Two shocking admissions

[This is the heading over the latest addition to the Lockerbie series on Adam "Caustic Logic" Larson's blog The 12/7-9/11 Treadmill and Beyond. The admissions come from Detective Inspector Harry Bell and from Paul Gauci, brother of Tony, and relate to the date of purchase in Mary's House, Sliema, of the clothes that, in the official explanation of the Lockerbie disaster, were in the brown Samsonite suitcase along with the bomb. It was essential to the prosecution case against Megrahi that the date of purchase was shown to be 7 December 1988 (when Megrahi was on Malta) and not 23 November (when he was not).

The following are excerpts from the blog post:]

Detective Inspector Harry Bell, who headed the Scottish police effort on Malta and was the main contact point for the Gaucis, was interviewed in 2006 by the SCCRC [Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission]. Some extracts were re-printed in Megrahi's rock-solid grounds of appeal. Excerpts from there:
DI Bell SCCRC interview (25-26/7/06)
"...The evidence of the football matches was confusing and in the end we did not manage to bottom it out..."
"...I am asked whether at the time I felt that the evidence of the football matches was strongly indicative of 7th December 1988 as the purchase date. No, I did not. Both dates 23rd Nov and 7th Dec 1988 looked likely.
"...It really has to be acknowledged how confusing this all was. No date was signficant for me at the time. Ultimately it was the applicant's [Megrahi’s] presence on the island on 7th December 1988 that persuaded me that the purchase took place on that date. Paul specified 7th December when I met with him on 14th December 1989 and I recorded this..."

The bolded is a shocking admission of just what many had guessed. And then, almost as an afterthought (and a quick one I'd venture) "Paul specified 7th December" as the right day, during a meeting of "14th December 1989." He even has the date memorized! No direct quotes provided there of this meeting. But two months earlier, in a 19 October meeting with the same Harry Bell, he clearly specified the other day. In a police report obtained by Private Eye and published in Paul Foot's 2000 booklet Lockerbie, the Flight from Justice, Mr. Gauci said:

“I was shown a list of European football matches I know as UEFA. I checked all the games and dates. I am of the opinion that the game I watched on TV was on 23 November, 1988: SC Dynamo Dresden v AS Roma. On checking the 7th December 1988, I can say that I watched AS Roma v Dynamo Dresden in the afternoon. All the other games were played in the evening. I can say for certain I watched the Dresden v Roma game. On the basis that there were two games played during the afternoon of 23 November and only one on the afternoon of 7th December, I would say that the 23rd November 1988 was the date in question.” [Foot, 2000, p 21]

FOIA lawsuit against FBI regarding Megrahi release

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on January 14th against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to obtain documents related to the United Kingdom’s release last August of convicted terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was serving a life sentence for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. Judicial Watch seeks information that will shed light on what role, if any, the United States played in the decision to release al-Megrahi.

On August 20, 2009, the United Kingdom came under heavy fire for releasing the former Libyan intelligence officer from prison on “compassionate grounds” due to the fact al-Megrahi suffers from terminal prostate cancer. The British government also reportedly attempted to include al-Megrahi as part of a prisoner transfer pact signed with Col. Muammer al-Gadaffi’s Libyan government in 2007 in order to help secure oil contracts for British companies.

Al-Megrahi, who received a hero’s welcome upon returning to Libya, was given three months to live at the time of his release. However, now five months after his release, al-Megrahi is reportedly alive and living with his family in Libya. Convicted in 2001, al-Megrahi served only eight years of his life sentence.

Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, filed on January 14, seeks “all communications with/between the FBI and the United Kingdom concerning the August 20, 2009 release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer who was convicted of 270 counts of murder for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.”

Judicial Watch filed its original FOIA request on September 10, 2009. By law, the FBI was required to respond by October 8, 2009. However, to date, the FBI has not provided any documents responsive to the request, nor has the agency provided an explanation as to why documents must be withheld.

“The decision to release al-Megrahi from prison was an affront to justice and an insult to the families of the victims of the Pan Am tragedy. Al-Megrahi’s release also served to rally terrorists around the world. The American people deserve to know what role, if any, the United States government played in the horrible decision to release a known terrorist from prison. Frankly, I’m concerned the Obama administration did not do enough to prevent this terrorist’s release. The FBI has an obligation to the American people and the victims’ families to release all relevant documents as soon as possible,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

[The above is the text of a press release issued by Judicial Watch. I doubt if there are any FBI documents relating to Megrahi's release, other than the idiotic letter sent by FBI Director Robert Mueller to Kenny MacAskill.]

Who bombed Lockerbie?

This is the heading over a post of yesterday's date on the Hunting Monsters blog. It refers to some relatively recent pieces in the UK media that cast doubt on the official version of the Lockerbie disaster. There is nothing in it that will be new to followers of this blog. I mention it only so that anxious readers will be reassured that I survived my journey to the Northern Cape.

Crown misinformation

[What follows is a commentary by Peter Biddulph on the Crown's response to Dr John Wyatt's findings as disclosed in the recent Newsnight segment.]

The recent Crown statement regarding the John Wyatt tests needs to be exposed for what it is: - an attempt to confuse the uninformed with carefully placed words such as "fragments of circuit boards" and "fragment".

The statement includes:

1. "It was reported in the BBC Newsnight Programme [6th January 2010] that tests carried out by Dr Wyatt suggest that the fragment was unlikely to have survived the mid-air explosion and that the radio used in his tests 'totally disintegrated' and 'went into tiny, tiny bits'. In fact, extensive explosive tests were carried out in the United States in 1989, some time before the fragment PT35B was extracted by forensic experts, as part of the Lockerbie investigation. …."

COMMENT: The Indian Head tests took place in April 1989, three weeks before the bomb "fragment" was discovered for the first time by Dr Thomas Hayes on 12th May 1989.

At the time of the Indian Head tests, neither Thurman or Feraday were aware of the existence of the Hayes fragment, nor of its possible link to an MEBO MST-13 timer board.

They were not tests of the survivability of any kind of bomb trigger timer board, but to establish the location of the primary suitcase and the amount of explosive used.

No mention has ever been made by Thurman or Feraday to fragment survivability testing as part of the Indian Head tests.

2. The Crown statement continues: "After a number of test explosions, a detailed search was made and circuit board fragments … were all recovered in a condition which was consistent with the debris recovered in relation to the Lockerbie disaster."

COMMENT: An aircraft body contains many printed circuit boards. Test explosions of any part of an aircraft body will therefore produce many circuit board fragments.

Note the use of the terms "consistent with" and "fragments". An uninformed reader - including an uninformed journalist such as Dave Cowan of STV, or even an uninformed lawyer - will naturally conclude a link to the next Crown paragraph:-

3. "The forensic evidence placed before the court included evidence about the appearance of 'the fragment.' And the fact that when it was recovered, it was embedded within a fragment from a blast-damaged grey Slalom brand shirt, which had been found in Newcastleton, Roxburghshire on 13th January 1989 ..."

COMMENT: The fragment was not found on 13th January 1989. The shirt collar containing it was found on that day and entered on the evidence log by DC Gilchrist under the identification "CLOTH".

It would take another four months before the fragment was discovered, well after the completion of the Indian Head tests. It was found by Dr Thomas Hayes on 12th May 1989.

At the trial, under cross-examination, Hayes insisted in reply to two specific questions from Richard Keen QC that it was embedded deep within the shirt collar, and that the police could not have been aware of it prior to his finding.

CONCLUSION

The Indian Head tests, as far as the Hayes fragment is concerned, are an irrelevance.

Either the writers of the Crown statement haven't done their homework, or they've been seriously misled by FBI misinformation. Probably a combination of both.

Crown Agent appointed sheriff

Crown Agent Norman McFadyen, who led the Crown's discredited investigation into the Lockerbie case, has been praised by Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini as he steps down to take up appointment as Sheriff. [RB: A sheriff in Scotland is a local judge, one tier down from the High Court of Justiciary (criminal) and the Court of Session (civil).]

McFadyen, who was investigated by Lothian and Borders CID in 2009 when he was reported by MSP Christine Grahame over concerns about his handling of crucial evidence, was praised by Angiolini for his "great professionalism and integrity" in his handling of the case.

After three weeks investigation, no charges were brought against him.

Earlier this month the Crown Office also attacked the BBC over a Newsnight investigation which challenged the explosives evidence offered by the Crown at the Zeist trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.

"Norman McFadyen is an outstanding lawyer with a long and very distinguished career with Scotland's prosecution service," Angiolini said.

"He has served in a variety of senior posts before his appointment as Crown Agent and Chief Executive. These included Regional Procurator Fiscal for Lothian and Borders and Deputy Crown Agent. He also led the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing with great professionalism and integrity.

"Norman McFadyen has been an immense support to successive Law Officers over the years and he has played a key role in the modernisation of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service."

[The above report comes from the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. The Crown Agent is the civil service head of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the Scottish rough equivalent of the English Crown Prosecution Service. Mr McFadyen was promoted to the top job after the Lockerbie trial.]

O bring my -- weer -- terug na die ou Noordkaap!

My next post on this blog (not before the evening of 14 January) will be from the tiny settlement of Middelpos in the Northern Cape, South Africa. My internet connection there is painfully slow (and cannot be upgraded) which makes trawling the internet and the blogosphere difficult. I would therefore be grateful for any references to Lockerbie-related news items that readers care to send to me. But no large attachments, please, which take an eternity to download.

Update
British Airways has spurned the cri de coeur which forms the heading of this post. Because of weather conditions at Heathrow, I was unable to fly today. I am now booked on the equivalent Thursday flights. But will the runways be any clearer tomorrow? Keep tuned for the next thrilling instalment.

Further update
It looks as if I shall be able to get to Heathrow today (Thursday) for my flight to South Africa. But not too many chickens are yet being counted.

Lockerbie bomber release rules 'followed'

Scotland's first minister has rejected claims he failed to work closely enough with Westminster over the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber.

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's early release by Scottish ministers on compassionate grounds in August sparked a political row.

MPs asked First Minister Alex Salmond whether there had been "buck passing" between the Scots and UK governments.

He said his government had to observe the rules of the legal process.

Mr Salmond told Westminster's Scottish affairs committee it had not been possible to involve the UK government too closely in the decision to release terminally ill Megrahi, an issue devolved to Scotland.

He was giving evidence to the committee, along with Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and Scotland's top civil servant, Sir John Elvidge, as part of an investigation into co-operation and communication between the Scottish and UK governments.

Scottish ministers have said the protocols were followed and the UK and US governments were informed prior to the release. (...)

[T]he Holyrood government said the move was in line with the ideals of the Scottish justice system.

[From a report on the BBC News website. Longer reports are available on The Herald website here and on The Guardian website here. The latter report reads in part:]

Tony Blair failed to tell two of his most senior cabinet colleagues about secret plans to include the Lockerbie bomber in a prisoner-for-trade deal with Libya, Alex Salmond has suggested.

The first minister suggested that Lord Falconer, one of Blair's most trusted political friends, and Jack Straw, the justice secretary, believed that the UK would block Libya's demands for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to be included in a new prisoner transfer treaty.

But the ministers were not "in the loop" with Blair's plans to include Megrahi in that treaty in his controversial "deal in the desert" with Muammar Gaddafi in May 2007 – plans that were eventually agreed with the Libyans by Gordon Brown in December 2007.

Salmond today told the Scottish affairs select committee at the Commons that, throughout the summer of 2007, Falconer and Straw had repeatedly reassured the Scottish government, both in letters and in face-to-face meetings, that Megrahi would be excluded from the treaty.

Salmond told the committee that the Scottish nationalist government in Edinburgh had consistently opposed the proposal to allow Megrahi to be included.

Salmond said that Falconer, who was justice secretary until Blair stood down in June 2007, had "explicitly said: 'This isn't a difficulty. We've told the Libyans that Megrahi won't be included,' and Jack Straw in July of that year said quite openly that he didn't see any great difficulty, they would just negotiate a PTA [prisoner transfer agreement] which would give us the assurances we desired."

Salmond believed that transferring Megrahi to Libya before his 26-year life sentence was over would breach an undertaking to the US government and US relatives before Megrahi's trial that the Libyan would remain in a Scottish jail.

But in December 2007, after Gordon Brown had become prime minister, the UK government reneged on that position and, Salmond alleged, the deal with the US, when it revealed that the prisoner transfer agreement did not exclude Megrahi.

Straw was forced to say the government now believed it was in the UK's "overwhelming national interests", claiming that the UK's business dealings, security and its desire to see Libya re-enter the international community, overrode Scotland's objections.

Salmond said there was "again an 'evolution' in the UK government's position over this period".

He told the committee, which is investigating inter-government relations between Edinburgh and London, that the prisoner treaty was wrong. "It was a mistake because it raised an expectation by the Libyan government that Mr Megrahi would be included in such a prisoner transfer," he said.

"It was a mistake because it cut across the due process of Scots law, because one of the provisions of prisoner transfer is that legal proceedings would have to come to an end.

"It was a mistake because it was cut across what we believe to be prior agreements with the United States government and the relatives." (...)

Straw and Falconer have been approached for a response.

[Further reports have now appeared in The Scotsman and The Wall Street Journal.]

Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill set to be quizzed over Megrahi

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]

First Minister Alex Salmond will today tell an inquiry into the release of the Lockerbie bomber that his government was left in a difficult situation due to lack of information from UK ministers.

Mr Salmond and justice secretary Kenny MacAskill are due to appear before the Scottish Affairs committee to answer questions on the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi. Mr MacAskill's decision to free the mass murderer on compassionate grounds caused outrage.

But Mr Salmond told The Scotsman that the UK government's failure to provide details about the prisoner transfer agreement meant that his government was unable to assess whether it could have seen off a judicial review if Megrahi had not been released.

"The problem is that we do not know what prior commitments were made by the UK government," said Mr Salmond.

[The following are excerpts from a report on the BBC News website:]

Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill are to give evidence to the Scottish affairs committee at Westminster.

Political opponents have been highly critical of the decision to release Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

Mr Salmond will say that protocols were followed and the UK and US governments were informed prior to the release. (...)

The Scottish Affairs Committee will question Mr Salmond and Mr MacAskill on Tuesday as part of an investigation into co-operation and communication between the Scottish and UK governments.

In particular MPs are looking at how this worked in the case of the Lockerbie bomber.

Mr Salmond is also likely to express regret at the scenes in Tripoli when Scottish flags were waved as Megrahi arrived home.

Well, now we know

[The following are excerpts from a post on the David Morehouse website.]

Is there precognition, is it possible to travel forward in time and see what’s going to happen? Or can you, as the pre-cogs do, too, go backwards and see what actually did happen? Can you harness these skills for policing? (...)

Yes, you can. The CIA is already there. There are pre-cogs already working and they are called psychic spies. Operating in blacked out, secret warehouses nestled in bucolic Virginia industrial parkland, they work for the Department of Defense, the National Security Council and a half dozen other intelligence agencies.

Meet one of them: Dr David Morehouse, former Army Ranger officer, CIA operative and remote viewer.

“In 1972,” he says, “Stanford Research Institute pulled together all the major psychics that they could get temporary security clearances for and could pay, to come in and explore this. And the job of these laser physicists was to take these greatest natural abilities and synthesize these abilities into a protocol under clinical conditions, scientific test conditions and establish a protocol that could be trained, reliable, measurable, credible.

“It took them $50-million and six years of trial and error to develop that protocol. And this is what they came up with: Stages One through Six of co-ordinate remote viewing. The protocol was turned over to the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1982. (...)

“I was training Jordanian Rangers in the desert and a Jordanian machine gun, a bullet traveling 2,832 feet per second hits me 2 1/2 inches above the eye, knocks me unconscious, and I have a vision.” The vision shifted and changed, but kept returning. He told no one, was brought home and tested, but there was no damage. After a few months, he left the Rangers. (...) he was recruited into a Special Access program that was codenamed Royal Cape.

“Royal Cape was to support logistically and develop an infrastructure to support clandestine and covert operations in Tier One and Two countries. When I finally told one of our counselors what had happened to me in the desert, I was recruited, very rapidly, into a top secret clan of psychic spies called remote viewers.”

According to Morehouse, one of this unit’s most distinct successes was the discovery of what and who brought down Pan Am flight 103, which crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1989 [sic]. Information produced by remote viewers just hours after the crash said that a bomb placed in a music box was the source.

“There was a backup on Pan Am 103: an Iranian woman who had lost her family as a result of the US shooting down an Iranian airliner from a missile frigate. She was seated on the left-hand side of the leading edge of the wing, which was exactly where the explosives in the cargo hold were, just below her. She had explosives strapped around her waist."

Spare a thought for Lockerbie

[This is the heading over a segment of the column Richard Ingrams's Week in today's edition of The Independent. It reads as follows:]

Busily castigating the US intelligence services for their failures over the bomb attempt in a plane headed for Detroit, President Obama could well spend a moment or two of his time over their record with a previous and successful act of terrorism, the Lockerbie bombing of 1988.

A BBC Newsnight report this week revived interest in the long-running Lockerbie saga when John Wyatt, an explosives expert employed by the UN, gave details of extensive tests he had conducted on a replica of the timer allegedly used to blow up the Pan Am plane. It was a fragment of such a timer that helped to convict Abdul al Megrahi of the bombing. Yet in none of Wyatt's 20 test explosions did any single identifiable fragment survive. In a lengthy email to President Obama before Christmas, Lockerbie campaigner Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the explosion, had already drawn his attention to the suspect evidence about the time given at Megrahi's trial by FBI agent Thomas Thurman who also featured in the Newsnight report.

Dr Swire also referred the President to the fact that one of the key British witnesses for the prosecution, Alan Feraday of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, had been discredited in an IRA bombing case and that the Lord Chief Justice declared his evidence to be "dogmatic in the extreme" and ruled that "he should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in this field". So who, Dr Swire asks, authorised the employment of Feraday in the Lockerbie case, and why?

[Dr Swire was interviewed on these matters this morning on the BBC Radio Scotland programme Newsweek Scotland. The interview is available on the BBC iPlayer.]

Reaction to Newsnight programme

[The following e-mail was sent by Frank Duggan to Tom Thurman and copied to Mark Hirst and me amongst others.]

Tom - that BBC video is rubbish. It must gall you to have your own experience and background deliberately misstated, but worse, to have the whole investigation continually called into question by others with unsupported theories. I would hope that there would be one reporter in the UK who would understand that the piece of timer in question, as well as other pieces of evidence, were not destroyed because the plane was not blown up! It was torn apart, and even pieces of paper that were in that suitcase were recovered. Perhaps we can remind them what happens when a pinhole is made in a balloon, and that the relatively small explosive charge created a gas shockwave penetrating the skin of the plane and blowing off the front nose portion.

Perhaps I am asking too much.

[The following e-mail was sent by Mark Hirst to Frank Duggan and copied to me.]

Tom Thurman complains [in an e-mail to Richard Marquise] that the BBC left out his other "relevant" background. Fred Whitehurst (former FBI Crime Lab Supervisor) has made it plain Thurman could not in any way describe himself as a scientist. He is certainly not qualified in the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) industry. Furthermore his comments related to PT35 confirm that the "link" was made not through scientific tests, but merely through a visual ID of the circuit board, after the most experienced explosive experts in the UK could not identify it, nor could the dozens of PCB manufacturers that police investigators visited.

As a former PCB quality assurance inspector myself (with the largest PCB manufacturer in the world) and who has spoken to a number of colleagues in the industry, there are a large number of scientific tests that could have, and should have, been carried out on PT35, but which were not. These would have given a clearer indication whether this fragment came from the timer device alleged. But as is clear in the trial transcript and below there was no actual scientific testing applied to this fragment, beyond the visual ID of a man whose professional integrity has, as is already widely known and reported, been brought into serious question in other criminal investigations. Sadly the same is true of Mr Feraday and the dubious forensic evidence he provided in other serious miscarriages of justice in the UK.

Sadly the Crown Office statement once again seems more concerned with upholding the reputation of the conviction, regardless of whether it deserves it or not - it clearly does not in this case. They are defending the indefensible, and leading the Scottish legal system further into the mire.

As a lifelong Scottish patriot, it pains me to say it but the reputation of the much vaunted independent Scottish legal system has been irredeemably damaged by this shoddy conviction, made worse by the subsequent sycophantic statements by the Crown Office to appease extreme right wing political sentiment in the US, whilst all the time one of the prime (PFLP-GC) suspects in this case sits comfortably in his home in Washington... What tragic irony.

Mr Duggan and those behind him (and I don't mean the US relatives of PA103) may take comfort in the knowledge that they are in some way reflecting and upholding the realpolitik of US global geo-political interests in persisting in the utter nonsense of this conviction, but eventually, regardless of the "appropriateness" of the forum, the full truth of this atrocity will come to light sooner or later. I would suggest, if they have not already done so, that the Crown Office press team begin drafting some preparatory lines to reflect that reality as it continues to enter the public domain, if we have any hope of salvaging the reputation of Scots law. I fear however it may be too late.

Patrick Haseldine's references

[Patrick Haseldine has recently posted a lengthy comment, with supporting references, on the Newsnight segment broadcast after all thread. Unfortunately, the hypertext links do not work. Here they are:]

References
A. UN Council for Namibia enacts Decree No 1 (http://www.jstor.org/pss/4186138) and UNCN plans enforcement action. (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1309/is_v22/ai_3752724/?tag=content;col1) (Also see "Council for Namibia sues Netherlands over Namibia's natural resources" article, which follows.)

B. History of Namibia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Namibia#Negotiations_and_transition)

C. Michael McGowan's invitation to Bernt Carlsson. (http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/opinion/Michael-McGowan-The-best-tribute.5612963.jp)

D. "Finger of suspicion", The Guardian, 7 December 1989. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PatrickHaseldine3B.jpg)

E. Jan-Olof Bengtsson, iDAG, 12 March 1990. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_talk:IDAG(1)12MAR90.jpg)

F. Reuters report, 12 November 1994. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_talk:REUTERS12NOV94.jpg)

G. "The Lockerbie Incident : A Detective's Tale", by John Crawford, 2002 (pages 88/89). http://books.google.com/books?id=Nh9_p8RjikQC&pg=PP1&dq=Lockerbie+Incident:+A+Detective%27s+Tale#v=onepage&q=&f=false

H. Former MEP calls for urgent inquiry by the United Nations. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernt_Carlsson#Call_for_urgent_inquiry)

Extract from The Gulliver Rossing Uranium Ltd Dossier:

Exploitation of Namibian uranium has had a "disastrous impact" on British foreign policy, and the relationship between Britain and many Third World countries. (A visit to the mine paid by the country's prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in early 1989, where she commented that the project made her "proud to be British" can only have deepened this sense of disillusionment and mistrust among Third World peoples). Moreover - and whether or not the mine's output has ever directly fed South Africa's nuclear plants - Rossing has certainly buttressed the apartheid state.
(http://www.sea-us.org.au/gulliver/rossing.html)

Council for Namibia sues Netherlands over Namibia's natural resources
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Council+for+Namibia+sues+Netherlands+over+Namibia's+natural...-a06272039

Patrick Haseldine's online petition http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BerntCarlsson/ which demands a United Nations inquiry into the murder of UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Crown Office swipes at BBC over Lockerbie claims, but dodges key explosives issue

[This is the headline over a report on the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. It reads in part:]

The Crown Office have released a statement criticising the BBC after it broadcast an investigation on Newsnight across England and Wales reporting that the UN's European consultant on explosives, John Wyatt, found that the circuit board “evidence” relied upon in the discredited Crown case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi could not have survived a semtex explosion as claimed in the trial. (...)

The Crown statement repeats the fact that Megrahi was convicted of the Lockerbie atrocity, but omits the later development that the conviction was thereafter under appeal before being dropped to facilitate Megrahi's return to Libya, following the finding of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission that a miscarriage of justice may have occured.

The statement also highlighted what it described as “errors” in the BBC report and lists details regarding a series of test explosions undertaken as part of the Lockerbie proceedings. However the statement does not address Wyatt’s central claim about the ability of a fragment of circuit board to survive a semtex explosion.

[The full report, including the complete text of the Crown Office statement, can be read here.]

Lockerbie-Malta link blasted away

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of the Maltese newspaper The Times. It reads in part:]

A piece of circuit board thought to have formed part of the bomb that blew up the Pan-Am aircraft over Lockerbie and which supported the thesis that linked Malta to the tragedy is unlikely to have survived the explosion, according to fresh tests by a British bomb expert.

The expert, a UN European consultant on explosives, John Wyatt, recreated the explosion 20 times, using a similar circuit board and timer and the parts were pulverised every time.

Talking to The Times yesterday, he said every test left absolutely no fragments like the one found at Lockerbie and which was used to implicate Libya and Malta in the whole affair. (...)

"It was highly improbable to the point of making it unlikely" that such a fragment could have survived the blast, Dr Wyatt said. (...)

"We conducted 20 tests, 19 of which were indoors to make sure we could collect all the evidence. We even painted the circuit board bright yellow to make it easier to identify any fragments among the debris. In no circumstance did we find any fragment," Dr Wyatt explained.

The explosive tests were conducted in stages and in a controlled environment, which would have made it very easy to collect all the evidence.

"We tried exploding the device on its own; in a radio similar to the one it was supposed to have been planted in; in a suitcase with and without clothes; surrounded by other suitcases and, eventually, in a container. In all tests, the timer and the circuit board were completely destroyed," Dr Wyatt said.

The fragment found in Lockerbie had not been in ideal forensic conditions, he added, because the explosion happened at a height of 10,000 feet and the debris fell over a large area in the Scottish wilderness. "This increases the improbability of finding a fragment that was part of the bomb itself," he said.

Dr Wyatt, who has more than 25 years experience in the British army, mostly as a bomb disposal officer, conducted the tests for BBC's current affairs programme, Newsnight (...)

When asked by The Times, the expert would not say whether his analysis would lead him to suggest the fragment could have been put there after the explosion. "That is not for me to say but it was very, very improbable for such a fragment to be found," he said.

The fragment was found three weeks after the attack. For months it remained unnoticed and unremarked but, eventually, it was to shape the entire investigation. The fragment was embedded in a charred piece of clothing, which was marked with a label saying it was made in Malta.

The Malta lead raised the question as to who would have bought the clothes.

The investigation zoomed in on the Sliema outlet Mary's House and shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who was the other key element in the prosecution's case, identified Mr al-Megrahi.

However, serious doubts were cast on Mr Gauci's testimony because the identification of Mr al-Megrahi only came years later after the witness had seen him pictured in a magazine as a Lockerbie suspect. (...)

This led several people, including Scottish relatives of people who died in the atrocity, to call for a fresh inquiry.

The call was never taken up, not even by the Maltese government, which, many believe, should lead the fight to clear Malta's name from the bombing implication.

Version available outside the UK

I am grateful to a reader of the blog for informing me that the Newsnight segment is available to non-UK residents on the BBC News website and can be accessed here.