The real case for the Heathrow introduction

[This is the title of an article written by Dr Morag Kerr, author of Adequately Explained by Stupidity?, which she has very kindly allowed me to publish here.  It reads as follows:]

Since my book was published I have been invited to take part in a couple of radio and TV discussion programmes about the Lockerbie case, and in general it has been a frustrating experience.  My contention is that the bomb suitcase was introduced at Heathrow airport, around half past four in the afternoon, not at Malta in the morning as the Crown proposed.  I have very specific and absolutely incontrovertible evidence to prove that.

Of course that does, indirectly, demonstrate that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was not the man who put that suitcase on the plane.  He was provably in Tripoli at that time, which as it happens is well over a thousand miles from Heathrow airport.  What it does not do is give me some unique insight into who did plant the bomb.  And yet, that’s all the interviewers seem to want to ask me.  “Who do you think did it, Dr. Kerr?”

I have no freaking idea who did it.  I have read the same articles and watched the same documentaries as everyone else.  I might have an opinion based on that, but it would be no better informed than anyone else’s opinion formed on the same basis.  It is seriously not worth dragging me into Edinburgh to sit in front of a microphone or a TV camera to ask me that.

Who do I think did it?  Someone or someones who were at Heathrow airport on the afternoon of 21st December 1988, that’s who.  The rest is up to the police, assuming they can get their act together this time, 25 years after the event.  Ask me how I know the bomb was introduced at Heathrow, why don’t you?  That’s my contention, and that’s what might be worth hearing.

This is what the interviewers would hear, if they asked me the right questions.

The recovered blast-damaged suitcases in effect form the pieces of a large, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.  The forensic investigators assembledthese pieces individually, described them, photographed them, and even drew pictures of some of them.  What they did not do was solve the jigsaw.

This is very easy to do, using these descriptions, photographs and drawings, also taking into account the passenger and baggage movements into Heathrow that afternoon and the statements of the baggage handlers who interacted with container AVE4041 before it was loaded on to Maid of the Seas.  When the jigsaw is solved, the bomb turns out to have been inside a brown hardshell Samsonite suitcase, loaded in the bottom position in the left-hand front stack of suitcases.  The position where John Bedford reported seeing a brown hardshell Samsonite suitcase, almost an hour before the feeder flight from Frankfurt landed.

And that’s basically it.  More detail, for those deeply familiar with the details of the evidence (that’s you I’m talking to, Magnus Linklater and Bill Taylor) can of course be provided.

1.  The conviction depended absolutely on the assumption that a blue Tourister suitcase which was carried on the feeder flight was positioned on the floor of the container, immediately underneath the bomb suitcase.  However, the physical evidence of the recovered luggage demonstrates without any doubt that the Tourister was in fact positioned on top of the bomb suitcase.

I can be more specific.  Material from the Tourister was recorded as being blasted into and on to half a dozen of the other suitcases in the container, something which could not have happened if it had been blasted through the base of the container and away from the rest of the luggage.  Part of the Tourister was recovered entangled with parts of two other Frankfurt-origin suitcases, which again points to the same conclusion.  Most damningly of all, the case which was on top of the Tourister can be easily identified among the photographs of the recovered luggage, with material from both the Tourister and the IED itself plastered across its lid.

2.  The conviction depended absolutely on the assumption that the bomb suitcase was on the second layer of luggage in the container, not on the floor.  However, the physical evidence of the recovered luggage and the airframe under the base of the container demonstrate conclusively that there was no suitcase under the bomb suitcase -- the bomb was in the case on the bottom of the stack.

First, the condition of the bottom front corners of the two suitcases which were positioned upright, end-on, behind the bomb suitcase shows incontrovertibly that these corners were not protected by another suitcase at floor level.  Second, the pitting and sooting noted by the forensic investigators as being absent from the floor panel of the container is indisputably present on the parts of the airframe immediately under the floor panel.  Third, only one of the recovered suitcases was damaged in a manner consistent with its having been loaded flat against the bomb suitcase -- the blue Tourister.  The Tourister was on top of the bomb suitcase.  Despite numerous pieces of all the other items in the vicinity being recovered, there are no remains of a candidate for the “under the bomb” position.

3.  The conviction depended absolutely on baggage handler Amarjit Sidhu having rearranged the Heathrow interline luggage when he added the Frankfurt transfer luggage to the container.  Not only is it inherently unlikely that he would have done this, given the conditions under which he was working, he himself was quite clear in several police statements and again in the witness box at the Fatal Accident Inquiry that he did not do it.  There is not a shred of physical evidence to support the assertion that he was mistaken on this point.

The entire case focusses on this precise point: on the basis of the condition of the baggage container and the adjacent airframe components, the bomb suitcase must have been either the one on the bottom of the front left-hand stack of luggage or the one on top of it.  The former position was occupied by a suitcase loaded in the interline shed at Heathrow, and the latter by a suitcase transferred from the feeder flight.  The AAIB inspectors and the forensic investigators jumped to the wrong conclusion at an early stage in the investigation, based on only a small subset of the available information (the condition of the container itself).  The full dataset was never assembled and interpreted.  If it had been, it would have shown without doubt that this conclusion was wrong.

Is it really that simple?  Yes, actually, it is.  Months investigating Frankfurt, years investigating Malta, indictments against a couple of people who happened to be going about their business on Malta that morning, eight years of punitive sanctions against Libya which destroyed the economy and social cohesion of the country, a three-ring-circus of a trial in a specially-built court in the Netherlands, the conviction of one of the people who happened to be on Malta that day, his eventual release under circumstances that turned the Scottish government into an international hate icon, and UK and US support for the Libyan rebels in the overthrow of Gaddafi in 2011 -- not to mention the x-ray operator at Frankfurt who was assumed to have missed the bomb suitcase transiting from the Malta flight apparently being hounded to his grave by the accusation.  All that, for want of someone having enough nous to spot and solve a jigsaw which was right there in front of them all the time.

Yes, I’m pretty stunned by this.  It’s almost unbelievable but it’s true.  Now get your heads round that, people, and stop asking me who I think did it.  That’s way beyond my pay grade.

Review of Morag Kerr's "splendid new book"

Baz, the author of The Masonic Verses blog (and a frequent commentator on this blog) has written a long review of Dr Morag Kerr’s Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies. The whole review merits close study.  What follows is the first six paragraphs:]

1.      Chapter 1 of Doctor Morag Kerr's splendid new book on the Lockerbie disaster Adequately Explained by Stupidity? is titled  "A Case About Cases".   True enough but it is essentially a Tale of Two Cases, to be precise two identical brown (or "antique bronze")  hard-sided Samsonite suitcases one of which contained the Improvised Explosive Device that destroyed flight PA103 over Scotland on the evening of the 21st December 1989 twenty-five years ago.

2.      One of these suitcases was very real.  The second did not exist at all outside the collective imaginations of the Police investigators notably Chief Superintendent John Orr, relevant lawyers at the Crown Office, perhaps even amongst members of the defence team and the three (or four) trial judges at all.

3.    The real one was placed within container AVE4041 in the Interline baggage shed at Heathrow before the feeder flight  PA103A arrived from Frankfurt.  It was placed at the bottom front left close to or in the actual position the bomb exploded.  Three witnesses saw it.  Who put it there? Well nobody ever put there hand up.

4. And the second imaginary suitcase?  Well Mr Megrahi was seen on Malta with a brown Samsonite but the evidence of that "witness" Majid Giaka was almost entirely discounted by the Trial Judges (or so they said.)   This imaginary suitcase was smuggled on board flight KM180 at Luqa Airport on the morning on the 21st December 1988 where by coincidence (or not) Megrahi was taking a flight home to Tripoli.   Security at Luqa was tight.  How was it smuggled onto the flight?  Nobody knows.  it was the Crown case that security was circumvented but they didn't even have a theory.

5.   At Frankfurt this imaginary bag was supposedly transferred to the feeder flight PA103A all the while it's timer ticking away.  How was this done?  Well all computerised records were lost but some sort of printout was retrieved which supposedly proved with a lot of mumbo jumbo about baggage trays coding stations and x-ray machines and the bag arrived in Heathrow where with a number of other bags from the feeder flight were placed in AVE4041 on the tarmac on top of several bags that were already within the container (including the real Samsonite.)  The loader then decided to rearrange the bags positioning this new brown Samsonite with another and moving the original brown Samsonite to "some far corner of the container."  Although the loader never actually said he did this.

6.       Doctor Kerr's fascinating book tells the quite remarkable story of how these two brown samsonites became switched.  The imaginary one became real blowing up in exactly the same position the real bag had occupied and the real bag became a phantom disappearing in a puff of smoke or a wormhole!  While there are similarities in the story to other great miscarriage of justice cases (a comparison with Ludovic Kennedy's classic on the Lindbergh case The Airman and the Carpenter springs to mind it's closest parallel is oddly  with the Hans Christian Anderson fable The [Emperor’s] New Clothes.

Lockerbie, Megrahi, Ashton and Linklater

[The following item has been published today on John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury website:]

Below is an unpublished letter, which I wrote to The Times in response to Magnus Linklater’s article of 21 December (to which I responded at greater length in an open letter). It provoked a response from Mr Linklater, which I have included below. I shall be responding to it in due course. As yet, he has not responded to either of my open letters, the first of which can be read here.

Dear Sir,

Not for the first time, Magnus Linklater (Times Scottish edition 21 December) seriously misrepresents the position of the majority of those who believe that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – the so-called Lockerbie bomber – was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Once again he resurrects the claim that we are conspiracy theorists and ignores the fact that our chief concerns – that the trial court judgment was unreasonable and that numerous items of exculpatory evidence were withheld from the defence lawyers – were shared by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which referred the case back to the appeal court on no fewer than six grounds. Mr Linklater praises the SCCRC’s lengthy report, yet ignores the fact its conclusions were a damning indictment of the Scottish criminal justice system.

He also attaches the conspiracy theorist label to those who suggest that Iran, rather than Libya, was to behind the bombing, while turning a blind eye to the fact that the role of Iran and its terrorist proxies, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, is confirmed by numerous declassified US intelligence documents and is spoken to by two former CIA agents Mr Robert Baer and Dr Richard Fuisz.

Most outrageously, he suggests that Mr Megrahi’s supporters have accused his original defence team of knowingly overlooking or suppressing evidence that might have helped his defence. As Mr Linklater, should know, that is not the view of the Justice for Megrahi group, nor is it mine.

Journalists who conflate fringe views with those of the mainstream and ignore facts that sit uncomfortably with their own opinions should be sent back to journalism college, not let loose on the pages of a respected newspaper.

Yours sincerely,

John Ashton

Dear John Ashton

I don’t know if The Times will publish your letter — that is up to them.

But if you find the phrase “conspiracy theorists” insulting, then I find your suggestion that I should go back to “journalism college” offensive. I’ve been in the husiness for more than 40 years, and have learned over that time a simple principle of reporting: that good investigation requires sound proof.

I use the word conspiracy advisedly. It describes the whole gamut of the pro-Megrahi school, which runs from CIA plots to drug-smuggling, tampered evidence, conniving lawyers, and complacent judges. Your own (first) book sets so many hares running it is quite impossible to track them down. And others have done the same. Only last week the Daily Mail had Dr Swire confronting Abu Talb, whom even you know was not responsible, as the principal suspect; and on  Saturday your fellow-theorist Morag Kerr alleged in a  radio discussion with me that the Crown had deliberately subverted evidence to support their case. If that is not a conspiracy I don’t know what is. 

I am amazed that you should be touting shadowy CIA agents like Fuisz and Baer, whose evidence would never stand up in court. The way that Baer was exposed in the SCCRC report should make you think twice about using his name again. 

Yes, it is true that the SCCRC found grounds for referring the case back to appeal. They mainly centred on Gauci’s evidence. That is certainly worth examining again, and might or might not undermine the prosecution case. But it is grounds for appeal, no more, and it  demonstrates  what an objective and  well-balanced inquiry the SCCRC  was. Far from being “a damning indictment” of the Scottish justice system,” it shows the system working. Of course, Megrahi himself had the opportunity of using the appeal process  to his advantage. But he chose not to. 

I much prefer the meticulous way in which the SCCRC disposed of the various conspiracy theories involving Iran and the PFLP-GC by going back to first principles and invetigating them properly, rather than the wild, headline-grabbing claims that you and your coleagues deploy [sic].

Regards

Magnus Linklater

Megrahi trial and first appeal lawyers defend their performance

[I am grateful to both Richard Marquise and Frank Duggan for sending me the text of the following report published in The Times on 21 December. It was not referred to on this blog at the time because it did not, for some reason, appear on the newspaper website (to which I subscribe, albeit through gritted teeth given my reluctance to contribute to the Murdoch coffers). It reads as follows:]

One of the key lawyers involved in the Lockerbie case has broken silence to condemn critics of the Scottish justice system,  who claim that Libya was not responsible for  the atrocity.

Bill Taylor QC, who defended  the  convicted Libyan bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, argues that allegations claiming the attack was ordered by Iran rather than Libya were examined in detail at the time of the trial, and dismissed, because they did not stand up to detailed scrutiny.

“We did raise all of these other possibilities in the course of our defence,” he said. “They were examined in the greatest detail, and fully investigated, but they did not stand up.  It’s like all the theories in the Kennedy assassination. They  are simply doors that have to be opened, and investigated if you are defending – as  we did.”

Mr Taylor’s intervention comes on the 25th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, and follows a spate of conspiracy theories  aimed at undermining  the original verdict, which resulted in the conviction of al-Megrahi. The Libyan was imprisoned in Scotland, before being released and returned home  by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds in 2009.

Campaigners, led by Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the disaster, have long claimed that al-Megrahi was innocent, that Libya played no part in the bombing, and that the atrocity was ordered by Iran in retaliation for the downing of an Iranian airliner by an American warship in 1988.

However, lawyers involved at the time of the trial, who have not felt able to speak out in response, say that the Iran connection and other theories were subjected to rigorous scrutiny at the time, and failed to pass the standards required in a court of law.

In particular, the suggestion that the bomb was put on board at Heathrow rather than in Malta as the prosecution stated, was “tested to destruction” by the defence team, whose case would have been vindicated if it had stood up in court.

But it did not. They point out that those who now back the Heathrow theory have not been able to explain how clothes, purchased in Malta, were found in the suitcase in which the bomb was packed.

“If the suggestion is that the bomb was placed on board at Heathrow, how on earth did it occur to anybody to take a trip to Malta in order to buy some children’s clothing,  in order to take that clothing back to London to assemble a bomb?  It just doesn’t stack up,” said one member of the defence team.

Defence lawyers have always argued that  the identification evidence against al-Megrahi supplied by the Maltese shop-keeper Tony Gauci, was weak, and that if it had been tested in front of a jury, rather than being heard by three judges,  the Libyan would have been acquitted on those grounds.

The Scottish Crimninal Cases Review Commission, which examined the evidence in detail, concluded that this did constitute grounds for appeal. However, al-Megrahi returned to Libya before the appeal could be heard.

The evidence that he was involved in the plan to insert a bomb remains strong. At the time of the trial the prosecution sought to introduce additional evidence about the money he was paid by the Libyan government. Accounts totaling several million  dollars were found, which would have undermined al-Megrahi’s claim that he was only a low-level official. The evidence  was disallowed, because not enough time had been given to consider it.

Mr Taylor added  that the  decision by the  Libyan administration,  announced this week by the Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, to appoint prosecutors to examine the evidence, undermined the  argument that Libyan was not involved in the outrage.  

He said: “If the bomb  was  planted in Heathrow or Frankfurt by people who were many  miles away in Libya, and of which the Libyans knew nothing, why is the new administration in Libya appointing two prosecutors,  who will be liaising  with the Lord Advocate in the discovery of any fresh evidence?”

[A commentary on this report will appear on this blog in due course. But in the meantime, for a rebuttal of the quite ludicrous assertion that the thesis of Heathrow rather than Malta ingestion of the bomb suitcase was “tested to destruction” by Megrahi’s defence team, readers are referred to Dr Morag Kerr’s book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies. An account of the performance of Megrahi’s then legal team during the Zeist trial and the first appeal can be found here.]

Who was really behind the Lockerbie bombing?

[This is the headline over an item on the Aljazeera website about its current Inside Story programme. It reads as follows:] 

As the world marks the 25th Lockerbie attack anniversary, we ask why there is no clarity on who was the perpetrator.

Commemorations have been held in the US, UK and Scotland to mark 25 years since Pan Am flight 103 crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. But after all these years, there are still questions about who was responsible for one the most infamous attacks in modern times.

The UK, US and Libyan governments have promised to work together to reveal the full facts of the bombing.

On December 21, 1988, the quaint Scottish town of Lockerbie was about to become the scene of one of the world's most infamous attacks.

The airliner had just left London's Heathrow airport – on its way to New York.

Less than half an hour after takeoff a bomb detonated, triggering an explosion and killing all 259 people on board. Most of the passengers were American while 11 others on the ground were also killed.

Three years later, a joint indictment by the US and Scotland implicated two Libyans for the bombing.

One of them was Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, who was accused of 270 counts of murder, conspiracy to murder and breach of aviation security.

In April 1999, the suspects, including al-Megrahi, surrendered and were flown from the Libyan capital, to the Netherlands, where the case was heard.

When the trial began in 2000, al-Megrahi pleaded not guilty but he was later convicted. In 2002, he re-launched an appeal which was unsuccessful and al-Megrahi started his life sentence behind bars in a Scottish prison.

The Libyan authorities formally accepted responsibility for the attack, and even paid out $2.7bn in compensation to the relatives of those killed. That move prompted the United Nations to lift its sanctions.

Six years into his prison sentence, it was revealed that al-Megrahi suffered from advanced prostate cancer. He was given just a short time to live, and on those grounds, a Scottish judge decided to free him. [RB: It was not a judge, but a Scottish Government minister.]

He arrived home to Libya to a hero's welcome, which upset people around the world and triggered international condemnation.

The last interview al-Megrahi gave, was while he was on his death bed in 2011.

He spoke about the man whose testimony helped convict him - Tony Gauci, a shopkeeper in Malta - who said Megrahi bought clothes in his store that were found wrapped around the bomb on the plane.

"If I have a chance to see him [Gauci] I am forgiving him. I would tell him that never in my entire life have I been in his shop. I never bought any clothing from him. And ... I would tell him ... that he dealt with me very wrongly," Megrahi said in his last interview.

Last year, the man known as the Lockerbie bomber died. Al-Megrahi has always said he is innocent, and his family, to this day, say they want an appeal against his sentence and demand the truth be revealed.

As the world remembers Lockerbie 25 years on, divisions remain between those who believe he was really guilty of the crime and those who do not.

So do we know who was really behind the bombing? Have investigators failed to nail the perpetrator? Was al-Megrahi a scapegoat? And how strong were the evidences that convicted al-Megrahi?

To discuss this, Inside Story presenter Folly Bah Thibault is joined by guests: Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the bombing and led a high-profile campaign for justice on behalf of the UK victims' relatives; Richard Marquise, then head of FBI's task force on the Lockerbie investigation; Morag Kerr, the author of Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies; and Anas el-Gomati, the director general of Libya's first public policy think-tank Sadeq Institute.

[Today’s Aljazeera GMT schedule can be found here. The programme can be watched here on You Tube.]

Justice remains elusive 25 years after Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article by Alasdair Soussi published yesterday on the website of The National, an English-language newspaper based in the United Arab Emirates.  It reads as follows:]

If an individual is found guilty in a court of law, does that always render it case closed? In cases where murder is involved, developed legal systems across the world pride themselves on their ability to deliver justice, to bring closure, to bring at least a modicum of comfort to grieving relatives. Yet, no matter how established the judicial system, how respected its legal canons, miscarriages of justice are sadly not without precedent.

This month marked 25 years since Pan Am Flight 103 exploded in the skies above Lockerbie, Scotland – a terrorist atrocity that claimed the lives of all 259 passengers and crew and 11 others on the ground. For the victim’s families, the anniversary is a chance to remember loved ones who lost their lives on that terrible winter’s night of December 21, 1988, when one small Scottish border town – previously shrouded in sleepy obscurity – made international headlines. For others, it will be a chance to reflect on what many consider to be one of the gravest miscarriages of justice of the modern age.

Abdel Basset Ali Al Megrahi remains the only person to be convicted in the attack on the US-bound flight – but doubts about his conviction remain widespread. The Libyan himself proclaimed his innocence up until his last breath when, nearly three years after his compassionate release from a Scottish jail, he died from prostate cancer at his Tripoli home in May last year.

Scotland suffered a political backlash when its nationalist government decided to release Megrahi on the grounds that he only had three months to live. I had sympathy with the Scottish government’s decision.

The idea that Scotland could demonstrate its compassion in such a public manner to a dying man made me proud of my nation – but my doubts about the safety of his conviction led me, on balance, to believe that his release was warranted.

To be sure, my belief in his innocence is not without some reservations – the tangle of intrigues surrounding the Lockerbie affair are murky at best – but my own reading of the evidence has given me great pause to consider that the 2001 verdict was fatally flawed. In all likelihood it delivered that most serious of judicial errors: the condemnation of an innocent man.

The eyewitness testimony from Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci who said he sold Megrahi the clothes that were said to have been wrapped around the bomb, is highly suspect.

Eyewitness accounts are crucial to any case – but Gauci’s testimony was riddled with flaws. For a start, Gauci consistently told police that the clothes buyer was around 50 years old, 1.83m tall, heavily built and dark-skinned. At the time, Megrahi was 36 years old, 1.75m, relatively slender and light-skinned.

And, then there was his exposure to press reports about the case featuring Megrahi’s photo – particularly a magazine piece, which contained an image of the Libyan under the heading “Who planted the bomb?”

This magazine was given to Gauci by a neighbour and kept in his possession for several months, crucially only handing it over to police just days before he picked out Megrahi at an identity parade in the Netherlands in 1999.

And, what of the fragment of circuit board found at the crash site? Known as PT/35b, the fragment was linked to the bombing because it was identified as originating from an MST-13 timer manufactured by the Swiss firm Mebo. Megrahi had associations with the firm. Yet, the plating of PT/35b was pure tin, the Mebo timer’s circuit boards a tin-lead alloy. Experts consulted by the police had put forward the theory that the heat from the explosion could have vaporised the lead – sadly, Megrahi’s defence never did dispute the connection between the two items at trial – but this has since been disproved by experiments conducted by independent experts.

Doubts about Megrahi’s conviction are not just confined to laypersons like me.

In 2007, six grounds for believing that Megrahi’s conviction could have constituted a miscarriage of justice were published by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). Among them was the SCCRC’s contention that the trial court’s judgement was unreasonable – specifically that there were no reasonable grounds to conclude that the clothes were purchased from Gauci’s shop in Malta on December 7, 1988, which was the only date that fitted with Megrahi’s presence on the island.

The other grounds for referral included undisclosed evidence to the defence about the Gauci identification (concerning his exposure to press articles on Megrahi before his picking him out at the identity parade), and, quite sensationally, other undisclosed evidence to the defence about Gauci’s interest in reward money.

I have very little interest in conspiracy theories surrounding Lockerbie, and my main interest has always been on the safety of Megrahi’s guilty verdict, and the strong desire to see a proper inquiry into a conviction that has done little to inspire public confidence.

For many who firmly believe in Megrahi’s guilt, the above points are nothing new – just a simple rehashing of old ground. But, for this writer, and more importantly those who have campaigned long and hard for justice, they are worthy, now more than ever, of reiteration.

Indeed, and perhaps just as tragically as the lives that were lost that cold December night, they only bolster the widespread belief that the wrong man was tried and convicted for a crime that was perpetrated over Scottish soil but that shook the entire world.

Alasdair Soussi is a freelance journalist, covering the Middle East and Scottish politics.

[Two further Lockerbie articles by Alasdair Soussi can be accessed here.]

Why Heathrow is back in the frame

[This is the headline over a report in the current issue of Private Eye.  It reads as follows:]

The bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie 25 years ago, killing 270 people, was loaded on to the plane at Heathrow, contrary to prosecution claims that it started its journey in Malta, a new book claims.

Adequately Explained by Stupidity?: Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies, by forensic pathologist Dr Morag Kerr, argues that crucial evidence about the suitcase bomb was withheld from the trial of Abdelbasset al-Megrahi because it would have provided the Libyan with a water-tight alibi.

The 220-page book is the result of a painstaking analysis of all the forensic evidence. Dr Kerr, a member of the Justice for Megrahi Committee, traced and matched baggage and passenger records of Pan Am 103 with its connecting flights, in particular the Maltese flight, which linked up with the Pan Am feeder flight from Frankfurt.

She examined witness statements, police memos and prosecution notes, as well as all the conflicting evidence – and judgments – about the bomb presented at the fatal accident inquiry, the civil case for damages against Pan Am brought by bereaved families, and at the trial and appeal of Megrahi. She makes a compelling case for identifying exactly which case contained the bomb and how it was smuggled aboard Pan Am 103 – and it wasn’t, she believes, from Malta.

It will not surprise those who have followed the Eye’s argument that Megrahi was the victim of a grave miscarriage of justice that Dr Kerr identifies instead the mystery brown/maroon suitcase spotted on a container at Heathrow destined for loading on to the US-bound flight.

Exact match

Baggage handler John Bedford noticed the hard-shell Samsonite after he returned from a break. His colleague denied putting it there, but as it was complete with security tags it didn’t arouse suspicion at the time. According to the baggage handlers, it was one of six or seven bags, which filled the bottom row of the container.

Coupled with the fact that there was a breach of the fence separating the public and secure airline areas the night before the flight (which was also not revealed at the trial), Dr Kerr barely conceals her incredulity that police seemed uninterested in following up the possibility that someone may have smuggled the bomb through the Heathrow baggage handling system – even when scientists discovered the Samsonite was an exact match to the bomb case.

That may have been because very early on suspicion fell on a Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorist cell, the PFLP, operating out of Germany, who had been caught with explosive devices equipped to bring down planes. Luggage from the Frankfurt feeder flight had been placed on top of Heathrow baggage and suspicion initially fell on German airport security.

Fool-proof security

Later, of course, the focus switched to Malta, with the discovery that the suitcase bomb was stuffed full of clothes bought from Tony Gauci, the shopkeeper who claimed – after seeing photographs of Megrahi – that the man who had bought the clothes strongly resembled the Libyan. But as Dr Kerr makes clear, there was no evidence of any unaccounted-for baggage at Malta and no evidence of how it could have been smuggled on to the plane by anyone, let alone Megrahi. He just happened to be at the airport that day. It was a difficulty in the prosecution case recognised at both Megrahi’s trial and appeal (in which the judge said that “there is considerable and quite convincing evidence that it could not have happened”) – but a difficulty they decided to ignore.

Unlike Malta, which had a pretty foolproof security system of double-checking luggage, Dr Kerr concludes that security at both Frankfurt and Heathrow was lax. There were multiple unaccounted-for bags at Frankfurt, while at Heathrow – the break-in aside – security was such that the loading shed and baggage trays were left unattended and security labels were available in unlocked drawers.

Not for the first time in the troubled case, Dr Kerr also completely takes apart the forensic evidence presented by the government scientists. Their evidence was that the exploding Samsonite case could not have been the bag described by Mr Bedford. In fact, says Dr Kerr, it is easy to piece together exactly which bag was next to which from the relative blast damage to all – something she says the scientists never did. She adds that all the evidence taken together shows “without any doubt whatsoever” that the bomb suitcase was loaded flat, with the handle facing the back of the container – just as described by Mr Bedford.

A ‘contrived scenario’

The Crown Office has dismissed Dr Kerr’s book as “speculation” and said that Mr Bedford’s evidence was “rigorously tested during the trial and subsequent appeal”. But as she goes to some lengths to demonstrate, the evidence in its entirety had never been properly tested until now.

Adding her weight to the calls for a fresh inquiry, Dr Kerr said it should include how Scottish police overlooked “a shed-load of evidence” pointing to Heathrow as the source of the bomb, how forensic scientists compounded the error by misinterpreting or failing to interpret all the evidence recovered from the crash site, and why prosecutors “chose to conceal so much important information from the court” and presented instead what she described as “a contrived scenario”.

Coming 25 years after the UK’s worst terrorist atrocity – and two years after new evidence showed that scientists’ claims at trial that a tiny piece of bomb fragment recovered from the site matched those supplied to Libya were also false – the case for an investigation into the scandal is now overwhelming.

"He died my friend": Dr Jim Swire's Westminster Abbey address

[Here, courtesy of Dr Jim Swire, is the text of the address that he delivered during Saturday’s Lockerbie memorial service in Westminster Abbey:]

In ‘UK Families-Flight 103’ we are free to be ourselves, here’s my individual contribution.

Lockerbie was a revenge attack, but no philosophy can justify the slaughter of innocent people. In the West we counter the threat of terrorism though intelligence gathering, and the bringing to justice of those who hate. Please pray for all who do this desperate work for us.

In our family Flora was our beautiful vivacious first born of three wonderful children. She had been on her way to spend Christmas with her American Jewish boyfriend. They had both become outstanding young medical scientists invited to their own research projects at our premier neurological institute at Queen’s Square in London where they met. Through him she had met with Rabbi Albert Friedlander: he called her a great seeker after truth.

We are the lucky ones, in the UK and USA. Not only do we live in two of the most free and safe countries in the world, but we relatives also had the joy of living with those we loved until their untimely deaths. It was Abraham Lincoln who at Gettysburg proclaimed a new birth of freedom for the people of the United States.

Here, Saint Thomas a Becket born on this day, but 700 years before Lincoln, was slaughtered in Canterbury Cathedral for upholding the Church against his King. I claim Habeas Corpus as I say in this ancient Abbey that I do not believe that our Governments have told us all the truth they know about this terrible tragedy.

Recently in a cold suburban car park in Sweden with the snow beginning to fall, I was watching a small town house. All day long the curtains were drawn shut and the blinds down. Inside was a man who has spent his whole life as a terrorist. I believe he played a key role in the Lockerbie atrocity. Too afraid to answer the bell himself, he sent his wife to an upstairs window to threaten.

How would I feel in meeting one of those deeply involved: what were the roots of his hatred, could one forgive? Nelson Mandela made forgiveness look easy. But even a Truth and Reconciliation commission cannot work unless first the truth is known.

When I first met the late Baset al Megrahi face to face in Greenock prison, though he was a practising Muslim, he had bought me a Christmas card in the prison shop; in it he had written “Dr Swire and family, please pray for me and my family”.

He died my friend. Over Christmas, if you pray, please pray for his innocent family, but also for all those who wrestle with hatred, that they may be healed by God’s love. Please pray also that we who will sit down at a Christmas table with chairs for ever empty may find peace.