This is the title of a fascinating article by Professor Edward S Herman, published on 22 September 2007 on the Global Research website at http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6845
The article analyses the New York Times's coverage of the Lockerbie disaster over the years and its editorial unwillingness to concede any possibility of doubt regarding the veracity of the official US and UK governmental version of events.
Wednesday, 26 September 2007
Monday, 17 September 2007
More from France
The following are references to two articles published, in French, on 14 September 2007 in Le Figaro. The first is entitled Lockerbie: and if Libya were innocent... and the second Jim Swire, father of a victim 'I want the true culprit found'.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070914.FIG000000142_lockerbie_et_si_la_libye_etait_innocente.html
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070914.FIG000000141_jim_swire_pere_d_une_victime_je_veux_que_soit_trouve_le_vrai_coupable.html
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070914.FIG000000142_lockerbie_et_si_la_libye_etait_innocente.html
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070914.FIG000000141_jim_swire_pere_d_une_victime_je_veux_que_soit_trouve_le_vrai_coupable.html
Monday, 10 September 2007
Politics and justice: the Lockerbie trial
This is the title of a radio programme broadcast on 9 September 2007 by ABC National Radio (Australia) in its Rear Vision series. The principal contributors are Dr Jim Swire, Professor Hans Koechler and myself, all being interviewed by Keri Phillips.
A transcript of the programme is available at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2007/2024833.htm#transcript
The progamme itself can be listened to at, or downloaded from, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2007/2024833.htm
A transcript of the programme is available at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2007/2024833.htm#transcript
The progamme itself can be listened to at, or downloaded from, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2007/2024833.htm
Friday, 7 September 2007
A most perceptive analysis
The following article appears on the Ohmynews English language website at http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=380264&rel_no=1
Key Lockerbie Witness Admits Perjury
'I am sorry for the consequences of my silence at that time'
Ludwig De Braeckeleer
Published 2007-09-06 07:04 (KST)
[They] have eyes to see but do not see, ears to hear but do not hear …--Ezekiel 12:2
The Lockerbie Affair has taken yet another extraordinary twist. Last Friday I received from Edwin Bollier, head of the Zurich-based company MeBo AG, a copy of a German original of an affidavit.
The document is dated July 18, 2007, and signed by Ulrich Lumpert, who worked as an electronic engineer at MeBo from 1978 to 1994. I have scrutinized the document carefully and concluded that I have no reason to doubt its authenticity or the truthfulness of its content.
Lumpert was a key witness (No. 550) at the Camp Zeist trial, where a three-judge panel convicted a Libyan citizen of murdering the 270 people who died in the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.
In his testimony, Lumpert stated that "of the three pieces of hand-made prototypes MST-13 timer PC-boards, the third MST-13 PC-board was broken and [he] had thrown it away."
In his affidavit, certified by Officer Walter Wieland, Lumpert admits having committed perjury.
"I confirm today on July 18, 2007, that I stole the third hand-manufactured MST-13 timer PC-board consisting of eight layers of fiber-glass from MEBO Ltd. and gave it without permission on June 22, 1989, to a person officially investigating in the Lockerbie case," Lumpert wrote. (The identity of the official is known.)
"It did not escape me that the MST-13 fragment shown [at the Lockerbie trial] on the police photograph No. PT/35(b) came from the nonoperational MST-13 prototype PC-board that I had stolen," Lumpert added.
"I am sorry for the consequences of my silence at that time, for the innocent Libyan Mr. Abdelbaset Al Megrahi sentenced to life imprisonment, and for the country of Libya."
In just seven paragraphs, the Lumpert affidavit elucidates the longstanding mysteries surrounding the infamous MST-13 timer, which allegedly triggered the bomb that exploded Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie on Dec. 21, 1988.
The Discovery of the MST-13 Timer Fragment
In the months following the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, someone discovered a piece of a gray Slalom-brand shirt in a wooded area about 25 miles away from the town. According to a forensics expert, the cloth contained a tiny fragment -- 4 millimeters square -- of a circuit board. The testimony of three expert witnesses allowed the prosecutors to link this circuit board, described as part of the bomb trigger, to Megrahi.
There have been different accounts concerning the discovery of the timer fragment. A police source close to the investigation reported that it had been discovered by lovers. Some have said that it was picked up by a man walking his dog. Others have claimed that it was found by a policeman "combing the ground on his hands and knees."
At the trial, the third explanation became official. "On 13 January 1989, DC Gilchrist and DC McColm were engaged together in line searches in an area near Newcastleton. A piece of charred material was found by them, which was given the police number PI/995 and which subsequently became label 168."
The Alteration of the Label
The officer had initially labeled the bag "cloth (charred)" but had later overwritten the word "cloth" with "debris."
The bag contained pieces of a shirt collar and fragments of materials said to have been extracted from it, including the tiny piece of circuit board identified as coming from an MST-13 timer made by the Swiss firm MeBo.
"The original inscription on the label, which we are satisfied, was written by DC Gilchrist, was 'cloth (charred).' The word 'cloth' has been overwritten by the word 'debris.' There was no satisfactory explanation as to why this was done."
The judges said in their judgment that Gilchrist's evidence had been "at worst evasive and at best confusing."
Yet the judges went on to admit the evidence. "We are, however, satisfied that this item was indeed found in the area described, and DC McColm, who corroborated DC Gilchrist on the finding of the item, was not cross-examined about the detail of the finding of this item."
It has long been rumored that a senior former Scottish officer who worked at the highest level of the Lockerbie inquiry had signed a statement in which he claimed that evidence had been planted. U.K. media have confirmed the story. Thus, the Scottish officer has confirmed an allegation previously made by a former CIA agent. The identity of the officer remains secret and he is only known as "Golfer."
"Golfer" has told Megrahi's legal team that Gilchrist had told him that he had not been responsible for changing the label.
The New Page 51
According to documents obtained by the Scotland on Sunday, the entry of the discovery is recorded at widely different times by U.K. and German investigators. Moreover, a new page 51 has been inserted in the record of evidence.
During the Lockerbie investigation Thomas Hayes and Allan Feraday were working at the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) forensic laboratory at Fort Halstead in Kent.
Hayes was employed at the Royal Armament Research Development Establishment (RARDE). In 1995, RARDE was subsumed into the DERA. In 2001, part of DERA became the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL).
Hayes testified that he collected the tiny fragment of the circuit board on May 12, 1989. He testified that the fragment was green. (Keep in mind that the board stolen from Lumpert is brown.) His colleague, Alan Feraday, confirmed his story at the Zeist trial.
The record is inserted on a loose-leaf page with the five subsequent pages re-numbered by hand. Hayes could not provide a reasonable explanation for this rather strange entry, and yet the judges concluded that: "Pagination was of no materiality because each item that was examined had the date of examination incorporated into the notes."
The argument of the court is illogical as the index number Hayes gave to the piece is higher than some entry he made three months later.
And there is more. In September 1989 Feraday sent a Polaroid photograph of the piece and wrote in the attached memorandum that it was "the best he could do in such short time." So, are we supposed to believe that it takes forensic experts several months to take a Polaroid picture?
Hayes could not explain this. He merely suggested that the person to ask about it would be the author of the memorandum, Feraday.
This, however, was not done. At the young age of 43, Hayes resigned just a few months after the discovery of the timer fragment.
Based on the forensic evidence Hayes had supplied, an entire family (the Maguire Seven) was sent to jail in 1976. They were acquitted in appeal in 1992. Sir John May was appointed to review Hayes' forensic evidence.
"The whole scientific basis on which the prosecution in … [the trial of the alleged IRA Maguire Seven] was founded was in truth so vitiated that on this basis alone, the Court of Appeal should be invited to set aside the conviction," said May.
In Megrahi's case, Hayes did not even perform the basic test that would have established the presence of explosive residue on the sample. During the trial, he maintained that the fragment was too small, while it is factually established that his laboratory has performed such tests on smaller samples.
Had he performed such a test, no residue would have been found. As noted by Lumpert, the fragment shown at the Zeist trial belongs to a timer that was never connected to a relay. In other words, that timer never triggered a bomb.
Feraday's reputation is hardly better. In three separate cases where men were convicted on the basis of his forensic evidence, the initial ruling was overturned in appeal.
After one of these cases in 2005, a lord of justice said that Feraday should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in the field of electronics.
According to forensic scientist Michael Scott, who was interviewed in the documentary "The Maltese Double Cross -- Lockerbie," Feraday has no formal qualifications as a scientist.
The Identification of the MeBo Timer
Thomas Thurman worked for the FBI forensics laboratory in the late '80s and most of the '90s. Thurman has been publicly credited for identifying the fragment as part of a MST-13 timer produced by the Swiss company MeBo.
"When that identification was made, of the timer, I knew that we had it," Thurman told ABC in 1991. "Absolute, positively euphoria. I was on cloud nine."
Again, his record is far from pristine. The U.S. attorney general has accused him of having altered lab reports in a way that rendered subsequent prosecutions all but impossible. He has been transferred out of the FBI forensic laboratory.
"He's very aggressive, but I think he made some mistakes that needed to be brought to the attention of FBI management," said Frederic Whitehurst, a former FBI chemist who filed the complaints that led to the inspector general's report.
"We're not necessarily going to get the truth out of what we're doing here," Whitehurst concluded.
The story shed some light on his formation. The report says, "Williams and Thurman merit special censure for their work. It recommends that Thurman, who has a degree in political science, be reassigned outside the lab and that only scientists work in its explosives section."
And the legal experts were just as fake as their scientific counterparts. In late 1998 Glasgow University set up the Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit (LTBU) to provide impartial advice to the world media on the legal aspects of the complex and unique trial.
Andrew Fulton, a British diplomat, was appointed as a visiting law professor to head the Unit. Fulton has no legal experience whatsoever. Prior to his appointment as head of LTBU, Fulton was MI6 station chief in Washington, D.C.
The Modification of the MST-13 Timer Fragment
Forensic analysis of the circuit board fragment allowed the investigators to identify its origin. The timer, known as MST-13, is fabricated by a Swiss company named MeBo, which stands for Meister and Bollier.
The company has indeed sold about 20 MST-13 timers to the Libyan military (machine-made nine-ply green boards), as well as a few units (hand-made eight-ply brown boards) to a Research Institute in Bernau known to have acted as a front to the Stasi, the former East German secret police.
The two batches are very different but as early as 1991 Bollier told the Scottish investigators that he could not identify the timer from a photograph alone. Yet, the Libyans were indicted in November 1991 -- without Bollier ever having been allowed to see the actual fragment -- on the ground that the integrity of the evidence had to be protected.
But in 1998 Bollier obtained a copy of a blown-up photograph that Thurman had shown on ABC in 1991. Bollier could tell from certain characteristics that the fragment was part of a board of the timers made for East Germany and definitely not one of the timers delivered by him to Libya.
In September 1999 Bollier was finally allowed to see the fragment. Unlike the one shown by Thurman on ABC, this one was machine-made, like the one sold to Libya. But it was obvious from the absence of traces of solder that the timer had never been used to trigger a bomb.
"As far as I'm concerned, and I told this to … [Scottish prosecutor Miriam Watson], this is a manufactured fragment," Bollier says. "A fabricated fragment, never from a complete, functional timer."
The next day Bollier was shown the fragment once more. You may have already guessed that it now had the soldering traces. "It was different. I'm not crazy. It was different!" says Bollier.
Finally, at the trial Bollier was presented a fragment of a circuit board completely burnt down. Thus, it was no longer possible to identify to which country that timer had been delivered. When he requested to explain the significance of the issue, Lord Shuterland told him that his request was denied.
How did the judges account for all the mysterious changes in the appearance of the fragment? They simply dismissed Bollier as an unreliable witness.
"We have assessed carefully the evidence of these three witnesses about the activities of MeBo and in particular their evidence relating to the MST-13 timers, which the company made. All three, and notably Mr. Bollier, were shown to be unreliable witnesses. Earlier statements which they made to the police and judicial authorities were at times in conflict with each other and with the evidence they gave in court. On some occasions, particularly in the case of Mr. Bollier, their evidence was self contradictory." (§ 45)
A Scenario Implausible on Its Face
"The evidence which we have considered up to this stage satisfies us beyond reasonable doubt that the cause of the disaster was the explosion of an improvised explosive device … and that the initiation of the explosion was triggered by the use of an MST-13 timer," wrote the three fudges. (§ 15)
Lockerbie experts, such as former CIA employee Robert Baer, have suspected that the MST-13 timer could have been given by the Stasi to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command [PFLP-GL], a terrorist group based in Syria, funded by Iran and led by the terrorist Ahmed Jibril.
The allegation deserves attention as it is well known that the two organizations had strong ties. Moreover, the archives of the Stasi reveal that the agency had infiltrated the Swedish government, and it is well documented that Jibril's close collaborators were operating from Sweden. Yet I never believed for a moment that the Lockerbie bomb had been triggered by a timer.
No terrorist would ever attempt to bomb an airliner with a timer-triggered bomb, and definitely not during the winter season, let alone at Christmas time, where the timetables are absolutely useless as delays are the norm rather than the exception.
Don't take my word for it. Terrorists such as Jibril and counter-terrorists such Noel Koch have stated that much.
"Explosives linked to an air pressure gauge, which would have detonated when the plane reached a certain altitude or to a timer would have been ineffective," Jibril said.
"I know all about the science of explosives. I am an engineer of explosives. I will argue this with any expert that the bomb went on board in London. I do not think the Libyans had anything to do with this."
Noel Koch headed the U.S. Defense Department's anti-terrorism office from 1981 to 1986. Koch ridiculed the idea that terrorists would gamble on the likelihood that unaccompanied luggage would be successfully transferred twice, first from Malta to Frankfurt, and then from Frankfurt to London.
"I can tell you this much that I know about terrorism: it's simple," Koch says. "You don't complicate life. Life's complicated enough as it is. If you've got a target you want to get as close as you can to it and you don't go through a series of permutations that provide opportunities for failure and that provide opportunities for discovery. It doesn't work that way."
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission
On Nov. 13, 1991, two Libyans were indicted for the murder of 270 people who died in the Lockerbie bombing. The indictment was the outcome of a three-year U.S.-U.K. joint investigation.
Although Libya never acknowledged responsibility in the matter, decade-long U.N. sanctions forced Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi to handover the two men accused of the worst act of terrorism in the U.K. On April 5, 1999, they were transferred to Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, where they were judged under Scottish Law.
On Jan. 31, 2001, a panel of three Scottish Judges acquitted one of them. They convicted the other for murder and sentenced him to life. Megrahi is serving his sentence in a prison near Glasgow.
Megrahi's appeal was rejected on March 14, 2002. The European Court of Human Rights declared his application inadmissible in July 2003.
In September 2003, he applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission [SCCRC] for a legal review of his conviction. His request was based on the legal test contained in section 106(3)(b) of Scotland's Criminal Procedure Act of 1995.
The provision states that an appeal may be made against "any alleged miscarriage of justice, which may include such a miscarriage based on … the jury's having returned a verdict which no reasonable jury, properly directed, could have returned."
On June 28, 2007, the SCCRC decided to grant Megrahi a second appeal and to refer his case to the High Court. An impressive 800-page long document stating the reasons for the decision has been sent to the High Court, the applicant, his solicitor and the Crown Office. Although the document is not available to the public, the commission has decided "to provide a fuller news release than normal."
Is it too much to ask why the "fuller news release than normal" lists only four of the six grounds that justify the commission's conclusion that a miscarriage of justice might have occurred?
As recently pointed out by Hans Koechler, who was an international observer appointed by the United Nations at the Lockerbie trial, we may also wonder "why a supposedly independent judicial review body [the SCCRC] would try to exonerate 'preventively' officials in a case which is being returned to the High Court for a second appeal because of suspicions of a miscarriage of justice."
Indeed, the SCCRC's statement that "the commission undertook extensive enquiries in this area but found nothing to support that allegation or to undermine the trial court's conclusions in respect of the fragment [of the MST-13 MeBo timer]" is rather difficult to justify.
Toward a Criminal Investigation?
Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the tragedy, describes the ruling on Megrahi as one of the most disgraceful miscarriages of justice in history, blaming both the Scottish legal system and U.S. intelligence.
"The Americans played their role in the investigation and influenced the prosecution," Swire told The Scotsman.
Top-level U.K. diplomats tend to agree with him, such as Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya.
"No court is likely get to the truth, now that various intelligence agencies have had the opportunity to corrupt the evidence," Miles told the BBC.
The spectacular decision of the SCCRC is certain to give a second life to the dozen of alternative theories of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Nearly two decades later, the case is back to square one.
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 U.K. 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 U.N. 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 p.m.), 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 p.m., 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. 7.
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.
And to those who seek the truth, I advise them to follow the drug trail on the road to Damascus.
Ludwig De Braeckeleer has a Ph.D. in nuclear sciences. He teaches physics and international humanitarian law. He blogs on The GaiaPost.
The following is a comment about this article posted on the Ohmynews website by Dr Hans Koechler:
Hans Koechler, 2007/09/07 00:40
This is a well researched analysis which precisely reveals the serious mistakes and omissions by the official Scottish investigators as well as the carelessness and lack of professionalism of the judges in the Lockerbie case. The Scottish judicial authorities are under the obligation to investigate possible criminal misconduct in the investigation and prosecution of the Lockerbie case.
Dr. Hans Koechler
University Professor
International observer, appointed by the United Nations, at the Lockerbie Trial in the Netherlands
Key Lockerbie Witness Admits Perjury
'I am sorry for the consequences of my silence at that time'
Ludwig De Braeckeleer
Published 2007-09-06 07:04 (KST)
[They] have eyes to see but do not see, ears to hear but do not hear …--Ezekiel 12:2
The Lockerbie Affair has taken yet another extraordinary twist. Last Friday I received from Edwin Bollier, head of the Zurich-based company MeBo AG, a copy of a German original of an affidavit.
The document is dated July 18, 2007, and signed by Ulrich Lumpert, who worked as an electronic engineer at MeBo from 1978 to 1994. I have scrutinized the document carefully and concluded that I have no reason to doubt its authenticity or the truthfulness of its content.
Lumpert was a key witness (No. 550) at the Camp Zeist trial, where a three-judge panel convicted a Libyan citizen of murdering the 270 people who died in the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.
In his testimony, Lumpert stated that "of the three pieces of hand-made prototypes MST-13 timer PC-boards, the third MST-13 PC-board was broken and [he] had thrown it away."
In his affidavit, certified by Officer Walter Wieland, Lumpert admits having committed perjury.
"I confirm today on July 18, 2007, that I stole the third hand-manufactured MST-13 timer PC-board consisting of eight layers of fiber-glass from MEBO Ltd. and gave it without permission on June 22, 1989, to a person officially investigating in the Lockerbie case," Lumpert wrote. (The identity of the official is known.)
"It did not escape me that the MST-13 fragment shown [at the Lockerbie trial] on the police photograph No. PT/35(b) came from the nonoperational MST-13 prototype PC-board that I had stolen," Lumpert added.
"I am sorry for the consequences of my silence at that time, for the innocent Libyan Mr. Abdelbaset Al Megrahi sentenced to life imprisonment, and for the country of Libya."
In just seven paragraphs, the Lumpert affidavit elucidates the longstanding mysteries surrounding the infamous MST-13 timer, which allegedly triggered the bomb that exploded Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie on Dec. 21, 1988.
The Discovery of the MST-13 Timer Fragment
In the months following the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, someone discovered a piece of a gray Slalom-brand shirt in a wooded area about 25 miles away from the town. According to a forensics expert, the cloth contained a tiny fragment -- 4 millimeters square -- of a circuit board. The testimony of three expert witnesses allowed the prosecutors to link this circuit board, described as part of the bomb trigger, to Megrahi.
There have been different accounts concerning the discovery of the timer fragment. A police source close to the investigation reported that it had been discovered by lovers. Some have said that it was picked up by a man walking his dog. Others have claimed that it was found by a policeman "combing the ground on his hands and knees."
At the trial, the third explanation became official. "On 13 January 1989, DC Gilchrist and DC McColm were engaged together in line searches in an area near Newcastleton. A piece of charred material was found by them, which was given the police number PI/995 and which subsequently became label 168."
The Alteration of the Label
The officer had initially labeled the bag "cloth (charred)" but had later overwritten the word "cloth" with "debris."
The bag contained pieces of a shirt collar and fragments of materials said to have been extracted from it, including the tiny piece of circuit board identified as coming from an MST-13 timer made by the Swiss firm MeBo.
"The original inscription on the label, which we are satisfied, was written by DC Gilchrist, was 'cloth (charred).' The word 'cloth' has been overwritten by the word 'debris.' There was no satisfactory explanation as to why this was done."
The judges said in their judgment that Gilchrist's evidence had been "at worst evasive and at best confusing."
Yet the judges went on to admit the evidence. "We are, however, satisfied that this item was indeed found in the area described, and DC McColm, who corroborated DC Gilchrist on the finding of the item, was not cross-examined about the detail of the finding of this item."
It has long been rumored that a senior former Scottish officer who worked at the highest level of the Lockerbie inquiry had signed a statement in which he claimed that evidence had been planted. U.K. media have confirmed the story. Thus, the Scottish officer has confirmed an allegation previously made by a former CIA agent. The identity of the officer remains secret and he is only known as "Golfer."
"Golfer" has told Megrahi's legal team that Gilchrist had told him that he had not been responsible for changing the label.
The New Page 51
According to documents obtained by the Scotland on Sunday, the entry of the discovery is recorded at widely different times by U.K. and German investigators. Moreover, a new page 51 has been inserted in the record of evidence.
During the Lockerbie investigation Thomas Hayes and Allan Feraday were working at the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) forensic laboratory at Fort Halstead in Kent.
Hayes was employed at the Royal Armament Research Development Establishment (RARDE). In 1995, RARDE was subsumed into the DERA. In 2001, part of DERA became the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL).
Hayes testified that he collected the tiny fragment of the circuit board on May 12, 1989. He testified that the fragment was green. (Keep in mind that the board stolen from Lumpert is brown.) His colleague, Alan Feraday, confirmed his story at the Zeist trial.
The record is inserted on a loose-leaf page with the five subsequent pages re-numbered by hand. Hayes could not provide a reasonable explanation for this rather strange entry, and yet the judges concluded that: "Pagination was of no materiality because each item that was examined had the date of examination incorporated into the notes."
The argument of the court is illogical as the index number Hayes gave to the piece is higher than some entry he made three months later.
And there is more. In September 1989 Feraday sent a Polaroid photograph of the piece and wrote in the attached memorandum that it was "the best he could do in such short time." So, are we supposed to believe that it takes forensic experts several months to take a Polaroid picture?
Hayes could not explain this. He merely suggested that the person to ask about it would be the author of the memorandum, Feraday.
This, however, was not done. At the young age of 43, Hayes resigned just a few months after the discovery of the timer fragment.
Based on the forensic evidence Hayes had supplied, an entire family (the Maguire Seven) was sent to jail in 1976. They were acquitted in appeal in 1992. Sir John May was appointed to review Hayes' forensic evidence.
"The whole scientific basis on which the prosecution in … [the trial of the alleged IRA Maguire Seven] was founded was in truth so vitiated that on this basis alone, the Court of Appeal should be invited to set aside the conviction," said May.
In Megrahi's case, Hayes did not even perform the basic test that would have established the presence of explosive residue on the sample. During the trial, he maintained that the fragment was too small, while it is factually established that his laboratory has performed such tests on smaller samples.
Had he performed such a test, no residue would have been found. As noted by Lumpert, the fragment shown at the Zeist trial belongs to a timer that was never connected to a relay. In other words, that timer never triggered a bomb.
Feraday's reputation is hardly better. In three separate cases where men were convicted on the basis of his forensic evidence, the initial ruling was overturned in appeal.
After one of these cases in 2005, a lord of justice said that Feraday should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in the field of electronics.
According to forensic scientist Michael Scott, who was interviewed in the documentary "The Maltese Double Cross -- Lockerbie," Feraday has no formal qualifications as a scientist.
The Identification of the MeBo Timer
Thomas Thurman worked for the FBI forensics laboratory in the late '80s and most of the '90s. Thurman has been publicly credited for identifying the fragment as part of a MST-13 timer produced by the Swiss company MeBo.
"When that identification was made, of the timer, I knew that we had it," Thurman told ABC in 1991. "Absolute, positively euphoria. I was on cloud nine."
Again, his record is far from pristine. The U.S. attorney general has accused him of having altered lab reports in a way that rendered subsequent prosecutions all but impossible. He has been transferred out of the FBI forensic laboratory.
"He's very aggressive, but I think he made some mistakes that needed to be brought to the attention of FBI management," said Frederic Whitehurst, a former FBI chemist who filed the complaints that led to the inspector general's report.
"We're not necessarily going to get the truth out of what we're doing here," Whitehurst concluded.
The story shed some light on his formation. The report says, "Williams and Thurman merit special censure for their work. It recommends that Thurman, who has a degree in political science, be reassigned outside the lab and that only scientists work in its explosives section."
And the legal experts were just as fake as their scientific counterparts. In late 1998 Glasgow University set up the Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit (LTBU) to provide impartial advice to the world media on the legal aspects of the complex and unique trial.
Andrew Fulton, a British diplomat, was appointed as a visiting law professor to head the Unit. Fulton has no legal experience whatsoever. Prior to his appointment as head of LTBU, Fulton was MI6 station chief in Washington, D.C.
The Modification of the MST-13 Timer Fragment
Forensic analysis of the circuit board fragment allowed the investigators to identify its origin. The timer, known as MST-13, is fabricated by a Swiss company named MeBo, which stands for Meister and Bollier.
The company has indeed sold about 20 MST-13 timers to the Libyan military (machine-made nine-ply green boards), as well as a few units (hand-made eight-ply brown boards) to a Research Institute in Bernau known to have acted as a front to the Stasi, the former East German secret police.
The two batches are very different but as early as 1991 Bollier told the Scottish investigators that he could not identify the timer from a photograph alone. Yet, the Libyans were indicted in November 1991 -- without Bollier ever having been allowed to see the actual fragment -- on the ground that the integrity of the evidence had to be protected.
But in 1998 Bollier obtained a copy of a blown-up photograph that Thurman had shown on ABC in 1991. Bollier could tell from certain characteristics that the fragment was part of a board of the timers made for East Germany and definitely not one of the timers delivered by him to Libya.
In September 1999 Bollier was finally allowed to see the fragment. Unlike the one shown by Thurman on ABC, this one was machine-made, like the one sold to Libya. But it was obvious from the absence of traces of solder that the timer had never been used to trigger a bomb.
"As far as I'm concerned, and I told this to … [Scottish prosecutor Miriam Watson], this is a manufactured fragment," Bollier says. "A fabricated fragment, never from a complete, functional timer."
The next day Bollier was shown the fragment once more. You may have already guessed that it now had the soldering traces. "It was different. I'm not crazy. It was different!" says Bollier.
Finally, at the trial Bollier was presented a fragment of a circuit board completely burnt down. Thus, it was no longer possible to identify to which country that timer had been delivered. When he requested to explain the significance of the issue, Lord Shuterland told him that his request was denied.
How did the judges account for all the mysterious changes in the appearance of the fragment? They simply dismissed Bollier as an unreliable witness.
"We have assessed carefully the evidence of these three witnesses about the activities of MeBo and in particular their evidence relating to the MST-13 timers, which the company made. All three, and notably Mr. Bollier, were shown to be unreliable witnesses. Earlier statements which they made to the police and judicial authorities were at times in conflict with each other and with the evidence they gave in court. On some occasions, particularly in the case of Mr. Bollier, their evidence was self contradictory." (§ 45)
A Scenario Implausible on Its Face
"The evidence which we have considered up to this stage satisfies us beyond reasonable doubt that the cause of the disaster was the explosion of an improvised explosive device … and that the initiation of the explosion was triggered by the use of an MST-13 timer," wrote the three fudges. (§ 15)
Lockerbie experts, such as former CIA employee Robert Baer, have suspected that the MST-13 timer could have been given by the Stasi to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command [PFLP-GL], a terrorist group based in Syria, funded by Iran and led by the terrorist Ahmed Jibril.
The allegation deserves attention as it is well known that the two organizations had strong ties. Moreover, the archives of the Stasi reveal that the agency had infiltrated the Swedish government, and it is well documented that Jibril's close collaborators were operating from Sweden. Yet I never believed for a moment that the Lockerbie bomb had been triggered by a timer.
No terrorist would ever attempt to bomb an airliner with a timer-triggered bomb, and definitely not during the winter season, let alone at Christmas time, where the timetables are absolutely useless as delays are the norm rather than the exception.
Don't take my word for it. Terrorists such as Jibril and counter-terrorists such Noel Koch have stated that much.
"Explosives linked to an air pressure gauge, which would have detonated when the plane reached a certain altitude or to a timer would have been ineffective," Jibril said.
"I know all about the science of explosives. I am an engineer of explosives. I will argue this with any expert that the bomb went on board in London. I do not think the Libyans had anything to do with this."
Noel Koch headed the U.S. Defense Department's anti-terrorism office from 1981 to 1986. Koch ridiculed the idea that terrorists would gamble on the likelihood that unaccompanied luggage would be successfully transferred twice, first from Malta to Frankfurt, and then from Frankfurt to London.
"I can tell you this much that I know about terrorism: it's simple," Koch says. "You don't complicate life. Life's complicated enough as it is. If you've got a target you want to get as close as you can to it and you don't go through a series of permutations that provide opportunities for failure and that provide opportunities for discovery. It doesn't work that way."
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission
On Nov. 13, 1991, two Libyans were indicted for the murder of 270 people who died in the Lockerbie bombing. The indictment was the outcome of a three-year U.S.-U.K. joint investigation.
Although Libya never acknowledged responsibility in the matter, decade-long U.N. sanctions forced Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi to handover the two men accused of the worst act of terrorism in the U.K. On April 5, 1999, they were transferred to Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, where they were judged under Scottish Law.
On Jan. 31, 2001, a panel of three Scottish Judges acquitted one of them. They convicted the other for murder and sentenced him to life. Megrahi is serving his sentence in a prison near Glasgow.
Megrahi's appeal was rejected on March 14, 2002. The European Court of Human Rights declared his application inadmissible in July 2003.
In September 2003, he applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission [SCCRC] for a legal review of his conviction. His request was based on the legal test contained in section 106(3)(b) of Scotland's Criminal Procedure Act of 1995.
The provision states that an appeal may be made against "any alleged miscarriage of justice, which may include such a miscarriage based on … the jury's having returned a verdict which no reasonable jury, properly directed, could have returned."
On June 28, 2007, the SCCRC decided to grant Megrahi a second appeal and to refer his case to the High Court. An impressive 800-page long document stating the reasons for the decision has been sent to the High Court, the applicant, his solicitor and the Crown Office. Although the document is not available to the public, the commission has decided "to provide a fuller news release than normal."
Is it too much to ask why the "fuller news release than normal" lists only four of the six grounds that justify the commission's conclusion that a miscarriage of justice might have occurred?
As recently pointed out by Hans Koechler, who was an international observer appointed by the United Nations at the Lockerbie trial, we may also wonder "why a supposedly independent judicial review body [the SCCRC] would try to exonerate 'preventively' officials in a case which is being returned to the High Court for a second appeal because of suspicions of a miscarriage of justice."
Indeed, the SCCRC's statement that "the commission undertook extensive enquiries in this area but found nothing to support that allegation or to undermine the trial court's conclusions in respect of the fragment [of the MST-13 MeBo timer]" is rather difficult to justify.
Toward a Criminal Investigation?
Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the tragedy, describes the ruling on Megrahi as one of the most disgraceful miscarriages of justice in history, blaming both the Scottish legal system and U.S. intelligence.
"The Americans played their role in the investigation and influenced the prosecution," Swire told The Scotsman.
Top-level U.K. diplomats tend to agree with him, such as Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya.
"No court is likely get to the truth, now that various intelligence agencies have had the opportunity to corrupt the evidence," Miles told the BBC.
The spectacular decision of the SCCRC is certain to give a second life to the dozen of alternative theories of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Nearly two decades later, the case is back to square one.
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 U.K. 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 U.N. 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 p.m.), 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 p.m., 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. 7.
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.
And to those who seek the truth, I advise them to follow the drug trail on the road to Damascus.
Ludwig De Braeckeleer has a Ph.D. in nuclear sciences. He teaches physics and international humanitarian law. He blogs on The GaiaPost.
The following is a comment about this article posted on the Ohmynews website by Dr Hans Koechler:
Hans Koechler, 2007/09/07 00:40
This is a well researched analysis which precisely reveals the serious mistakes and omissions by the official Scottish investigators as well as the carelessness and lack of professionalism of the judges in the Lockerbie case. The Scottish judicial authorities are under the obligation to investigate possible criminal misconduct in the investigation and prosecution of the Lockerbie case.
Dr. Hans Koechler
University Professor
International observer, appointed by the United Nations, at the Lockerbie Trial in the Netherlands
Wednesday, 5 September 2007
Scotland catches up
At last, a Scottish newspaper has run the Lumpert story:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1664337.0.0.php
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1664337.0.0.php
Sunday, 2 September 2007
Vital Lockerbie evidence 'was tampered with'
Fragments of bomb timer that helped to convict a Libyan ex-agent were 'practically carbonised' before the trial, says bankrupt Swiss businessman
Alex Duval Smith, Europe correspondent
Sunday September 2, 2007
The Observer
The key piece of material evidence used by prosecutors to implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing has emerged as a probable fake.
Nearly two decades after Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Scotland on 21 December, 1988, allegations of international political intrigue and shoddy investigative work are being levelled at the British government, the FBI and the Scottish police as one of the crucial witnesses, Swiss engineer Ulrich Lumpert, has apparently confessed that he lied about the origins of a crucial 'timer' - evidence that helped tie the man convicted of the bombing to the crime.
The disaster killed 270 people when the London to New York Boeing 747 exploded in mid-air. Britain and the US blamed Libya, saying that its leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, wanted revenge for the US bombing of Tripoli in 1986. At a trial in the Netherlands in 2001, former Libyan agent Abdulbaset al-Megrahi was jailed for life.
He is currently serving his sentence in Greenock prison, but later this month the Scottish Court of Appeal is expected to hear Megrahi's case, after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled in June that there was enough evidence to suggest a miscarriage of justice. Lumpert's confession, which was given to police in his home city of Zurich last week, will strengthen Megrahi's appeal.
The Zurich-based Swiss businessman Edwin Bollier, who has spent nearly two decades trying to clear his company's name, is as eager for the appeal as is Megrahi. Bollier's now bankrupt company, Mebo, manufactured the timer switch that prosecutors used to implicate Libya after they said that fragments of it had been found on a Scottish hillside.
Bollier, now 70, admits having done business with Libya. 'Two years before Lockerbie, we sold 20 MST-13 timers to the Libyan military. FBI agents and the Scottish investigators said one of those timers had been used to detonate the bomb. We were shown a fuzzy photograph and I confirmed the fragments looked as though they came from one of our timers.'
However, Bollier was uneasy with the photograph he had been shown and asked to see the fragments. He was finally given permission in 1998 and travelled to Dumfries to see the evidence.
'I was shown fragments of a brown circuit board which matched our prototype. But when the MST-13 went into production, the timers contained green boards. I knew that the timers sold to Libya had green boards. I told the investigators this.'
Back in Switzerland, Bollier's company was in effect bankrupt, having faced a lawsuit from Pan Am and having lost major clients, such as the German federal police to which Mebo supplied communications equipment.
In 2001, Bollier spent five days in the witness box at the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. 'I was a defence witness, but the trial was so skewed to prove Libyan involvement that the details of what I had to say was ignored. A photograph of the fragments was produced in court and I asked to see the pieces again. When they were brought to me, they were practically carbonised. They had been tampered with since I had seen them in Dumfries.'
Few people apart from conspiracy theorists and investigative journalists working on the case were prepared to believe Bollier until the end of last month, when Lumpert, one of his former employees, walked into a Zurich police station and asked to swear an affidavit before a notary.
Note by RB: There is no chance whatsoever that the Scottish Court of Criminal Appeal will hear Megrahi's appeal "later this month". September 2008 would be much more likely.
Alex Duval Smith, Europe correspondent
Sunday September 2, 2007
The Observer
The key piece of material evidence used by prosecutors to implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing has emerged as a probable fake.
Nearly two decades after Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Scotland on 21 December, 1988, allegations of international political intrigue and shoddy investigative work are being levelled at the British government, the FBI and the Scottish police as one of the crucial witnesses, Swiss engineer Ulrich Lumpert, has apparently confessed that he lied about the origins of a crucial 'timer' - evidence that helped tie the man convicted of the bombing to the crime.
The disaster killed 270 people when the London to New York Boeing 747 exploded in mid-air. Britain and the US blamed Libya, saying that its leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, wanted revenge for the US bombing of Tripoli in 1986. At a trial in the Netherlands in 2001, former Libyan agent Abdulbaset al-Megrahi was jailed for life.
He is currently serving his sentence in Greenock prison, but later this month the Scottish Court of Appeal is expected to hear Megrahi's case, after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled in June that there was enough evidence to suggest a miscarriage of justice. Lumpert's confession, which was given to police in his home city of Zurich last week, will strengthen Megrahi's appeal.
The Zurich-based Swiss businessman Edwin Bollier, who has spent nearly two decades trying to clear his company's name, is as eager for the appeal as is Megrahi. Bollier's now bankrupt company, Mebo, manufactured the timer switch that prosecutors used to implicate Libya after they said that fragments of it had been found on a Scottish hillside.
Bollier, now 70, admits having done business with Libya. 'Two years before Lockerbie, we sold 20 MST-13 timers to the Libyan military. FBI agents and the Scottish investigators said one of those timers had been used to detonate the bomb. We were shown a fuzzy photograph and I confirmed the fragments looked as though they came from one of our timers.'
However, Bollier was uneasy with the photograph he had been shown and asked to see the fragments. He was finally given permission in 1998 and travelled to Dumfries to see the evidence.
'I was shown fragments of a brown circuit board which matched our prototype. But when the MST-13 went into production, the timers contained green boards. I knew that the timers sold to Libya had green boards. I told the investigators this.'
Back in Switzerland, Bollier's company was in effect bankrupt, having faced a lawsuit from Pan Am and having lost major clients, such as the German federal police to which Mebo supplied communications equipment.
In 2001, Bollier spent five days in the witness box at the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. 'I was a defence witness, but the trial was so skewed to prove Libyan involvement that the details of what I had to say was ignored. A photograph of the fragments was produced in court and I asked to see the pieces again. When they were brought to me, they were practically carbonised. They had been tampered with since I had seen them in Dumfries.'
Few people apart from conspiracy theorists and investigative journalists working on the case were prepared to believe Bollier until the end of last month, when Lumpert, one of his former employees, walked into a Zurich police station and asked to swear an affidavit before a notary.
Note by RB: There is no chance whatsoever that the Scottish Court of Criminal Appeal will hear Megrahi's appeal "later this month". September 2008 would be much more likely.
Saturday, 1 September 2007
Welcome back, Safia
Safia Aoude, who for many years operated the most comprehensive Pan Am 103 website, has re-emerged with a Pan Am 103 news blog: http://panam103news.blogspot.com/
This is a most welcome development.
This is a most welcome development.
Wednesday, 29 August 2007
More on Lumpert
The following are links to press coverage of the Lumpert affidavit, including the article in Le Figaro which broke the story.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070827.FIG000000327_lockerbie_un_temoin_capital_affirme_avoir_menti.html
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=21895
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=nw20070827213616753C102824
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3212,36-948181,0.html?xtor=RSS-3208
http://mathaba.net/rss/?x=562264
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070827.FIG000000327_lockerbie_un_temoin_capital_affirme_avoir_menti.html
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=21895
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=nw20070827213616753C102824
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3212,36-948181,0.html?xtor=RSS-3208
http://mathaba.net/rss/?x=562264
The Lumpert Affidavit
Ulrich Lumpert, an engineer at one time employed by MEBO in Zurich, gave evidence at the Lockerbie trial that a fragment of circuit board allegedly found amongst the aircraft debris (and which was absolutely crucial to the prosecution contention that the bomb which destroyed Pan Am 103 was linked to Libya) was part of an operative MST-13 timer manufactured by MEBO. In an affidavit sworn in Switzerland in July 2007 (available on the website www.lockerbie.ch) Lumpert now states that the fragment produced in court was in fact part of a non-operational demonstration circuit board that he himself had removed from the premises of MEBO and had handed over to a Lockerbie investigator on 22 June 1989 (six months AFTER the destruction of Pan Am 103).
If this is true, then it totally demolishes the prosecution version of how the aircraft was destroyed, as well, of course, as demonstrating deliberate fabrication of evidence laid before the court.
At the forthcoming appeal resulting from the SCCRC’s report on the Megrahi conviction, will the appeal court have an opportunity to assess the truth of Lumpert’s revised version of events? The hurdles are formidable. Section 106 (3C) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 provides that an appeal may not be founded upon evidence from a witness at the original trial which is different from, or additional to, the evidence that he gave at that trial, unless there is a reasonable explanation as to why the new evidence was not given by him at the original trial and that explanation is itself supported by independent evidence. In this context “independent evidence” means evidence which was not heard at the original trial; which comes from a source other than the witness himself; and which is accepted by the appeal court as credible and reliable. It might well be extremely difficult to convince a court that these conditions were satisfied in Lumpert’s case.
What follows is the text of a press release regarding Lumpert’s affidavit from Professor Hans Koechler, who was one of the official UN-appointed observers at the Lockerbie trial:
(http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie-report.htm)
I.P.O. Information Service
Lockerbie case: new accusations of manipulation of key forensic evidence
Statement of Dr. Hans Koechler, international observer appointed by the United Nations at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands (2000-2002), on a key witness’s admission of perjury in the Lockerbie Trial
Vienna, Austria, 28 August 2007 P/RE/20559c-is
On 4 August 2007 Dr. Hans Koechler received from Mr. Edwin Bollier, head of the Swiss-based company MEBO AG, a copy of the German original of an Affidavit, dated 18 July 2007 and signed by Mr. Ulrich Lumpert, former employee (electronics engineer) of MEBO AG, Zurich, related to the Lockerbie case. In a statement released today, Dr. Hans Koechler, who has followed the Lockerbie proceedings since the beginning of the trial in the Netherlands in May 2000, highlighted basic aspects and questions of this new revelation that appear to be of relevance not only in connection with the upcoming second appeal of the convicted Libyan national, but also for new prosecutorial action ex officio by the Scottish authorities.
In his affidavit Mr. Lumpert implicitly admits having committed perjury as witness No. 550 before the Scottish Court in the Netherlands. He states (Par. 2) that he has stolen a handmade (by him) sample of an “MST-13 Timer PC-board” from MEBO company in Zurich and handed it over, on 22 June 1989 (!), to an “official person investigating the Lockerbie case.” He further states (in Par. 5) that the fragment of the MST-13 timer, cut into two pieces for “supposedly forensic reasons,” which was presented in Court as vital part of evidence, stemmed from the piece which he had stolen and handed over to an investigator in 1989. He further states that when he became aware that this piece was used for an “intentional politically motivated criminal undertaking” (vorsätzliche politisch kriminelle “Machenschaft”) he decided, out of fear for his life, to keep silent on the matter.
The rather late admission of Mr. Lumpert is consistent with an earlier revelation in the British and Scottish media according to which a former Scottish police officer (whose identity has not yet been disclosed to the public) stated “that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan” for the bombing of the Pan Am jet (Scotland on Sunday, 28 August 2005).
Upon receipt of the document, Dr. Koechler informed the owner of MEBO AG on 7 August 2007 that Mr. Lumpert will have to submit his affidavit under oath before the competent judicial authorities of Scotland. In the meantime (22 August 2007), the owner of MEBO AG has requested the Scottish judicial authorities – by way of the Swiss Prosecutor’s office and on the basis of the agreement on mutual judicial assistance between the UK and Switzerland – to investigate the alleged criminal manipulations referred to in Mr. Lumpert’s statement.
In his capacity as UN-appointed observer of the Lockerbie trial, Dr. Hans Koechler has repeatedly raised the issue of the timer fragment and expressed his amazement at the Defense team’s refusal to look into the matter during Mr. Megrahi’s appeal when questions as to the reliability of forensic evidence had already been raised. (See Dr. Koechler’s appeal report, Par. 10 [c] of 26 March 2002; his statement of 23 August 2003, Par. 10; and his statement of 14 October 2005, Par. 2.)
It is to be recalled that, as witness before the Lockerbie court, Mr. Edwin Bollier had raised the issue of the manipulation of the timer fragments, but was brusquely interrupted in his testimony by the presiding Judge and prevented from giving further information in this matter.
In the meantime (information received on 26 August 2007), Mr. Lumpert has revised part of his Affidavit (Par. 5); he now states that the letter “M” on the timer fragment (supposedly for the German word Muster: sample), unlike previously stated, has been engraved by himself. In view of this and earlier statements, Mr. Lumpert’s credibility will have to be assessed very carefully by the competent judicial authorities and he will have to be made aware of the consequences, in terms of criminal law, of lying to the Court.
At the same time, the credibility of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is also at stake. In its News Release of 28 June 2007, in which it had announced the referral of Mr. Al-Megrahi’s case to the Scottish High Court for a second appeal, the SCCRC found it necessary to “absolve” the investigating authorities of any suspicion of wrongdoing. Should Mr. Lumpert’s confession be proven to be true, the SCCRC’s statement – “The Commission undertook extensive enquiries in this area but found nothing to support that allegation or to undermine the trial court’s conclusions in respect of the fragment” – will appear highly questionable, even dubious. The public will have to ask why a supposedly independent judicial review body would try to exonerate “preventively” officials in a case which is being returned to the High Court for a second appeal because of suspicions of a miscarriage of justice. If it is indeed the rule of law that governs the Scottish polity, the Scottish judicial authorities will have to deal with this new revelation ex officio– independently of how the appeal court in Mr. Megrahi’s case will evaluate this witness’s confession of perjury.
Those responsible for the midair explosion of PanAm flight 103 will have to be identified and brought to justice. If there was any wrongdoing, criminal and/or due to incompetence, of the judicial authorities in the investigation and prosecution of the Lockerbie case, this will also have to be dealt with through proper procedures of criminal law. A continuation of the rather obvious cover-up which we have witnessed up until now is neither acceptable for the citizens of Scotland nor for the international public, Dr. Koechler stated.
*
Dr. Koechler's Lockerbie trial report (http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie-report.htm)
*
Dr. Koechler's Lockerbie appeal report of 26 March 2002
(http://i-p-o.org/koechler-lockerbie-appeal_report.htm)
*
Dr. Koechler's statement of 23 August 2003 on the agreements between the UK, the USA and Libya (http://i-p-o.org/koechler-lockerbie-statement-aug2003.htm)
*
Dr. Koechler's statement on new Lockerbie revelations of 14 October 2005
(http://i-p-o.org/nr-lockerbie-14Oct05.htm)
*
Dr. Koechler's statement on the referral of the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi to the High Court of Justiciary
(http://i-p-o.org/koechler-lockerbie-referral-29June2007.htm)
*
Web Site of the Lockerbie Observer Mission of Dr. Hans Koechler
(http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie_observer_mission.htm)
END/Lockerbie case: new accusations of manipulation of key forensic evidence/2007-07-04/20559c-is
International Progress Organization
Enquiries: _info@i-p-o.org_ (mailto:info@i-p-o.org) , fax +43-1-5332962, postal address: A-1010 Vienna, Kohlmarkt 4, Austria
(http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie-report.htm)
If this is true, then it totally demolishes the prosecution version of how the aircraft was destroyed, as well, of course, as demonstrating deliberate fabrication of evidence laid before the court.
At the forthcoming appeal resulting from the SCCRC’s report on the Megrahi conviction, will the appeal court have an opportunity to assess the truth of Lumpert’s revised version of events? The hurdles are formidable. Section 106 (3C) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 provides that an appeal may not be founded upon evidence from a witness at the original trial which is different from, or additional to, the evidence that he gave at that trial, unless there is a reasonable explanation as to why the new evidence was not given by him at the original trial and that explanation is itself supported by independent evidence. In this context “independent evidence” means evidence which was not heard at the original trial; which comes from a source other than the witness himself; and which is accepted by the appeal court as credible and reliable. It might well be extremely difficult to convince a court that these conditions were satisfied in Lumpert’s case.
What follows is the text of a press release regarding Lumpert’s affidavit from Professor Hans Koechler, who was one of the official UN-appointed observers at the Lockerbie trial:
(http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie-report.htm)
I.P.O. Information Service
Lockerbie case: new accusations of manipulation of key forensic evidence
Statement of Dr. Hans Koechler, international observer appointed by the United Nations at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands (2000-2002), on a key witness’s admission of perjury in the Lockerbie Trial
Vienna, Austria, 28 August 2007 P/RE/20559c-is
On 4 August 2007 Dr. Hans Koechler received from Mr. Edwin Bollier, head of the Swiss-based company MEBO AG, a copy of the German original of an Affidavit, dated 18 July 2007 and signed by Mr. Ulrich Lumpert, former employee (electronics engineer) of MEBO AG, Zurich, related to the Lockerbie case. In a statement released today, Dr. Hans Koechler, who has followed the Lockerbie proceedings since the beginning of the trial in the Netherlands in May 2000, highlighted basic aspects and questions of this new revelation that appear to be of relevance not only in connection with the upcoming second appeal of the convicted Libyan national, but also for new prosecutorial action ex officio by the Scottish authorities.
In his affidavit Mr. Lumpert implicitly admits having committed perjury as witness No. 550 before the Scottish Court in the Netherlands. He states (Par. 2) that he has stolen a handmade (by him) sample of an “MST-13 Timer PC-board” from MEBO company in Zurich and handed it over, on 22 June 1989 (!), to an “official person investigating the Lockerbie case.” He further states (in Par. 5) that the fragment of the MST-13 timer, cut into two pieces for “supposedly forensic reasons,” which was presented in Court as vital part of evidence, stemmed from the piece which he had stolen and handed over to an investigator in 1989. He further states that when he became aware that this piece was used for an “intentional politically motivated criminal undertaking” (vorsätzliche politisch kriminelle “Machenschaft”) he decided, out of fear for his life, to keep silent on the matter.
The rather late admission of Mr. Lumpert is consistent with an earlier revelation in the British and Scottish media according to which a former Scottish police officer (whose identity has not yet been disclosed to the public) stated “that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan” for the bombing of the Pan Am jet (Scotland on Sunday, 28 August 2005).
Upon receipt of the document, Dr. Koechler informed the owner of MEBO AG on 7 August 2007 that Mr. Lumpert will have to submit his affidavit under oath before the competent judicial authorities of Scotland. In the meantime (22 August 2007), the owner of MEBO AG has requested the Scottish judicial authorities – by way of the Swiss Prosecutor’s office and on the basis of the agreement on mutual judicial assistance between the UK and Switzerland – to investigate the alleged criminal manipulations referred to in Mr. Lumpert’s statement.
In his capacity as UN-appointed observer of the Lockerbie trial, Dr. Hans Koechler has repeatedly raised the issue of the timer fragment and expressed his amazement at the Defense team’s refusal to look into the matter during Mr. Megrahi’s appeal when questions as to the reliability of forensic evidence had already been raised. (See Dr. Koechler’s appeal report, Par. 10 [c] of 26 March 2002; his statement of 23 August 2003, Par. 10; and his statement of 14 October 2005, Par. 2.)
It is to be recalled that, as witness before the Lockerbie court, Mr. Edwin Bollier had raised the issue of the manipulation of the timer fragments, but was brusquely interrupted in his testimony by the presiding Judge and prevented from giving further information in this matter.
In the meantime (information received on 26 August 2007), Mr. Lumpert has revised part of his Affidavit (Par. 5); he now states that the letter “M” on the timer fragment (supposedly for the German word Muster: sample), unlike previously stated, has been engraved by himself. In view of this and earlier statements, Mr. Lumpert’s credibility will have to be assessed very carefully by the competent judicial authorities and he will have to be made aware of the consequences, in terms of criminal law, of lying to the Court.
At the same time, the credibility of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is also at stake. In its News Release of 28 June 2007, in which it had announced the referral of Mr. Al-Megrahi’s case to the Scottish High Court for a second appeal, the SCCRC found it necessary to “absolve” the investigating authorities of any suspicion of wrongdoing. Should Mr. Lumpert’s confession be proven to be true, the SCCRC’s statement – “The Commission undertook extensive enquiries in this area but found nothing to support that allegation or to undermine the trial court’s conclusions in respect of the fragment” – will appear highly questionable, even dubious. The public will have to ask why a supposedly independent judicial review body would try to exonerate “preventively” officials in a case which is being returned to the High Court for a second appeal because of suspicions of a miscarriage of justice. If it is indeed the rule of law that governs the Scottish polity, the Scottish judicial authorities will have to deal with this new revelation ex officio– independently of how the appeal court in Mr. Megrahi’s case will evaluate this witness’s confession of perjury.
Those responsible for the midair explosion of PanAm flight 103 will have to be identified and brought to justice. If there was any wrongdoing, criminal and/or due to incompetence, of the judicial authorities in the investigation and prosecution of the Lockerbie case, this will also have to be dealt with through proper procedures of criminal law. A continuation of the rather obvious cover-up which we have witnessed up until now is neither acceptable for the citizens of Scotland nor for the international public, Dr. Koechler stated.
*
Dr. Koechler's Lockerbie trial report (http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie-report.htm)
*
Dr. Koechler's Lockerbie appeal report of 26 March 2002
(http://i-p-o.org/koechler-lockerbie-appeal_report.htm)
*
Dr. Koechler's statement of 23 August 2003 on the agreements between the UK, the USA and Libya (http://i-p-o.org/koechler-lockerbie-statement-aug2003.htm)
*
Dr. Koechler's statement on new Lockerbie revelations of 14 October 2005
(http://i-p-o.org/nr-lockerbie-14Oct05.htm)
*
Dr. Koechler's statement on the referral of the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi to the High Court of Justiciary
(http://i-p-o.org/koechler-lockerbie-referral-29June2007.htm)
*
Web Site of the Lockerbie Observer Mission of Dr. Hans Koechler
(http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie_observer_mission.htm)
END/Lockerbie case: new accusations of manipulation of key forensic evidence/2007-07-04/20559c-is
International Progress Organization
Enquiries: _info@i-p-o.org_ (mailto:info@i-p-o.org) , fax +43-1-5332962, postal address: A-1010 Vienna, Kohlmarkt 4, Austria
(http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie-report.htm)
Sunday, 5 August 2007
Trust no-one, believe nothing
This is the title of a powerful and compelling article by Ian Bell in the Sunday Herald of 5 August 2007. See
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12770175.Trust_no_one__believe_nothing/
Bell makes interesting comparisons between the behaviour of the authorities in the Lockerbie affair and in the shooting in London of Jean Charles de Menezes.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/12770175.Trust_no_one__believe_nothing/
Bell makes interesting comparisons between the behaviour of the authorities in the Lockerbie affair and in the shooting in London of Jean Charles de Menezes.
Friday, 3 August 2007
Bid to restore Scottish legal reputation
[This is the headline over an article published in The Sunday Post on 29 July 2007. It reads as follows:]
Foreign judges for al-Megrahi appeal
By Paul Johnson
AN MSP wants the court hearing the Lockerbie bomber’s appeal to include at least two international judges.He says it’s a bid to restore the reputation of the Scottish legal system.The call came in a letter from SNP backbencher Alex Neil to the Lord President of the Court of Session, Lord Hamilton on Thursday. He claims his idea has the support of Lockerbie campaigner Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died in the bombing, plus former MP Tam Dalyell and Iain McKie, father of “fingerprint case detective” Shirley.
It also has the backing of Professor Robert Black, who originally suggested holding the trial in a neutral country.
Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was jailed in 2001 for the 1988 atrocity. But the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission recently said he could go ahead with a second appeal.
Supportive
Mr Neil said, “I haven’t discussed my letter with Executive members, but Tam Dalyell, Iain McKie and Jim Swire are all very supportive. “If you look through the report of the Review Commission there are a lot of unanswered questions about due process and justice at the original trial. This brings into serious question aspects of the Scottish legal system.”
Mr Neil claimed the conduct of the McKie and Lockerbie cases has damaged the system’s international standing.“I know people in the US who are very critical about what has happened,” he added. “There’s a need to re-establish the criminal justice system’s reputation.“The world’s eyes will be on the appeal, so it’s critical justice is done and seen to be done.“I feel people have been complacent about the effectiveness of the system because it has always been held up as something to admire.“Those romantic memories of yesteryear will not sustain us tomorrow.”
Edinburgh University professor Robert Black is credited with drawing up procedures for the original trial which convinced Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi to hand over the accused men.
Neutral venue
He said last night, “My January 1994 proposal for a non-jury trial in a neutral venue suggested foreign judges should be involved with a Scot presiding. But the UK Government insisted all the judges should be Scottish.“I still think including foreign judges is a good idea.” There is no precedent for this but Prof Black says it could be possible to extend the categories of people who can become temporary judges in the High Court to include foreign judges.“I think it would require legislation in the Scottish Parliament which would be easy to draft. The question is whether it would have majority support.”
A Justice Department spokesman said, “The priority is to allow the legal process to follow its natural course. This is very much a matter between Mr Neil and the Lord President.” Tam Dalyell said, “I’ve been calling for an international element to the appeal hearing for some time. If not judges, what they might want to do is have some international observers.”
At al-Megrahi’s first appeal in 2002 a panel of five judges met at the special Scottish court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, led by then Lord President Lord Cullen
Foreign judges for al-Megrahi appeal
By Paul Johnson
AN MSP wants the court hearing the Lockerbie bomber’s appeal to include at least two international judges.He says it’s a bid to restore the reputation of the Scottish legal system.The call came in a letter from SNP backbencher Alex Neil to the Lord President of the Court of Session, Lord Hamilton on Thursday. He claims his idea has the support of Lockerbie campaigner Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died in the bombing, plus former MP Tam Dalyell and Iain McKie, father of “fingerprint case detective” Shirley.
It also has the backing of Professor Robert Black, who originally suggested holding the trial in a neutral country.
Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was jailed in 2001 for the 1988 atrocity. But the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission recently said he could go ahead with a second appeal.
Supportive
Mr Neil said, “I haven’t discussed my letter with Executive members, but Tam Dalyell, Iain McKie and Jim Swire are all very supportive. “If you look through the report of the Review Commission there are a lot of unanswered questions about due process and justice at the original trial. This brings into serious question aspects of the Scottish legal system.”
Mr Neil claimed the conduct of the McKie and Lockerbie cases has damaged the system’s international standing.“I know people in the US who are very critical about what has happened,” he added. “There’s a need to re-establish the criminal justice system’s reputation.“The world’s eyes will be on the appeal, so it’s critical justice is done and seen to be done.“I feel people have been complacent about the effectiveness of the system because it has always been held up as something to admire.“Those romantic memories of yesteryear will not sustain us tomorrow.”
Edinburgh University professor Robert Black is credited with drawing up procedures for the original trial which convinced Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi to hand over the accused men.
Neutral venue
He said last night, “My January 1994 proposal for a non-jury trial in a neutral venue suggested foreign judges should be involved with a Scot presiding. But the UK Government insisted all the judges should be Scottish.“I still think including foreign judges is a good idea.” There is no precedent for this but Prof Black says it could be possible to extend the categories of people who can become temporary judges in the High Court to include foreign judges.“I think it would require legislation in the Scottish Parliament which would be easy to draft. The question is whether it would have majority support.”
A Justice Department spokesman said, “The priority is to allow the legal process to follow its natural course. This is very much a matter between Mr Neil and the Lord President.” Tam Dalyell said, “I’ve been calling for an international element to the appeal hearing for some time. If not judges, what they might want to do is have some international observers.”
At al-Megrahi’s first appeal in 2002 a panel of five judges met at the special Scottish court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, led by then Lord President Lord Cullen
Wednesday, 25 July 2007
Article in The Scotsman on 23 July 2007
The fairy story of the Crown's independence
ROBERT BLACK
At the end of June, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) referred Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi's conviction of the Lockerbie bombing back to the High Court of Justiciary for a further appeal. The case had been under consideration by the SCCRC since September 2003 and its statement of reasons (available only to Megrahi, the Crown and the High Court) extends to more than 800 pages, accompanied by 13 volumes of appendices. The commission, in the published summary of its findings, rejected submissions on behalf of Megrahi to the effect that evidence led at the trial had been fabricated and that he had been inadequately represented by his then legal team, but went on to indicate there were six grounds on which it had concluded a miscarriage of justice might have occurred.
Strangely, only four of these grounds are enumerated in the summary. They are:
• That there was no reasonable basis for the trial court's conclusion that the date of purchase of the clothes which surrounded the bomb was 7 December 1988, the only date on which Megrahi was proved to have been on Malta and so could have purchased them. The finding that he was the purchaser was "important to the verdict against him".
• That evidence not heard at the trial about the date on which Christmas lights were switched on in Malta further undermined the trial court's conclusion that the date of purchase was as late as 7 December.
• That evidence was not made available to the defence that four days before the shopkeeper made a tentative identification of Megrahi at an ID parade he had seen a magazine article containing a photograph of Megrahi, linking him to the bombing.
• That other evidence which undermined the shopkeeper's identification of Megrahi and the finding as to the date of purchase was not made available to the defence.
The reasons given by the commission for finding that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred in this case are not limited to the effect of new evidence which has become available since the date of the original trial and the non-disclosure by the police and prosecution of evidence helpful to the defence. The prima facie miscarriage of justice identified by the commission includes the trial court's finding in fact on the evidence heard at the trial that the clothes which surrounded the bomb were purchased in Malta on 7 December 1988 and that Megrahi was the purchaser. This was the cornerstone of the Crown's case against him. If, as suggested, that finding had no reasonable basis in the evidence, then there is no legal justification for his conviction.
I have always contended that no reasonable tribunal could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence led. Here is one example of the trial court's idiosyncratic approach to the evidence. Many more could be provided.
A vitally important issue was the date on which the goods that surrounded the bomb were purchased in Malta. There were only two live possibilities: 7 December 1988, a date when Megrahi was proved to be on Malta, and 23 November 1988, when he was not. In an attempt to establish just which of these dates was correct, the weather conditions in Sliema on those two days were explored. Shopkeeper Tony Gauci's evidence was that when the purchaser left his shop it was raining so heavily his customer thought it advisable to buy an umbrella to protect himself while he went in search of a taxi. The unchallenged meteorological evidence led by the defence established that, while it had rained on 23 November at the relevant time, it was unlikely to have rained at all on 7 December and, if there had been any rain, it would have been at most a few drops, insufficient to wet the ground. On this material, the judges found in fact that the clothes were purchased on 7 December.
On evidence as weak as this, how was it possible for the trial court to find him guilty? And how was it possible for the appeal court to fail to overturn the conviction? The Criminal Appeal Court dismissed Megrahi's appeal on the most technical of technical legal grounds: it did not consider the justifiability of the trial court's factual findings at all (though it is clear from their interventions during the Crown submissions in the appeal that at least some of the judges were only too well aware of how shaky certain crucial findings were and how contrary to the weight of the evidence).
I contend that at least part of the answer lies in the history of the Scottish legal and judicial system. For centuries courts have accorded a specially privileged status to the Lord Advocate. It has been unquestioningly accepted that, though a political appointee and the government's (now the Executive's) chief legal adviser, he (now she) would at all times, in his capacity as head of the prosecution system, act independently, without concern for political considerations, and would always place the public interest in a fair trial above the narrow interest of the prosecution in gaining a conviction. This vision of the role of the Lord Advocate was reinforced by the fact that, until the Scottish Judicial Appointments Board commenced operations in 2002, all Scottish High Court Judges (and sheriffs) were nominated for appointment to the Bench by the Lord Advocate of the day. This meant that, in all criminal proceedings, the presiding judge owed his position to the person (or one of his predecessors in office) who was ultimately responsible for bringing the case before him, and for its conduct while in his court.
The behaviour of the Crown in the Lockerbie trial was certainly not beyond criticism - and indeed it casts grave doubt on the extent to which the Lord Advocate and Crown Office staff can be relied on always to place the interest of securing a fair trial for the accused above any perceived institutional imperative to obtain a conviction.
To illustrate this in the context of the Lockerbie trial, it is enough to refer to the saga of CIA cables relating to the star Crown witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, who had been a long-standing CIA asset in Libya and, by the time of the trial, was living in the US in a witness protection programme. Giaka's evidence was ultimately found by the court to be utterly untrustworthy. This was largely due to the devastating effectiveness of the cross-examination by defence counsel. Their ability to destroy completely the credibility of the witness stemmed from the contents of cables in which his CIA handlers communicated to headquarters the information that Giaka had provided to them in the course of their secret meetings. Discrepancies between Giaka's evidence-in-chief to the Advocate Depute and the contents of these contemporaneous cables enabled the defence to mount a formidable challenge to the truthfulness and accuracy, or credibility and reliability, of Giaka's testimony. Had the information contained in these cables not been available to them, the task of attempting to demonstrate to the court that Giaka was an incredible or unreliable witness would have been more difficult, and perhaps impossible.
Yet the Crown strove valiantly to prevent the defence obtaining access to these cables. At the trial, on 22 August 2000, when he was seeking to persuade the Court to deny the defence access to those cables in their unedited or uncensored form, the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, stated that the members of the prosecution team who were given access to the uncensored CIA cables on 1 June 2000 were fully aware of the obligation incumbent upon them as prosecutors to make available to the defence material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, approached the contents of those cables with certain considerations in mind.
Boyd said: "First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions which would undermine the Crown case in any way. Second, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Majid... On all of these matters, the learned Advocate Depute reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special defence... I emphasise that the redactions have been made on the basis of what is in the interests of the security of a friendly power... Crown counsel was satisfied that there was nothing within the documents which bore upon the defence case in any way."
One judge, Lord Coulsfield, then intervened: "Does that include, Lord Advocate... that Crown counsel, having considered the documents, can say to the Court that there is nothing concealed which could possibly bear on the credibility of this witness?"
The Lord Advocate replied: "Well, I'm just checking with the counsel who made that... there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Majid on these matters."
Notwithstanding the opposition of the Lord Advocate, the court ordered the unedited cables to be made available to the defence, who went on to use their contents to such devastating effect in questioning Giaka that the court held that his evidence had to be disregarded in its entirety. Yet, strangely enough, the judges did not see fit publicly to censure the Crown for its inaccurate assurances that the cables contained nothing that could assist the defence.
Beyond the Lockerbie trial, the failure of the Crown to place the public interest in a fair trial above the interest of the prosecution in obtaining convictions is illustrated by the extent to which the Lord Advocate has recently had to be dragged through the Privy Council in London before making available to the defence material in the prosecution's possession that no-one could conceivably deny was of relevance and assistance in the accused person's defence. So much for the fairness of the trial being the Crown's primary and predominant motivation!
It is surely time for all involved in the Scottish criminal justice system to put away childish things. We are all of us, judges included, surely too old to believe any longer in fairytales. Fairytales can be convenient and comforting and can bolster our self esteem. But, as in the case of the belief that the Crown can uniformly be relied upon always to act selflessly in the public interest, they can be dangerous and, if acted upon, work terrible injustice.
It is submitted that the Lockerbie case demonstrates just how necessary it is, if public confidence is to be maintained, for the Scottish Executive to institute a high-powered independent investigation into all three aspects - investigation, prosecution and adjudication - of the Scottish criminal justice system, as has already been called for by, among others, Dr Jim Swire, Tam Dalyell and Professor Hans Koechler, the UN observer at the Lockerbie trial.
• Robert Black, QC, FRSE, is Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh.
ROBERT BLACK
At the end of June, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) referred Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi's conviction of the Lockerbie bombing back to the High Court of Justiciary for a further appeal. The case had been under consideration by the SCCRC since September 2003 and its statement of reasons (available only to Megrahi, the Crown and the High Court) extends to more than 800 pages, accompanied by 13 volumes of appendices. The commission, in the published summary of its findings, rejected submissions on behalf of Megrahi to the effect that evidence led at the trial had been fabricated and that he had been inadequately represented by his then legal team, but went on to indicate there were six grounds on which it had concluded a miscarriage of justice might have occurred.
Strangely, only four of these grounds are enumerated in the summary. They are:
• That there was no reasonable basis for the trial court's conclusion that the date of purchase of the clothes which surrounded the bomb was 7 December 1988, the only date on which Megrahi was proved to have been on Malta and so could have purchased them. The finding that he was the purchaser was "important to the verdict against him".
• That evidence not heard at the trial about the date on which Christmas lights were switched on in Malta further undermined the trial court's conclusion that the date of purchase was as late as 7 December.
• That evidence was not made available to the defence that four days before the shopkeeper made a tentative identification of Megrahi at an ID parade he had seen a magazine article containing a photograph of Megrahi, linking him to the bombing.
• That other evidence which undermined the shopkeeper's identification of Megrahi and the finding as to the date of purchase was not made available to the defence.
The reasons given by the commission for finding that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred in this case are not limited to the effect of new evidence which has become available since the date of the original trial and the non-disclosure by the police and prosecution of evidence helpful to the defence. The prima facie miscarriage of justice identified by the commission includes the trial court's finding in fact on the evidence heard at the trial that the clothes which surrounded the bomb were purchased in Malta on 7 December 1988 and that Megrahi was the purchaser. This was the cornerstone of the Crown's case against him. If, as suggested, that finding had no reasonable basis in the evidence, then there is no legal justification for his conviction.
I have always contended that no reasonable tribunal could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence led. Here is one example of the trial court's idiosyncratic approach to the evidence. Many more could be provided.
A vitally important issue was the date on which the goods that surrounded the bomb were purchased in Malta. There were only two live possibilities: 7 December 1988, a date when Megrahi was proved to be on Malta, and 23 November 1988, when he was not. In an attempt to establish just which of these dates was correct, the weather conditions in Sliema on those two days were explored. Shopkeeper Tony Gauci's evidence was that when the purchaser left his shop it was raining so heavily his customer thought it advisable to buy an umbrella to protect himself while he went in search of a taxi. The unchallenged meteorological evidence led by the defence established that, while it had rained on 23 November at the relevant time, it was unlikely to have rained at all on 7 December and, if there had been any rain, it would have been at most a few drops, insufficient to wet the ground. On this material, the judges found in fact that the clothes were purchased on 7 December.
On evidence as weak as this, how was it possible for the trial court to find him guilty? And how was it possible for the appeal court to fail to overturn the conviction? The Criminal Appeal Court dismissed Megrahi's appeal on the most technical of technical legal grounds: it did not consider the justifiability of the trial court's factual findings at all (though it is clear from their interventions during the Crown submissions in the appeal that at least some of the judges were only too well aware of how shaky certain crucial findings were and how contrary to the weight of the evidence).
I contend that at least part of the answer lies in the history of the Scottish legal and judicial system. For centuries courts have accorded a specially privileged status to the Lord Advocate. It has been unquestioningly accepted that, though a political appointee and the government's (now the Executive's) chief legal adviser, he (now she) would at all times, in his capacity as head of the prosecution system, act independently, without concern for political considerations, and would always place the public interest in a fair trial above the narrow interest of the prosecution in gaining a conviction. This vision of the role of the Lord Advocate was reinforced by the fact that, until the Scottish Judicial Appointments Board commenced operations in 2002, all Scottish High Court Judges (and sheriffs) were nominated for appointment to the Bench by the Lord Advocate of the day. This meant that, in all criminal proceedings, the presiding judge owed his position to the person (or one of his predecessors in office) who was ultimately responsible for bringing the case before him, and for its conduct while in his court.
The behaviour of the Crown in the Lockerbie trial was certainly not beyond criticism - and indeed it casts grave doubt on the extent to which the Lord Advocate and Crown Office staff can be relied on always to place the interest of securing a fair trial for the accused above any perceived institutional imperative to obtain a conviction.
To illustrate this in the context of the Lockerbie trial, it is enough to refer to the saga of CIA cables relating to the star Crown witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, who had been a long-standing CIA asset in Libya and, by the time of the trial, was living in the US in a witness protection programme. Giaka's evidence was ultimately found by the court to be utterly untrustworthy. This was largely due to the devastating effectiveness of the cross-examination by defence counsel. Their ability to destroy completely the credibility of the witness stemmed from the contents of cables in which his CIA handlers communicated to headquarters the information that Giaka had provided to them in the course of their secret meetings. Discrepancies between Giaka's evidence-in-chief to the Advocate Depute and the contents of these contemporaneous cables enabled the defence to mount a formidable challenge to the truthfulness and accuracy, or credibility and reliability, of Giaka's testimony. Had the information contained in these cables not been available to them, the task of attempting to demonstrate to the court that Giaka was an incredible or unreliable witness would have been more difficult, and perhaps impossible.
Yet the Crown strove valiantly to prevent the defence obtaining access to these cables. At the trial, on 22 August 2000, when he was seeking to persuade the Court to deny the defence access to those cables in their unedited or uncensored form, the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, stated that the members of the prosecution team who were given access to the uncensored CIA cables on 1 June 2000 were fully aware of the obligation incumbent upon them as prosecutors to make available to the defence material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, approached the contents of those cables with certain considerations in mind.
Boyd said: "First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions which would undermine the Crown case in any way. Second, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Majid... On all of these matters, the learned Advocate Depute reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special defence... I emphasise that the redactions have been made on the basis of what is in the interests of the security of a friendly power... Crown counsel was satisfied that there was nothing within the documents which bore upon the defence case in any way."
One judge, Lord Coulsfield, then intervened: "Does that include, Lord Advocate... that Crown counsel, having considered the documents, can say to the Court that there is nothing concealed which could possibly bear on the credibility of this witness?"
The Lord Advocate replied: "Well, I'm just checking with the counsel who made that... there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Majid on these matters."
Notwithstanding the opposition of the Lord Advocate, the court ordered the unedited cables to be made available to the defence, who went on to use their contents to such devastating effect in questioning Giaka that the court held that his evidence had to be disregarded in its entirety. Yet, strangely enough, the judges did not see fit publicly to censure the Crown for its inaccurate assurances that the cables contained nothing that could assist the defence.
Beyond the Lockerbie trial, the failure of the Crown to place the public interest in a fair trial above the interest of the prosecution in obtaining convictions is illustrated by the extent to which the Lord Advocate has recently had to be dragged through the Privy Council in London before making available to the defence material in the prosecution's possession that no-one could conceivably deny was of relevance and assistance in the accused person's defence. So much for the fairness of the trial being the Crown's primary and predominant motivation!
It is surely time for all involved in the Scottish criminal justice system to put away childish things. We are all of us, judges included, surely too old to believe any longer in fairytales. Fairytales can be convenient and comforting and can bolster our self esteem. But, as in the case of the belief that the Crown can uniformly be relied upon always to act selflessly in the public interest, they can be dangerous and, if acted upon, work terrible injustice.
It is submitted that the Lockerbie case demonstrates just how necessary it is, if public confidence is to be maintained, for the Scottish Executive to institute a high-powered independent investigation into all three aspects - investigation, prosecution and adjudication - of the Scottish criminal justice system, as has already been called for by, among others, Dr Jim Swire, Tam Dalyell and Professor Hans Koechler, the UN observer at the Lockerbie trial.
• Robert Black, QC, FRSE, is Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh.
Sunday, 8 July 2007
PFLP-GC
For an article in the Sunday Express 0f 8 July 2007 pointing the finger of blame for the Lockerbie bombing at the PFLP-GC, Ahmed Jibril, Abu Talb, Abu Elias, Mobdi Goben, Hafez Dalkamoni et al, see http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/12732
Nothing very new in it, except the claim that Abu Elias is living near Washington DC under a new identity.
More than two years later (August 2009) the Sunday Express is recycling this story.
Nothing very new in it, except the claim that Abu Elias is living near Washington DC under a new identity.
More than two years later (August 2009) the Sunday Express is recycling this story.
Saturday, 7 July 2007
The SCCRC Decision
“Additional evidence, not made available to the defence, which indicates that four days prior to the identification parade at which Mr Gauci picked out the applicant, he saw a photograph of the applicant in a magazine article linking him to the bombing. In the Commission's view evidence of Mr Gauci's exposure to this photograph in such close proximity to the parade undermines the reliability of his identification of the applicant at that time and at the trial itself.
“Other evidence, not made available to the defence, which the Commission believes may further undermine Mr Gauci's identification of the applicant as the purchaser and the trial court's finding as to the date of purchase.”
The implications for the verdict of guilty
The implications for the Scottish criminal justice system
At the trial, on 22 August 2000, when he was seeking to persuade the Court to deny the defence access to those cables in their unedited or uncensored form, the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, stated that the members of the prosecution team who were given access to the uncensored CIA cables on 1 June 2000 were fully aware of the obligation incumbent upon them as prosecutors to make available to the defence material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, approached the contents of those cables with certain considerations in mind.
Lockerbie: A satisfactory process but a flawed result
THE TRIAL
Introduction
On 31 January 2001, after just over one hundred and thirty court days of a trial that had started on 3 May 2000, the three judges in the Lockerbie trial (Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and MacLean) returned a unanimous verdict of guilty of murder in respect of the first accused, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, and a unanimous verdict of not guilty of murder in respect of the second accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhima1. Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he serve at least twenty years.
The prosecution in their closing submissions conceded that the case against the accused was entirely circumstantial. That, of course, is no bar to a verdict of guilty. Circumstantial evidence can be just as persuasive and just as damning as the direct evidence of eyewitnesses to the commission of a crime. But to many observers, including me, it seemed that the case presented by the prosecution was a very weak circumstantial one, and was further undermined by the additional prosecution concession that they had not been able to prove how the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 got into the interline baggage system and onto the aircraft.
The trial court’s crucial findings and were they justified?
From the 90 paragraph written judgement produced by the trial court (available on the Scottish Courts website http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/sc---lockerbie/lockerbiejudgement.pdf?sfvrsn=2) it is clear that the court convicted Megrahi on the basis of the following nine factors.
1. The bomb was detonated through the mechanism of a MST-13 digital electronic timer manufactured by a Swiss company (MeBo) and supplied principally (but not exclusively) to Libya.
Commentary. The judges accepted prosecution evidence that a fragment of circuit board found among the wreckage of Pan Am 103 came from a MeBo MST-13 timer. The managing director of MeBo had denied this in his evidence, but his credibility was, unsurprisingly, assessed as being very low. The evidence established that timers of this model were supplied predominantly to Libya (though a few did go elsewhere, such as to the East German Stasi). This fragment is also important since it was the only piece of evidence that indicated that the Lockerbie bomb was detonated by a stand-alone, long-running timing mechanism, as distinct from a short-term timer triggered by a barometric device when the aircraft reached a pre-determined altitude (a method known to be favoured by certain Palestinian terrorist cells operating in Europe in 1988). The provenance of this vitally important piece of evidence was challenged by the defence and, in their written Opinion, the judges accept that in a substantial number of respects this fragment, for reasons that were never satisfactorily explained, was not dealt with by the investigators and forensic scientists in the same way as other pieces of electronic circuit board (of which there were a multitude). The judges say that they are satisfied that there was no sinister reason for the differential treatment. But regrettably they do not find it at all necessary to enlighten us regarding the reasons for their satisfaction.
2. A company of which a member of the Libyan intelligence services (Badri Hassan) was a principal for a time had office accommodation in the premises of the Swiss manufacturer, MeBo.
3. Megrahi was a member of the Libyan intelligence service.
Commentary. The only evidence to this effect came from a Libyan defector and CIA asset, Abdul Majid Giaka, now living in the United States under a witness protection programme. He gave evidence highly incriminating of both Megrahi and the co-accused Fhima. However, the trial judges rejected his evidence as wholly and utterly unworthy of credit, with the sole exception of his evidence regarding the Libyan intelligence service and Megrahi’s position therein. The court provides no reasons for accepting Giaka’s evidence on this issue while comprehensively rejecting it on every other matter.
4. The suitcase which contained the bomb also contained clothes and an umbrella bought in a particular shop, Mary’s House, in Sliema, Malta.
5. Megrahi was identified by the Maltese shopkeeper as the person who bought the clothes and umbrella.
Commentary. The most that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, would say (either in his evidence in court or at an identification parade before the trial or in a series of nineteen police statements over the years) was that Megrahi “resembled a lot” the purchaser, a phrase which he equally used with reference to Abu Talb, one of those mentioned in the special defence of incrimination lodged on behalf of Megrahi. Gauci had also described his customer to the police as being six feet [183 cms] tall and over fifty years of age. The evidence at the trial established (i) that Megrahi is five feet eight inches [173 cms] tall and (ii) that in late 1988 he was thirty-six years of age. On this material, the judges found in fact that Megrahi was the purchaser.
6. The purchases were made on 7 December 1988, a date when Megrahi was proved to be on Malta and not on 23 November 1988 when he was not.
Commentary. By reference to the dates on which international football matches were broadcast on television on Malta, Tony Gauci was able to narrow down the date of purchase of the items in question to either 23 November or 7 December. In an attempt to establish just which, the weather conditions in Sliema on these two days were explored. Gauci’s evidence was that when the purchaser left his shop it was raining to such an extent that his customer thought it advisable to buy an umbrella to protect himself while he went in search of a taxi. The unchallenged meteorological evidence led by the defence established that while it had rained on 23 November at the relevant time, it was unlikely that it had rained at all on 7 December; and if there had been any rain, it would have been at most a few drops, insufficient to wet the ground. On this material, the judges found in fact that the clothes were purchased on 7 December.
7. The suitcase containing the bomb was sent as unaccompanied baggage from Luqa Airport in Malta, via Frankfurt, on the morning of 21 December 1988 on an Air Malta flight, KM 180.
Commentary. The trial judges held it proved that the bomb was contained in a piece of unaccompanied baggage which was transported on Air Malta flight KM 180 from Luqa to Frankfurt on 21 December 1988, and was then carried on a feeder flight to Heathrow where Pan Am flight 103 was loaded from empty. The evidence supporting the finding that there was such a piece of unaccompanied baggage was a computer printout which could be interpreted to indicate that a piece of baggage went through the particular luggage coding station at Frankfurt Airport used for baggage from KM 180, and was routed towards the feeder flight to Heathrow, at a time consistent with its having been offloaded from KM 180. Against this, the evidence from Luqa Airport in Malta (whose baggage reconciliation and security systems were proven to be, by international standards, very effective) was to the effect that there was no unaccompanied bag on that flight to Frankfurt. All luggage on that flight was accounted for. The number of bags loaded into the hold matched the number of bags checked in (and subsequently collected) by the passengers on the aircraft. The court nevertheless held it proved that there had been a piece of unaccompanied baggage on flight KM 180.
8. Megrahi was in Malta on the night of 20/21 December 1988 and left for Tripoli from Luqa Airport on the morning of 21 December.
9. On this visit Megrahi had been travelling on a passport (in a name other than his own) which was never subsequently used.
Commentary. Megrahi (inexplicably, in the view of many) was not called by his lawyers to give evidence on his own behalf at the trial; so no explanation of his use of this passport was ever supplied to the court. There is an innocent (ie non-Lockerbie related) explanation (involving his role in seeking to circumvent US trade sanctions against Libya and obtain Boeing aircraft spare parts on behalf of his employers, Libyan Arab Airlines) which could have been provided.
It is my firm view that the crucial incriminating findings made by the judges were unwarranted by the evidence led in court and were in many cases entirely contrary to the weight of that evidence. I am convinced that no Scottish jury, following the instructions traditionally given by judges regarding the assessment of evidence and the meaning and application of the concept of reasonable doubt, would or could have convicted Megrahi. So how did it come about that the three distinguished and experienced judges who concurred in the verdict felt able to convict him?
In paragraph 89 of the Opinion of the Court it is stated: “We are aware that in relation to certain aspects of the case there are a number of uncertainties and qualifications. We are also aware that there is a danger that by selecting parts of the evidence which seem to fit together and ignoring parts which might not fit, it is possible to read into a mass of conflicting evidence a pattern or conclusion which is not really justified.” Regrettably, in my submission, the judges’ intellectual recognition of the danger does not appear to have enabled them to avoid it2.
THE APPEAL
Introduction
Megrahi duly intimated his intention to appeal against his conviction. Pending the appeal he remained incarcerated in the Netherlands in HM Prison, Zeist. On 14 March 2002 the appeal was dismissed. An Opinion of the Court extending to 200 typed pages divided into 370 paragraphs was delivered3. The appeal was against conviction only: there was no attempt to challenge the recommendation, that a minimum of twenty years should be served before release was considered, which accompanied the trial court’s mandatory sentence of life imprisonment.
As required by the provisions of the High Court of Justiciary (Proceedings in the Netherlands) (United Nations) Order 1998, the Appeal Court consisted of five Lords Commissioners of Justiciary and sat in the premises of the Scottish Court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands4. The hearing extended from 23 January to14 February 2002. The proceedings (except when the evidence of witnesses was being heard) were televised live over the internet on a website maintained by the BBC, the first occasion in Scotland (or elsewhere in the United Kingdom) that live public broadcasting of judicial proceedings has been permitted. The consensus of opinion was that the administration of justice was not impaired by the presence of the television cameras, but that the level of excitement and drama was such that there is unlikely to be much clamour in the foreseeable future from either broadcasters or the viewing public for the experiment to be repeated.
The grounds of appeal
The only ground upon which a criminal appeal can succeed in Scotland is that there has been a miscarriage of justice. In the Note of Appeal lodged on behalf of Megrahi there were set out in 21 paragraphs (many of them subdivided) the grounds upon which, individually or in combination, it was contended that a miscarriage had occurred. One of those grounds related to the existence and significance of evidence which was not heard during the original proceedings. This evidence related to a breach of security at Heathrow Terminal 3 (potentially giving access to the baggage build-up area) the night before Pan Am 103 departed from that terminal on its fatal flight. The Appeal Court allowed the new evidence to be led before it, but ultimately concluded that it could not be regarded as possessing such importance as to have been likely to have had a material bearing on the trial court’s determination of the critical issue of whether the suitcase containing the bomb was launched on its progress from Luqa Airport in Malta (an essential plank in the prosecution case) or from Heathrow. This ground of appeal was accordingly rejected.
As far as the appeal based on the remaining twenty paragraphs of the written grounds of appeal was concerned, its failure appears to have been rendered virtually inevitable by two concessions made in the course of argument by the appellant’s counsel. The first of these, as recorded in the Opinion of the Court (paragraph 4) is as follows:
“At the trial it was not submitted on the appellant’s behalf that there was insufficient evidence in law to convict him. In its judgment the trial court rejected parts of the evidence relied upon by the Crown at the trial. Nevertheless, it was not contended in the appeal that those parts of the evidence not rejected by the trial court did not afford a sufficient basis in law for conviction.”
The second concession is recorded in the following terms (paragraph 5):
“Under subsection (3) [of s106 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995] an appellant may bring under review of the High Court:
‘any alleged miscarriage of justice, which may include such a miscarriage
based on –
(b) the jury’s having returned a verdict which no reasonable jury, properly
directed, could have returned.’ …
Mr Taylor, who appeared for the appellant, expressly disavowed any reliance on para (b).”
The importance of these concessions is emphasised by the Appeal Court in the penultimate paragraph of its Opinion (paragraph 369):
“When opening the case for the appellant before this court Mr Taylor stated that the appeal was not about sufficiency of evidence: he accepted that there was a sufficiency of evidence. He also stated that he was not seeking to found on section 106(3)(b) of the 1995 Act. His position was that the trial court had misdirected itself in various respects. Accordingly in this appeal we have not required to consider whether the evidence before the trial court, apart from the evidence which it rejected, was sufficient as a matter of law to entitle it to convict the appellant on the basis set out in its judgment. We have not had to consider whether the verdict of guilty was one which no reasonable trial court, properly directing itself, could have returned in the light of that evidence.”
The issues that the appeal did not address
The limitations under which the Appeal Court was thus constrained to operate effectively disabled it from considering the issues of (a) whether there was sufficient evidence in law to justify such absolutely crucial findings-in-fact by the trial court as (i) that the date of purchase in Malta of the clothes surrounding the bomb was 7 December 1988, (ii) that Megrahi was the purchaser and (iii) that the case containing the bomb started its progress from Malta’s Luqa Airport and (b) whether those findings or any of them (on the assumption that there was a legal sufficiency of evidence) were such as no reasonable trial court, properly directing itself, could have made, or been satisfied of beyond reasonable doubt, in the light of (i) justifiable criticisms of the evidence and witnesses supporting them and (ii) ex facie credible contrary evidence.
The issues that the appeal did address
What the appellant instead invited the Appeal Court to do was to hold that various findings-in-fact made by the trial court (a) were based upon a misunderstanding of the evidence or were without a basis in the evidence; or (b) were arrived at by giving undue weight to evidence that supported them or insufficient weight or “proper regard5” to evidence that contradicted them; or (c) were in the nature of inferences from primary facts drawn in situations where other, non-incriminating, inferences were equally open.
As regards (a) the Appeal Court held that in two or three instances the trial court had found a fact proved on the basis of a misunderstanding of the evidence led, or where there was no evidential basis for the finding. But in each such case the Appeal Court went on to decide that the error was insignificant, could not have affected the ultimate outcome of the case and, hence, was not such as to give rise to a miscarriage of justice.
As regards (b) and (c) the Appeal Court insisted that, as long it was (as here) not contended that no reasonable trial court could have made the finding-in-fact, challenge of findings on these grounds was simply not competent. The weight to be given to evidence or the “proper regard” to be accorded to it were matters entirely for the trial court, as was the question of what inferences to draw from the primary facts that it held proved. Even where, as here, the tribunal of fact was not an inscrutable jury but a bench of judges who gave reasons for their findings, the Appeal Court was simply not entitled to substitute its own views for those of the trial judges. It followed that all of the grounds of appeal directed towards issues of “weight” or “proper regard” fell to be rejected as raising matters not within the competence or powers of the Appeal Court. This is emphasised at various points in the Opinion of the Court6 but principally in the section headed “The function of an appeal court.7”
Conclusion
Before the verdicts in the original trial were delivered, I expressed the view that for the judges to return verdicts of guilty they would require (i) to accept every incriminating inference that the Crown invited them to draw from evidence that was on the face of it neutral and capable of supporting quite innocent inferences, (ii) to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, positively identified Megrahi as the person who bought from his shop in Sliema the clothes and umbrella contained in the suitcase that held the bomb and (iii) to accept that the date of purchase of these items was proved to be 7 December 1988 (as distinct from 23 November 1988 when Megrahi was not present on Malta). I went on rashly to express the opinion that, for the judges to be satisfied of all these matters on the evidence led at the trial, they would require to adopt the posture of the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, when she informed Alice "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." In convicting Megrahi, it is submitted that this is precisely what the trial judges did.
As far as the outcome of the appeal is concerned, some commentators have confidently opined that, in dismissing Megrahi’s appeal, the Appeal Court endorsed the findings of the trial court. This is not so. The Appeal Court repeatedly stresses that it is not its function to approve or disapprove of the trial court’s findings-in-fact, given that it was not contended on behalf of the appellant that there was insufficient evidence to warrant them or that no reasonable court could have made them. These findings-in-fact accordingly continue, as before the appeal, to have the authority only of the court which, and the three judges who, made them.
Until such time as an appellate court (perhaps on a reference from the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) is required to address the fundamental issues of (i) whether there was sufficient evidence to warrant the incriminating findings, (ii) whether any reasonable trial court could have made those findings (and could have been satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of the guilt of Megrahi) on the evidence led at Camp Zeist and (iii) whether Megrahi’s representation at the trial and the appeal was adequate, I will continue to maintain that a shameful miscarriage of justice has been perpetrated and that the Scottish criminal justice system has been gravely sullied.
Footnotes
1. Fhima was acquitted largely because the judges were not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that, even if he assisted Megrahi to launch the suitcase containing the bomb which destroyed Pan Am 103 on its progress from Luqa Airport in Malta, he knew that the suitcase contained a bomb.
2. In John Lawton's excellent novel A Little White Death (1999) -- a fictionalised account of the Profumo affair and the Stephen Ward trial -- the hero (at p501 of the paperback edition) describes the presiding judge in the trial (Mr Justice Mirkeyn) as follows: "Everyone doing what they think is expected of them. Mirkeyn did the same. It's probably never crossed Mirkeyn's mind that he's a bad judge or a bent judge. He simply did what was expected. Didn't even need a nod or a wink."
3. Al Megrahi v H M Advocate 2002 SCCR 509, available at http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/default-source/sc---lockerbie/lockerbieappealjudgement.pdf?sfvrsn=2
4. The High Court (Proceedings in the Netherlands) (United Nations) Order 1998, SI 1998 No 2251, art 14(1), (2) available at www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1998/19982251.htm
5. "Proper regard" is an expression used frequently in the written grounds of appeal.
6. For examples of grounds of appeal being rejected on this basis, see Opinion of the Court, paras 76, 80, 84, 118, 129,262, 274, 288, 327, 351.
7. See Opinion of the Court, paras 20-27.
2004
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