Never been a proper explanation

[What follows is the text of an article published in The Times on this date in 2009:]

An independent inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing was called for last night by a leading human rights lawyer.

Gareth Peirce, who has represented a string of high-profile victims of miscarriage of justice, said that the forensic evidence on which the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, was convicted was flawed.

The finding itself was “very, very worrying” and based the same kind of discredited forensic science that was at the heart of several notable miscarriages of justice in the ‘70s and ‘80s, she said.

“The [Lockerbie] case was founded on twin pillars: one, that al-Megrahi was linked to a charred fragment of a bomb timer; and second, his identification was ‘claimed’ by a man who could not be sure of his evidence.

“Has everyone forgotten the lessions learned of flawed scientified evidence and identification?

“The point being made by the families over 20 years is that they want to know the cause of the Lockerbie diaster. And at every turn, limitations have been put on their ability to discover it.”

Ms Peirce, who in a career spanning 30 years has acted for the Guildford Four, Birmingham Six and families of the Marchioness river boat disaster, was speaking at a special event in London attended by campaigners and experts including Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was among the 270 killed when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie.

She said that there had been a Fatal Accident Inquiry in [1990/91], which was limited to the immediate cause of the explosion so as not to prejudice future prosecutions, she said.

Some 15 years later there was the prosecution in the Hague of two Libyans, where the family could only be present and observe. But there had never been a “proper explanation of what they want to hear.”

But a UN assessor appointed to the trial had been scathing of the judges’ verdict, she added, and of the “atmosphere of political interference that permeated the trial”.

Megrahi’s son vows to return to Scotland to clear his father’s name

[What follows is excerpted from an article published in today’s edition of the Sunday Post:]

The son of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has revealed he’s heading back to Scotland to fight for justice for his dad – while branding Libya a lawless jungle.

Speaking from his home in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, Khalid al-Megrahi said a fresh appeal to clear his dad’s name was imminent.

Khalid, 31, has vowed to return to Scotland to play a central role in the case.

He will bring his family, which now includes a son named after his father, who was the only man to be convicted of the 1988 atrocity.

“Libya is like a jungle,” he said. “I want to return to Scotland for justice.”

An appeal launched by campaigners who believe Megrahi is innocent collapsed last November.

At the time, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission – a Scottish Government body – said it could not proceed without input from Megrahi’s family.

It would have been the third appeal against Megrahi’s 2001 conviction.

He dropped the second appeal in 2009 – launched while he was in prison in Scotland – because he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer.

Months later, he was controversially allowed to return to Libya on “compassionate grounds”, where he lived for a further three years.

Now, in his first interview since his father died in 2012, Khalid said the family’s participation in the appeal process has been hampered by “lawlessness in Libya”.

Khalid, Megrahi’s eldest son, has borne the burden of paternal responsibility since his dad was convicted in 2001.

He said it was only now during a lull in fighting in Libya that’s it had been possible for his family to get more involved in his father’s case. He said: “In Libya, it’s not a good time to do anything. Before the country was much better than it is now.

“And it’s not just for us but all Libyan people.

“It’s just not safe.

“Crime is everywhere. Banks don’t have money, police don’t work and the court system doesn’t work.

“You can ask any Libyan and he will tell you the same answer.”

Khalid, 31, said the capital often went without power, which compounded the problems of fighting a legal appeal from overseas and communicating with lawyers in Scotland.

Libya has been plagued by chaos since Nato-backed forces overthrew dictator Muammar Gaddafi in October 2011. (...)

Khalid believes his family was targeted in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s death because of perceived closeness to the regime. (...)

But Khalid has distanced his family from the notorious Gaddafi clan and said he knew “nothing about them”.

Khalid, whose three-year-old son is named Abdelbaset in honour of his dad, said: “We had a lot of problems at the beginning of the revolution.

“We had a home and car stolen and they burned out our farm.

“There were also a lot of other things that happened to the family.

“The reason for doing all these crimes was that we belonged to the tribe of Megrahi.” (...)

Khalid said both he and his family had fond memories of their time in Scotland.

He spent his formative years here, was educated here and can’t wait to return so he can see his friends.

Khalid said: “I want to return to Scotland for the appeal. I love Scotland. I still keep in touch with some of the Scottish families.

“We are fighting because we believe Scotland will give us justice.

“The people of the country have always been very friendly towards us.

“We want justice not just for our family but also for the families of the victims.

“My family have been victims too.”

Khalid also revealed his toddler son Abdelbaset bore a resemblance to his father.

“I believe if I don’t clear my dad’s name my son will,” he said.

“We believe one day the truth will get out  – God willing.”

As well as eldest son Khalid, Megrahi had another four children – Ghada, Mohammed, Ali, and Motasem.

His eldest daughter Ghada, 33, studied law in Scotland and is now practicing in Tripoli.

IT consultant Khalid – also a Scottish graduate – spends time travelling the world with his work.

His three youngest siblings are all supportive of the appeal.

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the 1988 disaster and who supports the Megrahi appeal, said: “There is not a scrap of doubt in my mind that if this appeal goes ahead, his conviction will be overturned.

“If that happens the relatives will examine calls for a full inquiry.”

But other relatives of victims last night blasted the Megrahi family’s new appeal as a fresh heartache.

Susan Cohen’s daughter Theodora, 20, was on board the flight when it exploded over Lockerbie.

Speaking from her home in New Jersey, USA, Mrs Cohen, 78, said: “For the Megrahis to call themselves victims, well, that is despicable.

“He was a mass murderer and to defend him is disgusting.”

A Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission spokesman said it had not received any new paperwork about the case and “there is no current appeal”.

The AAIB technical investigation

[What follows is excerpted from a long and detailed article by K P R Smart, AAIB Chief Inspector of Air Accidents, entitled The Lockerbie Investigation: Understanding of the Effects of the Detonation of `Improvised Explosive Devices’ on Aircraft Pressure Cabins that was published on this date in 1997:]

At 19:03 hrs UTC on 21 December 1988 Pan American World Airways Flight PA 103 from London, Heathrow to Kennedy Airport, New York was receiving its oceanic clearance from Shanwick Oceanic Control. Seconds later the secondary radar return disappeared from the controller’s screen and multiple primary radar returns were seen to fan out in an easterly direction for a considerable distance.

An improvised explosive device (IED) had detonated in the forward baggage compartment of the Boeing 747 at station 700. The structural damage to the aircraft forward fuselage caused the forward section of the aircraft to detach and pivot to the right around the window belt on the right side. The nose section of the aircraft struck the No 3 engine intake causing the engine to detach from its pylon. This element of the structural break-up was complete within three seconds of the detonation of the device. The aircraft then entered a steepening descent path with the forward fuselage structure detaching until it reached a vertical descent at some 19,000 feet over the town of Lockerbie. At about this time the tail surfaces of the aircraft started to disintegrate, probably by a flutter mode, and as a consequence the rear fuselage started the break-up. A large section of cabin floor and baggage hold from the rear fuselage together with three landing gear units fell onto a residential area in Lockerbie. The main wing structure struck the ground a short distance away, destroying a bungalow and creating a huge crater in the ground. There was a very strong westerly wind at the time of the accident (115 knots at the aircraft’s cruising altitude of 31,000 feet). These winds produced a wreckage trail that stretched from Lockerbie in the south west of Scotland to the east coast of northern England, some 80 miles away. The recorded primary radar returns showed debris falling over the east coast of northern England more than one hour after the initiating event. All 259 passengers and crew on board the aircraft were killed and 11 residents of Lockerbie lost their lives as the wreckage fell onto the town.

At the time of the disaster it was dark and the initial emergency service response was concentrated in and around the town of Lockerbie. The area to the east of Lockerbie is sparsely populated and includes one of the largest manmade forests in Europe, the Kielder Forest. The police had initially identified some seven major wreckage sites in or near the town and the rescue teams set about the task of recovering bodies whilst at the same time preserving essential evidence for the criminal and technical investigations. Increasingly it became clear that wreckage was being discovered at greater and greater distances from Lockerbie and the eventual wreckage and evidential trail was established to have covered an area of 840 square miles.

From the start of the investigation into the causes of the Lockerbie disaster, the police and the AAIB were considering two possible scenarios. The first involved sabotage, which would obviously have resulted in the police conducting a criminal investigation. The second, that the aircraft had been destroyed by defects in the aircraft structure, which would have resulted in the AAIB taking the lead in an investigation under the Civil Aviation (Investigation of Air Accidents) Regulations. On 26 December a small section of baggage container was recovered from the open countryside to the east of Lockerbie. This piece of wreckage showed evidence of being in the vicinity of detonating high explosive. Forensic examinations conducted on 26/27 December confirmed the initial  findings and the world was notified of these facts in a press release on 28 December. At that time the AAIB decided that the technical investigation, conducted under the Civil Aviation (Investigation of Air Accidents) Regulations, required clear boundaries to ensure that no conflict arose with the criminal investigation. It was decided that the AAIB investigation would determine the position of the device within the aircraft, the sequence of structural failures that led to the break-up of the Boeing 747, and consider what safety action could be recommended to provide the aircraft with enhanced protection against explosive devices. The technical investigation was therefore able to concentrate on the aviation safety aspects arising out of this disaster whilst at the same time assisting and supporting the criminal investigation being conducted by the police.

The initial AAIB team of ten accident investigators arrived in Lockerbie at 01.30 hrs, some six hours after the accident occurred. Over that first night they started to assess the task ahead and co-ordinate their activities with the police. In the days that followed the disaster the numbers of agencies and personnel increased to peak at around 2000 personnel working on the accident site. On the day after the disaster the AAIB arranged for the Royal Air Force to fly a series of photographic reconnaissance missions in an attempt to establish the boundaries of the wreckage trail. It quickly became clear that there were in fact two wreckage trails. One, the `northern trail’ , was bounded at its western end by the town of Lockerbie where a number of large sections of aircraft structure and three of its engines fell. This trail extended to the east by some 15 km. The second trail, `the southern trail’ , was far longer and stretched from the site of the initial explosion, south of Lockerbie, to the east coast of northern England some 80 miles away. These very long wreckage trails were a result of the upper level winds on the evening of 21 December which were from the west at 115 knots at flight level 310 (31000 feet), the cruising altitude of the aircraft prior to the explosion taking place. The first priority for the technical investigation was to identify and record the position of all the items of wreckage over the very long wreckage trail. This was done with the aid of military photographic interpreters and large teams on the ground who examined, identifed and recorded each piece of wreckage.

Lockerbie: Heathrow break-in revealed

[This is the headline over a report published in The Independent on this date in 2001. It reads as follows:]

New evidence relating to the bombing of the Lockerbie jumbo jet was revealed today.

A former security guard at Heathrow airport says he discovered a break-in at a Pan Am baggage facility early on the day that 270 people died in the bombing of the New York-bound flight.

Ray Manly, 63, was quoted in The Mirror as saying he was surprised that the incident was not mentioned during the trial of two Libyans for the bombing.

The Scottish Office, the government executive office in Scotland, would not comment on the report because an appeal is pending.

Manly said that anti-terrorist police questioned him after the bombing, but the report was not mentioned in the trial that led to the 31 January conviction of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent. A co-defendant, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted.

Prosecutors alleged that the bomb had been hidden in a suitcase and put aboard an aircraft in Malta. It was then alleged route through Frankfurt to London and the Pan Am flight.

Manly's statement suggested the possibility that the bomb was sneaked into a luggage area in London.

In sworn affidavits, he said he had found a padlock had been cut from a door that led to Pan Am's baggage about 18 hours before Flight 103 took off, The Mirror said.

"I believe it would have been possible for an unauthorized person to obtain tags for a particular Pan Am flight then, having broken the ... lock, to have introduced a tagged bag into the baggage buildup area," Manly was quoted as saying.

The Mirror reported that Al-Megrahi's lawyers may use the new information in an appeal scheduled to begin on 15 October at Camp Zeist, a former US air base in the Netherlands where the initial trial was held.

If the appeal is rejected, al-Megrahi, 48, will serve his life sentence in a Scottish prison. Judges recommended a minimum term of 20 years.

During the proceedings, defense attorneys suggested a bomb could have been introduced into the inter-airport luggage system, either in Frankfurt or London. The defense also tried to throw suspicion onto two Palestinian groups.

The New York-bound Pan Am flight was over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December in 1988 when it exploded, sending 259 passengers and crew to their deaths. Eleven people were killed on the ground.

[RB: The concealment from Megrahi’s defence team of the evidence relating to the Heathrow break-in is the subject of one of Justice for Megrahi’s allegations of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial that are currently under investigation by Police Scotland.]

Many felt uneasy as the proceedings were played out

[On this date in 2009 the late Margo MacDonald MSP contibuted an article headlined No need to hide politics behind Megrahi release to Edinburgh’s evening newspaper, the Evening News. It reads in part:]

When Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was tried for the murder of 270 people at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands, the usual process was amended. (...) [H]is trial was conducted without a jury, with the verdict and sentence being decided by three Scottish High Court judges. (...)

A few people at his trial, whose numbers have grown over the years, harbour suspicions that the changed procedures served to protect the security interests of these states, and others, at least as much as al-Megrahi's safety. But allowing for the compromises in procedure, there was still the intention that justice should be the overriding factor.

Many people felt uneasy as the jury-free proceedings were played out in public, in the presence of victims' relatives. But they trusted in everything else being done according to the book. It's now known the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has turned up evidence withheld from al-Megrahi's defence lawyers at the trial, pertinent enough to have the SCCRC advise that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. You can bet your bottom petro-dollar that if there was any manipulation of evidence, it was down to diplomatic, and not judicial considerations.

This being the case, why should anyone find it an unthinkable departure from the paths of righteousness for Kenny MacAskill to have taken notice of the multiplicity of state interests involved with his decision on whether to agree to al-Megrahi's request to be allowed to end his days in Libya? Legal considerations doubtless influenced and guided the justice secretary's decision. But it beggars belief that in meetings between civil servants from Edinburgh and London, transatlantic phone calls between the American State Department and Scotland's Justice Ministry, and meetings and communications between Arab, Scottish and UK governments there were no exchanges of views on what should happen to al-Megrahi.

Apart from anything else, people who were not directly affected by the atrocity can address the issue buffered by the 20 years that have passed. In the same way as many other wicked cruelties have come to be accommodated by their victims as the world has moved on and new relationships have developed, so the realpolitik of 2009 is different from that of 1988. The Berlin Wall was still in place, the world was divided between states under the influence of either Moscow or Washington. In the Middle East, internal civil war all but destroyed Lebanon, Iran and Iraq had pursued a long, destructive war, other Arab countries were unable to exert influence or power in defence of their interests because of internal tensions, and Libya was a pariah state. (...)

Nelson Mandela's was the name invoked by the supporters of the decision to let al-Megrahi go home. Twenty years ago, he was still a convicted terrorist. It's ironic that should have been his legal status when he was released from prison, and nobody even thought to ask about the legal niceties. (...)

The details of such things may have blurred in the public mind, but experience and common sense ensures understanding of all the pressures on the justice secretary when the Libyans and al-Megrahi applied for release.

The Scottish government and the justice secretary would have saved themselves a load of angst if they'd admitted this up front. For the record, I agreed with the decision, but thought the stated reasons for it didn't ring totally true.

[RB: Earlier this week a portrait of Margo MacDonald was gifted to the Scottish Parliament. It can be viewed here.]

His long-awaited appeal would have confirmed his innocence

[What follows is an extract from an article by John Pilger that was published on the Information Clearing House website on this date in 2011:]

Gone from the Murdoch press are pejorative "insurgents". The action in Libya, says The Times, is "a revolution... as revolutions used to be". That it is a coup by a gang of Muammar Gaddafi's ex cronies and spooks in collusion with Nato is hardly news. The self-appointed "rebel leader", Mustafa Abdul Jalil, was Gaddafi's feared justice minister. The CIA runs or bankrolls most of the rest, including America's old friends, the Mujadeen Islamists who spawned al-Qaeda.

 

They told journalists what they needed to know: that Gaddafi was about to commit "genocide", of which there was no evidence, unlike the abundant evidence of "rebel" massacres of black African workers falsely accused of being mercenaries. European bankers' secret transfer of the Central Bank of Libya from Tripoli to "rebel" Benghazi by European bankers in order to control the country's oil billions was an epic heist of little interest.

The entirely predictable indictment of Gaddafi before the "international court" at The Hague evokes the charade of the dying "Lockerbie bomber", Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, whose "heinous crime" has been deployed to promote the west's ambitions in Libya. In 2009, al-Megrahi was sent back to Libya by the Scottish authorities not for compassionate reasons, as reported, but because his long-awaited appeal would have confirmed his innocence and described how he was framed by the Thatcher government, as the late Paul Foot's landmark expose revealed. As an antidote to the current propaganda, I urge you to read a forensic demolition of al-Megrahi's "guilt" and its political meaning in Dispatches from the Dark Side: on torture and the death of justice (Verso) by the distinguished human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce.

The truth was inconvenient

[On this date in 2007 I reproduced on this blog a long article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer published the previous day on OhmyNews International. What follows is an excerpt:]

Back to Square One

Let us give Lord Sutherland, Lord Coulsfield and Lord Maclean some credit. After hearing 230 witnesses and studying 621 exhibits during 84 days of evidence, spread over eight months, the three judges of the Lockerbie trial almost got the date of the worst act of terror in the UK correct.

In the first line of the first paragraph of the most expensive verdict in history (￡80 million), they wrote: "At 1903 hours on 22 December 1988 Pan Am flight 103 fell out of the sky." As a matter of fact, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded on Dec 21.

Michael Scharf is an international law expert at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. Scharf joined the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser for Law Enforcement and Intelligence in April 1989. He was also responsible for drawing up the UN Security Council resolutions that imposed sanctions on Libya in 1992.

"It was a trial where everybody agreed ahead of time that they were just going to focus on these two guys, and they were the fall guys," Scharf wrote.

"The CIA and the FBI kept the State Department in the dark. It worked for them for us to be fully committed to the theory that Libya was responsible. I helped the counter-terrorism bureau draft documents that described why we thought Libya was responsible, but these were not based on seeing a lot of evidence, but rather on representations from the CIA and FBI and the Department of Justice about what the case would prove and did prove."

"It was largely based on this inside guy [Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka]. It wasn't until the trial that I learned this guy was a nut-job and that the CIA had absolutely no confidence in him and that they knew he was a liar."

The Magic Luggage

According to the Lockerbie verdict, the bomb was hidden in a Toshiba radio, wrapped in clothes and located in luggage that was mysteriously boarded in Malta.

The court has examined this allegation in depth and the matter occupies 24 paragraphs of the final verdict (§16 to §34). After reviewing all the evidence and testimonies, the three judges came to the following conclusions:

"Luqa airport had a relatively elaborate security system. All items of baggage checked in were entered into the airport computer as well as being noted on the passenger's ticket. After the baggage had passed the sniffer check, it was placed on a trolley in the baggage area to wait until the flight was ready for loading.

"When the flight was ready, the baggage was taken out and loaded, and the head loader was required to count the items placed on board. The ramp dispatcher, the airport official on the tarmac responsible for the departure of the flight, was in touch by radiotelephone with the load control office. The load control had access to the computer and, after the flight was closed, would notify the ramp dispatcher of the number of items checked in. The ramp dispatcher would also be told by the head loader how many items had been loaded; and if there were a discrepancy, the ramp dispatcher would take steps to resolve it.

"In addition to the baggage reconciliation procedure, there was a triple count of the number of passengers boarding a departing flight, that is there was a count of the boarding cards, a count by immigration officers of the number of immigration cards handed in, and a head count by the crew.

"The records relating to KM180 on 21 December 1988 show no discrepancy in respect of baggage. The flight log (production 930) shows that 55 items of baggage were loaded, corresponding to 55 on the load plan.

"On the face of them, these arrangements seem to make it extremely difficult for an unaccompanied and unidentified bag to be shipped on a flight out of Luqa.

"If therefore the unaccompanied bag was launched from Luqa, the method by which that was done is not established, and the Crown accepted that they could not point to any specific route by which the primary suitcase could have been loaded.

"The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 is a major difficulty for the Crown case."

An internal 1989 FBI memo indicates that there is no indication that unaccompanied luggage was transferred from Air Malta to Pan Am. Law authorities from Malta and Germany came to the same conclusion.

And yet, without any explanation, the judges wrote in the conclusion of the verdict that: "the absence of an explanation as to how the suitcase was taken into the system at Luqa is a major difficulty for the Crown case, but after taking full account of that difficulty, we remain of the view that the primary suitcase began its journey at Luqa." (§ 82)

The Maltese Storekeeper

According to the verdict, Megrahi bought the clothes in which the bomb was wrapped in Sliema, a small town of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea, including the "cloth" in which the fragment was "discovered" by Hayes. At first sight, the "cloth" appears to be part of a Slalom shirt sold in a little shop -- Mary's House -- located on the island.

However, upon closer examination, the "cloth" raises a series of issues. Firstly, the color of the label is incorrect. A blue Slalom shirt label should have blue writing, not brown.

Secondly, the breast pocket size corresponds to a child shirt, not the 16-and-a-half-sized shirt allegedly bought by Megrahi, for the pocket would have been 2 centimeters wider.

Thirdly, German records show the shirt had most of the breast pocket intact, while the evidence shown at Zeist had a deep triangular tear extending inside the pocket.

Lastly, the storekeeper initially told the investigators he never sold such shirts to whoever visited him a few weeks before the Lockerbie tragedy.

Storekeeper Tony Gauci's testimony was pivotal in the case against Megrahi. Gauci gave a series of 19 statements to the police that are fully inconsistent. Yet, the judges found him trustworthy. Allow me to disagree.

On Jan 30, 1990, Gauci stated, "That time when the man came, I am sure I did not sell him a shirt." Then, on Sept 10, 1990, he told the investigators, "I now remember that the man who bought the clothing also bought a Slalom shirt." And to make things worse, two of his testimonies have disappeared.

When Were the Clothes Bought?

According to the verdict, Megrahi bought the clothes on Dec 7, 1989. Gauci remembered that his brother had gone home earlier to watch an evening football game (Rome vs Dresden), that the man came just before closing time (7 pm), that it was raining (the man bought an umbrella) and that the Christmas lights were on.

The game allows for only two dates: Nov 23 or Dec 7. The issue is critical for there is no indication that Megrahi was in Malta on Nov 23, but he is known to have been on the island on Dec 7.

The chief meteorologist of Malta airport testified that it was raining on Nov 23 but not on Dec 7. Yet the judges determined the date as Dec 7. This rather absurd conclusion from the judges raises two other issues.

The Dec 7 Rome-Dresden game was played at 1 pm, not in the evening. What is more, Gauci had previously testified that the Christmas lights were not up, meaning that the date had to be Nov [23].

On Sept 19, 1989, Gauci stated, "The [Christmas] decorations were not up when the man bought the clothing." Then, at the Lockerbie trial, Gauci told the judges that the Christmas lights were on. "Yes, they were … up."

Who Was the Mysterious Buyer?

"We are nevertheless satisfied that his identification, so far as it went, of the first accused as the purchaser was reliable and should be treated as a highly important element in this case," wrote the judges.

In fact, Gauci never identified Megrahi. He merely stated that Megrahi resembles the man to whom he had sold the clothes, but only if he were much older and two inches taller. Gauci, however, had identified another man: Abu Talb.

Talb was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GL), the terrorist group led by Jibril.

In late October 1988 the senior bomb maker of the PFLP-GC, Marwan Khreesat, was arrested in Frankfurt in the company of Hafez Dalkamoni, the leader of the organization's German cell.

Dalkamoni had met Talb in Cyprus and Malta the week before. In the car the two men used, police found a bomb hidden in a Toshiba radio. Khreesat told the police that he had manufactured five similar improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Each device Khreesat had built was triggered by a pressure gauge that activated a timer -- range 0 to 45 minutes -- when the plane reached a cruising altitude of 11,000 meters. The timers of all recovered bombs were set on 30 minutes. It takes about 7 minutes for a 747 to reach cruising altitude. Pan Am 103 exploded 38 minutes after take-off from London.

German police eventually recovered four of the IEDs Khreesat had built. No one seems to know what happened to the fifth one, which was never recovered. When police raided Talb's apartment in Sweden, they found his appointment notebook. Talb had circled one date: Dec 21.

Contrary to Jibril's statement, and surely he must know better, a bomb triggered by a pressure gauge set at 11,000 meters would not have detonated during the Frankfurt to London flight as the airliner does not reach cruising altitude on such a short flight.

Then again, such a device would not have detonated at all if it had been located in the luggage area, as the hold is at the pressure of the passengers' zone and never drops below the pressure equivalent of 2,400 meters.

This is why when the judges were presented with the undisputable and undisputed evidence that a proper simulation of the explosion -- taking proper account of the Mach stem effect -- would locate the explosion outside the luggage hold they simply decided to dismiss the existence of a scientifically well-established fact.

"We do not consider it necessary to go into any detail about Mach stem formation," the judges wrote.

Had the judges deemed it "necessary to go into the details regarding Mach stem formation," they would have been forced to acknowledge that the position of the bomb was fully incompatible with the indictment. That magic unaccompanied luggage went mysteriously through airport security was "plausible." That it jumped on its own out of the luggage hold at London airport was a little too much to believe.

In truth, a proper simulation of the explosion locates the bomb just a few inches away from the skin of the plane, a position fully consistent with the very specific damages left by the explosion.

The truth was inconvenient. The three judges had to dismiss it in order to justify a verdict that had been decided more than a decade before the first day of the Zeist trial.

Shame on those who committed this horrific act of terror. Shame on those who have ordered the cover-up. Shame on those who provided false testimony and those who suppressed and fabricated the evidence needed to frame Libya. And shame on the media, whose silence made it an accomplice.