA103A as a souvenir, which the Frankfurt police sat on for eight months, but finally handed over.

    Out of context, that printout was very hard to interpret, but one entry seemed to show a bag being coded for PA103A at a time suggesting it had come off KM180. Seemed being the operative word, because the evidence was indirect and open to interpretation. It could have been a mere coding anomaly, and it was accepted that coding anomalies happened at Frankfurt.

    Due in large part to the very limited nature of the data available, the defence failed to prove it was a coding anomaly. At the same time the prosecution, with absolutely zero evidence to support it, asserted that the entire Maltese ground staff had been suborned by the Libyan secret service, were lying in their teeth, and all the Malta paperwork had been forged. Now there's a conspiracy theory if you like.

    The judges decided that because there was no proof the stray bag at Frankfurt was a coding anomaly, they would accept the prosecution assertion about the Great Maltese Conspiracy, even without any evidence.

    Now I don't know why the judges chose to take that view, and I can't ask them. However, I can ask you, as I've asked every person who has come along and asserted that Megrahi was proved to be guilty. How do you interpret that evidence to show that he bought these clothes, and how do you interpret that evidence to show there was an unaccompanied bag on KM180?

    Because I have never heard any rational explanation for either view.

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  24. Another inaccuracy. Libyan Doctors did not contribute to the reports submitted to our Justice Minister. That is another myth promoted by dishonest American senators.

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  25. If Megrahi is so innocent, why would he lie? What IS the origin of those millions in his bank account? Why are all you conspiracy theorists so quick to brush these matters off? Why didn't he testify? Do YOU have details on Megrahi's innocence? So far, all I've seen in blustering on YOUR fringe "information" and NO evidence of Megrahi's innocence. What PROOF do you have that the bomb was not planted on Malta, besides a lock that was cut on a door at Heathrow? What PROOF do you have about the "other stuff" noted above?

    Yes, it is pathetic. Megrahi is no Sunday School teacher. That's a lot of EVIDENCE. Do you have any EVIDENCE AND FACTS that can explain it?


    What on earth do any of these things have to do with whether or not he was guilty of Lockerbie? Nothing at all. He told lies to a journalist. Wow. Like nobody ever did that before. Maybe being accused by Americans of a capital crime might spook anyone into cover-up mode?

    You have to address the clothes purchase, and the presence of an unaccompanied bag on KM180. These are the only things that connect Megrahi as an individual to the Lockerbie incident. The rest of it is pure froth if neither of these points stands.

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  26. PS. I meant older, heavier man.

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  27. What PROOF do you have that the bomb was not planted on Malta, besides a lock that was cut on a door at Heathrow?

    Nothing to do with Heathrow, or locks, or even brownSamsonite suitcases in baggage container AVE4041, before PA103A landed. Nothing at all.

    Everything to do with the baggage records at Luqa, which were tight as a duck's arse, and showed no opportunity for any unaccompanied bag to have been carried on KM180.

    The only way to get that to happen, was to allege a massive conspiracy theory at Malta, involving the entire Maltese ground staff, who were supposed to have all been suborned by Libyan intelligence. Except not a shred of evidence was ever produced to support this, and the BA investigator who interviewed the staff said he was impressed by their apparent honesty and straightforward answers.

    Ten years the CIA tried to find evidence for this conspiracy, and failed. They tapped private phone calls, and harrassed the Maltese staff till they were fed up with it, but they found nothing. In all these years, and despite the huge atrocity, a crashed airliner and a town in flames, nobody ever cracked, or let anything slip.

    And you call us conspiracy theorists?

    Tell me why you think there was an unaccompanied bag on that plane, again?

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  28. Libyan Doctors did not contribute to the reports submitted to our Justice Minister HA! And anyone who believes that, is probably vacationing w/ Tony Blair on the shores of Tripoli.

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  29. Nothing to do with Heathrow, or locks, or even brownSamsonite suitcases in baggage container AVE4041, before PA103A landed. Nothing at all.

    Everything to do with the baggage records at Luqa, which were tight as a duck's arse, and showed no opportunity for any unaccompanied bag to have been carried on KM180.
    Another laughable point. Particularly considering both accused were heading up "security" at Luqa.

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  30. Regarding "bribary", the US posted very clearly an award for justice and information leading to arrest and conviction – THAT IS NOT A SECRET. It was posted on the FBI web site, among other public venues. It is NOT bribery. Even if it were bribary, the heinous murder of 270 innocents is a far more serious offense than any “alleged” bribary.

    Learn to spell, why don't you.

    Perhaps you are labouring under a misapprehension, Bunntamas. We are not talking about Tony and Paul Gauci and their $3 million relocation to Australia, when we talk about bribery. Or mostly not, anyway.

    Yes, Toony and Paul were bribed. Paul realised there was a lot of money to be made for fingering the right man, and shamelessly coached his brother to do it. Even so, Tony never said Megrahi was the man in his shop.

    And if you think 270 deaths is sufficient excuse to bribe witnesses to identify the wrong man, then I despise you utterly.

    However, the major brobery was of a guy called Giaka. Heard of him? The CIA was paying him a salary, for bugger-all useful information, and then they called him in and told him to provide information to incriminate Megrahi and Fhimah, or they would cut him loose and strand hin on Malta without a penny. Giaka made up a string of lies to keep his retainer coming, and was promptly whisked away on a US vessel and resettled in the USA under the witness protection programme, with a great deal of money. Nice work for a Libyan garage mechanic.

    That's bribery, pure and blatant. Giaka had no information to incriminate anyone at all in the Lockerbie bombing, but he was told by the CIA and the DoJ to make some up if he knew what was good for him.

    You think that's acceptable behaviour for any criminal justice system?

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  31. Libyan Doctors did not contribute to the reports submitted to our Justice Minister HA! And anyone who believes that, is probably vacationing w/ Tony Blair on the shores of Tripoli.

    Now you're just making stuff up. The medical evidence was examined in detail, and no Libyan doctor had any input at all. And neither did that idiot Sikora.

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  32. Particularly considering both accused were heading up "security" at Luqa.

    You're making stuff up again. Neither accused had anything to do with "security at Luqa".

    Megrahi had been Head of Airline Security for LAA. The airline. Nothing to do with security at Luqa, which was the responsibility of Air Malta.

    And the important point is "had been". He wasn't even in that job by December 1988.

    Fhimah had been station manager at Luqa for LAA. A manager. Nothing to do with security, he ran the LAA operation at Luqa. And again, that's "had been", as he also had changed jobs before the bombing, and no longer worked at the airport.

    The plane supposed to have carried the bomb was an Air Malta flight, and it was entirely under the control of Air Malta. Wilfrid Borg was in charge of the security.

    Nobody ever found any evidence at all for the Conspiracy Theory you are now advancing. None at all. You need evidence before you can assert something like that, and there was none.

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  33. "brobery". Oops, after I criticised Bunntama's spelling of the same word.

    You can tell my typos because they're different every time.

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  34. Bunntamas, do you know what Lord Osborne said about the possibility of an unaccompanied bag going on at Malta, during the appeal? "There is considerable and quite convincing evidence that that could not have happened."

    What do you know, to set against that? And I mean evidence, not foam-flecked conspiracy-theory ranting about wholesale fabrication of baggage records and Libyan suborning of Maltese ground staff, for which there has never been a shred of evidence.

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  35. My goodness, I seem to have gotten all your old man, soggy panties in a twist, and "Junior" caustic's as well, whom by the way, does NOT deal in fact, other than what he finds in the media, other blogs, and posts online, and your conspiracies.
    With that said, I think all of this back and forth about the case has already been hashed and re-hashed before. Have you nothing else to do but reiterrate what has already been judged TWICE???
    THat said, I have my beliefs, you have yours.
    I apologized for my country's arrogance and the downing of the Iraninan airliner, and George Bush the scum et. al.
    Perhaps the US did not take the best approach in international relations with regard to the BP / Megrahi release inquiry. But then again, if there is nothing to hide, in the name of good foreign relations, why would the UK and Scots not want to have a nice sit down and talk about what happened?

    Only time will tell.
    I have better things to do than go over and over points already made.
    For now, old guys and junior, I bid you adieu.

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  36. Bunny, my don't you get personal? There really is no need for that sort of thing you know. Make your points but for heavens sake there is no need to get personal.

    To labour a point further, the US has NO jurisdiction here. This was done to death a year ago and they have only resurrected it again to make a connection with BP.......a connection which doesn't exist between BP and the Scottish Government. The only connection with BP and anyone here in Government is the one with America's good friend Tony Blair and they.....errrrrrrrr.......changed their minds about speaking to him. Your sad little senators didn't ask for a nice chat. They demanded elected representatives from another country to be accountable to them. And we simply aren't accountable to the US. Check the UN website and they'll tell you about the rights which all sovereign countries have to go about their own business and how interference by a separate nation in anyone else's affairs is a clear breach. To repeat, these senators have no authority here to demand anything.

    And Bunny, if you want the truth about Lockerbie from start to finish I will be right there calling for the same. But if you insist on this "getting to the bottom of the release" thing then you seek to find answers only to the questions you feel its safe to ask. Questions which won't rock the boat about what really happened and who really did it. I have other questions that go way back before the release and they are much more important.

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  37. You're American? I accidentally clicked on your profile, and it says you're a Brit? Oh well, everybody lies on the internet. If you're in America, the night is but young, but run away if you feel like it.

    Sounds like one more person who can't support his belief (that Megrahi committed the crime) with any evidence at all, and when confronted with that uncomfortable truth, falls back on the irrational verdicts. Bunntamas has pretended to know a lot about the case, and criticised Caustic Logic, but when push comes to shove his assertion that Megrahi was guilty rests itself on a conspiracy theory. Which he can't substantiate.

    Bunntamas, the whole point of this conversation is that we don't agree with the court verdict, and we have rational and sensible arguments to support that view. If all you can come up with in reply is that the court came to that verdict, then you might as well run away, because there's no point in staying.

    However, if you want to learn more, read more. Loath as I am to blow my own trumpet, Prof. Black was kind enough to recommend a summary I wrote on this blog, explaining the flaws in the case against Megrahi.

    Rolfe on the evidence against Megrahi

    It's a run of about five comments, with few interruptions. Read that, then come back and argue if you like.

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  38. I think brobery is a great new word!

    Plus, I've never been called a old man before!

    Nite all.

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  39. why would the UK and Scots not want to have a nice sit down and talk about what happened?

    Would your senior politicians submit themsleves to hostile questioning under oath at the whim of some junior politicians of a foreign country? I don't think so.

    Where were the Americans giving evidence at the Chilcot Inquiry? Despite being asked, ever so nicely, to come and explain themselves? Not there, that's what.

    "A nice sit down and talk"! We saw the grilling given to Tony Hayward. Maybe he deserved it. But he wasn't there for a nice chat, or even to answer questions, he was there to sit and be abused by grandstanding Americans with an eye on votes.

    Do you seriously, honestly think our Justice Minister and First Minister are going to go within a thousand miles of that?

    You guys have been afforded every courtesy, and been sent reams of written evidence. These senators hadn't even read it when they came on TV here and started demanding that our government submit itself to their piddling little committee and be grilled on these questions in person - when all the answers they were asking for were right there in the written evidence.

    That's right, Bunntamas, run away. When you trim away your abuse and insults, you don't even have the beginning of an argument.

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  40. No, gents, I'm not running away. I just have other things to do this afternoon, and though it's been enlightening, I've spent a lot of time sparring with you all here.
    Rolfe: Nice to know you make typos too. I agree - Brobbery is a great new word. And yes, I'm an American. Sometimes I'm proud of my country, other times I'm not. But like you, I am grateful for my freedom. Not sure why my profile is coming up as a Brit. Thanks for the alert. I'll check it out.
    With all due respect, Thanks, Joe G. for "running away" with me. ;)
    And for the rest of the old guys' comments. I do love a good banter. So, thanks for that as well.
    In the words of one of our American governors (AKA the governator) "I'll be back".
    Hugs and kisses,
    ~Bunny

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  41. Sorry, my mistake. I clicked accidentally on a profile I thought was yours, but it wasn't. You don't have a profile, your secrets are safe.

    If you come back, cut the insults and the bluster, and address the evidence. Like I said, evidence that any unaccompanied bag was loaded on to KM180 that day. Any tiny little hint, even a whisper? Remember, Lord Osborne said "there is considerable and quite convincing evidence that that could not have happened."

    Could have gone on at Frankfurt, could have gone on at Heathrow, could have been interlined into either Frankfurt or Heathrow from quite a lot of other places. The one airport where there is hard evidence it didn't go on is Malta.

    If you have any evidence to contradict that, please present it.

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  42. Because you know what?

    Without evidence that an unaccompanied bag was loaded on KM180 that morning, Megrahi has an alibi.

    A better alibi than I have myself for that day.

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  43. Excuse me, Rolfe, but the last time I checked, this was Professor Black's blog. Since when are you authorized to advise on whom can and cannot post here?
    My apologies for any offense in attempting to inject humor re: "old guys'" into an otherwise debate that seemed to be getting quite a bit heated. Touched a nerve, did I?
    Sorry if I hurt your feelings Rolfie. I'll refrain in the future.
    I also trust Professor Black will interject when I've gone a bit too far.
    Okay. I'm REALLY signing off now.

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  44. Whew!

    Misunderstanding. Rolfe was offering you advice only, to help you come across as better-informer and more relevant, and has no power over who comments here.

    Bunny - and thanks for offering that nickname (you can call me Adam or CL or whatever) - I hadn't realized you were yourself a victim of PA103. If I had, I might've used a slightly different tone.

    To all: I apologize for being a little more obnoxious in spots than I needed to be.

    Bunny: What you've done, more than hit on a raw nerve, is provided a rare target for our well-practiced rhetoric. It's afine art, and we excell at tag-team work. Most of us have met, in one or another workshop in Tripoli or somewhere in Europe's soft underbelly.

    Okay, that was just me being silly. But to address specific points:
    "Yes, it is pathetic. Megrahi is no Sunday School teacher. That's a lot of EVIDENCE. Do you have any EVIDENCE AND FACTS that can explain it?"

    How about sanction circumvention, as Megrahi has explained, in some secret service (not proven to be JSO). Secret service means two things we see - a false identity and denial of movements under it. And money in bank accounts. Why is that not a worthy possibility?

    "Add to that Megrahi’s relationship with Bollier, The space Megrahi rented from Bollier for an alleged travel business..."
    And Bollier's instant offer (Jan 19 '89) to the CIA to implicate Libya for a reward, and the acceptance of some of his bogus Megrahi claims in the US indictments, and so on...

    Bollier and Giaka were the first two people to provide info on Megrahi to the CIA and later the FBI. One was paid millions by the DoJ and resettled, the other is ... ebol. How is this a good thing for the case against Megrahi?

    I could go into others but will end it with:
    "and "Junior" caustic's as well, whom by the way, does NOT deal in fact, other than what he finds in the media, other blogs, and posts online ..."

    And the trial transcripts, books, magazine articles, appeal documents, official reports, interviews, letters, photographs, videos ... the world. I realize you've pegged me as some "weak link" to single out on a personal level, based on some investigoogling, and hoping to discredit the larger movement (or whatever this is). It won't work. Everyone knows I'm just my own jackass. So some more advice - stick with the issues.

    Final tip: "Gents" is probably incorrect (note "Jo" not "Joe" for one)

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  45. I've left my comments at the Daily Beast. The final one (but first in reading) links to
    Debate Call:Brian Flynn

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  46. Bunny, my name is Jo, and I am female. I did not run away. I went to bed. It was coming up for 1.30am.

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  47. Adam I think you should stay away from that Beast site. There are some people you just can't reach. This young man Flynn will undoubtedly be in that group. It is as a result of grief obviously but on top of that he has been told certain things over a long period and will simply suffer no change to that.

    I am sorry you had to suffer such awful things being said about you here by Bunny. That was awful.

    Please stay away from that site tho. You are in the States and you've put your name there too on your comments. Please be careful.

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  48. I keep re-reading the comments made by Mr Flynn and more and more I'm astonished at the very public and damaging allegations he has made against the Scottish Government in particular. I'd threaten to sue in Salmond's shoes. Some Americans really do behave like their governments - they open their mouths and say what they like regardless of whether the allegations are factually correct - and if anyone comes back at them, hell, we'll invade and flatten their country!

    To call another country, over whom you have no jurisdiction, corrupt, simply because you disagree with something the elected representatives do, within that country's laws, is not just childish, it simply demonstrates again the American way of trashing other countries who will not obey them.

    These senators are not trying to assist the likes of Mr Flynn and his family. They are using Mr Flynn's pain to stir it. I think that is despicable. They are making up allegations as they go, grand-standing as we call it, and breaching international laws in the process too.

    I made a comment using a line from a Jack Nicolson movie which you took offence to. I'm sorry if it offended but I still think it is very appropriate because frankly I'm not sure any of us could handle the truth about Lockerbie.

    You made a joke which in my opinion was worse, much worse, by ridiculing a man called Jim Swire. You had no right to do that and it was enormously offensive. You could learn a great deal from him actually: I think we all could when it comes to dignity. I'm sure he wanted immediate closure too. I'm sure he could have said, oh well, they've got someone, that's it. Unlike many Americans however he paid attention to the doubts about that trial. And the doubts aren't just about all the other things so well covered here. They were also about our processes here under Scots law and what should happen in any trial in order to convict safely. Our Professor Black has provided background elsewhere on this site explaining how it should be. Jim Swire believes we need to be sure whether the doubts about Megrahi's conviction are justified because he believes in justice and in the truth. Its that simple. Many of us happen to share that philosophy.

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  49. Goodness, Jo, I'm fine. :)

    It's a rough biz, mentally. I'm just worried about Bunny and Mr.Flynn and the rest and how they're going to hold up as their fantasy construct falls apart. Of course they'll curse the messenger even before that.

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  50. They may also shoot the messenger Adam, so you be careful!

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  55. sfm,

    Please restore your comment! If you accidentally post it more than once, I'll remove the surplus. But I don't want to lose it!

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  56. Apologies to all for the flood of posts. There is a problem with the browser and it came out with an error everytime I tried to post. I didn't realize that it actually
    _did_ post.

    Below the posting (this time I will check if it is there before I try again :-)

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  57. Oh dear, I seem to have missed some posts while I was posting on another thread! I hope nothing too interesting was deleted!

    I tried to register at that "Beast" site yesterday, at the point where there was only one comment on the article, but it wouldn't accept my registration. Maybe just as well.

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  58. Hello Bunntamas,

    first of all, welcome to the blog. Naturally you are a minority here, all respect to you for speaking up anyway.

    Let me start by saying that I am totally convinced that the conviction of Megrahi is a scandal - just to let you know where I am coming from.

    There were many issues I'd like to take up with you regarding, but I'll take up only one now.

    For me, what immediately closes the case is the bribery of Tony Gauci.

    You write:
    "Regarding "bribary", the US posted very clearly an award for justice and information leading to arrest and conviction – THAT IS NOT A SECRET."

    No, that is not a secret and awarding people who come forward with information is an accepted method.

    However, note, that such persons are NEVER at the same time accepted as witnesses in the trial.
    For very obvious reasons. The information provided must be verified otherwise.

    No money can ever be paid to a trial witness, short of compensation for lost income, travel etc.

    If a witness receives a huge amount after a trial, paid by a party interested in a certain outcome, it is simply a bribe, unless of course the payor had anything else to pay for, which is not the case here.

    In USA this is a class C fellony, punisable in some states with up to 25 years in prison.

    - - -

    And Tony Gauci did not even step forward. He was found, contacted and called for interrogation by police.

    Do your police in US produce such people in court and transfer money into their accounts after a trial with the 'right' result?

    What an insulting question that is. Of course they don't.

    - - -

    Note that even the trial judges stated in [43]:

    "Information
    provided by a paid informer is always open to the criticism that it may be invented in
    order to justify payment, and in our view this is a case where such criticism is more
    than usually justified"

    That was about Abdul Majid, and his testimony was entirely discounted.

    If they had known that TG would soon receive millions of USDs, how could they accept his - already worthless, but that is another matter - evidence?

    - - -

    You write:

    "Even if it were bribary, the heinous murder of 270 innocents is a far more serious offense than any “alleged” bribery."

    In other words, you justify the bribing of the primary witness by the result of the very same case where a conviction took place.

    It is called circular reasoning, and it is not known to lead to the truth.

    - - -

    Recently we had a case where staff in the danish army faked a piece of evidence in a case against a soldier's publishing of a book.

    Both chief of defense and minister of defense had to go.

    And the case against the soldier died instantly.

    So did the verdict against Megrahi when the bribery got known.

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  59. I've tried to review this thread a bit, as we were all posting so hastily last night. I have spotted the part where Bunntamas reveals that he's a US Lockerbie relative, and that he attended at least a part of the Zeist trial.

    I have to say, I'm deeply shocked. Slightly, that such an aggressive and personal tone should be adopted by someone in this position. But mainly, at the depth of his ignorance and the extent of the misinformation demonstrated by his posts. Surely someone who has been exposed to the case for all that time should display more knowledge of facts that are, after all, in the public domain?

    His main point of attack was on Megrahi's character and antecedents. He was a JSO officer, he knew Bollier, he had access to a large amount of money (I don't think we know that this money was his personal property though) and he travelled on occasion under a false name. Oh and he told some lies to a journalist. This may make him a shady character. It may even mean he was connected to activities we might not be very comfortable with, though again we don't know about that last bit. What it doesn't do, is implicate him in the Lockerbie atrocity at all.

    There were many JSO officers in the 1980s. Many of them probably knew Bollier. Lots of people have access to large amounts of funds in Swiss bank accounts. Many people even tell lies to journalists, shocking though that may seem. Are all of them guilty of the Lockerbie bombing?

    Bunntamas doesn't even seem to know in what capacity the two accused worked at Malta airport, or when. He doesn't seem to know anything about the events of the morning of 21st December 1988, and what the accused were shown to have been doing that day.

    He seems to know nothing about the lack of evidence for any unaccompanied suitcase on the Frankfurt flight, as his immediate retort to that suggestion was that it must be based on there having been a break-in at Heathrow earlier that day.

    Bunntamas, you have to discuss on the basis of the evidence. If you have evidence to support your case, I will change my mind and I'm sure so will others. But it has to be fact - not bluster, insinuation and insults. Can you do that? Support your point of view with actual evidence? If you can,I look forward to discussing with you further.

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  60. As I posted above, any discussion of Megrahi's culpability must rest on two issues. The purchase of the clothes, and the presence of an unaccompanied suitcase on KM180. There are other points which, if substantiated, might suggest this was a Libyan operation. However that's a completely separate argument.

    sfm has posted about Tony Gauci, and what he says is true. Tony and Paul Gauci were bribed, even though the money was handed over after the conviction. Paul was the driving force, repeatedly pressing for the family to be appropriately rewarded - and you can bet your life he knew about the $4 million.

    The $4 million was of course offered to induce informants to come forward, several years after the police had already tracked down the Gaucis by their own efforts. The information the FBI were really hoping for, of course, was a tip-off as to where they could snatch the two accused, if they ever set foot out of Libya. Any information would have had to be independently verified, as uncorroborated evidence from a paid informer is clearly unacceptable.

    The idea of paying a witness who has already been identified, so that he then identifies the suspect the police want him to identify, is totally unacceptable, and surely anyone can see how abhorrent it is. No matter how great the crime, there can be no excuse for fabricating evidence to pin it on the wrong person.

    However, unlike sfm, I have to say the news about the bribery of the Gauci's didn't change my mind about Tony's evidence in the slightest. It was always clear that his memory of the purchaser was of someone older, taller and more heavily built than Megrahi, and that the sale had not taken place on 7th December. His tentative statements that Megrahi "resembled" the purchaser (initially based only on mug-shots, when Tony's memory was of height, build and vital statistics) were never even close to convincing. The fact that there was money involved does little more than explain why he never came straight out and said, "I don't remember the man well enough, I'm afraid I can't help you."

    Even if we lay aside the tenuous identification of a "resemblance" to the purchaser, we know it wasn't Megrahi anyway, because the only day he was in town and was able to buy the clothes was 7th December, and the purchase didn't take place on 7th December according to the weather records, the football matches played, and the state of the Christmas lights.

    Bunntamas, you have to realise this, or come up with a rational alternative explanation for the facts.

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  61. I have to say, though, that in my opinion the introduction of the suitcase at Malta is the crucial thing Bunntamas has to cope with. He seems entirely unaware of the flaws in the evidence on this point - well I say flaws, but actually it's a total absence of evidence. Worse still, it's positive evidence that this DIDN'T HAPPEN!

    Bunntamas seemed to think both Megrahi and Fhimah worked at Luqa airport at the time. They didn't. Both of them had in the past worked for Libyan Arab Airlines, although only Fhimah was actually based at Luqa. Both had moved on to other jobs by the time of the bombing.

    Fhimah, who had never worked in security (he was an ordinary manager), still had his airside pass from his old job at the time. However, it was proved in court that he didn't go to the airport that morning. He WASN'T THERE. Nor did he have any other connection to the bombing at all. Abdulmajid Giaka MADE IT ALL UP when the Department of (in)Justice told him that if he didn't provide evidence to implicate Megrahi and Fhimah in the bombing, he would be stranded on Malta without a penny, but if he did, then he'd be relocated to a new and affluent life in the USA. Which promptly happened.

    That's bribery, right?

    Megrahi didn't have an airside pass. He was at the airport that morning, using the infamous Abdusmad passport, on who knows what business - I imagine some errand for Gadaffi that Gadaffi didn't want revealed. He was there - but all he did was check in for his Tripoli flight, and board it. He didn't go airside, he didn't have any suspicious luggage, and he didn't do anything suspicious or have any contact with anyone suspicious. (In fact, there was nobody else suspicious identified at the airport for him to have had contact with.) As a result he wasn't convicted of putting the bomb on the airport, but merely of being there in some unspecified accessory capacity.

    So that leaves us with an absolute black hole as regards WHO DID?

    Security at Luqa, which was under the responsibility of Air Malta, was tight. They didn't x-ray the cases (they had sniffer dogs, but these wouldn't detect Semtex), but the counted obsessively. 39 passengers and 55 bags. So if ever the number of bags wasn't 55, then all the alarms would sound. There were only 55 bags every time they were counted.

    Was a bag substituted, then? No, because all the passengers picked up their bags as expected at their destinations. Was one of the passengers an accomplice, who wouldn't report a missing bag? No, because all 39 passengers were investigated for terrorist connections till their pips squeaked, and they all came up clean.

    The paperwork was all there, as it should have been, and it was all in order. There had been a continuous chain of custody of the bags from check-in to take-off, and there wasn't even a crack where an extra bag could have slipped in. Regarding an unaccompanied bag, Lord Osborne said, "there is considerable and quite convincing evidence that that could not have happened."

    Not only that, as I said, Megrahi was the only person at the airport that morning who was identified as being in any way suspicious. And he didn't smuggle the bag on board. Nobody who could have done was ever identified.

    Surely someone who has studied the case for years should be aware of all this? It's all there in the court transcripts and the judgements. It's "beyond reasonable doubt" that the bomb didn't travel on KM180. Which means Megrahi actually had an alibi.

    Bunntamas, this is the evidence you have to deal with, not irrelevant froth about Swiss bank accounts and journalists being told lies.

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  62. And finally, Bunntamas, I know I said this before but it bears saying again. What about Giaka?

    He was a low-level garage mechanic working for the JSO. He was discontented and unpopular. He approached the CIA in August 1988 and offered to turn informer. They accepted, because they had very few Libyan contacts. He didn't have much useful information to give though, and CIA patience began to wear thin. The asked him about Lockerbie on a number of occasions over many months, but he had nothing to say.

    Finally, in July 1991, the CIA contacted him in Libya and told him to travel to Malta. Once there, they told him they had a metting set up with the Department of Justice, and his future depended on the outcome of that meeting. The DoJ told him straight that if he gave information to implicate Megrahi and Fhimah in the Lockerbie incident, they would relocate him to the USA under the witness protection programme, and pay him a sizeable chunk of the advertised reward. If not, they would abandon him right there on Malta without even his fare back to Libya.

    Giaka promptly came out with a story about Megrahi and Fhimah smuggling a brown Samsonite suitcase through customs, and other similar fairy-stories. The CIA promptly whisked him away on a US warship, and he was duly settled in the USA with that reward.

    This all came out at the trial and his evidence was set aside as being a pack of lies. Not before the DoJ had bust a gut trying to keep the evidence of the bribery and threats from the court, though. Anyone who was at the trial should know this, because it's all there in the transcripts.

    This is the calibre of the evidence used to bring Megrahi to court. Do you really approve of the way your country behaved in this matter?

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  63. Let's see if Bunntamas comes back. If anyone is peddling a conspiracy theory, it's him.

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  64. He peddled more than one Rolfe, he implied we're all men!

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  65. You two are like the Prof's tag team from hell (if Jo G, the rottweiler don't get you, Rolfe, the sabre toothed pussy cat, does). If you had been on the defence team at Camp Zeist I would now be on a blog about 'who killed Marilyn Monroe?' or UFO's over Falkirk not a conspiracy about a miscarriage of justice in Lockerbie.
    However, to make this comment admissible, can I ask a very simple factual question? (Rolfe, I don't want a 1000 word diatribe or double guessing my motives)
    Where was the fragment of PCB from the MST13 found? Is there a circuit diagram around that I can look at? Or a photo of the component board from an identical unit? (these questions pertain to my interest in the robustness of the unit under a destructive force - and the probability of finding such evidence in the crash trail)

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  66. The piece of grey cloth (collar of a Slalom shirt) which later was found to contain explosion debris including the MST-13 timer fragment was found (allegedly anyway, this is one of the genuinely dodgy bits of evidence) in a big field of rough grazing just above the steading of Blinkbonny Farm, near Newcastleton. Very close to the edge of the Newcastleton Forest, but actually out in the open.

    I got this from the court transcript, in which the policeman giving evidence reads out the OS grid reference of the find. Working back (I found the field and read off the grid reference, rather than fishing it out of the transcript, so it may not be spot on) it is NY 501 858. The reference is to the middle of the field, and I imagine everything found in that field would be given that reference, rather than trying to pinpoint every individual piece of debris.

    I don't know where all the stuff about the Kielder Forest came from but I think someone just got hold of the wrong end of the stick at some point.

    I have seen pictures of the entire board, including a populated one, somewhere on the JREF forum. Give me a little while and I'll see what I can find.

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  67. Bloggy.......errrr, thank you, I think!

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  68. Picture of an intact board - seems to be a forensic exhibit, judging by the exhibit numbers on it. It has the same colour problems as all the photos of this bloody thing, which should be green but never is.

    Comparison with the actual fragment.

    Fuzzy picture of a populated board, this time showing up the correct colour.

    Comparison photo-composite of these two pictures.

    If you're intrested in the survivability of the fragment, you should look at the 15-minute Newsnight film in which an explosives expert recreated the explosion in the baggage container 20 times, and didn't find any of the timer surviving in any of them. But at Lockerbie, not only did a piece survive, it was probably the only corner that was distinctive enough to be identified.

    Lockerbie - flaws in key evidence.

    Am I at my 1,000 words yet? Just a comment, if you come across any suggestion that the fragment was switched at any point during the investigation, it wasn't. The fragment in the first photo taken when it was picked out of the shirt collar (whenever that was!) is the same as the fragment exhibited in court.

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  69. Thanks Rolfe – you did very well… << 1000 words!
    [One of your URL’s did not work for me. The one that requires me to apply for account at randi.org – wonder how we circumvent that? – I applied recently for an account but was later denied it by some wumman administrator for an unknown reason :{ ]

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  70. However, moving on from that… and this is probably old hat to you guys, but…
    I’ve seen that Newsnight clip a while back of the ‘all consuming’ explosive force of Semtex…to be quite honest, I don’t believe it. And I know I’m not an explosives expert but intuitively, and after reading reports about other Semtex explosions (e.g. it’s been used a lot in N. Ireland) there are always fragments. However, whether there are fragments or not is irrelevant to this case because I do not think one can ever be convinced beyond reasonable doubt whether a specific explosion could consume all the triggering mechanism. But one thing that struck me when thinking about the explosion and the fact that there had been a fragment found – it is not the type of fragment I would have expected to survive a conflagration of 3800 Celsius (the temperature of a Semtex explosion). I used to work for a company that designed and manufactured integrated circuits, including timer chips – those chips went into missile systems, like the Patriot system. The ones we supplied for mil/aero (extremes of temperature range) were ALWAYS contained in a ceramic chip holder. That’s the standard package for non-commercial use. That is why I was interested in the board – because I can see it does actually have a number of chips, although I can’t make out the package type. The ceramic material will start to disintegrate just below 2000 Celsius – but you have to keep a flame hotter than a propane flame (1800 Celsius) but not as hot, as say, an acetylene flame (3700 Celsius) trained on it for a few seconds…and you end up with a bit of charred glass which still can be seen to be a chip – btw. I know all this because we did stuff to chips which bordered on the sadistic . Now, I have also seen PCB material ignite (by mistake) in an oven at fairly low temperatures whereas the chips they contained were left intact – and found to still function when tested. What I am alluding to is if the chips on that board were in ceramic packages and the board had been ‘consumed’ in a catastrophic event – I would have expected to find the chips and definitely not a piece of PCB board which would have been zapped instantly. And so by that logic if there are pieces or a piece of PCB fragment there are ceramic chips out there too (Unfortunately, of course, the aircraft would also contain many pieces of electronic equipment with ceramic chips). Now this is all predicated on ceramic packages – if it was commercial plastic DIP type then this is not the case. But why would high spec military timer devices not have mil/aero spec components? Maybe Mr Ebol knows. Now of course, if you wanted the evidence to disappear in a catastrophic event you would populate the board with plastic chips but of course the reliability of the device would also decrease – and so there is a trade-off between guaranteeing reliability and guaranteeing no traces being left of the device. To give the highest chance of the device being consumed in an explosion, I would have thought utilising standard timer units would be unwise. It is not difficult to design and build a reliable timer circuit out of off-shelf commercial components that would quite happily burn after they had served their dastardly purpose (this is speculative – I have never done this nor have I the intention of doing this – this is one for the forensic scientist). But I am interested, or more precisely, dubious about this piece of ‘evidence’. I am sure this has all been speculated upon before by the real experts but I am new to all of this, and have a bit of relevant experience in a narrow part of this topic – no more – so I posed the question.
    I must get out on to Blinkyblonky farm with my metal detector and magnifying glass and look for more fragments….maybe instead of bits of an MST-13, I will find the remnants of a pressure triggered device…and associated ceramic chips - because the same logic applies to other devices.

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  71. Bloggy maybe you called the wumman a rottweiller! : )

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  72. Bloggy, but why would Newsnight give us fake results?

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  73. I don't think Newsnight would "give us fake results" as you put it. They reported on Dr. Wyatt's series of tests, and his findings from them, as he related them. I would have liked to have had more detail about what was and wasn't found as regards radio parts, also, did they check every bit of cloth for embedded bits.

    Remember, the fragment was (allegedly) found embedded in the neckband of a shirt. So you'd have to sieve all the bits of clothes that were left, to be sure there was no fragment of the timer anywhere. There wasn't enough detail in the broadcast to know if he did all that.

    I'm also slightly unconvinced the survival is utterly impossible, but as the timer would have had to be taken out of its box and put in the radio as unboxed components, I can see why it's held to be unlikely.

    What I simply can't get my brain round is that a two-page fragment of the radio manual, supposedly still in the box right beside the radio, survived with exactly the minimum printing still legible to pin down the exact model of the radio. It fell free, not embedded in anything, was blown 60 miles from 31,000 feet, and picked up in a field the next day. And it was a model, a batch of which had recently been sold to a Libyan retailer.

    That boggles me utterly.

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  74. Wow! Did I say fake? Don't build an argument on something I did not say! I do not think you can take it as a proven certainty that a Semtex explosion vapourises ALL the material surrounding it, in all cases. Some material is ejected at high speed by the expanding gas and escapes being consumed. In Northern Ireland when a small device is placed under a car and explodes - the police search the area for trigger fragments and can usually reconstruct it. I have this on authority from my friend in the PSNI.

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  75. I applied recently for an account but was later denied it by some wumman administrator for an unknown reason :{ ]

    Lisa? (Not her real name, I forget that, she goes by the moniker "Lisa Simpson".) She's a pussy-cat, and she lets anyone in so long as they apply properly and they aren't a sock-puppet of someone who has been banned.

    It must have been some technical glitch. Try it again, and contact her if it doesn't go through. (Dammit, she lets mad Indian homoeopaths and people who think the planes that hit the twin towers were holograms in!)

    Anyway, try this link to the actual post. It's in a public forum area so you should be able to see it. The entire thread might interest you. It goes round the houses quite a lot (partly my fault!), and the early pages have some debunker interference, and you have to ignore everything written by a poster called Longtabber PE who was actually a fraud, but there's some sterling research in there.

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  76. Blogiston, what do you think about the plausibility of the manual pages having survived as I described? There are other problems with that piece of evidence as well, for example the woman who picked the pages up didn't recognise the court exhibit as being what she found, but the very idea that such a large piece of a paper booklet survived being in the box along with the radio is hard for me to get my brain round.

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  77. Oh, and I don't see that checking the same field would necessarily turn anything up. There was a 90mph gale blowing that night, and light items were scattered a long way. That field is about 20 miles from where the actual plane came down. Even things that started off together would probably have been separated.

    It's kind of over that hill, though.

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  78. Well, it's bed-time. No sign of Bunntamas. I live in hope that some day, one of these people who is so convinced of Megrahi's guilt will either stay and politely explain why, in terms we can follow, or take on board what we're saying and realise he's wrong.

    So far, all I see these people doing is running away.

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  79. Bloggy I really wasn't trying to build an argument. I was just asking a question. Anyway, forget I even spoke.

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  80. Just unfortunate wording, that's all. We're both questioning the reliability or perhaps the universality of Dr. Wyatt's findings, not accusing the BBC of presenting faked data.

    Though we have to remember that this device wasn't under a car, it was in a rado in a box wrapped in clothes in a suitcase in a baggage container inside an aeroplane. Much of which was recreated by Dr. Wyatt. I wonder if all these layers would work against pieces being blown free and make them more likely to be incinerated?

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  81. The location and state of the manual seems problematic – apart from the fact that something as ‘unaircraft’-like as a booklet would be seen as a significant find by a member of the public ~60 miles from the crash (if that is how it was found). However, if you were going to place a manual somewhere to be ‘found’, why would you not just fling it over a wall a few miles from the scene – that would be more plausible. Makes me wonder what else has been ‘scattered’ over the scene (by mysterious forces) and never found.
    I would have expected a combustible and fragile material like a paper manual to have been completely and utterly consumed (it must have been inches from the seat of the explosion) – if not, then it has to be the luckiest but soggiest, and probably the most illegible manual in history after it’s 60 mile terror ride on the jet stream – which is a descent angle of about six degrees off the horizontal (if my trig is correct). (I recall the JFK magic bullet when thinking about the survival of this manual)
    Again, it all seems so very unfeasible. But we are not accident investigators and maybe to them this is all typical.
    [Jo G: Oops! Soz…just didn’t want to lose the thread on semantics – KWIM?]

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  82. I'm tempted to gloat that Bunny has run off in fear, but fact is, it's been less than two days. Heck, I've barely been back, keeping busy enough. This thread is worth checking on for another couple days.

    Mr. Tamas sounded quite sure of himself, so I suspect we're in for the amazing deeper analysis that goes beyond the tired old list of circumstantial clues everyone repeats off the baker's dozen cue cards they're sent. Check Mr. Flynn's response to jazzthedog's comment in the article. Same stuff there. Makes one wonder if the secret weapon is being prepared.

    I know we're really glutting the field here with side-discussions, but...

    Blogiston: On fragment survivability, you ned to consider what survived, what it's made of, how far from the blast center, what kind of blast is centered there, etc. I don't know the science, and the timer fragment might be a little ambiguous, but to set the precedent, do consider the manual cover, as Rolfe pointed out. Supposedly packed inside a snug cardboard box in a baggie, up against the radio, maybe 3" from the blast center (it was a small model), shielded only by radio case and a plastic bag. The paper was supposedly found thus:
    image


    Compared to: The ruptured aluminum hull was app. 25" from the center, shielded by the above, plus the radio's box, clothing, suitcase, luggage container aluminum, and then about a foot of air.

    That's blatantly incongruous, and one has to wonder what Mr. Feraday (I presume) was thinking. IMO the timer fragment is similar enough to be at least suspect - a massive convenience-to-plausibility ratio. It was about 1.5" from the blast center, but it could have been shielded by the detonator, an attached component, etc.

    And several other items have their own question marks. Consider AG/145 and PT/30 (with some serious questions brought back on PT/35(b) along the way.)
    link

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  83. Bloggy, thank you for the footnote. Semantics? Is that what my contributions represent? Is that what you mean? Oh well.
    For what its worth I was simply asking a question.

    You said "To be quite honest I don't believe it." in relation to the results of tests carried out by Newsnight and which involved the UN's European consultant on explosives, John Wyatt. Perhaps I misunderstood but you're, "I don't believe it." suggested to me you were saying the results weren't true.

    He told Newsnight that there were further doubts over the whether the fragment could have come from the trigger of the Lockerbie bomb.

    He recreated the bomb used over Lockerbie using the type of radio in which the explosive and the timer circuit board were allegedly placed and similar clothes the fragment was said to be found in.

    In each test the timer and its circuit board were obliterated, and led him to doubt the fragment could have survived the mid-air explosion.

    He said "I do find it quite it extraordinary and I think highly improbable and most unlikely that you would find a fragment like that - it is unbelievable.

    "We carried out 20 tests, we didn't carry out 100 or 1,000, but in those 20 tests we found absolutely nothing at all - so I found it highly improbable that you would find anything like that, particularly at 10,000 feet when bits are dropping into long wet grass over hundreds of miles."

    You seem to wish to focus on the type of explosion seen in NI which is just not the sort of situation we are talking about here. This wasn't a car-bomb on the ground going off outside. It happened on a plane in mid-air which changes the environment of the bomb completely.

    My technical knowledge of these things is zilch but I am perfectly able to follow what Mr Wyatt said. That is why I wondered if you were suggesting the findings weren't correct or even true.

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  84. Caustic, I had another look at that Beast site. I saw Mr Flynn's reply. Hmmmm. Not a good atmosphere on there.

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  85. I wish Mr. Flynn would come on the JREF forum with these points, and stay to debate them. He'd be shredded in a few pages.

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  86. You know, I was thinking the other day that there was a time when I really believed in the justice system here in a sort of automatic way. Imagine being caught up in it tho, knowing you were innocent and not guilty of what you were being accused of yet also knowing you were going down for it. What sort of feeling must that be?

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  87. The suspicion is that the Hortons picked up something quite unrelated to the bomb - either something from another suitcase, or the passenger cabin, or a mailbag, or even locally-deposited litter. "Something electrical", maybe with Toshiba legible, maybe not. More or less a page, a bit tatty round the edges. This went into the plastic bag with the rest of the stuff, and was given to the police.

    In February, Feraday had decided the radio was a white RT-8016. However, in April he discovered that another possible contender was a model with a link to Libya. What he needed was black plastic fragments, but that wouldn't be enough for a definite identification. The manual would do that though. So a copy of the manual was artistically mutilated to look as if it had been in close proximity to an explosion, but leaving the crucial "SF16" letters legible. This was then introduced into the evidence trail in May by substituting it for the item Decky Horton picked up, in the (pretty reasonable) hope that she woudn't remember in detail what she had bagged from the field that morning.

    This is what we speculate, anyway.

    However, I find the concept that this item could really have survived as described very difficult to get my brain round. The manual is supposed to have been packed in the radio box, right beside the radio, still in its plastic bag. It would only have been an inch or so from the bomb, and in the line of fire of lots of bits of plastic and electronics components. Some other fragments of the manual were found embedded in some of the Maltese clothes, little compact wodges of several pages. However, the important part was Decky Horton's find - two sheets, including the front page, flying free in the wind, several centimetres square, and with just the right words legible.

    Do you think it's really feasible that this piece of paper could have survived like that?

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  88. Bizarre. That last post is the second of a pair. The first has vanished three times. The second time I had to re-write it, but after that I saved it.

    I'll try again, but splitting it in two.

    Damn, I keep losing this. First my office computer comprehensively crashed as I started it and I had no time to re-commence, then this evening I had it all done, and I must have omitted to submit the post after previewing it!

    Blogiston, could I explain about the manual pages in a bit more detail, so that you can comment?

    On the morning of 22nd December residents in Morpeth woke up to a lot of what seemed to be litter all over the lanes and fields. In fact it was light debris from PA103 that had blown 60 miles. I don't know how extensive the area was, but it extended right into the North Sea. Local people were asked by the police to gather up anything they could find and hand it in.

    Geoffrey and Gwendolyn Horton (Geoff and Deccy) went out to litter-pick their land - I think they had a couple of fields. They gathered two or three plastic bags-full and gave them to the police. Eventually, one of the bits of litter in one of these bags was held to be the item that identified the radio-cassette as a model which had had a large batch sold to a Libyan retailer in October 1988.

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  89. Well, it's bed-time. No sign of Bunntamas. I live in hope that some day, one of these people who is so convinced of Megrahi's guilt will either stay and politely explain why, in terms we can follow, or take on board what we're saying and realise he's wrong.
    So far, all I see these people doing is running away.


    As I commented previously, I was not running away. Just had other things to do.
    So, it seems I got off on the wrong foot here in my original reply to Caustic re: his seeming degradation of a fellow family member, and my poor attempt to inject humor on further comments.
    Thanks to Jo G and SFM for welcoming me here. And my apologies for assuming you're all men, and any other offences I may have committed in the name of banter. Though it would seem most of you are neither unfamiliar nor benign to hurling insults and offences yourselves.
    To give you a bit of background, I spent many years following every nook and cranny of this case. As of late, yes, Rolfe, I have remained on the fringes. This is a dark, dark world, which can take people to very dark places BTW - thank you, again to Jo for noting comments on other web sites and warnings of safety.
    I have seen a great of deal unimaginable darkness since receiving the news on 21 December, 1988. After commenting here last week, it took a bit of doing to decide whether or not to dive back in again after a bit of a hiatus.
    As noted previously, you have your beliefs, I have mine. I would welcome intellectual sparring on all of the issues we have; for and against.
    So please forgive me as I may not immediately respond whilst digging out and reviewing all my old files from day one forward.
    I do so wish this blog had a forum application. With all due respect to Pr. Black, I loathe scrolling up & down in the comments here.
    I have no intention of taking web traffic away from Pr. Black, but I would like to share more with you all in an actual forum.
    Perhaps JREF? or if you would prefer another venue, please advise.
    Obviously, there are many issues to pick apart, upon which we have just tipped the iceberg here in this comment section about one article, on a blog that has been posting for years.
    However, one point in particular I would like to jump into is the terrorist training that took place in Libya, about which Bollier, under oath, admitted to attending. I have certain declassified documents that I would like to reference in said banter. From there, I'm game to go on.
    Anyone up for more fodder?
    Name the place. I'm game.
    Best,
    ~Bunny

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  90. err... that is, I'm up for game. Not that I'm target for game. Or at least I hope you (and others) won't see it that way.

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  91. Bunntamas: "As I commented previously, I was not running away. Just had other things to do."

    I knew it, and I told them so. Hey, I meant to say myself, props for coming here and letting yourself get ganged up on. That takes some cajones or, as you might say, not at all. But it does take some time either way. Thanks for taking it.

    And as far as the darkness that underlays this whole thing, we'll have to leave you to guard against that yourself. If we're able to get through to you in the way I think is necessary sooner or later, that could be a painful experience. So I'm not sure what I really want out of this...

    "So, it seems I got off on the wrong foot here in my original reply to Caustic re: his seeming degradation of a fellow family member, and my poor attempt to inject humor on further comments."

    I realize I've been less than fully diplomatic with you, Mr. Flynn, Frank Duggan, and the American families community in general. Or is it just not deferential enough? What can I say, you guys all annoy me. I mean really, what did I say to set you off?
    "Mr. Flynn isn't very well-informed," and has a "limited/stunted understanding of this complex situation."
    That's a subjective opinion, based on what well-informed means to me. He's informed, just not very well (balanced), in my opinion. You don't seem to be much different, and you'd both find my information equally unwell. So... maybe we should get more specific and less personal.

    "I would welcome intellectual sparring on all of the issues we have; for and against."

    Good. It's true that comments on a blog are not the best forum for a detailed discussion. I'm amazed it works as well as it does. And we've been all over the board here. Might I suggest, as I think Rolfe did, JREF:
    http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=91
    (that's the CT sub-forum - registering shouldn't be hard, normally)
    It's normally a forum for debunking conspiracy theories, but the limited pool of members there hasn't been able to pull it together yet. Rolfe and me and some others are running rampant and convincing people! It's insanity. Bring a friend.

    However, one point in particular I would like to jump into is the terrorist training that took place in Libya, about which Bollier, under oath, admitted to attending. I have certain declassified documents that I would like to reference in said banter. From there, I'm game to go on.
    Anyone up for more fodder?


    Yes, tho my own time is limited and gets scattered, to chat with you I'd make the time. That document sounds interesting, but I've found if Bollier says something, under oath or not, it's quite likely to be untrue. That particular point I don't know. He surprises me occasionally.

    Cheers

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  92. To flesh out a pint above I forgot to:

    And as far as the darkness that underlays this whole thing, we'll have to leave you to guard against that yourself. If you manage to get through to any of us, we risk embarrassment for being so wrong and leading others astray. But on the other hand, if we're able to get through to you in the way I think is necessary sooner or later, that could be an intensely painful experience for you. So I'm not sure what I really want out of this...

    Does that make sense?

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  93. Rolfe asked, Do you think it's really feasible that this piece of paper could have survived like that? A. Not really feasible – because there is a high probability that it would either be completely incinerated by the initial temperature surge (3800 Celsius for Semtex – paper spontaneously combusts at 400 Celsius), and/or be shredded by the explosive debris, and/or be reduced to illegible mulch after spending an hour and twenty minutes travelling through the atmosphere at an average speed of 45 mph in a windy and rainy December night. [Unfortunately, not feasible (or highly improbable) does not equate to ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ it could not happen, in the black/white world of the court room because it refers to something not happening (i.e. the paper manual not being intact). And proving the negative on the balance of probabilities is not admissible, or de rigueur. That is, proving an event probably ‘did not happen’ is not, 1-P(event happening) – if my logic is sound? The attribute of ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ is only associated with proving something, in the positive sense, did happen, and does not apply to the negative. This has always amused me about court room logic. If this is deemed ball locks by RB, then .
    But, as I’ve mentioned before unfortunately it wasn’t Joe Beltrami waving the piece of evidence in the air in front of a jury and scoffing, “We are being asked to believe that this, 'magic', radio cassette manual….blah blah..” You know how it goes on. ]

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  94. Yes, I noticed that about the court judgement. I'm a scientist, and if someone says to me in the ordinary course of events, is it absolutely impossible that such-and-such could happen, I would normally hesitate to be completely categorical (well, unless you're talking about homoeopathy, that is....). I have to school myself when doing expert witness work to avoid that pitfall, and at the very least say, in my opinion that's impossible. Because even if one admits even a hypothetical possibility, someone will jump on that and elevate it to the likeliest explanation.

    I noticed that Wilfrid Borg unfortunately fell into that trap in court. After having said for ten years that it was impossible that an unaccompanied bag could get on an Air Malta plane, and repeating that in his evidence-in-chief, when the prosecution advocate asked him, but was it really completely impossible, he said something along the lines of, well anything's possible I suppose.

    It was the same with the rain at Sliema on 7th December. There was none recorded at Luqa three miles away, but when the meteorologist (a scientist) was pushed, he suggested a 10% chance that there might have been a few drops at Sliema. The judges seized on this in preference to the actual record of rain just as Tony had described on 23rd November.

    I think in both cases there was wilful disregard of where the weight of the evidence lay, but IANAL and all that.

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  95. I think there's another point that is implied by your Joe Beltrami scenario. It's one thing to argue that Tony didn't identify Megrahi and it wasn't 7th December anyway, and that tray B8849 was a coding anomaly, but starting in on the manual page or the timer fragment is tantamount to accusing the investigators of fabricating evidence.

    This is the sort of thing that can alienate even a jury, never mind a judicial bench. (Cue remarks about Lord Denning....) If you can prove it, sure, but if you can't (and you usually can't), the most you can do is use the doubts to muddy the water a bit. Otherwise it can risk making the defence seem desperate, and clutching at straws.

    I don't think there's any need to raise these points to make a compelling case that Megrahi didn't do it. However, I harbour suspicions beyond that, which centre round the manual page, the timer fragment and tray B8849. All three seem way to convenient to live, and the survival of the manual fragment looks to me as if it is in the miracle category.

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  96. Bunntamas, nothing personal at all - I merely have long experience of people insisting hotly that Megrahi was undoubtedly guilty, only to disappear and never be heard of again when confronted with the actual evidence.

    I have remarked before that the blog format is a very poor one for the sort of discussion we often try to have here. A forum would obviously be far preferable, but I suspect the committment of administrating and moderating a forum is more than Professor Black would want to undertake. I have previously suggested the JREF forum, which is quite tightly moderated to keep posters on the strait and narrow, however the people I suggested it to were unwilling to register there. You have to give your real name and address to the admins, and although they do not reveal this information under any circumstances, this seems to be too much for some people.

    There are several threads about the Lockerbie bombing, moving rather slowly because few people post in them. However, the place is simply crawling with people who like nothing better than to "debunk" conspiracy theories. They have all abandoned the Lockerbie threads because they can't counter the evidence, but if you provided some ammunition for them, I suspect you'd have a posse of willing foot-soldiers in no time.

    The home page is at http://forums.randi.org/index.php, and the admins mostly don't bite.

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  97. However, one point in particular I would like to jump into is the terrorist training that took place in Libya, about which Bollier, under oath, admitted to attending. I have certain declassified documents that I would like to reference in said banter.

    JREF would be a better place for this, but in case that isn't a runner, I'll just address this.

    Bunntamas, is this going anywhere? I don't think you'll get any opposition to the proposition that Libya was engaged in terrorist activities in the 1980s (though possibly not quite as much as Vincent Cannistraro would have us believe....).

    This discussion is about whether Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was involved in the introduction of the Pan Am 103 bomb on to KM180 at Luqa airport. Pointing out that Gadaffi was a bad lot and up to no good at all in many respects is hardly news, but I question how relevant it is.

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  98. (Yes, we would make poor policemen – shades of grey to them is abhorrent)
    We have seen the Newsnight experiment where the eminent explosives expert demonstrated the incinerating effect of a Semtex explosion of a charge, similar to one used on PanAm 103. Most of his findings seem pretty much in agreement with other descriptions I have read on the internet. The science is consistent as regards temperature and the causality of the effects of the explosion. Combustible materials like paper and circuit boards (plastic hydrocarbon materials) which are near the source of the explosion and take the first few microseconds of the blast are ignited and incinerate (or oxidised) completely. Material that is not combustible tends to fracture and disintegrate and is ejected along the radial path from the centre of the explosion. This material then acts like shrapnel and tends to shred softer material in its path. This means a PCB board with components mounted by solder near the seat of explosion (~3800 Celsius) would be expected to destruct as follows; any plastic material (PCB board, sockets, switches, plastic packaged chips, capacitors) would be oxidised, non-plastic components (ceramic chips, some types of resistors) would fragment or be ejected outward, solder (which melts at ~450 Celsius) would be ejected in a molten state, paper packaging (flashpoint of ~400 Celsius) would be incinerated. The further the object is away from the seat of the explosion the lesser the effect, of course, and it follows a phenomenon called the inverse-square law (the transferred energy is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the point source). However, my point is, since non-combustible material tends to be ejected rather than consumed then there are always fragments that a forensic scientist can use to determine what triggered the device. For example, in NI they can tell whether a bomb of considerably more Semtex than was used on Pan AM 103, was triggered by a tilt switch or a remote device (the baddies don’t use timers in Belfast). So whether one can draw any firm conclusions from a car bomb explosion to what may happen in a mid-air explosion, is arguable. However, there is a small probability that some fragments are ejected – it is not zero. The guy on Newsnight disputed this but if he had said anything other than that, he would not have been on tv! Because that whole report was about casting doubt on the evidence, and to do that, beyond reasonable doubt, you have to be very definite with a probability of 1. i.e. 100% that there would be no residue to find. I would have liked to have been there when they were rehearsing that piece. That is why I said, “I don’t believe him”. If I had a pound for every time I have heard someone say such and such could never happen…only to be proved wrong, then I….
    So, my assertion is, there probably were fragments.
    However, the probability of them being found in a search area of 850 square miles is infinitesimally small – so the Scottish ‘polis’ did the impossible – I mean, the improbable. So here we are again, similar to the magic manual, trying to put a number on how probable is improbable. Well, in the case of two independent events the probabilities multiply (i.e. bits flying out and bits being found). So multiply two very small numbers and you get an even smaller number. Tiny. So at this point it looks good for the defence because based on probabilities it seems unfeasible (extremely) – but in court room logic, unfeasible is not the same as impossible – and as we commented previously definitely not the same as ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. I read Lord Sutherland’s verdict twice (only) and I was struck by the number of times he seemed to say, something or other does not seem feasible or such…but let’s put that aside. If a juror had asked him for advice during a consideration, and commented, “…a lot of this is not feasible or reliable, but hey, let’s just set it aside”, he would have reminded the juror not to think that way.

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  99. Leaving aside for the moment the question of Megrahi's actual guilt or innocence, how anyone at all could possibly describe that evidence as "beyond reasonable doubt" is completely unfathomable.

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