The dead still wait...

[This is the heading over an item posted yesterday on the Lockerbie Truth website of Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph.  It reads as follows:]

It is true that Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi was found guilty in a court of law and his conviction confirmed by five senior judges. [RB: For the restricted scope of this appeal and the issues which it did not address, see Lockerbie: A satisfactory process but a flawed result, section headed “The Appeal”.]

This - as Scottish government spokespersons continually remind us - remains the situation.

But those judges at trial and appeal are now proven to have been misled and mis-informed by senior British scientists and senior police officers who failed in their duty to the truth and the society they were entrusted to serve.  

This also – as Scottish government spokespersons continually ignore – remains the situation.

During the Lockerbie trial, RARDE scientist Alan Feraday in his evidence stated as follows:

"The conducting pad and tracks present on the fragment PT/35(b) are of copper covered by a layer of pure tin."  

(In other words, the tracking was 100% tin. And Feraday had written in long hand on his notebook just those numbers "100% tin".)  

And later in his evidence Feraday stated:

".. it has been conclusively established that the [PT/35(b)] fragment materials and tracking pattern are similar in all respects to the area around the connection pad for the output relay of the MST-13 timer."  

Unfortunately for Feraday is has now been conclusively established that the conducting pad and tracks present on all timer boards supplied to Libya by Swiss suppliers MEBO, and from which - according to the prosecution - came fragment PT/35(b), were of copper covered by a layer of 70/30% alloy of tin and lead.

Indeed, Feraday was aware of the difference and asked two scientists to look at the reason for the difference.  They did not do so.

In his evidence at trial, Feraday never mentioned the discrepancy.  The judges remained in ignorance of the discrepancy.  The defence team knew nothing of it.

So the fragment materials were and are not "similar in all respects" to those used on the MEBO MST-13 timer boards.

This phrase "similar in all respects" formed the kernel of the judgement against al-Megrahi.

No-one knows the origin of the Lockerbie fragment, and we will not speculate as to where it came from or who made it. It is, however, clear that PT/35(b) did not originate from any timer boards which the prosecution claimed were used by Al-Megrahi.

The prosecution did not, incidentally, produce any evidence as to where Al-Megrahi had used such timers, nor where or how he had constructed a bomb, nor where he had stored it or deployed it.  The judges, misled as they were by the remaining evidence, accepted such innuendo as fact.

The timer fragment PT/35(b) was not the only matter central to the verdict in which misinformation and concealment by the prosecution and their witnesses occurred. These are serious matters which cry out for independent investigation.  

Earlier this year Prime Minister David Cameron, just two days after the revelation of the above information, claimed that such revelations were "an insult" to the Lockerbie dead.  

We must leave it to objective historians to form their own conclusions on such a statement.

An independent inquiry into the Lockerbie tragedy and its investigation and evidence submitted at trial is long overdue.

It is now almost a quarter of a century since the December 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The two hundred and seventy dead of Lockerbie still wait for truth and justice.