Dr Swire on "Pan Am 103: what really happened?"

[What follows is a response by Dr Jim Swire to some of the comments made by readers on the Pan Am 103: what really happened? thread.]

I must congratulate 'Rolfe' and Patrick Haseldine on the interesting set of comments re Pik Botha, Carlsson and Pan Am 103. At the same time I hope they will forgive me for pointing out that to us the relatives, this all falls into the category of 'speculation'.

That is so due to the flat refusal of successive UK governments despite our lobbying of every single Prime Minister since 1988 to allow any meaningful inquiry into the events leading up to the disaster. Had they fulfilled their legal obligation to provide such an inquiry, then hopefully much of this speculation would have reached at least the level of confidence given to those aspects of the disaster which were the subject of the Zeist court and inquiries.

Personally I entered the Zeist courtroom expecting to see the murderers of my daughter condemned and punished. The effect was the opposite, the evidence and the way in which it was derived and used, convinced me that neither Megrahi nor Fhimah were guilty as charged. But I was left with some relatively reliable information, compared with that derived from the best efforts of those people, may of them so well meaning, who previously had had no access whatever to any means of penetrating the official wall of silence, being obliged to speculate as a result of their (and our) exclusion.

As 'Rolfe' says, if it is true that Botha's party had reached London early, enabling the embassy 'on the spur of the moment' to book them on the earlier PA101, I see nothing suspicious in that, but as 'Rolfe' points out, if it is true that they were rebooked onto PA101 at the last minute, 'but some of their retinue could not get seats on that flight and thereupon returned to South Africa' that would be very, very interesting.

The logical speculation from that point would be that they must have known that PA103 was unsafe, for PA103 was only 2/3 full that night. 'Rolfe''s conclusion that such a development would constitute support for knowledge of a much more specific warning than those provided in the 'Helsinki' warning and other warnings already known to have been received would be valid. Patrick correctly confirms that not a single member of the Botha team was on PA103.

Why was PA103 only 2/3 full just before Christmas?

Is 'Rolfe' able to provide chapter and verse for his comment that 'instead of taking up their existing bookings on PA103 [they] just turned round and went home'?

The Zeist court had little to say about any regime's involvement, nor about those who might have been involved in the run up to the massacre itself. The nearest it came to that, for me, was the detailed account provided by the Germans of the PFLP-GC's technology, and of their known workshop on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria's capital city. They were making IEDs which however long they had lain about in an airport before being put aboard an aircraft, were still obligated to explode around 40 minutes following take off, without anyone in the relevant airport having to touch them, or even to open any container which they might be hidden in. An irrefutable fact is that my daughter's death occurred 38 minutes after her plane had left the Heathrow tarmac, just as would have been inevitable had one of these IEDs been used.

The court did not in my view exclude the use of this technology, far from it, it believed the prosecution's speculation - for that was all it was - that Megrahi (whose identification as 'the clothes buyer' was blatantly inadequate) had somehow while passing through Luqa airport penetrated security there (not supported by any evidence), to enable a profoundly unwise route of attack through 2 changes of aircraft, using a digital timer perfectly capable of being set to explode over mid-Atlantic.

Their Lordships were however operating under a severe Handicap, due to the suppression of vitally significant evidence (see below under DC Crawford).

Possible motivation was covered in terms of the past experiences of both Libya and Iran, at the hands of US military forces, but motivation for the assassination of Botha, Carlsson or the US McKee intelligence team was not established. The court's (the defence's actually) interest in Syria was snubbed by that country, leading to the inexplicable abandonment of their 'defence of incrimination' by the Megrahi defence team.

Since Megrahi's second appeal was stopped, his defence team have started to put some very interesting material on the web at and this is where investigating policeman Harry Bell enters the scene. Harry recorded in a diary written while on the island of Malta, how US official(s) was/were suggesting the payment of '$10,000 up front' with' $2,000,000 to follow, to Tony Gauci plus a payment of $1,000,000 to Gauci's brother Paul.

It is not clear to me whether Bell passed this on to the Crown Office, nor what his response was to the US agent suggesting it.

The astoundingly amateurish attitude attributed to DC Crawford, as to the significance of Carlsson in all this supports my worst fears as to the competence of the police force involved to cope with so great a disaster and investigation. If DC Crawford or his force really was prepared to write off the possible significance of Carlsson on the hearsay evidence of a single librarian, that says a great deal about the confidence we should have in other aspects of the investigation. The agreement to this decision by Stuart Henderson does little to reassure either, for Henderson has publicly claimed in front of a crowd of US relatives that he 'would like to wring the neck of anyone who disagreed with the police findings.' Do not these sound rather like the words of someone trying to defend something he knows to be indefensible?

Nowhere are doubts about the calibre of the investigating police more worrying than in the case of the Heathrow break-in. That occurred in the very early morning of 21/12/88 through the appropriate sector of Heathrow security to give access to where the PanAm containers were being loaded that evening. It was known to Heathrow through the night security file records on the morning of 21/12/88, and to the Met's special branch, who interviewed Manley, the night security guard in January 1989.

Yet the information about this break-in 'disappeared' for 12 years, till after the Zeist court had convicted Megrahi.

I wrote to the Crown Office to ask them if they had known about the break-in during these 12 years, and they denied knowing. They then made the disingenuous comment that the break-in didn't matter because the first appeal did know but did not overturn the verdict.

Think about their Lordships in the trial who said that the absence of evidence as to how Megrahi penetrated security at Luqa was 'a difficulty for the Crown', and compare that with what they were denied knowing - a fully documented break-in appropriate in time and position to the spot from which the fatal aircraft was actually loaded with its cargo. It seems pretty obvious to me that had they known they would have had to have found Megrahi not guilty, since Heathrow was strongly supported by evidence, whereas Luqa was not.

But glossing over the Crown's outrageous misrepresentation of the likely effect of the missing evidence upon the court's verdict, and assuming that they really didn't know during those 12 years, then it looks most likely that since the Met would surely have told the investigating Scots about it, the Scottish police probably failed to pass it on to the Crown Office.

What would be their motive for that? Well again we speculate, but the Heathrow evidence was desperately dangerous to the hypothesis that the device had come from Malta, simply because the clothing had. The annals of police investigations are full of instances where the driving hypothesis has destroyed the objectivity of the investigating force, and caused a tunnel vision where only matters that fit that hypothesis are considered.

Owing to the refusal to launch a properly empowered inquiry, it has been impossible thus far to probe the work of the Dumfries and Galloway police, nor indeed the Thatcher government's decision to put them in charge rather than the more experienced teams available in London.

In speculating about how much was known beforehand about the impending disaster, and by whom, we are discussing the worst fear that we have about this cruel business, the real possibility that our families were allowed to march on board an aircraft known by some of those who should have protected it to be doomed. To resolve that issue really would be a huge help in advancing our recovery from the loss of those we loved. Even if it turned out to be true, we would rather know the truth than be left any longer in such doubt, through the absence of a properly endowed inquiry.

Lest there be any doubt about it by the way our Fatal Accident Inquiry, though also denied knowledge of the Heathrow break-in, concluded that the disaster was preventable and that the aircraft was under the 'Host State Protection of the United Kingdom'.

I am a signatory to the appeal put out by JFM (Justice for Megrahi) to the UN for a UN based inquiry. The silence from them thus far is as dense as that from Whitehall has been for 21 years. The issues about which we speculate here appear more appropriate for a UN inquiry than simply a UK one, but the latter at least is obligatory under UK law.

Fortunately current ECHR legislation in this country entitles us as next of kin of the dead, to a suitably empowered inquiry.

Absent a fully supportive reply from Gordon Brown to our request for such an inquiry, for which we are still waiting, we shall have to see what Gareth Peirce and the UK justice system can do for us.

Lockerbie bombing: 30 years of grief

[This is the headline over an article published yesterday on the website of the Daily Express. It reads in part:]

Still the worst terrorist atrocity on British soil, 270 passengers, crew and residents of a small Scottish town died when a bomb in a radio/cassette player packed in a Samsonite suitcase exploded in the cargo hold of Pan Am flight 103 nearly 30 years ago.

To mark the anniversary, Channel 5 documentary Lockerbie: The Unheard Voices, tells the story of 12 victims and survivors - and reveals two warnings were ignored. (...)

But could the horror have been avoided if warnings were heeded? A fortnight before the explosion, a caller rang the US Embassy in Finland to say there was a "plot against a Pan American flight to the US sometime in the next two weeks".

This was passed to the US Federal Aviation Administration but was "ultimately dismissed as a hoax".

A second, less widely known warning, came two days before the ill-fated flight. The UK Department of Transport "sent out a letter" warning a "bomb had been placed in a cassette player", according to the documentary. "The warning was based on detailed information sent out by the German intelligence services."

This was never heeded. It is not known how the brown Samsonite case made its way into cargo hold, but "security checks" failed to pick up anything.

It contained the Toshiba radio/ cassette tape player, in which 450g of Semtex and a timer was hidden. [RB: Dr Morag Kerr's researches have established conclusively that bomb suitcase was already in the luggage container AVE4041 at Heathrow before the aircraft supposedly carrying the case that the Libyans had sent as unaccompanied baggage from Malta arrived in London: Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies.] (...)

But the ultimate suspect was Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, Libyan Airlines' security chief, who was convicted in 2001 of the bombing.

He died in May 2012, maintaining his innocence. His family are still trying to appeal his conviction.

Last week, a police probe found no evidence of criminality in relation to the handling of the investigation and prosecution in the case. [RB: The Chief Constable of Police Scotland has stated that the report contains material that is relevant to the Megrahi family's current application to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission and to any subsequent appeal against Megrahi's conviction.]

The film states: "For many of the families of the 270 victims there are still many unanswered questions."

The unanswered questions…

1 Will al-Megrahi's family get the chance to appeal on his behalf? The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is looking at Megrahi's conviction and if it decides there has been a miscarriage of justice, the case will return to the Court of Appeal. Some believe the truth will finally be brought to light.

2 Why was key evidence overlooked at the original Lockerbie trial? A break-in at the Pan Am baggage department at Heathrow airport before the bombing was never disclosed to the judges. And a $2million reward paid to witness Tony Gauci by the US only emerged years after Megrahi's conviction.

3 How can a discrepancy in forensic evidence be explained? A fragment of bomb timer found in a field near Lockerbie was linked to Libya, as Swiss firm Mebo had sold timers to Colonel Gaddafi's regime. It has since emerged the fragment was made of pure tin, not the lead/tin alloy used by Mebo.

4 If Megrahi did not plant the bomb then who did? Some believe Iran paid Palestinian terror group PFLP-GC to carry out the attack after the US Navy accidentally shot down an Iranian airliner in July 1988, killing 290 people.

5 What were the warnings? German police told British authorities a PFLP-GC cell might plant bombs hidden in tape recorders on passenger planes, while a man with an Arabic accent rang the US Embassy in Helsinki on December 5 to say a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to the US would be blown up.

Lockerbie secret files

[What follows is a section headed Lockerbie Secret Files from an article published today on Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer's Intel Today website:]

Until this week, we knew of two secret sets of Lockerbie files. The first is the so-called Lockerbie X file. This set of docs deal with Major McKee, CIA Matt Gannon — and others US personal — who died on Pan Am 103. IT probably also deals with the large amount of cash and drugs recovered from the crash site as well as the presence of US explosives illegally carried by the civilian airliner. It is unlikely that this file was updated in 1992-93.

RELATED POST: FBI PSA : “Think Before You Post” — FLASHBACK : “The Helsinki Warning”

We also knew from the SCCRC Report that the two secret letters (under PII) were sent by the King of Jordan to John Major in September 1996.

I have already explained that the SCCRC findings clearly suggest the content of this letter. The reasoning of the SCCRC implies  that these “SECRET Letters” point to the PFLP-GC having received – one way or another – at least one MST-13 timer. (Whether this allegation is true or false is yet another story.)

The SCCRC concluded that if these documents had been made available to the defence, the judges could not have reached some of the conclusions that were necessary to convict Megrahi.

RELATED POST: LOCKERBIE SECRET DOC – What Do We Know?

RELATED POST: The Lockerbie Secret Doc: Khreesat and the Swiss

The undisclosed 1992-93 Lockerbie file from the Prime Minister almost certainly deals with yet another aspect of this extraordinary scandal.

[RB: The introduction preceding the section reproduced above, and the remaining sections of the article, headed Dr Richard Fuisz & the TEREX Affair and Why Hiding the 1992 Lockerbie File? should also be read.]

“Charges are now possible”

[On this date in 1994 the London Review of Books published a review by Paul Foot of Donald Goddard and Lester Coleman’s Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie. It reads in part:]

The American investigative columnist Jack Anderson has had some scoops in his time but none more significant than his revelation – in January 1990 – that in mid-March 1989, three months after Lockerbie, George Bush rang Margaret Thatcher to warn her to ‘cool it’ on the subject. On what seems to have been the very same day, perhaps a few hours earlier, Thatcher’s Secretary of State for Transport, Paul Channon, was the guest of five prominent political correspondents at a lunch at the Garrick Club. It was agreed that anything said at the lunch was ‘on strict lobby terms’ – that is, for the journalists only, not their readers. Channon then announced that the Dumfries and Galloway Police – the smallest police force in Britain – had concluded a brilliant criminal investigation into the Lockerbie crash. They had found who was responsible and arrests were expected before long. The Minister could not conceal his delight at the speed and efficiency of the PC McPlods from Dumfries, and was unstinting in his praise of the European intelligence.

So sensational was the revelation that at least one of the five journalists broke ranks; and the news that the Lockerbie villains would soon he behind bars in Scotland was divulged to the public. Channon, still playing the lobby game, promptly denied that he was the source of the story. Denounced by the Daily Mirror’s front page as a ‘liar’, he did not sue or complain. A few months later he was quietly sacked. Thatcher, of course, could not blame her loyal minister for his indiscretion, which coincided so unluckily with her instructions from the White House.

Channon had been right, however, about the confidence of the Dumfries and Galloway Police. They did reckon they knew who had done the bombing. Indeed, they had discovered almost at once that a terrorist bombing of an American airliner, probably owned by Pan-Am, had been widely signalled and even expected by the authorities in different European countries. The point was, as German police and intelligence rather shamefacedly admitted, that a gang of suspected terrorists had been rumbled in Germany in the months before the bombing. They were members of a faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Ahmed Jibril. The aim of the gang was to bomb an American airliner in revenge for the shooting down by an American warship of an Iranian civil airliner in the Gulf earlier in the year. On 26 October 1988, less than two months before the bombing, two of the suspects – Hafez Dalkomini and Marwan Abdel Khreesat – were arrested in their car outside a flat at Neuss near Frankfurt. In the car was a bomb, moulded into the workings of a black Toshiba cassette recorder. In the ensuing weeks other raids were carried out on alleged terrorist hideaways in Germany, and 16 suspects arrested. One of them was Mohammad Abu Talb, another member of the PFLP, who was almost instantly released. Even more curious was the equally prompt release of Khreesat, who was suspected of making the bomb found in Dalkomini’s car.

The finding of the bomb led to a flurry of intelligence activity. It was discovered that the bomb had been specifically made to blow up an aircraft; and that the gang had made at least five bombs, four of which had not been found. At once, a warning went out on the European intelligence network to watch out for bombs masked in radio cassette recorders, especially at airports. There were more specific warnings. On 5 December 1988 the US Embassy in Helsinki got a telephone warning that 'within the next few weeks' an attempt would be made to bomb a Pan-Am flight from Frankfurt to New York. On 8 December, Israeli forces attacked a PFLP base in the Lebanon and found papers about a planned attack on a Pan-Am flight from Frankfurt. This information, too, was passed on. On 18 December the German police got another warning about a bomb plot against a Pan-American flight. This message was passed to American embassies, including the embassy in Moscow, and as a result of it 80 per cent of the Americans in Moscow who had booked to fly home for Christmas on Pan-Am flights canceled their reservations. (...)

Though the German police dragged their feet and were singularly reluctant to disclose any documents, the facts about the Jibril gang were known to the Scottish police by March 1989. All the ingredients of a solution were in place. The motive was clear: revenge for a similar atrocity. The Lockerbie bomb, forensic experts discovered, had been concealed in a black Toshiba cassette recorder exactly like the one found in Dalkomini's car two months earlier. The German connection was impossible to ignore: the flight had started in Frankfurt. The identity of the bombers seemed certain, and surely it was only a matter of time before they could be charged. But, like Channon, the police were unaware of the telephone conversation between Bush and Thatcher. When Thatcher sacked Channon a few decent months later, she appointed Cecil Parkinson in his place. Shaken by the grief of the Lockerbie victims' families, Parkinson promised them a full public inquiry. Alas, when he put the idea to the Prime Minister she slapped him down at once. There was no judicial or public inquiry with full powers—just a very limited fatal accident inquiry, which found that the disaster could have been prevented by security precautions which are still not in place.

All through the rest of 1989 the Scottish police beavered away. In May they found more clues. A group of Palestinian terrorists were arrested in Sweden, among them Abu Talb. Talb's German flat was raided. It was full of clothing bought in Malta. The forensic evidence showed that the Lockerbie cassette-bomb had been wrapped, inside its suitcase, in clothes with Maltese tags. Talb was known to have visited Malta some weeks before the bombing. Off flew the Scottish police to: Malta, where a boutique-owner remembered selling a suspicious-looking man some clothes—similar to those found in the fatal suitcase. Closely questioned by FBI video-fit (or identikit) experts, the boutique-owner's answers produced a picture which looked very like Abu Talb. When a computer print-out of baggage on the fatal airliner appeared to show an unaccompanied suitcase transferred to PanAm 103 from a flight from Malta, the jigsaw seemed complete. Jibril had agreed to bomb an airliner, probably in exchange for a huge reward from the Iranian Government. The task was taken on by a PFLP team in Germany, led by Dalkomini. It was joined by Khreesat, who made several bombs, only three of which were ever discovered. One of the other two found its way, probably via Talb, to the hold of the airliner. The culprits were obvious. But the authorities still dragged their feet. The initial determination to identify the conspirators and bring them to justice seemed to have waned. The Scottish police were exasperated. They made more and more of the information available. Much of it appeared in the Sunday Times in a series of articles leading up to the first anniversary of the bombing. No one who read them could doubt that the bombers were Syrians and Palestinians. The series, mainly written by David Leppard, who worked closely with the Scottish police team, ended with a scoop: white plastic residue found at Lockerbie was traced back to alarm clocks bought by the Dalkomini gang. There seemed no more room for argument. 'The Sunday Times understands,' Leppard wrote, 'that officers heading the investigation — despite a cautious attitude in public — have told their counterparts abroad that under Scottish law "charges are now possible against certain persons."'

There were no charges, however — not for a long time.

[RB: And when they came, the charges were -- surprise, surprise! -- against two Libyans.]

What Lockerbie evidence should be relied on, and what not?

[What follows is a further contribution from Kevin Bannon:]

Lockerbie: the PFLP-GC, the Helsinki warning, Marwan Khreesat, the 1988 Frankfurt bomb factory, the Goben memorandum, Iran, Syria ‘...and all that’ (after Sellar & Yeatman).

The history of the Lockerbie bombing can only be disseminated and understood from that which can be properly and reasonably established, not by uncorroborated hearsay and rumours. We know what was said at trial and in police statements because there are verbatim records. These confirm, for example, that Tony Gauci changed his eyewitness evidence - in every aspect - from a narrative that consistently ruled out the participation of al-Megrahi in the Lockerbie bombing, to one in which served to incriminate him. We know that these changes were made while the police were discussing among themselves the potential of rewards for Gauci - specifically to lubricate his testimony in favour of their suspect-profile. 

The forensic evidence is so profoundly unsatisfactory as to be farcical. A fragment of a time switch, which would link Gauci’s shop to the Pan Am 103 explosive device, and to Libya, was found in the Lockerbie debris on a date which is ambiguous. Both the means of its recognition as significant evidence and the identity of the investigator who first made this discovery – are unclear. The evidence label which annotated the items in the bag, later found to include the timer fragment, had been plainly falsified, but the police officer who admitted having “overwritten” it - and explained why he had done so - later expressed doubt that it was his “handwriting”. The alteration crucially changed the description of the evidence bag’s contents. The page number on which the item was logged in the chief forensic scientist’s notebook had been systematically altered for reasons which remain highly suspicious. The police photograph of the evidence items and its purported date, are inconsistent with other records and the picture is of such poor quality that essential details are unintelligible – contrary to the very purpose of police photographs. The crucial items of evidence – the timer fragment, the radio/cassette recorder which had enclosed it, the fragments of the suitcase which carried it – were not shown to have been tested for explosive residues. 

Incredibly, this catalogue of fiddling and negligence represents the core of the greatest forensic investigation in British criminal history!

This evidence eventually led to the conviction of al-Megrahi – who became a suspect only because of his reputed visit to Gauci’s shop – which transparently never took place. While the find of the timer fragment is generally accepted as almost miraculous, subsequent independent scientific tests on a control sample from the circuit boards supplied to Libya found it to be constituently different from the suspect fragment.

In court, virtually every component of al-Megrahi’s defence was apparently suspended, enabling his incrimination by the contrived prosecution evidence. He was advised to say nothing in his defence in the face of 230 prosecution witness testimonies against the defence’s three; the Crown brought 1,858 court productions to Kamp Zeist, compared with the defence’s seven. In his pre-trial examination, al-Megrahi (like his co-accused) was advised to reply to all 76 questions put to him with a stock refusal to respond, even when the accusations that he planted the bomb were put to him – such is a standard defence procedure in Scotland normally only applied for pathological criminals in open-and-shut cases heard before juries. 

The blatant contradictions in Gauci’s recollections were inexplicably skirted during his cross-examination while al-Megrahi’s counsel openly and repeatedly complemented Gauci on his honesty - at the outset of the appeal he even declared to the Bench, that Gauci’s honesty was above reproach. Other evidence of value to the defence was ignored or blatantly deconstructed. Finally, his advocate simply jettisoned the essential criteria on which al-Megrahi’s appeal might have been effective, even disabling the scope of the Bench to endorse the appeal – as their conclusions confirmed. 

Unfortunately these facts are not generally known because they have not been effectively disseminated; the popular perception is that some dispute al-Megrahi’s conviction, basing their doubts on ‘conspiracy theories’ – the well established euphemism for imaginative fantasies constructed around major crime narratives. In fact, the conspiracy theories in this case, are more steadfastly clung to by those who believe al-Megrahi was justly convicted, including CIA and FBI officials, who have enthusiastically posited al-Megrahi as representing only the tip of an iceberg of international conspirators. The otherwise straightforward narrative about corruption of due process has become lost in a mess of uncorroborated, vaguely intersecting plots, none of which were factually established either during the police investigation or the testimonies at Kamp Zeist. 

The recently posted Scotsman obituary of Lord Coulsfield - referring to the Kamp Zeist verdict as a ‘much debated subject’ and citing the Princess Diana and JFK stories - reveals precisely the detrimental effect of these alternative themes. 

When John Ashton presented ‘Megrahi: You are my Jury’ at the August 2012 Edinburgh book festival before a large audience, one of the first members of the audience to raise a question was a journalist who made plain his deep scepticism about Ashton’s book. This was Ian Black, the Middle East Editor of The Guardian - arguably the most influential individual in Britain concerning perceptions of Middle Eastern affairs. The Guardian is overwhelmingly the newspaper of choice among most Labour and Liberal MPs and academics, particularly in the humanities – a cohort among whom we would expect to find a rich seem of scepticism on this issue. However, I am not aware of significant commentary from these quarters - not even from the shadow cabinet - about this terrible miscarriage of justice, which has had dire consequences, ultimately helping precipitate the destruction of Libya itself.

I strongly believe that the inclusion of the international terrorist conspiracy in the Lockerbie bombing discussion are enormously damaging to the aims and objectives of JfM. In the first place, attempting to identify the actual perpetrators of the Lockerbie bombing is a task a thousand times more complex than unravelling the embroidered ‘evidence’ brought against the late al-Megrahi. Secondly, placing these unsubstantiated theories in the same narrative as genuine, documented evidence reduces what is incontrovertible to similar obscurity – a fait accompli for the opponents of JfM. 

The documented facts of the Lockerbie case are very clear and require no supplement of ‘debateable’ half-baked anecdotes – especially those associated with the ulterior agendas of dis-informants, spooks with CIA connections - and even terrorists - a collective which did so much to frame Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in the first place.

The verdict cannot possibly stand as a representation of historical fact

[The item that follows has been contributed by Dr Kevin Bannon:]

It appears that the vast majority of parliamentarians, jurists, academics and news editors in the UK - and their US equivalents - have very little idea of the extent of the affront to justice in the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing, in which 270 people died on 21 December 1988. 

Just to recount the basics, the crime-scene was the largest in law enforcement history and police investigations took about three years. By international arrangement, Al-Megrahi’s special trial under Scottish jurisdiction and his appeal were held at Kamp Zeist, Holland in 2000-2001. He served 10 years until his release because of his terminal cancer and following his agreement to drop his planned second appeal. Al-Megrahi died in May 2012.

Here is a summary of matters largely omitted from the general narrative about the Lockerbie atrocity:

Investigation and Evidence

The most important item of hard evidence in the investigation was a centimetre square fragment of circuit-board, found, remarkably, within a debris field of hundreds of square miles. Just as fortunately, this was matched by its appearance to a commercially marketed circuit board from a timing device supplied to Libya. Despite that the fragment remains the only part of the explosive device found, no test for explosives residues was carried out on it – which one investigator described as “inconceivable” and “irrational”. In fact neither were such tests carried out on the fragments of the radio/cassette player housing the bomb, or the pieces of suitcase which had contained it – a series of evasions simply too outrageous to describe as an oversight. 

Despite a supposedly meticulous investigation, both the date of the fragment’s discovery and the identity of its discoverer remain contradictory and matters of dispute. Most suspiciously of all, the police evidence label pertaining to this item had been manifestly falsified, crucially altering its apparent provenance. 

It was never discovered how a bomb was introduced at Malta’s Luqa airport, nor how it transited unaccompanied through Frankfurt and Heathrow - supposedly impossible under security protocols. Instead of solving such outstanding issues, the largest criminal investigation in history has left us with only uncertainties and discrepancies.

A day or two after the Lockerbie bombing, a relatively intact suitcase was removed from the debris field by US officials and taken by helicopter to an unknown destination where its contents were ‘handled’. The suitcase had belonged to a US intelligence official on the passenger list. Four days after the bombing, two Americans believed to be from the CIA, returned the suitcase to the exact position from where it had been removed – a manoeuvre not logged in police records. 

In September 1989 a Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, described to police the visit of a Libyan to his shop in late November 1988 to purchase several clothing items which matched pieces later found near Lockerbie; these items had apparently been adjacent to the bomb in ‘the primary suitcase’ aboard PA 103. Gauci appeared to have a magnificent memory, and in his first police interviews – nine months after the purchase – he recalled most of the items bought by the customer, the total bill and the weather at the time. Unfortunately, he described in detail someone entirely unlike al-Megrahi both facially and in stature. In any event, al-Megrahi was not in Malta in late November 1988. However, Gauci changed all of his initial evidence in subsequent interviews – changes which were more consistently harmonious with police suspicions and later with the Crown prosecution case. The purchaser’s visit was now revised to December 7 – the only day in the timeframe consistent with al-Megrahi’s movements.

In a ‘photo-session’ al-Megrahi’s picture had been shown to Gauci amongst 11 other photographs of individuals, some of which had been blatantly ‘doctored’ - supposedly to make them more similar to the suspect; even under these circumstances a senior investigating detective gave a plainly illegitimate prompt to Gauci who then chose al-Megrahi’s picture – already known as the ‘correct’ choice to police officers observing the procedure in the same room. This became the clinching identification of al-Megrahi and the basis of his eventual indictment. An identification line-up observed by Gauci was held only years later after al-Megrahi’s picture had been widely publicised, but in any event, the procedure was again improperly set-up in the Crown’s favour. 

Two months before the Lockerbie bombing, an apparent Frankfurt-based plot to bomb an airliner had been uncovered by German police. Marwan Khreesat (possibly an alias) arrested as the supposed mastermind, was a Jordanian (i.e. pro-western) intelligence agent and was allowed to return home, despite being caught red-handed making bombs. One of these later exploded killing a German police investigator, but no reports of an investigation or a prosecution transpired; Khreesat has not been seen or heard in public since. 

Just two weeks before the PA 103 attack, a telephone warning was received in Helsinki about a plan to bomb a Pan Am transatlantic flight from Frankfurt. Despite this being recognised as entirely spurious by investigators, US and airline security officials took it seriously. The caller’s identity remains oddly obscure to this day and he was not prosecuted for his ‘hoax’.

Both the German and UK investigators concluded that neither the Frankfurt set-up nor the Helsinki hoax had any link to the Lockerbie bombing but the obvious artificiality and official suppression of facts surrounding these incidents remains profoundly suspicious. 

The Trial

The Helsinki and Frankfurt incidents were referred to frequently in cross-examinations at Kamp Zeist, helping create a backdrop concerning Middle Eastern bomb threats in Europe, and reminding the court that such terrorists were devious and repeatedly escaped justice. Additional to this undercurrent were a cohort of invisible Crown witnesses: three CIA agents and three more from the former East German STASI - gave evidence concealed behind screens, under pseudonyms and with their voices disguised – all for unexplained reasons. Three more CIA agents, similarly pseudo-named, did not attend court but supplied written statements. Several other Crown witnesses were so vaguely identified in court as to remain obscure. 

Four Crown witnesses were described as liars in open court without objection – because it was transparently obvious. A director of the company which supplied the Lockerbie bomb timer had been shown to have conspired to falsely implicate Libya in the Lockerbie bombing during the investigation. In another incident the same witness claimed to have contacted the CIA with another false story implicating Gaddafi and his security chief Abdullah Senoussi in the Lockerbie attack. These clumsy acts of espionage were justly treated as laughable by the Defence. For all practical purposes, witnesses at Kamp Zeist were free from risk of perjury charges which would normally be applicable in Criminal trials in Scotland. 

One major Crown witness, Abu Talb, was serving a life sentence for a terrorist murder and two more (a Mr. ‘Wenzel’ and one Mansour El Saber) had each been party to preparing explosive devices for terrorist purposes – so it was claimed.  Her Majesty’s prosecutors had never before been propped-up by such a motley collection of crooks and spooks.

The bomb’s introduction at Malta’s international airport was never established but the judges, like the police before them, decided that this is what must have happened because of al-Megrahi’s ‘identification’ by Tony Gauci. This highly improbable arrangement diverted the investigation away from straightforward, circumstantial evidence that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow – the most logical scenario, but of course entailing an entirely different conspiracy.

Despite facing 227 Crown witnesses, al-Megrahi, mild-mannered and of previous good character, was advised to say nothing in his defence – a suicidal defence strategy designed for jury trials of gangsters or otherwise ‘open and shut’ cases. Of only three witnesses who testified on behalf of the Defence, two were FBI men, whose organisation was backing the prosecution. 

The trial and appeal, among the most extensive in the UK’s legal history, were made considerably more lengthy and costly by the attendance of irrelevant Crown witnesses and vast tracts of waffle on points of law and case citations emanating from al-Megrahi’s advocate, without any perceptible contribution to al-Megrahi’s defence. Stupendous weaknesses in the Crown case went unchallenged, in particular Gauci’s contradictory police statements, details of which were almost entirely evaded in cross-examination.

Al-Megrahi’s appeal was prepared in such a way that it was doomed to fail – as even the judges themselves emphasised in their verdict.

After the trial and appeal, Gauci was paid ‘in excess of $2 million’ by the US department of Justice for helping the investigation - his brother received $1 million despite not appearing in court - such payments are not legitimate under Scottish law and if a witness has been promised, or has formed expectations about receiving such payment it should be disclosed to the defence, having significant relevance to the witness’s credibility. Other witnesses received substantial benefits for their information or testimony, whether in the form of money from the US or fishing trips and fancy hotel stays in Scotland, laid on by the police. 

The CIA’s witness

Crown witness Majid Giaka worked for the JSO (the Libyan external security organisation) and was on secondment with Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta around the time of the bombing. He was also a CIA mole and as a former colleague of the accused he was regarded as a principal Crown witness at trial. Giaka’s evidence included his sight of a box of TNT in the office drawer of the second accused; the Libyan Consul in Malta seen handling the same explosives; Libyan senior security officials speaking of surreptitiously placing a bag on an ‘English’ aircraft, and the two accused couriering a Samsonite suitcase – the same as the suspect suitcase - into Malta’s Luca airport from Libya. This might have been damning evidence were it to have been credible.

In preparing their case, the Defence, acquired copies of 25 redacted CIA reports or ‘cables’ understanding that these represented all relevant material on Giaka, and believing that the redactions were mere security formalities. However, Defence advocates accidentally got wind of the fact that the Crown had been shown greatly extended versions of the CIA cables at a ‘secret’ meeting at the US embassy. This was against the rule of ‘equality of arms’ - fundamental to the principles of fairness in an adversarial trial. The failure to notify the defence and arrange for the exposed cables to be shared was a duplicitous and illegitimate act in any event. The chief prosecutor Lord Advocate Colin Boyd was then obliged to make a statement admitting his responsibility for the issue but he belittled the significance of the redactions – telling the court that “While they may have been of significance to the Central Intelligence Agency, they had no significance whatsoever to the case”. 

This statement from the chief prosecutor, Scotland’s Lord Advocate, proved to be an outstanding misrepresentation. The court was left in the humiliating position of having to petition the CIA to reveal the redactions for the benefit of the Defence. After only a brief scan of the exposed passages Richard Keen QC for the second accused, was scathing about what had become ‘abundantly clear’:

‘…what is now disclosed is, in many instances, highly relevant to the Defence, and I frankly find it inconceivable that it could have been thought otherwise…Some of the material, which is now disclosed, goes to the very heart of material aspects of this case, not just to issues of credibility and reliability but beyond...’ 

The revelations showed that the CIA themselves had considerable doubts about Majid Giaka, believing he was a smuggler, was milking them for thousands of dollars and supplying little useful information, but plenty which was implausible. It was revealed that a further 11 cables featuring Giaka’s behaviour had been withheld from the Defence. The judge’s conclusions describe the man who had been posited as second principal Crown witness in the trial of the century. Majid Giaka attempted to give a ‘false impression of his importance within the JSO’. He had told the CIA that he had been in the JSO ‘secret files section’ when in fact he was in ‘vehicle maintenance’. He falsely claimed to be on familiar terms with senior JSO officials – and to be related to Libya’s former King Idris – which he was not. Giaka’s claims were ‘at best grossly exaggerated, at worst simply untrue’ the judges noted, and he was ‘largely motivated by financial considerations’. 

Inviting the CIA to assist with the Lockerbie investigation was an extraordinary error of judgement by the Scottish authorities. If the Kamp Zeist bench imagined the CIA to be a bona fide intelligence agency gathering information about security threats, they were mistaken. The US defence department has considerably greater, genuine intelligence resources to inform its defence department and government of such threats. The CIA is in fact a civilian institution, specialising in clandestine operations serving the interests, including the political interests, of the White House. The CIA’s ambit includes disinformation and propaganda and it has been infamous for manipulating events solely in the interests of the USA. Its methods have involved bribery, intimidation and murder and various other criminal means. Historically the CIA has assisted in the overthrow of benign governments – even those of democratic states and NATO members – and to have helped replace them with ruthless military juntas or corrupt and murderous oligarchs. 

The CIA’s contribution to the indictment of al-Megrahi was quite remarkable: the CIA came up with the commercial timing device brand which was matched to the circuit board fragment found near Lockerbie. The CIA also unearthed the photograph of al-Megrahi which led to his identification by the eyewitness. The CIA would also have supplied the court with the Crown’s principal witness but were exposed withholding the fact that Giaka was a liar. 

The CIA, whose personnel had tampered with the crime scene itself, have no place whatsoever in either assisting police investigations or in the gathering of information for use as evidence in criminal trials, most especially those in foreign jurisdictions, and with political implications. 

Expert views

Most citizens understand that a criminal trial is supposed to include a transparent examination and exposition of facts. Whence a conviction is reached, there should not be lingering doubts about the verdict. Every jurist, lawyer, academic investigator or researcher who has examined or analysed al-Megrahi’s conviction has reasoned that it represent an outstandingly blatant and audacious miscarriage of justice. These include:

• Robert Black QC, Professor Emeritus of Scottish Law at Edinburgh University, former General Editor of The Laws of Scotland: Stair Memorial Encyclopaedia and frequently referred to as ‘the architect of the Lockerbie trial’ - has described its verdict as ‘a disgrace and an outrage’.
• Britain’s most celebrated defence lawyer Gareth Peirce, whose advocacy led to the overturn some of Britain’s most infamous miscarriages of justice, called the Lockerbie trial outcome ‘the death of justice’. As well as describing certain aspects of the forensic investigations as ‘disgraceful’ she refers to political interference, believing that al-Megrahi was returned to his home in Libya because it suited Britain: She wrote: ‘The political furore has been very obviously contrived, since both the British and American governments know perfectly well the history of how and for what reasons he came to be prosecuted’
• American media analyst and economist, Emeritus Prof. Edward S. Herman addressed the CIA’s attempt to withhold from the court, evidence about Giaka’s character: ‘Only under considerable court pressure did they produce a limited number of documents which showed Giaka to have been an incorrigible liar and the CIA, The United States and prosecuting attorneys, to be dishonest’.
• Former US international lawyer and jurist Professor Michael P. Scharf, who had worked with the State Department on preparations for the indictment of the Lockerbie suspects, later formed the opinion that these were not based so much on evidence ‘...but rather on representations from the CIA and FBI and the Department of Justice about what the case would prove, and did prove.’ About Majid Giaka he declared: “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.”
• Dr. Hans Köchler is one of Europe’s most eminent authorities on international law, in which he has made major contributions to the development of legal infrastructure. Reporting on his observations of the entire Camp Zeist proceedings on behalf of the UN, he wrote: ‘…foreign governments or (secret) governmental agencies may have been allowed, albeit indirectly, to determine, to a considerable extent, which evidence was made available to the Court.’ Dr Köchler described the verdict as ‘totally incomprehensible…a spectacular case of a miscarriage of justice.’
• Len Murray, now retired as one of Scotland’s most distinguished and experienced lawyers, found it inexplicable that the Court could ‘have drawn so many adverse inferences against the accused when there were other explanations that were just as likely...’. Mr. Murray believed that the court’s finding of the crucial date - on which the eyewitness controversially identified al-Megrahi - was established by a means which ‘bordered on the perverse’.
• Eddie MacKechnie, solicitor to al-Megrahi’s acquitted co-accused said: ‘This case was intelligence driven and the conduct of the CIA and other clandestine bodies had a very significant impact…the supposed evidence….was wholly inadequate and contrived’.
• Ian Hamilton QC. Former rector of Aberdeen University wrote: ‘‘I don’t think there’s a lawyer in Scotland who now believes that Mr. Megrahi was justly convicted’.

These eminent people are experts in their fields and mostly involved either directly with the Lockerbie case itself or with special knowledge of Scottish law, international law or terrorist trials. 

Undeniably, other jurists, terrorism experts or commentators have made public statements in support of al-Megrahi’s conviction, but these have avoided factual analyses, offering instead their confidence in due process of law:

• Anthony Aust was legal adviser to the UK’s UN Mission and later to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office department. Writing in a law journal he applauded the ‘ingenious use of international law’ in bringing the accused to justice - in fact the Kamp Zeist court was specifically an application of Scotland’s municipal law to an international case. Mr. Aust describes the trial as ‘This example of what can be achieved in the cause of justice...’
• Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC, Scotland’s chief prosecutor in the Lockerbie trial, took a very similar view: “…these proceedings have demonstrated what the judicial process can achieve when the international community acts together…I hope that this can be the enduring legacy of the Lockerbie trial. It is one that cannot and must not be forgotten”.
• Stephen Emerson, a former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and author is Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism which focuses on ‘Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups’. While describing the Lockerbie forensic investigation as ‘meticulous’ Emerson frankly outlined his analytical priorities: ‘Rather than detail the actual components of the investigation, it is helpful to step back and consider the Pan Am 103 investigation and trial from a cost-benefit analysis perspective to determine whether U.S. interests were ultimately served’.

More recently Prime Minister David Cameron referred to Stephen Emerson as ‘a complete idiot’ for describing Birmingham, UK as “...totally Muslim where non-Muslims just don’t go in” on a US News broadcast.

Those who knew al-Megrahi personally have testified as to his good character. Investigative journalist John Ashton researched for a TV documentary about the Lockerbie bombing in the 90s and co-authored two seminal books about the affair and did research for Al-Megrahi’s legal team in preparation for his second appeal. He attested to the decency and integrity of al-Megrahi in August 2011:

‘I am as certain as I can be that al-Megrahi is innocent. His good manners and cooperative behavior won him respect from prison officers and inmates alike and he strongly desires to clear his name.’

Former Scottish Police Detective George Thomson researched for and interviewed contributors to the Al Jazzera film documentary Lockerbie: Case closed, including al-Megrahi himself. Thompson’s emotional, affectionate portrayal of al-Megrahi in the opening and closing minutes of the film fully substantiates the magnanimous, forgiving statements of al-Megrahi himself from his deathbed. I strongly recommend anyone to see Lockerbie Case closed and judge for themselves the sincerity of al-Megrahi’s comments.

See: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/2012/02/20122286572242641.html

Al-Megrahi’s conviction was not merely based on weak circumstantial evidence but on a collection of stark falsehoods and transparent absurdities. Once the imaginary ‘identification’ evidence against al-Megrahi had been authorised, the remaining case was constructed around it - in particular the evidence pertaining to the fragment of the bomb itself, which is contradictory in every aspect of its appearance throughout the investigation.

In the context of the conspicuous improprieties in both investigation and trial - the falsification of evidence and documents, the gaps in the forensic evidence, the contradictory testimony, the unknown witnesses, and the extent of circumstantial and hearsay evidence - the verdict cannot possibly stand as a representation of historical fact. 

Unlike most criminal trials, the outcome of the Lockerbie trial has had profound connotations for the development of foreign and security policies of the UK and the USA. It has strongly influenced popular and governmental attitudes to Middle Eastern terrorism, Islam, and the Arabic-speaking peoples in general. Based on the obvious discrepancies pervading the Lockerbie case, then even history itself appears to have been bent and continues on a perilously misguided course. 

I invite any jurist or expert to be the first to defend the conviction of al-Megrahi on a factual, analytical basis. I also invite members of the SCCRC or the Scottish Judiciary to respond informally or otherwise, to matters raised here, which are based entirely on either reputable, published sources or from notes made from the Kamp Zeist trial transcript or extracts from it. 

Hopefully, in the name of justice and humanity - and common sense - the Scottish or UK authorities will soon make a courageous decision leading to a root-and-branch review of this case. Taking no action is the most perilous option.

An A to Z of Lockerbie “conspiracies”

[What follows is the text of an article published in The Guardian on this date in 1999. Some of the "conspiracies" have since been comprehensively debunked. Others have not:]

Lockerbie conspiracies: from A to Z

A

is for Africa, South

Several pieces of evidence (see H and W) suggest that the authorities knew in advance that the Boeing 747 which blew up over Lockerbie in southern Scotland on December 21 1988 was in danger. The German newspaper Die Zeit claimed that the South African foreign minister, Pik Botha, intended to fly on Pan Am 103 but had been warned off. Mr Botha flew on an earlier flight, Pan Am 101, which, unlike flight 103, had special security checks at Heathrow. No one has been able to definitively confirm or refute the Die Zeit story.

B

is for bomb-maker

The German anti-terror campaign Operation Autumn Leaves (see J, O and P) led to the arrest of bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat weeks before the Lockerbie disaster. Khreesat was released after a few days because of a lack of evidence. In April 1989 further German police raids resulted in the discovery of two more bombs designed by Khreesat specifically to blow up aircraft. Did he make the bomb which was placed on feeder flight Pan Am 103A before it left Frankfurt for Heathrow?

C

is for coffin

Two coach-loads of officials arrived at the disaster scene in the day after the crash. Many were plain-clothed Americans with no obvious affiliation. Among their baggage was a single coffin for which no explanation has ever been given. Labour MP Tam Dalyell later produced evidence indicating that the Americans had "stolen" a body from the wreckage. A local doctor identified and labelled 59 bodies and was then puzzled to find that the Americans had relabelled and tagged only 58 in the area where he had been working.

D

is for drugs

Lockerbie farmer Jim Wilson found a suitcase full of cellophane packets containing white powder among the debris in his fields. The suitcase was taken away, no explanation was given, and the authorities continued to insist that no drugs (apart from a small quantity of cannabis) had been found on the plane. But it was later discovered that the name Mr Wilson saw on the suitcase did not correspond with any of the names on the Pan Am 103 passenger list.

E

is for the Express

Ten days after the Lockerbie disaster, the Daily Express devoted its front page to exposing a Lebanese American called Khaled Jafaar whom it named as the "bomb carrier". The Express's sources were "the FBI and Scotland Yard". The Interfor report (see I) also named Khaled Jafaar as the bomb carrier.

F

is for fiction

It has been argued that talk of the CIA, cover-ups, bombs, timers and Maltese trousers (see M) is just entertaining fiction. Some observers believe that there was no bomb on Pan Am 103 and that explosive decompression or an electrical fault caused the Lockerbie disaster, as they caused other Boeing 747 crashes.

G

is for Garrick

Paul Channon, British Secretary of State for Transport, lunched five journalists at the Garrick Club three months after Lockerbie and told them, off-the-record, that the Lockerbie killers had been identified and would soon be arrested. Yet the two Libyans who came to be the prime suspects were not charged until November 1991. It seems likely that at that time Mr Channon was confident that the Lockerbie bomb was the work of the Palestinians (see P).

H

is for Helsinki

Sixteen days before the disaster, a man rang the US embassy in Helsinki, Finland, and warned of a bomb aboard a Pan Am aircraft flying from Frankfurt to the US. The 1990 US President's Commission report on aviation security said that "thousands of US government employees saw the Helsinki threat". Not a single US worker at the Moscow embassy took flight Pan Am 103 from Frankfurt, a standard and popular route home for Christmas. But the British Department of Transport had told Pan Am in December that British intelligence dismissed the threat as "not real".

I

is for Interfor

A report by Interfor, a New York corporate investigative company hired by Pan Am, suggested that a Palestinian gang (see P) had got the bomb on to the airliner at Frankfurt by exploiting a US intelligence deal (see U). In a bid to free American hostages in Beirut, American intelligence agents had apparently struck a deal with Syrian drug smugglers: in exchange for hostage information, the agents smoothed the Lebanon-US drugs route by relaxing security restrictions and allowing drug luggage to sail through customs. The terrorist gang simply switched the drug luggage for a bomb.

J

is for Ahmed Jibril

Ahmed Jibril was the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) (see P). He enjoyed the protection of the Syrian government. Intelligence agents reported that Jibril had been assigned by a furious Iran to avenge the shooting down of an Iranian airbus by a US warship in 1988 (which killed 290 people). The leader of Jibril's terrorist gang, Hafez Dalkamoni, was one of the Palestinians arrested in Operation Autumn Leaves (see O).

K

is for Kuwait

In 1990 Kuwait was invaded by Saddam Hussein. Anglo-American attitudes to the Middle East were transformed. Paul Foot and John Ashton argue that theories about Lockerbie are inextricably linked to this changing political situation. In 1989 intelligence-based evidence fitted snugly with US and British foreign policy in the Middle East. Both countries had severed relations with Syria, and the Iraq-Iran war ended in 1988 with America and Britain continuing to be hostile to Iran and supportive of Iraq. The US and British governments were content with the prime Lockerbie suspects: a Palestinian gang (see P), backed by Syria and Iran. But in 1990, the impending Anglo-American war against Iraq necessitated neutralising Iran and winning the support of Syria. Britain's diplomatic relations with Syria were duly restored in November 1990 and the Gulf war commenced in 1991. Sure enough, the credibility of intelligence theories about the Lockerbie bombing being masterminded by the Iran- and Syria-backed Palestinian gang was soon dismantled.

L

is for Libya

In November 1991, the American and British governments charged two Libyan airline officials, Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, with planting the Lockerbie bomb. To justify the radical change in the investigation's focus away from the Palestinians, the US State Department said: "Fresh evidence undermined the initial theory linking the PFLP-GC (see P) to the bomb". This included evidence that the Lockerbie bomb's "sophisticated electronic timer" had been delivered from Switzerland to Libya. And, in contrast, the bombs discovered in the hands of the Palestinians in Germany (see B) had "relatively crude timers".

M

is for the Maltese connection

A series of Sunday Times investigative pieces reported that the Lockerbie bomb had first been put on a plane in Malta. The bombing had been carried out by the Palestinian group (see P), after a gang member, Abu Talb, visited Malta. He was identified by a Maltese boutique owner as the man who bought clothes later found in the bomb suitcase. A bag which ended up on Pan Am 103 was identified by a baggage handler as coming from an Air Malta flight. When a Granada TV documentary repeated the allegations, Air Malta sued Granada for libel. A hitherto unpublished document from Air Malta's lawyers demonstrated that there were no bags on the flight which went on to Pan Am 103 or 103A. Granada settled out of court.

N

is for not proven

Legally defined as "a criminal verdict, somewhere between guilty and not guilty, the consequences of which are that the accused is treated as if found not guilty". Britain and the US fear that if attention is paid to the conflicting conspiracy theories, the case against the Libyans in The Hague could only be "not proven".

O

is for Operation Autumn Leaves

Five weeks before the Palestinian warning (see I) was received, a German anti-terrorism campaign, Operation Autumn Leaves, arrested a "team of Palestinians not associated with the PLO" in possession of a bomb in a cassette recorder (see T) strikingly similar to the Lockerbie bomb. These Palestinians, including Hafez Dalkamoni (see J) and Marwan Khreesat (see B) had been arrested outside a flat in Neuss - two hours' drive from Frankfurt, from whose airport Pan Am 103's feeder flight had originated. They were released after five days because there was not enough evidence against them.

P

is for Palestinians

Operation Autumn Leaves led to the arrest of a gang associated with a splinter group of the Palestinian movement the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC). Was Pan Am 103 blown up by a Palestinian gang, protected by Syria and paid for by Iran?

Q

is for Queen's English

The official air accident report concludes: "The detonation of an improvised explosive device led directly to the destruction of the aircraft". If it was a bomb why wasn't it called a bomb in plain English?

R

is for red tarpaulin

On the night of the disaster teams of rescue volunteers scouring the area discovered a large object under a red tarpaulin. As they approached it, they were warned off by gunmen in the doorway of a hovering helicopter. A local farmer, Innes Graham, was also warned by US investigators to stay away from a small wooded area a few miles east of Lockerbie.

S

is for the Swiss circuit board

A central piece of evidence which pointed to the Libyans (see L) was a tiny fragment of a circuit board found among the Lockerbie debris. This was traced to a firm in Switzerland which exported timers to Libya. Apart from the confusion over when and where the circuit board was found (reports vary between June and November 1990), the Libyan connection to the timers is not as clear-cut as investigators have claimed. The US state department maintained that all timers from the Swiss firm had been delivered to Libya, but a BBC radio programme later proved that the firm had provided identical timers to the East German secret police, the Stasi.

T

is for Toshiba

The German anti-terror campaign Operation Autumn Leaves (see O) discovered a Toshiba cassette recorder packed with semtex. Pieces of a similar model of recorder had been found in the wreckage at Lockerbie.

U

is for US intelligence

There have been several claims that the bomb was planted on Pan Am 103 by a crack team of US intelligence agents. A Radio Forth journalist reported the claim and, within an hour, was threatened with prosecution or, bizarrely, invited to disclose his source to the Prime Minister. The Interfor report (see I) also alleged that Major Charles McKee, the head of the US intelligence team, who was travelling on the plane, was shocked by his colleagues' deal with Syrian drug smugglers and was returning on Pan Am 103 to report them. The inference was obvious - Pan Am 103 was sacrificed by the intelligence community to get rid of Major McKee. But the Interfor report was greeted with widespread scepticism.

V

is for Vincent Cannistraro

In the early 1990s the Lockerbie investigation shifted from the Scottish Borders to the CIA base in America. The man in charge there was Vincent Cannistraro. Mr Cannistraro had worked with Oliver North in President Reagan's National Security Council and, Paul Foot and John Ashton argue, he "specialised in the US vendetta against Libya". Mr Cannistraro was part of a secret programme to destabilise the Libyan regime which culminated in the US bombing of Libya in 1986. He retired from the CIA in September 1990 but by then had helped lay the foundations for a completely new approach to the bombing investigation, in which the chief suspect was not Iran or Syria, but Libya.

W

is for warning

Three days before the Helsinki threat (see H), an intelligence source in the US state department's office of diplomatic security warned that a team of Palestinians, not associated with the PLO, was targeting Pan Am airline and US military bases in Europe. The comment attached to the message read: "We cannot refute or confirm this".

X

is for xenophobia

In 1989 Anglo-American intelligence services and politicians widely blamed the Lockerbie bomb on a Palestinian terror group (see P), backed by Syria and Iran. In 1990, (see K) Iraq became the Anglo-American Arab enemy number one in the run-up to the Gulf war; Iran became neutral and Syrian troops joined the Allied forces. Only Libya remained adamantly aligned with Iraq. Suddenly, coincidentally, the Lockerbie bomb was blamed on the Libyans.

Y

is for Yvonne Fletcher

PC Yvonne Fletcher was shot dead outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984, causing diplomatic relations between Britain and Libya to be severed. The file on Yvonne Fletcher is still open and Britain continues to demand Libyan co-operation on the matter. The fairness of the trial of the two Libyan suspects could yet affect this case.

Z

is for Zeist

Camp Zeist is the former US air base in The Hague where the two Libyans are being tried under Scottish law. But even the conviction of Abdel Basset Ali Al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah seems unlikely to still the disquiet and conspiracies that continue to surround flight Pan Am 103.