Tuesday 29 May 2018

Chancellor Kohl denies Lockerbie bomb passed through Frankfurt

[What follows is a statement from the Rev’d John Mosey which is
published here with his consent. The letters referred to in it are in Mr
Mosey’s possession.]

My wife is a German citizen and our nineteen year old daughter, Helga, was also
a passenger on board Pan Am Flight 103. Dr Jim Swire and I shared an apartment
in Zeist for the duration of the Lockerbie trial process.

On the 4th February 1996 my wife wrote to the German Federal Chancellor,
Helmut Kohl, asking what investigation was being carried out regarding the alleged
passage of the bomb through Frankfurt airport. I would like to know how the official
position, which is being so tenaciously and desperately clung to by the Westminster
and Holyrood politicians and the Scottish legal system, can be reconciled with
his reply on the 6th March 1996 (below). Who stands to lose should the truth ever
come out?

“Now that the Federal Ministry of Justice has made its position known, I return to
your letter of 4th February 1996. But first I want again to express to you my deep
sympathy at the loss of your daughter which you suffered through the attack on
Pan Am flight 103.

“The Federal Government is aware that the supposition that the explosive material,
the detonation of which led to the shooting down of the Pan Am aircraft, was
brought from Frankfurt to London, is still voiced from various sides. For that,
however, as the Federal Ministry of Justice has emphatically assured me, there are
no indications at all. The investigations of the State Investigation Authority in
Frankfurt in connection with the crash of the Pan Am aircraft which concentrated
especially on this question, have produced no findings to support this.”

2 comments:

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  2. (Sorry, I fouled up the html first time.)

    This is something I tried to explain to Kenny MacAskill at the Edinburgh Book Festival a few years ago. Ruth Wishart had challenged him about the absolute and total lack of evidence of the bomb at Malta, which virtually amounts to strong proof the thing was never there. Kenny assured Ruth and the (packed) audience that the proof of the bomb having come from Malta resided in Frankfurt and all the evidence was in the possession of the German police.

    I'm not the most concise mortal but I got up and tried to explain the fragmentary nature of the baggage records at Frankfurt, the extreme difficulty even with reasonable extrapolation of explaining a number of the records on the computer printout, and the fact that there appeared to have been unexplained items from Warsaw, Berlin Tegel and New Delhi transferred to PA103 at Frankfurt as well as Malta. Why was none of these places investigated as possible sources of the bomb suitcase?

    I quoted, as far as my memory served, the final conclusion from Jurgen Fühl's detailed report on the Frankfurt baggage evidence. (And be under no illusions, Fühl was extremely thorough once he realised he'd wasted about a year misinterpreting the printout and looking in the wrong place.)

    "Throughout the inquiries into the baggage for PA103A there was no evidence that the bomb suitcase had been transferred with the luggage either from or via Frankfurt Main to London."

    But of course Kenny had the platform and I was just some yahoo in the audience, so he smirked superciliously and ignored my point.

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