Sunday 21 June 2015

Inconvenient Truths

[This is the headline over a long article by Hugh Miles that was published in the London Review of Books on this date in 2007.  The following are excerpts:]

From the outset the Lockerbie disaster has been marked by superlatives. The bombing was the deadliest terror attack on American civilians until 11 September 2001. It sparked Britain’s biggest ever criminal inquiry, led by its smallest police force, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary. It spelled the end of Pan Am, which never recovered from the damage to its reputation. The trial at Camp Zeist was the longest and – at a cost of £75 million – the most expensive in Scottish legal history. The appeal hearing was the first Scottish trial to be broadcast live on both television and the internet.

Lawyers, politicians, diplomats and relatives of Lockerbie victims now believe that the former Libyan intelligence officer is innocent. (...)

Al-Megrahi applied to the SCCRC for a review of his case in 2003 and the commission has been reinspecting evidence from the trial for the last four years. It will submit its findings at the end of June. It looks likely that the SCCRC will find that there is enough evidence to refer al-Megrahi’s case back to the appeal court. The Crown Office has already begun reinforcing its Lockerbie legal team in anticipation of a referral.

If al-Megrahi is granted a second appeal, it will, like the original trial, be held before a panel of Scottish judges, without a jury. This time the trial will take place in Scotland, and if the glacial pace of proceedings in the past is anything to go by, it will probably not be heard before the summer of 2008. Al-Megrahi’s defence team would be ready to launch an appeal in a matter of weeks, but the prosecution would be likely to delay the hearing for as long as possible. If an appeal takes place, al-Megrahi’s defence team will produce important evidence that was not available at the time of the first appeal, evidence that seems likely not only to exonerate al-Megrahi but to do so by pointing the finger of blame at the real perpetrators of the Lockerbie bombing and revealing some inconvenient truths.

Even the [official] who presided over the Lockerbie investigation and issued the 1991 arrest warrants for the two Libyans has cast doubt on the prosecution’s case. In an interview with the Sunday Times in October 2005, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Scotland’s larger-than-life lord advocate from 1989 to 1992, questioned the reliability of the shopkeeper Tony Gauci, the prosecution’s star witness. ‘Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say [that he] was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy, I don’t think he was deliberately lying but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer.’ Lord Fraser made it clear that this did not mean he thought al-Megrahi was innocent. But he had presented Gauci as a reliable witness; he went on to become the heart of the prosecution’s case. Now he was casting doubt on the man who identified al-Megrahi. (...)

Hans Köchler, the UN observer at Camp Zeist, reported at the time that the trial was politically charged and the verdict ‘totally incomprehensible’.

In his report Köchler wrote that he found the presence of US Justice Department representatives in the court ‘highly problematic’, because it gave the impression that they were ‘“supervisors” handling vital matters of the prosecution strategy and deciding … which documents … were to be released in open court and what parts of information contained in a certain document were to be withheld.’ ‘The alternative theory of the defence,’ he went on, ‘was never seriously investigated. Amid shrouds of secrecy and national security considerations, that avenue was never seriously pursued – although it was officially declared as being of major importance for the defence case. This is totally incomprehensible to any rational observer.’ The prosecution, Köchler noted, dismissed evidence on the grounds that it was not relevant; but now that that evidence has finally – partially – been released, it turns out to be very relevant indeed: to the defence.

Whatever happens, al-Megrahi may not have to wait long. As soon as a further appeal is scheduled, he can make an application to be released from custody: the convicted Lockerbie bomber, who was supposed to serve no fewer than 27 years in a Scottish jail, might well be free this summer. Whether al-Megrahi is freed pending his appeal – and what conditions would be applied if he were – depends largely on whether his defence team can convince the judge that he is not a flight risk. This may be hard to do. The judge might decide that if he left the country, he might choose to stay in Libya rather than come back next year for another round in court. If al-Megrahi is exonerated, many tricky questions will resurface, not least what to do about the $2.7 billion compensation paid by Libya to the relatives of the victims of the bombing. And then, of course, there is the question of who really bombed Flight 103.

In the first three years following the bombing, before a shred of evidence had been produced to incriminate Libya, the Dumfries and Galloway police, the FBI and several other intelligence services around the world all shared the belief that the Lockerbie bombers belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC), a Palestinian rejectionist organisation backed by Iran. The PFLP-GC is headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army captain; its headquarters are in Damascus and it is closely allied with the Syrian president and other senior Syrian officials. In the 1970s and 1980s the PFLP-GC carried out a number of raids against Israel, including a novel hang-glider assault launched from inside Lebanon. Lawyers, intelligence services and diplomats around the world continue to suspect that Jibril – who has even boasted that he is responsible – was behind Lockerbie.

The case against Jibril and his gang is well established. It runs like this: in July 1988, five months before the Lockerbie bombing, a US naval commander aboard USSVincennes in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian airbus, apparently mistaking it for an attacker. On board Iran Air Flight 655 were 270 pilgrims en route to Mecca. Ayatollah Khomeini vowed the skies would ‘rain blood’ in revenge and offered a $10 million reward to anyone who ‘obtained justice’ for Iran. The suggestion is that the PFLP-GC was commissioned to undertake a retaliatory bombing.

We know at least that two months before Lockerbie, a PFLP-GC cell was active in the Frankfurt and Neuss areas of West Germany. On 26 October 1998, German police arrested 17 terrorist suspects who, surveillance showed, had cased Frankfurt airport and browsed Pan Am flight timetables. Four Semtex-based explosive devices were confiscated; a fifth is known to have gone missing. They were concealed inside Toshiba radios very similar to the one found at Lockerbie a few weeks later. One of the gang, a Palestinian known as Abu Talb, was later found to have a calendar in his flat in Sweden with the date of 21 December circled. New evidence, now in the hands of al-Megrahi’s defence, proves for the first time that Abu Talb was in Malta when the Lockerbie bombing took place. The Maltese man whose testimony convicted al-Megrahi has also identified Abu Talb. During al-Megrahi’s trial Abu Talb had a strange role. As part of a defence available in Scottish law, known as ‘incrimination’, Abu Talb was named as someone who – rather than the accused – might have carried out the bombing. At the time he was serving a life sentence in Sweden for the bombing of a synagogue, but he was summoned to Camp Zeist to give evidence. He ended up testifying as a prosecution witness, denying that he had anything to do with Lockerbie. In exchange for his testimony, he received lifelong immunity from prosecution.

Other evidence has emerged showing that the bomb could have been placed on the plane at Frankfurt airport, a possibility that the prosecution in al-Megrahi’s trial consistently ruled out (their case depended on the suitcase containing the bomb having been transferred from a connecting flight from Malta). Most significantly, German federal police have provided financial records showing that on 23 December 1988, two days after the bombing, the Iranian government deposited £5.9 million into a Swiss bank account that belonged to the arrested members of the PFLP-GC.

The decision to steer the investigation away from the PFLP-GC and in the direction of Libya came in the run-up to the first Gulf War, as America was looking to rally a coalition to liberate Kuwait and was calling for support from Iran and Syria. Syria subsequently joined the UN forces. Quietly, the evidence incriminating Jibril, so painstakingly sifted from the debris, was binned.

Those who continued to press the case against the PFLP-GC seemed to fall foul of American law. When a New York corporate investigative company asked to look into the bombing on behalf of Pan Am found the PFLP-GC responsible, the federal government promptly indicted the company’s president, Juval Aviv, for mail fraud. Lester Coleman, a former Defense Intelligence Agency operative who was researching a book about the PFLP-GC and Lockerbie, was charged by the FBI with ‘falsely procuring a passport’. William Casey, a lobbyist who made similar allegations in 1995, found his bank accounts frozen and federal agents searching through his trash. Even so, documents leaked from the US Defense Intelligence Agency in 1995, two years after the Libyans were first identified as the prime suspects, still blamed the PFLP-GC.

Suspicions and conspiracy theories have swirled around Lockerbie from the beginning. Some of them are fairly outlandish. In Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse (2005), Brigid Keenan, the wife of the British diplomat Alan Waddams, reported that over dinner in Gambia, a former Interpol agent told her and her husband that the bombing had been a revenge attack by Iran, in retaliation for the downed airliner (though she didn’t say how he knew this). The Interpol agent claimed the cargo had not been checked because the plane was carrying drugs as part of a deal over American hostages held by Hizbullah in Beirut. Militant groups were being allowed to smuggle heroin into the US in exchange for information; the bomb had gone on board when the PFLP-GC found a loophole in this drug-running operation.

At least four US intelligence officers, including the CIA’s deputy station chief in Beirut, were on the Flight 103 passenger list. In the days following the bombing, CIA agents scoured the Scottish countryside, some reportedly dressed in Pan Am overalls. Mary Boylan, then a constable with Lothian and Borders police, has said that senior police officers told her not to make an official record of the CIA badge she recovered from the wreckage, asking her instead to hand it over to a senior colleague. Her testimony, too, is now in the hands of the SCCRC. Jim Wilson, a farmer from the village of Tundergarth, reported shortly after the bombing that he had found in his field a suitcase packed with a powdery substance that looked ‘like drugs’. He last saw the suitcase when he handed it over to the police, he said; he was never asked about it again.

When al-Megrahi was handed over for trial, Libya declared that it would accept responsibility for his actions. But it never accepted guilt. This distinction was spelled out clearly in Libyan letters to the UN Security Council. In a BBC radio interview in 2004, the Libyan prime minister, Shukri Ghanem, underlined once again that compensation had been paid because this was the ‘price for peace’ and to secure the lifting of sanctions. When asked if Libya did not accept guilt, he said: ‘I agree with that.’

If the court that convicted al-Megrahi now reverses its decision, then Libya would clearly have a case for demanding its money back. Since recovering the compensation from the relatives would be unthinkable, it is more likely Libya would pursue those responsible for the miscarriage of justice. ‘What they might try to do,’ Black suggests, ‘is to recoup the money from the British and American governments, who after all are responsible for the initial farce and the wrongful conviction in the first place. They paid that money on the basis of a miscarriage of justice perpetrated by the British courts.’ Al-Megrahi’s acquittal on appeal would not ipso facto make a compelling case for Libya to have its money back: even if guilt can’t be proved beyond reasonable doubt – the test of the criminal burden of proof – it could still be shown that it was more likely than not (which is the burden applied to civil cases such as compensation cases). If Libya paid the money for purely political reasons then, one could argue, it might have to live with that decision. When I asked the Foreign Office whether Britain would consider reimbursing Libya in the event of al-Megrahi’s exoneration, a spokesman declined to comment.

If al-Megrahi is acquitted, he will also have the right to sue for wrongful conviction. He could claim compensation to the tune of several tens of thousands of pounds. The Crown Office, which is headed by the Scottish lord advocate, is responsible for what happened, which means that al-Megrahi would sue the Scottish Executive. The lord advocate is now one of the ‘Scottish ministers’, whereas previously he – now she – was one of the law officers of the UK Government. The Scottish Executive might refuse to pay, blaming Westminster. Westminster, meanwhile, would argue that Lockerbie is and always has been a Crown Office matter and that the UK government has no say. A political storm is on its way, especially now that the SNP is in charge in Scotland.

Since the case against al-Megrahi was so weak, it is hard to understand how the judges who presided over the trial could have got it so wrong. Black has a view:
It has been suggested to me, very often by Libyans, that political pressure was placed upon the judges. I don’t think for a minute that political pressure of that nature was placed on the judges. What happened, I think, was that it was internal politics in Scotland. Prosecutions in Scotland are brought by the lord advocate. Until just a few years ago, one of the other functions of the lord advocate in Scotland was that he appointed all Scottish judges. I think what influenced these judges was that they thought that if both of the Libyans accused are found not guilty, this will be the most fiendish embarrassment to the lord advocate.
The appointment system for judges has changed since the trial, but another controversial aspect of the al-Megrahi case may also be re-examined: the policies on disclosure. Compared to almost any other similar criminal justice system, Scotland does not have a proper system of disclosure of information. In England and Wales, the Crown has to disclose all material to the defence, according to rules set out in statute. In Scotland the Crown is allowed to modify or withhold evidence if it considers that withholding is in the ‘public interest’. At least the Scottish criminal justice system doesn’t have the death penalty.

3 comments:

  1. DOSSIER LOCKERBIE, 2015
    Why was not adopted until today the Criminal Complaint of MEBO ?

    NEUPERT & PARTNER
    Rechtsanwalte
    Attorney´s at law
    Avocats
    Registered
    Office of the Procurator Fiscal
    Sheriff Courthouse
    Buccleuch-Street
    Dumfries DC-1 2 AN
    Scottland
    United Kingdom
    Zollikon-Zurich July 11, 2000
    SA13294.TXT

    Criminal Complaint regarding the Falsification Evidence In the Lockerbie Case
    Dear Mr Procurotor
    Acting on behalf of
    Mr Edwin Bollier
    Badenerstrasse 414, CH-8004 Zurich/Switzerland
    a key witness in the case against
    Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah
    we herewith respectfully submit the present request to open
    CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS
    with regard to the following punishable offences:

    A. Use Of a forged (never functioning) fragment of an alleged MST-13 timer, allegedly manufactured by Mebo Ltd.. the company of Mr Edwin Bollier as key evidence for the Crown.
    B. Manipulation with and disfigurement of the alleged MST-13 timer fragment up to September 13, 1999.
    C. Total disfigurement of said fragment from September 13, 1999 until June 2000, in order to obliterate shape and colour of said fragment.

    REASONING
    1. MEBO AG fabricated 3 pieces of brown MST-13 timer motherboards in the middle of 1985. Of these handmade motherboards 2 pieces were subjected to electronic counterparts, thus creating 2 functioning MST-13 timer prototypes. Those were handed over to the Institute for Technical Research (IYTU - STASI/NVA) in Bernau (ex.DDR) in the middle of 1985. The third brown motherboard has allegedly been broken in the hands of the employee Engineer U. Lumpert and disposed of ? (Police protocol testimony, U. Lumpert November 1990, Legal Aid, USA, Scotland).
    Also the blueprint for construction of such MST?13 timer prototypes did presumably disappear in the spring of 1990 from MEBO AG.

    2. Additionally, 20 pieces of MST-13 timer were fabricated 1985-1986 and delivered to the Libyan military-security in Tripoli Libya. Those MST-13 timers were fitted with machine-created motherboards, colour: green (Thuring motherboards).

    3. It showed that the colour of the alleged Lockerbie-found "Corpus Delicti" would have been of utmost importance for the Scottish Police, in order to identify the origin of the fragments:, one brown fragment. Pol, No. PT/35(b), from a MST13 timer.

    4. Why ? The trace tracked back from the Scottish Police to the USA, to the FBI-forensic expert Mr Thomas Thurman. A Scottish forensic expert, Mr. Feraday, did bring the future alleged Lockerbie-found MST-13 timer fragment to the USA, to Thomas Thurman, FBI forensic expert. He then found that the fragment came from a MST- 13 timer, that looks like MST-13 timers, seized from a Libyan courier in Togo and Senegal.
    Thomas Thurman then on June 15, 1990 did decide and found that the alleged Lockerbie-found fragment come from a MST- 13 timer, that activated that "Radio-Recorder-Bomb. IED" in the plane of PanAm 103! Thus the link between Lockerbie and Libya was established and on November 14, 1991. the responsibility of the PanAm 103 attack could be transferred to Libya.
    The first forensic pictures and films that came from the FBI-laboratory of forensic expert Thomas Thurman clearly contain that the allegedly Lockerbie found fragment came from a brown MST-13 prototype-timer. (Thus the central piece of evidence that the prosecution is relying upon, was in the beginning a brown fragment, from a non-functionin g prototype MST-13 timer that was later switched with a green copied fragment-copy!)
    Read more on www.lockerbie.ch (under LINK)

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd Telecommunication Switzerland

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  2. DOSSIER LOCKERBIE, 2015
    Doc. Nr. 21317. rtf; part from the new 'MEBO Report 182'; in progress for an International criminal investigation (currently translated only with google, German/English):

    Why remains that after visit of Scottish Inspector William Williamson, by MEBO AG in Zurich, the first crucial FBI photo with the original figure of the MST-13 timerfragment (PT-35) is disappeared by Swiss (BUPO) until today?

    Today, following rationale can be created supported on testimonies by Scottish Inspector Williamsen: was the FBI expert, Tom Thurman, during the first half of 1990, among others already in possession of one photo with the original fragment of MST-13 circuit board. Most likely, it was the same crucial FBI photo, which is missing bei (BUPO) to this day...
    +++
    Excerpt court in Kamp van Zeist:
    Witness, William Williamson, sworn. EXAMINATION IN CHIEF BY MR. TURNBULL:

    Q Mr. Williamson, are you Chief Inspector William Williamson?
    A That's correct, sir
    Q Do you know whether or not he had a photograph of the fragment during the
    first half of 1990 ?
    A (Williamson) said: It's my belief that he did have a photograph of the circuit
    board in the first half of 1990, yes.
    Q And then did there come a time, in perhaps about June of 1990, when
    Mr. Thurman contacted you regarding the fragment ?
    A Yes, sir.
    Q And as a result of what Mr. Thurman told you, did you go to the United States
    of America?
    A Yes, sir, yes.
    +++

    According to a crucial fax of 22nd of January 1990, the MST-13 timerfragmet (PT-35) was found in a "Slalom" shirt, at first time, in January 1990 by (RARDE).

    Inspector William Williamson went along with the senior investigating officer Chief Superintendent Stuart Henderson; along with officer, Mr. MacLean and Expert Allen Feraday (RARDE) to FBI Headquarter in Washington. (June 1990).

    FBI expert Tom Thurman have to show in the first place, photographs an MST-13 Timer (K-1, TOGO Timer from Libya) - inside of a MST-13 timer, a printed circuit board with components attached to it, etc.
    After discussing these photographs for some time, Thurman to show the actual MST-13 timer.

    By the FBI Laboratory at Washington, expert Feraday handover on 20th June 1990 the MST-13 timer Fragment
    (PT-35) allegedly found in a "Slalom" shirt, for a side by side comparison of specimen (K-1, MST-13 TOGO timer) and the (PT-35) MST-13 timer fragment. (FBI Report nr. 262-23, August 20,1990).

    It was a fraud, because it was not the original "black carbonized" fragment, the original fragment (PT-35) was on 27 April 1990, in company Siemens, sawed in two parts, part (PT- 35/b) and in (DP-31/a).

    From a (2015) held secret FBI report nr. 262-23, of 20 August 1990, is well known that the Scots, a MST-13 timer fragment (PT-35) with 9 layers of fiberglass on both sides with green solder mask coated paint, have been submitted for examination.
    This proves that Feraday and his CROW, they did not give the original black carbonized (PT-35) fragment, with the inserted scratched letter "M" and the 3 scratch set of Ing. Lumpert made, to FBI for examination - but a DUPIKAT (PT-35) coated with 9 layers of fiberglass and on bothsides with green solder mask, without explosives tracks.!

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO LTD Telecommunication Switzerland. Webpage: www.lockerbie.ch



    ReplyDelete
  3. DOSSIER LOCKERBIE, 2015, (currently translated only with google, German/English):

    Supported on the decisive fax of 22 January 1990, transmitted by (SIO) Investigation Chief Superintendent Stuart Henderson to expert Allen Feraday (RARDE) shows that the decisive MST-13 timer fragment (PT-35) for the first time, in January 1990, from a "Slalom" Shirt was found by RARDE, supposedly...

    Thus, all the witnesses who have sworn in Kamp van Zeist, under OATH of wrong retrieval data over the (PT-35) fragment, including on manipulated police Label PI'995 and PT'137, back booked date to September 15, 1989 (original date 10th September 1990) - manipulated additional page No. 51,52,53,54,55,56, lying in Report 181, with an incorrect date of 12 May 1989 - must be severely punished !
    This official persons have partly Mega great calamity and damage mainly caused to Libya and Abdelbaset al Megrahi and other finaziell damaged !

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd Switzerland

    ReplyDelete