Maltese Prime Minister on Lockerbie

[What follows is a brief extract from a long article just published on the website of the Maltese newspaper The Independent:]

A question regarding the Lockerbie bombing ... was flung at Prime Minister Joseph Muscat during a question and answer session at the London School of Economics whilst discussing the Commonwealth. (...)

He added that Malta has been lucky that British bases were closed peacefully, without bloodshed. “We are a model as to how a country can transform from a colony to a free state”.

On the subject of Lockerbie, Dr Muscat argued [Dr Jim] Swire, the father of a girl killed in the bombing, said that Malta had nothing to do with the bombing and that he has met with Swire many times and will meet him again in the future. 

[The Maltese Foreign Minister has expressed himself even more clearly on Lockerbie: see Maltese minister believes Megrahi innocent.]

Crash scene integrity: Ukraine and Lockerbie

Amidst all of the reports about the MH17 crash scene being “severely compromised” (of which this is a typical example) so rendering investigation of the circumstances of the disaster more difficult, it is perhaps worth remembering that serious claims have been made by reputable sources about interference with the integrity of the Pan Am 103 crash site at Lockerbie from the evening of 21 December 1988 onwards. This issue is dealt with in Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer’s essay Suspicious Activities at Lockerbie Crash Site.

Legal responsibility for aircraft accident investigation

[I was interviewed this morning by Mark Hirst for RIA Novosti. Here is his report:]

European investigators, who unexpectedly arrived on the Malaysian aircraft crash site in eastern Ukraine, had “no legal locus” to participate in the investigation without Kiev's invite, Professor Robert Black of the University of Edinburgh, known as the “architect of the Lockerbie trial”, told RIA Novosti on Monday.

“If the nation decides that they don’t have the necessary facilities or investigative infrastructure, then they can call on another state or states to lend them the expertise,” said Black, a globally recognized legal expert, who specialized in examining the judicial issues surrounding the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.

“Air investigation teams from Europe simply arrived at the scene and are now complaining that they weren’t immediately allowed free access to the site,” the lawyer said.

“It is understandable that they should be annoyed, but they have no legal locus to be there whatsoever unless and until they are invited to participate by the state which has the legal responsibility to investigate,” Black added.

“The law is that the responsibility to investigate is that of the state where the plane came down. But given the circumstances in that part of Ukraine at the moment, it is a difficult question to answer. Who is the state and who is the government of that state?” the expert said.

Black agreed it was important for the site to be secured and called for proper international investigation into the circumstances of the crash.

Malaysia Airlines' Flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed on July 17 near Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, causing death of 283 passengers and 15 crew members.

Ukrainian government and militia have been trading blame for the alleged downing of the plane, with independence supporters saying they lacked the technology to shoot down a target flying at altitude of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles).

Commenting on the crash, Russian President Vladimir Putin said it was vital to abstain from hasty conclusions on the case before the international investigation was over.

The UN Security Council late on Sunday night completed the text of its resolution regarding the Malaysia Airlines crash. Russia introduced its own draft resolution to the UN Security Council, calling for an impartial investigation into the circumstances of the crash.

The price paid at Lockerbie for an appalling and unforgivable blunder

[Today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph contains an article headed This is Putin’s war, and this disaster is his responsibility by the mayor of London, Boris Johnson. It reads in part:]

On the morning of July 3 1988, a passenger jet was taking off from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. It was an Airbus A300 operated by Iran Air, and on board were 290 people including 66 children. They were about to make a routine flight to Dubai, where many of them intended to have a holiday – Iran being a bit miserable at that time, since it was the middle of the Iran-Iraq war. At 10.17am, the plane left the tarmac and began to climb to 14,000 feet for the 28-minute flight. They took an entirely predictable route. They turned on their transponder – in accordance with normal practice – so that it emitted a “squawk code” identifying the aircraft as civilian. The crew was experienced, and at all times maintained communication, in English, with air traffic control.

It was a tragedy for all concerned that on that same morning, a state-of-the-art US warship, the USS Vincennes, was lying more or less beneath them in the Straits of Hormuz. The USS Vincennes had been involved in an engagement in the past few hours, when one of its helicopters had come under small arms fire from Iranian vessels. It was only a year since 37 US sailors had died in an airborne attack by Iraq on the USS Stark. It would be fair to say that the crew on the bridge of the Vincennes were in a state of high battle alertness, if not nervousness.

At any rate, they somehow managed to mistake the Iranian Airbus flight 655 for an F-14A Tomcat fighter of the kind used by the Iranian air force. They thought the plane was descending in an attack run, when it was actually climbing. When the plane failed to respond to their calls, they took this to be a sign of hostile intent. With only minutes to spare, they made a decision to neutralise what they thought was a threat to their lives. They fired SM-2MR missiles at an unarmed jet, and blew it out of the sky, killing everyone on board. There were passengers from Iran, India, Pakistan, Yugoslavia and Italy. It was an appalling and unforgivable blunder, for which America and her allies were to pay a heavy price – not least at Lockerbie. (...)

The reason I mention the Iranian Airbus is not to suggest that there is some kind of moral equivalence between the two disasters – both of them the accidental shooting-down of a passenger jet – but rather the opposite. My purpose is to show the difference between these two events, and the difference that consequently emerges between a great and open democracy and the Russia of Vladimir Putin.

I will not pretend that the Americans were perfect in their handling of the Airbus tragedy. They never made a formal apology to Iran, and for some (incredible) reason the captain of the USS Vincennes was later awarded the Legion of Merit. But the first and most important difference was that when America erred, there was no significant attempt to deny the truth, or to cover up the enormity of what had happened. An inquiry was held, and it was accepted that there was absolutely no fault on the side of the Iranian plane. It was concluded that the bridge crew had essentially made a disastrous error in thinking the plane looked hostile, and this was ascribed to “scenario fulfilment”, whereby people trained to respond to a certain scenario (attack by air) carry out every detail of the procedure without thinking hard enough whether reality corresponds to the scenario.

Many in the US Navy went further, and said that the captain, William Rogers III, was at fault in the sense that he was notoriously willing to “pick a fight”. Furthermore, the US actually compensated the Iranians for the disaster, in that they eventually settled an international court case by paying $131.8 million, most of the sum going to the families of the deceased. In accepting some measure of responsibility towards the bereaved, and in trying to get at the truth, the US showed a degree of maturity and wisdom. Contrast Putin, with his evasion and obfuscation and lies. Can you imagine him ever accepting the reality of what has happened, let alone doing something to atone, such as sending money to the families of the victims?

Then there is the final and fundamental difference in the circumstances of the downing of the two passenger jets. The Americans made a horrific mistake, as they admitted; but they were not in the Straits of Hormuz as belligerents. On the contrary, the US Navy was trying to keep those seas safe. They were there to try to protect all the civilian and commercial traffic that was vulnerable because of the Iran-Iraq war.

Look at what Putin is doing in Ukraine, and the distinction is obvious. There is only one reason why those drunken Russian-backed separatists had access to a Buk surface-to-air missile. It was a present from Vladimir in the Kremlin. He has set on this conflict. He is fanning the flames of violence in a sovereign European state. This is his war. He bears responsibility, and he must not be allowed to get away with it.

Lockerbie and MH17: is there no limit to the hypocrisy of Salmond and Cameron?

[From the BBC News website yesterday:]

One Scot is known to have died after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed in east Ukraine, First Minister Alex Salmond has confirmed.

Ten UK citizens were among 298 people who were killed in the incident. (...)

Describing the incident as an "appalling atrocity", Mr Salmond called for an international investigation to take place "quickly and effectively". (...)

He added: "It is now vitally important that an international investigation into the cause of the crash proceeds swiftly and effectively, and that investigation teams are given full access to the crash site.

"The Scottish government is in touch with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to ensure that any and all relevant expertise and experience in Scotland will be made available to the investigation now and in the coming weeks."

[From Prime Minister David Cameron’s Facebook page today:]

Like the horror of Lockerbie in 1988 when I was a young man, the images of the burnt-out Malaysian plane, 298 victims and their personal effects strewn across the wheatfields and villages around Grabovo in eastern Ukraine will never leave me. (...)

We must establish the full facts of what happened. (...)

We must turn this moment of outrage into a moment of action. Action to find those who committed this crime and bring them to justice. But this goes much wider than justice. (...)

First, there must be immediate access to the crash site and the crime scene must be preserved. The remains of the victims must be identified, treated with proper respect and dignity and returned to their families. There must be a ceasefire. And there must be a full investigation into what happened.

[Is there no limit to the hypocrisy of the leaders of the Scottish and United Kingdom governments? Both Alex Salmond and David Cameron have refused to countenance an independent inquiry into the Lockerbie case, notwithstanding the wishes of the relatives of UK victims and the now almost universal acceptance, on the clearest of evidence, that the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi was a travesty of justice and the inculpation of Libya at best precarious.]

Lockerbie: none of the evidence points to Libya

[The following are excerpts from Peter Hitchens’s column in today’s edition of The Mail on Sunday:]

One thing we should have learned in the past 100 years is  that war is hell. We might also have noticed that, once begun, war is hard  to stop and often takes shocking turns.

So those who began the current war in Ukraine – the direct cause of the frightful murder of so many innocents on Flight MH17 on Thursday – really have no excuse.

There is no doubt about who they were. In any war, the aggressor is the one who makes the first move into neutral or disputed territory.

And that aggressor was the European Union, which rivals China as the world’s most expansionist power, swallowing countries the way performing seals swallow fish (16 gulped down since 1995).

Ignoring repeated and increasingly urgent warnings from Moscow, the EU – backed by the USA – sought to bring Ukraine into its orbit. It did so through violence and illegality, an armed mob and the overthrow of an elected president.

I warned then that this would lead to terrible conflict. I wrote in March: ‘Having raised hopes that we cannot fulfil, we have awakened the ancient passions of this cruel part of the world – and who knows where our vainglorious folly will now lead?’

Now we see. (...)

Powerful weapons make it all too easy for people to do stupid, frightful things. Wars make such things hugely more likely to happen. (...)

In July 1988, highly trained US Navy experts aboard the cruiser Vincennes, using  ultra-modern equipment, moronically mistook an Iranian Airbus, Iran Air Flight 655, for an F-14 Tomcat warplane. They shot the airliner out of the sky, killing 290 innocent people, including 66 children.

All kinds of official untruths were told at the time to excuse this. In October 2001, bungling Ukrainian servicemen on exercise were the main suspects for the destruction of Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 over the Black Sea. Whoever did it, they killed 78 passengers and crew en route from Israel to Novosibirsk – though Ukraine has never officially admitted guilt.

Complex quarrels about blame for such horrors are often never resolved. I am among many who do not believe that Libya had anything to do with the mass murder of those aboard Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988, very likely an Iranian-backed retaliation for the Airbus tragedy. All the evidence points to a terror group operating from Syrian-controlled territory, and none points to Libya.  

But at the time of the prosecution, we were trying to make friends with Syria, which has since gone back near the top of our enemies list but may soon be our ally again, against the fanatics of Isis. Confused? You should be.

So, let us just mourn the dead and comfort the bereaved, and regret human folly and the wickedness of war. Let us not allow this miserable event to be fanned into a new war. That is what we did almost 100 years ago, and it is about time we learned something from that.

Lockerbie relatives know the human costs of a disaster like the downing of flight MH17

[This is the heading over a letter from Dr Jim Swire published today in The Daily Telegraph.  It reads as follows:]

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, describes the consequences for victims' families

Relatives and friends will ask: did those aboard flight MH17 suffer? Following the Lockerbie disaster of 1988, in which my daughter Flora was among those murdered, we learnt that the answer was that loss of consciousness would be virtually instantaneous, from the moment that the fuselage depressurised.

When we commit ourselves to sit in a thinly clad metal fuselage travelling at about 500mph, some six miles above the earth, survival depends absolutely upon maintenance of a calm air pressure not too much different from that at sea level.

When the fuselage is suddenly disrupted, the instantaneous reduction of air pressure results in immediate loss of consciousness.

The bomb that destroyed the Lockerbie aircraft in 1988 held less than a pound of explosive. If it is confirmed that MH17 was hit by a Soviet-built Buk missile, the warhead would contain an explosive charge 140 times greater, adding to the certainty of immediate unconsciousness.

Some relatives will want to see the bodies of their loved ones, some will not. They should be given the choice, but in the knowledge that many bodies will be dismembered, and that any recognisably retrieved will show the bloated features of rapid depressurisation. In addition, a forensic examination will probably be required, and to perform this on so many victims will require remains to be preserved; so even a lock of hair is likely to be pungent with preservative.

Later will come the allegations and recriminations. Why did Malaysia Airlines overfly an area of conflict when some other airlines avoided it? Who provided the rocket, assuming it was hit by one? Who had the skills to organise the radar painting of the target? Who pressed the button?

There is no answer to the question: “Why did it have to be the aircraft with my loved ones aboard that was destroyed?” It is poignant for us Lockerbie relatives that the Dutch, who showed us so much kindness during the Lockerbie trial of two Libyans in 2000 near Utrecht, should now be so heavily wounded by this dreadful event.

An unusual feature after Lockerbie was the absence of credible claims of responsibility. This left the field open to the chicanery of international politics seeking to apportion blame. Relatives of MH17 victims should be cautious in assessing where guilt lies, for governments can massage apparent facts in ways which families may be unable to unravel.

The long-term consequences for relatives will cascade down the decades. It will be wise to seek professional help for post-traumatic stress disorder, and relationship and financial repercussions.

There is a small British charity called Disaster Action which, although not equipped to deal with the acute phase of an international disaster of this magnitude, does seek to support those affected, and draws on the experience of many such victims’ relatives.

Second Lockerbie air accident investigator speaks about MH17

[Another of the air accident investigators involved at Lockerbie has been talking about the MH17 crash. What follows is excerpted from an article in today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph:]

The painstaking process of investigating the Malaysian Airlines disaster will be made immeasurably more complicated by the crash site’s location in the middle of a country on the brink of civil war, experts said.

The investigation will require scrupulous mapping of debris - to help give a clear picture of how and why the fuselage broke up - followed by recovery of every piece of wreckage and possible forensic examination for traces of explosives.

Peter Claiden, who was a senior engineer in the AAIB investigation into the 1988 Lockerbie disaster, said: “There really needs to be a proper, professional investigation if they want to secure evidence from the wreckage.

“It was difficult enough to achieve at Lockerbie so the problems facing investigators in what is effectively a war zone are very serious indeed.”

Mr Claiden, who was responsible for reconstructing part of Pan Am Flight 103 after it was blown up mid-air above the Scottish town killing all 259 onboard and 11 on the ground, said: “The first problem will be to try to identify how widespread the wreckage is.

“They will need to find the infrastructure to take away the wreckage and store it safely.

“If the aircraft was destroyed by a missile, in an ideal world you must get all that wreckage and reassemble it. Then you might get an idea of the origin of the disaster.”

Air accident investigators must sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to establish the cause of a disaster - as in the case of Lockerbie which became Britain’s largest ever murder inquiry.

Part of the fuselage of Pan Am Boeing 747 - which exploded above Lockerbie in December 1988 - was reconstructed in a hangar in Farnborough, Hants, by the AAIB, where it remained for 24 years while diplomatic and legal machinations wore on.

The reconstruction was essential in proving Flight 103 broke up mid-air after the detonation of Semtex high explosive concealed in a Toshiba radio cassette recorder, which was contained in a Samsonite suitcase in the aircraft’s hold.

Fragments of the items, plus a long-delay electronic timer made by a Swiss firm, MEBO, were presented in the trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi held under Scottish law in Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, in 2000.

Debate continues over causes of Lockerbie, says air accident investigator

[A report by Mark Hirst published this afternoon on the website of the Russian news agency RIA Novosti contains the following:]

It is too early to draw any definitive conclusions over what caused aircrash of Malaysian flight MH17 in Eastern Ukraine, a former air accident investigator told RIA Novosti.

“It is too early to make any definitive conclusions on what caused the crash of this aircraft. There is a lot of apparent evidences, pointing towards a fairly sophisticated ground-to-air-missile. But as with any disaster like this, it’s requires some very close study to finish up with definitive conclusions,” said Tony Cable, who has been an investigator with the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch for 32 years and worked on the Lockerbie/Pan Am 103 bombing and the Paris Concorde disaster. (...)

Cable also told RIA Novosti he was surprised commercial flights were being permitted to fly directly over the conflict zone and said the responsibility for that had to rest with the Governments.

“I was surprised that aircraft were being allowed to fly over that area,” Cable said. “As far as I can see the responsibility for that would be government to government. So the Malaysian equivalent of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office giving advice to airlines. I don’t think you can expect the airlines themselves to work out that sort of detail on all the territories they cover.”

Cable worked directly on the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and despite the largest criminal investigation ever conducted in the UK and subsequent conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset al Megrahi, speculation still continues to this day over who was actually behind the attack. Cable told RIA Novosti a similar scenario could be repeated with Flight MH17.

“I could see a possibility of debate continuing over the causes of this disaster going on for years, as it has done with Lockerbie,” Cable said. “That is very much in the security and political field and way outside pure accident investigation which can just say what happened. It’s up to other folks to figure out why it happened.”

MH17, PanAm103 and IR655

[What follows is an excerpt from an article headlined UN meets as world leaders call for global inquiry into MH17 crash published today on The Guardian website:]

Sidney Dekker, an expert on aviation safety at Griffith University in Queensland, said: "According to the International Civil Aviation Organisation – a UN body – authority over the crash site and all in it lies squarely with the country in which it happens. It is not where the plane has registered, or from where [it flew], or where the airline is based." (...)

Ben Saul, a professor of international law at the University of Sydney, said that while Ukraine was the “first port of call” for any investigation, there were “exceptional circumstances” which made an international response likely and reasonable.

“There is an armed conflict going on, they don’t have control of bits of their territory. There are also international elements – the Russians seemingly providing the weapon. And there are victims from multiple countries.”

“The difficulty with the UN Security Council is Russia would be likely to block anything. Probably you might get this political difficulty, you might get a [Security Council] presidential statement condemning this heinous act of terrorism, and calling on the relevant authorities to bring the perpetrators to account.”

The Security Council has met previously on the Ukraine crisis, but has taken no formal action due to the disagreements among Russia, Britain, France and the US, four of its five veto-wielding members, Reuters reports.

Saul said that if those responsible fled to Russia, “Ukraine can request help from the Security Council, from its allies diplomatically, to bring pressure if Russia was not co-operating or not surrendering somebody in contravention of their treaty agreements.”

Saul said there were precedents for an international response in similar catastrophes or terrorist acts. The Lockerbie bombing in 1988, which killed 243 passengers, was jointly investigated by Scottish authorities and the FBI. UN sanctions were imposed on Libya to hand over two Libyan nationals for arrest in relation to the terrorist attack.

He said the issue under international law was whether the anti-aircraft missile was fired by separatist forces in the Ukraine and, if so, whether they knew it was a civilian aircraft or believed it was a military craft.

Saul wrote the international law of armed conflict could govern the incident, because fighters had a duty to distinguish between military and civilian objects and not to target civilians. It would be a war crime under international law if separatists had deliberately targeted a civilian plane.

There are suggestions that those responsible may have mistakenly shot down what they thought was a military aircraft. Saul said that in that case, international law may have been breached if the perpetrators did not take reasonable precautions to make sure the target was a military one.

He said the closest parallel could be the shooting down of an Iranian civilian plane by a US warship in the Persian Gulf in 1988. The US believed it was a military craft. The then president Ronald Reagan called it a “terrible human tragedy” at the time, while Iran called it a criminal act.

The US never admitted legal responsibility, but paid compensation to Iran.

Lockerbie wreckage disposed of in Canada

[This is the heading over an item posted yesterday on the blog The View from Falling Downs. I have no idea whether the assertion contained in it is correct and no source is cited. It reads as follows:]

The Pan Am 103 that went down over Lockerbie Scotland has always been a bit of a mystery.

It was pinned on a Libyan security guy who was supposedly in the employ of the ever-evil Gaddafi. Gaddafi wrote a big fat cheque to compensate the virtuous nations for his bad, at which point he thought he was free and clear to assume a business as usual mode with his new-found "friends" in the west.

We know how that turned out.

But what I didn't know was that the actual Lockerbie wreckage met a hasty end in the blast furnaces at one of the nickel mines in Sudbury.

There has long been theorizing about Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's culpability in the Pan Am 103 disaster, with a strong case being made that Libya may not have been the guilty party at all.

So the fact that the Pan Am 103 wreckage, just like the 9/11 wreckage, is no longer available for independent perusal, shouldn't come as a complete surprise.

[RB: Yesterday at Swansea University, neither of the examiners had any hesitation following the oral examination about recommending that the candidate should be awarded the degree of PhD for his Lockerbie-related thesis. I hope to be in a position to give further details about the thesis in the not too far distant future.]

Despair at damage inflicted on Scots law by Lockerbie case

On this date five years ago, the following item appeared on this blog.

[What follows is the text of a letter sent today to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice by Steven Raeburn, editor of the Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. The full account on the magazine's website can be read here.]

The Firm magazine recently ran a poll of its readers, which found that 86% of respondents supported a public inquiry into the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie.

A copy of the news story which ran in the July issue of the Magazine is appended below for your reference, and a copy of the magazine is enclosed.

I can add that solicitors and advocates, in addition to the general public, have frequently and consistently expressed to me their despair at the damage that has been inflicted upon the law of Scotland by this case. No doubt you are already aware that the Scots legal system was once rightly regarded as among the best and most effective in the world. Regardless of its present efficacy, it is now regarded both domestically and (especially) internationally as an embarrassment, principally because of the damning reflection cast upon it by the passage of the Lockerbie case through it.

On behalf of the readers of The Firm -- including over 10,000 solicitors and 500 or so advocates who wish to see the reputation of Scots law restored and be certain the legal system they work for and within is a source of pride to them, and not of shame -- I am duty bound to ask for you to address their wishes for a public inquiry. Like them, it is my fervent wish that the legal system of Scotland, and those who work within it, can be certain that the law which is applied in their name is done so honourably and with full accountability, devoid of the stains and shadows that this case has thrown upon it.

The reason this case refuses to go away is simply because the answers provided by the judicial process have failed to satisfy the public interest on one hand, and those directly affected by these events on the other. Whilst one bad case cannot be fairly described as representative of all that goes on in Scots law, that one bad case is nevertheless a valid reflection of what our legal system is capable of achieving, and there is a large constituency of the public who are not satisfied with that conclusion.

For my own part, I will simply state that the first step to repairing any damage is to understand how it was caused. A full inquiry may begin to shed the necessary light that will allow repairs to be effected. In the interests of accountability, and on behalf of the readers of The Firm, I ask you to let me have your response and proposals for action.

As a journalist, I constantly remind myself of the words of the great Edward R Murrow, who noted that just because my voice is amplified to the degree that it reaches from one end of the country to the other, it does not confer upon me greater wisdom or understanding than I possessed when it reached only from one end of the bar to the other. What my journalistic reach does impose upon me however, is a correspondingly amplified duty to use my free speech responsibly, and I therefore cannot in good conscience offer any voice to the readers of The Firm if I do not take forward their legitimate concerns and, where necessary, act upon them. If I felt otherwise, I should simply publish cartoons instead. Justice must be done, even tho’ the heavens may fall. If you and I cannot do our best to achieve that, then both of us are in the wrong jobs.

I, and those 86%, look forward to hearing from you.

[RB: I am off early tomorrow morning to Swansea University to take part as external examiner in the viva on a Lockerbie-related PhD thesis. It is unlikely that there will be further blogposts until Thursday evening at the earliest.]

Pan Am 103 and UTA 772

Today being Bastille Day, I felicitate this blog’s followers in France (the tenth largest source of its traffic). 

On this day it seems appropriate to provide a reminder of what may be regarded as the principal link between France and the Lockerbie disaster.  This is the destruction of UTA flight 772 over Niger on 19 September 1989 resulting in the deaths of all 170 passengers and crew on board the DC-10 aircraft. References to this tragedy on this blog can be accessed here.