[What follows is a response from Dr Jim Swire to Magnus Linklater’s articles Lockerbie conviction is upheld by review and Lockerbie review kills conspiracy theories in The Times on 20 December. Dr Swire intended to post the response on the relevant thread on this blog but I thought it should appear as a separate item:]
There were three particular aspects of comments attributed to the Crown Office and thus to Lord Advocate Mulholland, by Mr Linklater in The Times of 20 December 2014 which were intensely irritating to some Lockerbie relatives.
The first was that the Lord Advocate should be involved in such comments at all on that particular date knowing full well that many relatives here, such as myself, can no longer believe the Megrahi verdict to be justified and that therefore the precious memories to be renewed on the following day would be disturbed by his clear attempt to pander to US relatives, most of whom have not yet realised the extraordinary twisting of justice which seems to have occurred at Zeist, through not having reviewed the proceedings and subsequent fallout for themselves.
I am not aware that it is part of the remit of the Crown Office to suckle the American public, rather than objectively to examine evidence in criminal cases on behalf of the people of Scotland.
Those who do care about the human tragedy of this case should remember that the exhibition of such hubris in defence of the indefensible will, when the truth does eventually emerge, only add to the misery of those relatives who never detected the deception for themselves.
The second was the claim that the facts had been re-examined and that there was not a shred of doubt about the integrity of the verdict. In the face of the previous findings by the SCCRC after three years hard work, the Crown Office appears to have insulted their work as well as astonishing many Scots. Perhaps Lord Advocate Mulholland should hang the famous comments of the late Mandy Rice-Davies at the foot of his bed.
The third was the claim by the Lord Advocate that “our focus remains on the evidence, and not on speculation and supposition.” This is supported according to Mr Linklater by the police who are quoted as saying that the evidence (the forensic item PT35b etc) would have to have been planted within 23 days. Linklater writes:
‘Police are adamant, however, that the fragment was under supervision. They point out that the evidence would have to have been planted within 23 days, requiring knowledge of all the evidence to come — including Megrahi, whose existence was then unknown.’
Perhaps Lord Advocate Mulholland and those representing the police have forgotten the details of the provenance of these items.
They were presented to the court as having been recovered by prosecution forensic scientists from the only police evidence bag found to have had its official label illegally interfered with. The alteration to the label was both criminal and significant. The wording had been changed from the ‘charred cloth’ of the original label to read ‘charred debris’ The other debris of course included PT35b, the mysterious board fragment, mimicking boards belonging to the Libyans, but having a fundamentally different mode of finish simply not available to the firm which had made the Libyan boards prior to December 1988. It could not therefore have been derived from the remains of a Libyan bomb timer allegedly found in the innocent fields round Lockerbie.
An explanation from the Crown Office as to what they have done to discover who altered that police label and whether or not that crime was accompanied by any additions to the bag's contents, might, if conducted intensively by a party free of any hubristic attachment to the marvels of Lord Advocate Mulholland's office do more to advance the truth in this dire case than does the police assumption that any interference 'must' have occurred 'within 23 days'. Again the late Mandy applies.
Has the Crown Office had the sanctity of the ‘supervision’ which the police claim protected their evidence bags objectively investigated?
If so, what was found?
If not, why not?
[Other responses to the articles in The Times can be found here.]
Living with the "Lockerbie Affair", 2015 - only in german language:
ReplyDeleteMEBO AG & Edwin Bollier, warten auf das Urteil ihrer eingereichten Beschwerde, welche beim Bundesstrafgericht Bellinzona, gegen den ausser ordentlichen Staatsanwalt Felix Bänziger, der Aufsichtsbehörde über die Bundesanwaltschaft (AB-BA) eingereicht wurde. Ein neuer Skandal in der "Lockerbie-Affäre Schweiz" ?
Wollte der schweizerische Staatsanwalt Felix Bänziger, durch die Nichtanhandnahme, einer vom Polizei- und Justizdepartement (EJDP) - bewilligten Strafuntersuchung, in der Wahrheitsfindung im 'Lockerbie-Fall' - etwas entscheidendes vereiteln ?
Wird die Schweiz und Scotland bald im Fokus der "Lockerbie Affäre", gegen New/Libyen und anderen finanziell und Prestige Geschädigten, stehen...
Am 28. November 2014 gelangte der Rechtsanwalt Marcel Bosonnet, für Edwin Bollier & MEBO AG, mit einer Beschwerde an das Bundesstrafgericht in Bellnzona.
In der Rüge wird vorgehalten, dass der ausser ordentliche Staatsanwalt des Bundes (AB-BA) unter anderen fragwürdigen Fakten, befangen war. Staatsanwalt Felix Bänziger, hätte das Mandat nie übernehmen dürfen - und war deshalb auch nicht befugt eine Nichtanhandnahmeverfügung einer Strafuntersuchung gegen einen bekannten Mitarbeiter des schweizerischen Nachrichtendienst des Bundes (NDB) und unbekannte Staatsbedienstete zu erlassen !
Bänziger war nicht in der Lage Untersuchung unbefangen zu führen, da er vorbefasst war und sich die Strafanzeige sich möglicherweise auch gegen ihn selbst richtet.
Klassifizierte Dokumente zeigten dem Beschwerdeführer, Edwin Bollier & MEBO AG, kürzlich, dass Felix Bänziger in den 'Fall Lockerbie' selbst tätig war und offensichtlich auch Kontakt mit den englischen Behörden pflegte. Diese Unterlagen werden zum integrierenden Bestandteil der Beschwerde erklärt.
Es ist absolut unverständlich, dass Felix Bänziger sich von der Aufsichtskommission über die Bundesanwaltschaft (AB-BA) in der vorliegenden Strafsache zum a.o. Staatsanwalt des Bundes ernennen liess.
Es konnte ihm wohl bei der Übernahme des Mandates kaum entgangen sein, dass er selbst in der Strafuntersuchung betreffend des Flugzeugabsturzes PanAm 103, in Lockerbie, gegen den heutigen Beschwerdeführer tätig war.
Durch die Annahme dieses Mandates wäre er allenfalls gezwungen worden gegen sich selbst zu ermitteln; das könnte einen Grund sein, aber viel stärker steht im Raum, dass damit das gegenseitig abgeschlossene Rechtshifeverfahren zwischen der Schweiz und Scotland nicht einbezogen werden könnte - und somit das manipulierte Beweisstück des MST-13 Timerfragments (PT-35) nicht in das CH-Forensische Polizeiinstitut in Zürich, zur Analyse gebracht werden müsste !
Eine in einer Strafbehörde tätige Person tritt in den Ausstand, wenn sie in der Sache persönliche Interessen hat (Art. 56 lit.a StPO). Felix Bänziger wäre deshalb verpflichtet gewesen in den Ausstand zu treten.
Bekanntlich geht es um wissentliche falsche Anschuldigungen und Prozessbetrug u.a. zu Lasten des Beschwerdeführers Bollier & MEBO AG.
Die verlorene Ehre der Mutter Helvetia...
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Telecommunication Switzerland. Webpage: www.lockerbie.ch
The "BTF" (that's the "bloody timer fragment"!) is becoming a huge distraction in this case. It's interesting, it's anomalous, and the paperwork has more snafus than have any right to be associated with any one item. As regards the core of the Lockerbie conundrum, however, it's peripheral.
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether it fell from the sky or not. I'm inclined to agree with the Crown that if it didn't fall from the sky, it materialised very early. They say 23 days. I say 25 days, please look at what was happening in Dextar itself, probably on Sunday 15th January 1989. And that in itself is a huge can of worms.
Yes, I'd like to know if that 1 cm square fragment of PCB fell from the sky with the rest of the debris on 21st December, or was snuck in by nefarious means a few weeks later. Either way, the answer would be hugely interesting. But you know what? As regards proving that Megrahi was innocent and the entire investigation was up a gum tree without a paddle, IT DOESN'T MATTER A DAMN.
The bomb was in the suitcase Bedford saw in the interline shed at Heathrow, an hour before the feeder flight landed. That's been proved. Megrahi was in Tripoli at the relevant time. Why is Mulholland avoiding this freaking great elephant in the room? He's also avoiding the SCCRC's findings in relation to the only other link Megrahi allegedly had to the bombing, the purchase of the clothes. Hey, Frank, it wasn't Megrahi in Tony's shop that wet evening. You must know that.
It doesn't MATTER where PT/35b came from, at the most fundamental level. As the bomb was introduced at Heathrow, where Megrahi most definitely wasn't, he equally definitely didn't plant the bomb. And he didn't buy the clothes. He didn't have anything to do with any of it. And that fact remains, whether PT/35b fell out of the sky, was sneakily planted by an agent present at Lockerbie in the early weeks of the investigation, or formed itself by spontaneous generation from the primal aether, right there in the evidence bag.
Stop talking about PT/35b, Mr. Mulholland, and start talking about PK/139 and the rest of the evidence that shows the bomb suitcase was on the bottom layer of luggage in the container.
Sometimes I wonder, does anyone from the Crown Office read this blog? Read the comments?
ReplyDeleteCome on guys, how am I wrong? Where's your expert forensic analysis to counter mine? How can you possibly say the Coyle case was on the floor of the container under the bomb, when you have the Schäuble case right there with blue Tourister plastered all over one side of it? Sidhu repeatedly said he didn't move the cases Bedford described, and the Coyle case was on top of the bomb. Prove me wrong.
So if the case Bedford saw wasn't moved, and we have absolutely NO evidence to justify assuming that it was, and the bomb case was on the second layer, the case Bedford saw must have been right under the explosion. With the Coyle case right on top of the explosion.
So where is Bedford's case? Plenty bits of the Coyle case in the collection of litter photographed in the joint forensic report. Where are the bits of the case that was under the bomb? Oh look, there aren't any. Whose case was it anyway? Only six cases documented as being put into that container in the interline shed. We have all six. None of them was under the bomb. Are you seriously going to maintain that a seventh suitcase somehow got itself into the container, undocumented, and it was placed in that crucial position, and according to Bedford its description matched the description of the bomb case, but it wasn't the bomb? You think it was under the bomb, but unlike the Coyle case, somehow all the fragments selectively blew away and eluded the fingertip searches?
What, seriously? I can see why you weren't keen to run this argument at Camp Zeist, mind you.
So, about that evidence that there was another case under the bomb suitcase. Where is it? Nothing but unsupported assertions from various members of the forensic team. These guys claimed to be able to look at the floor of the container and magically intuit that it had been protected by another case. They didn't produce any experimental evidence to justify that. They couldn't, because the experiments done at Indian Head were a train wreck and couldn't prove jack. They just flatly insisted that there must have been such a case, even though they couldn't suggest whose case could have been in that position and they couldn't produce any recovered fragments to show it ever existed. (It's a pity nobody cottoned on to this in the Easterbrook Hall in 1990, when this argument was actually run in all seriousness. Might have saved a lot of people a lot of grief.)
Now look at the bit of the airframe under the floor of the container. Was that "protected by another suitcase lying below the bomb suitcase"? Did anyone even think of asking that question? Because in the photos it looks pretty blast-damaged to me, and in court the magic words "pitting and sooting" (looked for and not found on the floor itself) were used of the airframe. So how come the airframe showed evidence of up-close-and-personal involvement in the explosion, if this magical vanishing case was protecting it?
And for the cherry on top I present PK/139, the separate panel of lining fabric from the hinge end of the Carlsson suitcase. That, and the body of the McKee Samsonite. We know exactly where these cases were. They were sitting upright behind the bomb suitcase, end-on, handles up, like slices of toast in a toast rack. So can you really, seriously, with a straight face and in any sort of good faith, produce a forensics expert who is prepared to declare that the bottom front corners of these cases were protected by this phantom, vanishing suitcase?
How am I wrong? Tell me, how am I wrong?
The only possible solution to the suitcase jigsaw puzzle is that the case Bedford saw was the bomb. It was a brown Samsonite hardshell. Sidhu didn't move it. The condition of the Carlsson and McKee cases proves the bomb suitcase was on the bottom layer, in the position of the case Bedford saw. The condition of the airframe shows that it took the brunt of the downward-directed blast, giving the lie to the fantasy-theory of the mystery case lying below the bomb suitcase. (The floor of the container seems to have been deflected away from the blast, probably while protected by the shell of the bomb suitcase itself and some of the contents.)
ReplyDeleteIt is a scandal of EPIC proportions that your so-called crack forensic team from Kent didn't figure this out. The evidence is right there, even in the photographs, and it isn't even hard. Never mind that Bedford's initial statements should have had alarm bells going off like Coventry in 1940.
Why did everyone in charge of the Scottish police inquiry blank Bedford's statements as if there was nothing of interest in them (and Manly's account of the break-in too of course)? Why did everyone and his dog in RARDE and the AAIB line up dutifully giving their opinion that the explosion was on the second layer, when it absolutely, demonstrably WASN'T?
I don't need to ask why you decided, in 1999, to jettison the argument that had sustained the investigation up till then, and especially through the FAI. It obviously couldn't survive even a moderately competent examination by a defence advisor, in a criminal trial. So you abandoned the previously set-in-stone idea that Sidhu hadn't moved the cases and the Coyle case was on top of the bomb suitcase, on the third layer. You got Hayes to near-perjure himself to declare that the Coyle case had been under the bomb, and so decided the court could infer that Sidhu must have moved the cases without actually bringing him to the witness box and asking him. You pretended the Coyle case was on the bottom layer, and quietly ignored the fact that you now had no candidate for the smashed case that should have been on top of the bomb.
Why? I mean, if you're working on the assumption that Sidhu shuffled the cases Bedford saw randomly into the Frankfurt online luggage, why did the investigators spend so much time and effort trying to prove the bomb was on the second layer? If the cases were shuffled, the exact position of the explosion is IRRELEVANT, because any case, from either origin, could have been in any position.
But you didn't completely change the presentation, did you? You treated the court to hours of argumentation that the bomb suitcase couldn't have been on the bottom - and then concluded it didn't matter anyway. That was interesting, to me at least.
At some level, someone in the Crown Office in 1999 must have realised that if all the evidence was presented honestly, and it was agreed that Sidhu didn't rearrange the luggage, the case Bedford saw could be concluded to be the bomb suitcase. (At least to a fair degree of probability, even if the analysis wasn't taken to the extent of proving that it was.)
So you didn't present the evidence honestly. You obfuscated and misrepresented and damn near lied in your teeth to cover up the evidence that showed the men in the dock had been a thousand miles away when the Lockerbie bomb was actually planted. This is not an attractive look for my country's criminal justice system, I have to say.
And now you're wittering incessantly about the BTF, because it's a point that's still susceptible to being rubbished for public consumption, and try to pretend that saves your irretrievably broken case.
Seen any good Road Runner cartoons lately, Mr. Mulholland?
http://uncomelyandbroken.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/wile-e-coyote.gif
You'll have to look down eventually, you know.
And if you think that sounds tetchy, you're right. I've been telling you guys this for close on two years now. I've drawn you a picture. I've drawn you quite a lot of pictures actually. I've explained it in words of relatively few syllables. I've started again and explained it a different way. Several times.
ReplyDeleteAND NOBODY FROM THE CROWN OFFICE HAS EVEN ACKNOWLEDGED THAT THERE'S A POINT IN THERE THAT NEEDS ANSWERING.
All we get is more and more wittering about the BTF. Bland assurances that no evidence was planted or faked. As if that somehow makes it all right. Well I'm getting fed up with it.
I'm not alleging that anything was planted or faked. Not for the purposes of this argument. On the contrary, I'm basing my entire thesis on the assumption that the statements from the Heathrow staff and the photos of the blast-damaged fragments are God's honest truth. Because the evidence the Crown presented, as it stands and with no claim that anything was fabricated, proves conclusively that the bomb was planted in London at about 4.30 in the afternoon.
And that means that Megrahi wasn't "the Lockerbie Bomber". Absolutely definitely.
And you seem to think that if you can just keep ignoring me it'll all go away. Well, it won't.