The descent

[This is the headline over an article just published on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm by the editor, Steven Raeburn. It reads in part:]

Most coverage of Pan Am 103 deals with the pitiful saga - now in its 24th ignominious year - in increments. The latest Crown Office statement will be reported. The latest US condemnation, repeated. The latest revelation, examined. But that no more gives you an understanding of the issues that require scrutiny than ten minutes of last night’s Eastenders will of the sordid, bloody history of Albert Square. 

Zooming in on the minutiae of the trees obscures the forest we are wandering through, and it must never, ever be forgotten that Pan Am 103 is a story of geopolitics, of US and UK affairs, the implications for the Middle East and oil that resides there. What happens in Scotland is the dance of the puppet, and eyes should be focused on the hands pulling the strings. Anyone who fails to understand this will never grasp the evasive truth of these events. 

UN observer Hans Köchler grasped this essential truth, and criticised the “highly politicised circumstances in which the case was handled" and which he said "drew the attention of the international public to the possible interference of intelligence services from more than one country”. 

He also warned that “the search for truth is abandoned for political expediency and criminal justice…is sacrificed on the altar of political and commercial interests.” 

In short, on a global political level, the Governments involved all have something to hide and have worked strenuously to achieve this. It has become self evident to even the most casual observer that this is the case. (...)

The Government's Pan Am 103 dogma states that the doomed aircraft blew up at high altitude and fell to pieces over Lockerbie. Pretty straightforward stuff. 

Except it isn’t. 

Eyewitness accounts of the Boeing 747‘s final moments suggest the crew were in control of the aircraft at low altitude, a fact that, if established, totally destroys the carefully maintained but bankrupt fiction of the events that support the Crown’s case against Abdelbaset Al Megrahi. 

The issue was probed during the Zeist trial, albeit from a carefully selected group of witnesses for whom this matter was strictly ancillary to the key aspects of their evidence. But testimony nevertheless given by them supports the proposition that the plane may have been intact and under control at low level before being destroyed by the final explosions which broke the aircraft apart. 

For example, during his testimony, witness Roland Stephenson said he saw the Pan Am 103 travelling in a “glide path“, coming in at a “shallow angle". 

“It was showing some form of lights, probably a small flame, no great flame or anything, enough for me to see the dark shape and the passage of the object, which appeared to me to be travelling in what I would call a glide path,” he said. 

“It was coming at a shallow angle. It was travelling from the extreme right of the town to the extreme left of the town. It appeared to be travelling more or less the line of the main road. 

“But it wasn't descending sharply.” 

Cross-examined by counsel if he had any experience of aircraft, Stephenson said he had lived under two airport flight paths, including the famous Kai Tak in Hong Kong where large jets descended amidst the built up central conurbations.

“I used to live in Hounslow West, which is right under the main runway of the approach to London airport. I also lived in Hong Kong on the actual level with the glide path where planes land at Kai-Tak. I was very familiar,” he said. 

And witness Jasmine Bell testified that on the night of the event she saw the plane “just going over my head” at just above roof height, but did not see it hit the ground. 

That again attests to horizontal travel, rather than vertical.

What was the pilot, Captain McQuarrie, doing? There is not enough information to draw a conclusion, but if he had any control at all of his aircraft, enough to coax it into the “glide path” described, it is not unreasonable to hypothesise that he may have been attempting to effect a nighttime landing on the A74, the only possible option to ground the plane in that area of southern Scotland, which would have been lit like a runway beneath him, denoting the only flat ground in the southern uplands. 

That the plane was ultimately destroyed and ended up in pieces around Lockerbie is inarguable, but its journey from cruising comfortably at high altitude down to the ground is not - judging by the available evidence- as clear cut as the dogma would have us believe. It is a journey whose details the Governments of the UK and US are unwilling to revisit. Why, is self evident. It forces a reassessment of the destruction of the plane, something that has been actively obstructed in Scotland where judicial examination is possible. 

The Air Accident Investigation Branch’s report into the fall of Pan Am 103 said that explosives events onboard caused “most of the remaining aircraft to disintegrate while it was descending nearly vertically from 19,000 to 9,000 feet,” after breaking up substantially within seconds of…whatever it was that happened. 

By the time the wreckage fell below 9000 feet it had effectively disintegrated, we are told by the AAIB. Debris in such a state could never be mistaken for an intact aircraft on a horizontal glide path. 

The AAIB description is both completely at odds with the witness statements at Zeist, and some of the related contemporary reporting, as we shall see. (...)

The Scotsman, on 22 December 1988, reported this: 

“Trouble appears to have struck the 747 somewhere over Langholm approximately 13 miles to the east where residents found lumps of aircraft metal and suitcases. 

“The crippled aircraft struggled west at low level, apparently clipping a hill about three miles east of Lockerbie. 

“Mr Jack Glasgow of Mount Florida, Glasgow, said: "We tried to get near the plane but it was completely on fire. There were no bodies about. I don't think there would be any chance of anyone getting out of it. It went up in a fireball." 

“Mr Glasgow said the aircraft hit the road, carried on for about three quarters of a mile and then exploded.” 

Mr Glasgow was not called to give evidence at the Zeist trial, but what he saw speaks more of an intact aircraft covering ground at low level. Not something that disintegrated five miles up in the night sky overhead. 

The New York Times, in its issue datelined 21 December 1988 states the following: 

“The Associated Press quoted authorities as initially saying that the plane may have hit a hillside in the hamlet of Corrie, six miles from Lockerbie, and that debris was strewn across the countryside 

“The spokesman at the rescue and coordination center said that the first impact of the plane was in the southwestern corner of the village, which has a population of about 4,000, and that the aircraft had bounced after hitting the ground, spreading wreckage over six areas over 10 miles” 

Those of us who have been in journalism long enough know the significant value of the first contemporaneous reports of any event, before an established narrative has been set and an accepted shorthand has been arrived at. (...) When a determined political machine has an interest in protecting a false narrative for a generation, as happened with Bloody Sunday, the value of those initial reports - overlooked, dismissed or subsequently discredited as contrary to the preferred narrative - becomes clear after history permits a reassessment. (...)

The AAIB is a branch of the UK Government, and every sinew of that Government has strained to sustain the falsehood that is the case against Abdelbaset Al Megrahi. The fact that its conclusions sit so at odds with these eyewitness accounts is simply typical of the geopolitical duplicity that defines this case, and which is so hard for those concentrating on the puppet rather than the puppeteer to either recognise or comprehend. 

Hans Köchler grasped it, and concluded that government representatives had protected their vested interest by ensuring crucial evidence was withheld from the Zeist court. 

“The presence of de facto governmental representatives of both sides in the courtroom gave the trial a highly political aura that should have been avoided by all means," he reported. 

“It was a consistent pattern during the whole trial that − as an apparent result of political interests and considerations − efforts were undertaken to withhold substantial information from the Court.” 

Similar interventions have of course been well documented, at Lockerbie itself on the evening of 21 December 1988, and from every point onwards, including all the way through Al Megrahi’s application to the SCCRC, his second appeal, transfer to Libya and beyond. It has carried on in recent months, weeks and days as the supposed ongoing investigation does all that it can to deflect or absorb external inquiry whilst producing absolutely nothing. 

What is clear is that the available testimony does not sustain the manufactured case against Megrahi. Hans Köchler thinks that this amounts to criminal conduct. Such a stain of criminal culpability requires purging by examination, resulting in either exoneration or conviction. The Pan Am 103 deceased, and Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, cannot rest peacefully while questions of criminality remain unanswered. Judicial reassessment is required. 


[A postscript containing additional eyewitness accounts has been added to The Firm's article on 2 July.]