Lockerbie: Morag Kerr hits back at Magnus Linklater

[This is the headline over a letter from Dr Morag Kerr in The Café section of the issue of the Scottish Review published on 17 February:]

How dare Magnus Linklater (10 February) repeatedly traduce in print a book he hasn’t even had the courtesy to read! The false assumptions and downright fabrications in his latest sally make it all too clear that this is the case, despite his assurance to me two years ago that he had – even going so far as to call the unread text 'a remarkable piece of work'.

Does Mr Linklater seriously believe that I wrote a book in 2013 based entirely on premises the appeal court rejected in 2002? Of course I didn’t. Does he believe that the book merely points out (for about the ten-thousandth time) that the suitcase John Bedford saw in the baggage container an hour before the connecting flight from Frankfurt landed looks suspiciously like the bomb? There is much more to it than that. Does he imagine that I examined the Heathrow evidence in isolation from the rest of the case? The book would hardly be 220-pages long if that were so.

The break-in into Heathrow Terminal 3 the night before the disaster is irrelevant. It was freely acknowledged in court that airside security in 1988 was abysmal, and it would have been child’s play for anyone to walk in any time they liked. No midnight cutting of padlocks would have been necessary. The break-in happened, but whether it was related to the introduction of the bomb into the baggage container 17 hours later is an entirely moot point. I make this perfectly clear in the book, and I would take it very kindly if Mr Linklater would cease and desist from dragging up this irrelevancy at every turn, as if it somehow discredits my thesis.

The possibility that the bomb might have been in the case John Bedford saw was explored in the original trial, with the defence obviously keen to suggest that it was. What is remarkable is that no evidence was presented of any specific investigation into the provenance of that suitcase by the original inquiry. Apparently, it was merely assumed that it wasn’t the bomb.

The 'meat' of my book is a thorough investigation into the provenance of the case Bedford saw; the investigation which should have been done in 1989 but wasn’t. In the course of this I examine witness statements, passenger and baggage transfer records and detailed photographs of the blast-damaged luggage – evidence that was for the most part not presented either at the original trial or the appeal. The results of this analysis are clear-cut. That was indeed the bomb suitcase, beyond any reasonable doubt. Once again I challenge Mr Linklater, and indeed anyone who has read the book, to explain why they don’t accept this analysis – based on evidence and logic, not dismissive sneers.

Mr Linklater implies that I am ignoring separate evidence of 'an unaccompanied bag coming from Malta that morning'. If he were to read my book he would discover that I pick apart the evidence for the existence of this bag in exhaustive detail, and come down firmly on the side of the German policeman who was originally assigned this task and whose report concludes: 'Throughout the inquiries into the baggage for PA103A there was no evidence that the bomb suitcase had been transferred with the luggage either from or via Frankfurt Main to London'.

Indeed, some clothing packed with the bomb was purchased on Malta, but as that purchase took place several weeks before the disaster it in no way precludes the bomb itself having been introduced at Heathrow. Again I deal with this point in great detail in the book, and in particular with the contention that Megrahi was the man who made that purchase. Clearly he was not, and the SCCRC report of 2007 underlined that pretty effectively.

Far from picking at one small point and ignoring the bigger picture, putting this point in context is exactly what the book is about. Not simply the compelling evidence that the bomb was already in the baggage container an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed, but the extremely tight and well-documented security at Malta airport that shows no sign whatsoever of an illegitimate item of luggage on Air Malta flight 180. In this context I would refer Mr Linklater to the words of Lord Osborne at the first appeal in 2002. 'There is considerable and quite convincing evidence that that could not have happened.'

Mr Linklater, as always, sets great store by what the various judges concluded. In the context of a reasoned argument showing that these conclusions were wrong, this is an unhelpful begging of the question. The evidence I have analysed was not presented in court. Mine is an entirely new and more detailed dissection of the forensics than anything previously attempted.

I ask once again, although with fading hopes, that Mr Linklater go away and read my book, and then explain exactly where he takes issue with my reasoning or my conclusions. Or else refrain from commenting on something he clearly knows nothing about.

Analysis of the evidence and what was missed or hidden and why

Dr Morag Kerr’s book Adequately Explained by Stupidity?

Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies will be available to buy on, or very shortly after, 10 December. Why not order it today from your bookshop or through the publisher’s website?

‘A remarkable piece of work, comprehensive in its analysis of the evidence and what was missed or hidden and why,’ says James Robertson.

‘I have had the immense privilege of proofing aspects of this book. It is, without question, nothing less than a work of genius. Amongst many other features studied, it conclusively demonstrates, via a highly detailed and scholarly analysis of the evidence relating to the luggage carried in the hold of Pan Am 103, how horrifically bungled the Lockerbie investigation was. Its implications are truly shocking. It is high time that executive powers in Scotland were brought to bear on the Police, Crown Office and forensic officials responsible for this outrageous scandal,’ says Justice for Megrahi’s secretary, Robert Forrester.

‘I have had the privilege of reading the typescript of this book. The evidence painstakingly uncovered and meticulously analysed by Dr Kerr leaves absolutely no room for doubt that the bomb suitcase was already on the Pan Am luggage container AVE 4041 before the feeder flight from Frankfurt arrived at Heathrow. The prosecution scenario (surprisingly swallowed by the trial court) of the bomb being in an unaccompanied bag sent from Malta via Frankfurt to Heathrow is utterly destroyed. Whoever was responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103, Morag Kerr has conclusively demonstrated that it was not Abdelbaset al-Megrahi,’ say I.

Why Heathrow is back in the frame

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exact match

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

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

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

Fool-proof security

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

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

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

A ‘contrived scenario’

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

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

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

Justice for Megrahi deputy secretary's forthcoming book

[Advance information relating to Dr Morag Kerr’s book Adequately Explained by Stupidity?: Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies, which is to be released on 21 December, has been produced by the publisher.  It reads in part:]

Tunnel vision or organised cover-up? How the Lockerbie investigation got the wrong man

Twenty-five years after Maid of the Seas crashed on the town of Lockerbie, this groundbreaking book introduces an entirely new perspective on the controversial investigation and subsequent conviction. Concentrating almost entirely on the transfer baggage evidence, it exposes shocking deficiencies in both the police inquiry and the forensic investigation, which led the hunt in entirely the wrong direction.

Cleverly constructed to lead the reader through the complexities of the case, the book provides insights which will be new to even the most seasoned Lockerbie pundit, while remaining accessible to those with little or no previous familiarity with the subject. The reader will see all the main aspects of the official account of the Lockerbie disaster comprehensively destroyed.

This is the first book about Lockerbie to deal rigorously with the detail of the transfer baggage evidence. Morag G Kerr has been given access to reports, statements and photographs not previously available to the general public, and has analysed the information with forensic rigour. This analysis proves conclusively that the bomb that brought down the plane was introduced at Heathrow airport and not at Malta as claimed.

MacAskill concession destroys foundation of Megrahi conviction

[Today’s Scottish newspapers have at last latched on to the most important revelation in the extract from Kenny MacAskill’s Lockerbie book that was published in The Sunday Times this week:]

The National:  Campaigners who believe Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was innocent of the Lockerbie bombing have reported former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to Police Scotland over his new book on the atrocity and the compassionate release of the only man ever convicted of it.

Justice for Megrahi had previously made a series of criminal allegations concerning the investigation and trial which they said would throw serious doubt on Megrahi’s conviction and “point to possible malpractice by Crown Office personnel, police and other prosecution witnesses”.

A spokesman for the group told The National yesterday: “We have made a formal report to Police Scotland in respect of Mr MacAskill’s book as we believe that some of the contents relate directly to our nine criminal allegations which are currently being investigated by the police.”

In a statement, a Police Scotland spokesman said: “We are aware of the imminent publication of the book and will assess any new information should it come to light.”

MacAskill’s book The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice is being serialised by a Sunday newspaper but has already come under fire from the architect of the Camp Zeist trial of Megrahi, the only man to be convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. Professor Robert Black QC said the book casts further doubt on the conviction.

MacAskill took the decision to release Megrahi in August 2009 on compassionate grounds. He was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and died three years later in Libya.

Black, emeritus professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, told The National the most important thing to emerge from the book’s early extracts concerned the clothes that linked Megrahi to the bombing of PanAm flight 103.

He said MacAskill had written that “clothes in the suitcase that carried the bomb were acquired in Malta, though not by Megrahi. But if Megrahi didn’t buy the clothes, he was certainly involved”.

However, Black said: “This is huge. If the trial court hadn’t concluded that Megrahi bought the clothes in Gauci’s shop, he couldn’t have been convicted. This finding was absolutely crucial to the verdict.

“So Kenny is saying that the court was wrong on a matter absolutely essential to its verdict.”

Black also said MacAskill had cited among the reasons for his belief that Libya and Megrahi had been involved in the bombing “an alleged interview given by Colonel Gaddafi to The Washington Times in 2003”.

But he said: “There was no such 2003 interview. What MacAskill is referring to is the claim by the editor-in-chief of The Washington Times, Arnaud de Borchgrave, that in an off-the-record conversation in 1993 Gaddafi admitted that Libya played a part in a scheme to destroy an American aircraft which had been instigated by Iran.”

Black added there had been no mention of findings from the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission that the conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice on six grounds. He said they included evidence in Dr Morag Kerr’s book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies.

This, he said, established beyond reasonable doubt “that the suitcase containing the bomb did not arrive at Heathrow as unaccompanied baggage from Malta via Frankfurt but was already in the relevant luggage container before the feeder flight arrived”. (...)

Controversial identification was key to Megrahi's conviction

Central to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s conviction was his identification by Tony Gauci, a Maltese shop-owner, who testified that the Libyan had bought clothes that were later deemed to have been packed in the lethal suitcase bomb that brought down the PanAm flight.

In 19 separate statements made to police before the trial, Gauci had failed to positively identify Megrahi as the purchaser. During the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, the shopkeeper was asked several times if he recognised anyone in the courtroom, but could only answer when a prosecutor pointed to Megrahi sitting in the left of the dock.

Gauci had also told police that the man who bought the clothes on either November 23 or December 7 was 6ft tall and more than 50 years of age. Megrahi was 5ft 8in tall, and in 1988 he was 36.

The shopkeeper said the buyer also purchased an umbrella because it was raining heavily outside. Yet Maltese meteorological records introduced by the defence team showed that while it did rain all day on November 23, there was almost certainly no rain on December 7.

If it did rain on the later date, the shower would have been barely enough to wet the pavement.

The Herald:  Campaigners claim a former Scottish minister has called into question the conviction of the only man found guilty of the Lockerbie bombing.

Former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill controversially released Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds after he was diagnosed with cancer.

But in a new book Mr MacAskill appears to dismiss crucial evidence that helped to convict Mr Megrahi.

He writes that he does not believe the claim he bought clothes in a store in Malta that were packed around the bomb.

He maintains, however. that Mr Megrahi played a role.

All 259 people on board and 11 on the ground where killed when a Pan-Am airliner exploded over Lockerbie in 1988.

James Robertson, of the Justice for Megrahi campaign group, said that MacAskill’s comments raised serious questions.

He said: “The most interesting thing in all this is that Kenny MacAskill has said that he does not believe that Megrahi was the man who bought those clothes.

"But this calls into account the whole Camp Zeist judgement and it would mean that Megrahi could not have possibly been behind the bombing.

“As Justice minister Kenny MacAskill repeatedly stuck to the line that he had no doubt Megrahi was guilty, but now appears to be saying the opposite.

“Alex Salmond also stuck to this line, and the Justice for Megrahi campaign will be asking if what was said in public was the same as was said in private.”

Very little of the evidence now fits with the Crown case

[What follows is the text of a contribution by John Ashton in The Café section of today’s edition of the Scottish Review:]

Does Magnus Linklater run his Lockerbie articles through reverse fact-checking software before submitting them? How else I wonder could almost every one he writes contain so many basic errors?

His latest piece accuses me of failing to address new evidence concerning Mr Megrahi's relationship with alleged bomber Abouagela Masud. No one reading my recent articles could have failed to miss the fact that I acknowledged the evidence's potential significance and expressed my wish that it be put before the court. I also set out the reasons to treat it with scepticism, which I suspect is Mr Linklater’s real beef. Being sceptical is not the same as failing to address, but maybe his software conflates the two.

Mr Linklater acknowledges that he hasn't looked in detail at the evidence assembled by Dr Morag Kerr, which demonstrates that the bomb originated from Heathrow, rather than Malta (the latter being where Megrahi and Masud flew from to Tripoli on the morning of the bombing). He doesn't need to, he says, because the evidence was considered and dismissed by the appeal court and Megrahi’s trial lawyers. Except it wasn’t. Dr Kerr has in fact gone far further than anyone else in considering the bomb’s origin. If Mr Linklater doesn’t believe me, I’ll be happy to send him the defence paperwork and copies of the appeal court transcripts. I challenge Mr Linklater to read Dr Kerr's book and tell us why it doesn't stand up.

Mr Linklater also asserts that '[for] a long time those who argued for the Heathrow theory placed a lot of weight on the evidence that there had been a break-in: a padlock had been cut, allowing access to a potential bomb-carrier. That theory, I believe, has now been abandoned, because the timing is not right'. Wrong again. The break-in may or may not be significant, but the evidence of Heathrow ingestion stands separately to it and has never been considered as reliant upon it. Furthermore, Dr Kerr, who is the most prominent proponent of Heathrow, has always said that the break-in was likely irrelevant.

Mr Linklater goes on to tell us: 'When you have a large and complex circumstantial case, everything has to to fit into a coherent picture. Picking one part and analysing it in detail is unconvincing if what you come up with ignores other contradictory evidence'. The trouble is, very little of the evidence now fits with the Crown case that he is so keen to defend. Mr Megrahi allegedly bought the clothes from a Maltese shop that were placed in the bomb suitcase, yet the evidence shows that he looked nothing like the purchaser and that the clothes were bought when he was not on the island. The Crown claimed that a fragment of circuit board found among the clothes matched ones in timers supplied exclusively to Libya, but we now know that it did not. Most importantly, the Crown’s central claim that the bomb originated from Malta has been destroyed by Dr Kerr. Take Malta out of the equation and Megrahi's presence there, his lies and his shady associations are irrelevant.

None of this has been properly addressed by Mr Linklater in any of his numerous articles on Lockerbie. Apparently it's okay to ignore contradictory evidence when it's the Crown case that is contradicted.

MacAskill book ‘likely to focus on politics behind Lockerbie’

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The National. It reads as follows:]

Campaigners who believe Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was wrongly convicted of the Lockerbie bombing have said they doubt if a former justice secretary’s book on the atrocity will shed any further light on it.

Kenny MacAskill’s book will likely give his version of the period leading up to the release the terminally-ill Megrahi on compassionate grounds, and the subsequent international condemnation of the decision after the Libyan agent went on to live for a further three years.

It is said to include new details about MacAskill’s own investigation into the bombing, but Iain McKie, a retired police officer and leading member of the Justice for Megrahi (JfM) group, told The National he doubted that the MSP was cashing in on the case: “I would certainly hope that’s not the case. Surely anything of that nature should have been revealed long before now.

“I think it is more likely to focus on the political machinations surrounding the disaster both at home and abroad, but it is another indication that this is not going to go away.

“Reports on two police inquiries have still to be published, there is a documentary planned for later in the year and there is another book, and I think the relatives – for whom I have the deepest sympathy – deserve to know the truth.”

Robert Black QC, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh, who is a native of Lockerbie and a prominent member of JfM, added: “I very much doubt that Kenny’s book will add anything substantial to the sum of human knowledge on Lockerbie.

“I know it’s said that he’s conducted his own investigations, but I find it difficult to believe he can have uncovered anything that hasn’t already been brought into to public domain by Dr Morag Kerr (Adequately Explained by Stupidity: Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies) and John Ashton (Megrahi: You Are My Jury).

“If he has discovered evidence pointing to the guilt of others (Libyan or non-Libyan) or that in his view confirms the guilt of Megrahi, then he’s duty bound to have passed this on to the police and/or the Crown Office (who say that Lockerbie remains an open investigation) who would undoubtedly adjure him not to go public with the evidence.

“I find it utterly impossible to believe that a former Cabinet Secretary for Justice would ignore such a request or instruction.

“I therefore suspect that the book will deal virtually exclusively with Kenny’s role in the run-up to Megrahi’s compassionate release.”

American Susan Cohen, who lost her 20-year-old daughter Theodora in the bombing, said she was sceptical about the book.

“Do we really think MacAskill will tell us the truth?

“It will just be an exercise in self-serving and some attempt to protect what he thinks is his legacy,” she said.

“I find it disgusting.”

MacAskill’s book has a point of ‘enormous significance’

[This is the headline over a letter from Dr Morag Kerr published yesterday on the website of The National. It reads as follows:]

May I correct an inadvertent error in your article “MacAskill reported over Lockerbie book” (The National, May 17)?

The article implied that the material in my own book, Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies was included by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in its six grounds for believing that the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing might have been a miscarriage of justice. This is not the case.

The six grounds cited by the SCCRC in its 2007 report all relate to the identification of Megrahi as the man who bought the clothes packed around the bomb.

As your article correctly observed, Megrahi’s actual appearance differed wildly from the witness Tony Gauci’s original description of the purchaser, and the weather conditions (and incidentally evidence relating to the Christmas lights in the town) placed the purchase on a day when there is no evidence Megrahi was even on Malta.This flawed identification was absolutely fundamental to the original conviction of Megrahi in 2001, and Mr MacAskill’s repudiation of the identification in his forthcoming book is thus of enormous significance.

My own book deals principally with a different aspect of the case, that of the method by which the bomb suitcase was introduced into the airline baggage system.

This analysis was not carried out until after the SCCRC had completed its investigation, and thus it was not included in its 2007 report.

The issue is however now assuming overwhelming importance.

It appears that both Kenny MacAskill and Alex Salmond (on Scotland Tonight, May 16) now accept that Megrahi did not buy these clothes, nevertheless they continue to insist that he was “involved somehow”, based principally on his presence at Malta airport on the morning of the disaster.

The original Lockerbie investigation believed that the bomb suitcase was smuggled on to an Air Malta flight at that time.This belief was however fundamentally mistaken, based on a flawed and incomplete analysis of the recovered crash debris.

Careful analysis of the blast-damaged suitcases and adjacent items shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the bomb was in a suitcase seen in the baggage container at Heathrow an hour before the connecting flight from Frankfurt landed.

Mr MacAskill is thus incorrect in his assertion that “there is no suggestion” that the bomb suitcase was not transferred to the Pan Am feeder flight at Frankfurt. The evidence for this having happened is extremely questionable. The evidence for the bomb’s presence at Heathrow is, in contrast, well-nigh irrefutable. This being the case, not only did Megrahi not buy the clothes, he was a thousand miles away from the actual scene of the crime.

I do not know who carried out the Lockerbie bombing, still less who masterminded it.

It is plain that this will never be known until the authorities understand that they need to be looking for people who were in London in the afternoon, not on Malta in the morning.

Serious evidence-based concerns never addressed

[What follows is the text of an article by Dr Morag Kerr which is published today on the Scottish Legal News website:]

Dr Morag Kerr, secretary-depute of Justice for Megrahi, replies to Ronnie Clancy KC’s recent articles on Lockerbie and argues that despite the slur of ‘conspiracy theorist’ used by the UK and Scottish governments, the Crown Office, the SSCRC and the Americans, Mr Megrahi still suffered a miscarriage of justice.

I declare that the bomb that caused the Lockerbie disaster was in the suitcase seen by John Bedford in the baggage container in the interline shed at Heathrow at 4.30 pm, an hour before the PA103 feeder flight from Frankfurt landed. I challenge Mr Clancy, or anyone else, to prove me wrong using facts and reason, not the unevidenced opinions of others, and not legal technicalities.

Mr Clancy makes a number of assertions in his two-part article of 6th and 7th January, and delivers a number of ad hominem attacks on critics of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s conviction, but actual evidence is in short supply. Reasoned refutation is conspicuous by its absence. Much of his argument consists of “the SCCRC have looked at this and say it’s fine, nothing to see here folks,” and “these people are dreadful conspiracy theorists.”

The lazy “conspiracy theorist” slur is a repeat of Magnus Linklater’s perennial articles for The Times, built on a false premise, or rather the logical fallacy of the unexcluded middle. There is a third possibility between that of Megrahi being guilty as charged and the police, the justice system and the SCCRC all being complicit in a conscious conspiracy to perpetuate a miscarriage of justice, and that is the aspect of human nature known as confirmation bias. Reading Mr Clancy’s articles it is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that he too is a victim of this particular form of fact-blindness.

When one is personally invested in a particular conclusion, whether as an individual or as part of a self-reinforcing group, the act of considering the possibility that one might be mistaken can be repugnant, almost painful. This is particularly true when the consequences of having to acknowledge that a mistake has been made are wide-ranging. The brain will seize on any scrap of evidence, however peripheral to the core argument, any line of reasoning no matter how convoluted and sophistic, to shore up the original conclusion and avoid the cognitive dissonance of seriously contemplating a contradictory one.

It is disingenuous in the extreme to cherry-pick public statements by those advancing the proposition that Megrahi was wrongfully convicted to imply that some grand, conscious and co-ordinated conspiracy is being alleged (how could that possibly be, surely these people are malicious!), rather than the obvious interpretation that what is being proposed is that those determinedly shoring up the conviction are mistaken, in thrall to confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. (Indeed, the very title of my own book about the case, referencing the aphorism known as “Hanlon’s Razor”, should have provided something of a clue.)

It is particularly disingenuous do this, and to base an entire argument on the premise that the SCCRC is to be trusted implicitly, in the very week of the debacle in England surrounding the wrongful conviction of Andrew Malkinson and the very credible allegations that the CCRC “has been infected with a culture of denial”. A culture, that is, steeped in confirmation bias. The Malkinson case is not the only one. Can we really, hands on hearts, trust that the SCCRC is a completely different animal?

In the second part of his article Mr Clancy appears to call on specific pieces of evidence to support his position. Nevertheless, once again the argument is little more than “trust the SCCRC, they’ve looked at this very thoroughly,” rather than reasoned, factual refutation.

The timer fragment

Given the mysterious nature of this object it’s hardly surprising to find it surrounded by a fog of speculation and indeed conspiracy theorising. That also is human nature. However, the speculation comes after the observation that this item was not what the prosecution claimed it was, and does not negate that observation.

Dr Swire and Mr Biddulph, and indeed Mr James, are entirely justified in their doubts about the provenance of the fragment, and their criticism of the way this was handled by the SCCRC. To inject some facts into the discussion (a bit of a shock to the system, I know), the central issue is this. It was recognised at an early stage in the investigation that the circuitry of the fragment was coated with pure tin, a technique used by amateur hobbyists making single or small-batch PCBs, and which is not suitable for large-scale commercial use. This was considered a very significant finding when the fragment was first analysed in Scotland in early 1990. While the pattern of the circuitry on the fragment seems to confirm to a high degree of certainty that it was made from a Letraset template produced by the Swiss electronics firm MEBO, all the PCBs for the MST-13 timers that were manufactured from that template for MEBO by Thüring AG had their circuitry coated with a 70/30 tin/lead alloy. Thüring did not have the facilities to apply a pure tin coating. It is one of the many highly regrettable features of the Zeist trial that this discrepancy was fudged and obscured in court, mainly thanks to a highly misleading statement by Allen Feraday, an English forensics expert, and the bench was never made aware of it.

Speculation and conspiracy theorising aside, nobody knows what that fragment is, who made it or when or for what purpose. All that can be said is that it was not from one of the batches of PCBs manufactured by Thüring and which were supplied to Libya by MEBO, as alleged by the Crown. Mr Clancy refers to “… the large body of evidence, including scientific evidence, that questions the accuracy of [these] claims.” What evidence would that be, then? According to their public news release the SCCRC rejected this ground of appeal on the narrow technical point that “… the applicants have not provided a reasonable explanation as to why the fresh evidence concerning the metallurgy issue was not led at the trial,” and because they believed that the failure of the original defence team to uncover the discrepancy did not amount to “defective representation”, not because they had obtained scientific findings which contradicted this evidence.

The suitcase

This is my own personal area of expertise in the case, and Mr Clancy refers to my 2013 book Adequately Explained by Stupidity?, which is largely devoted to examining this issue. I wonder if he has read it?

According to Mr Clancy, “… the SCCRC carried out a thorough examination of the allegation taking account of all the relevant evidence including information which was not available to Justice for Megrahi. The SCCRC concluded that ‘… it was not arguable that the Justice for Megrahi theory could show conclusively that the bomb had entered the airline luggage in Heathrow’.” (Note, not that this information disproved the proposition, merely that it apparently rendered it inconclusive.)

The evidence presented in my book formed part of Justice for Megrahi’s submission to the COPFS which resulted in the police Operation Sandwood. In the course of that investigation I was interviewed by officers on several occasions, going through the evidence and my reasoning in minute detail. Repeatedly, I assured them that I had no dog in this fight beyond a desire to solve the puzzle (which the original forensic investigators had so signally failed to do). I was (and still am) convinced that the evidence proves beyond reasonable doubt that the bomb suitcase was already in London an hour before the flight supposedly carrying it landed. As a scientist, though, I always strive to maintain an open mind. I begged the police officers on several occasions to tell me if they discovered either additional evidence I didn’t have, or an alternative interpretation I hadn’t thought of, that would cast doubt on my conclusion. I stated categorically that if such evidence were to be found, I would withdraw my thesis and issue a public retraction. Nothing of that nature happened. Contact with Operation Sandwood tailed off and then ceased entirely, with no explanation. All I ever got was a personal jibe from Kenny Macaskill to the effect that (and I paraphrase) “I know something you don’t know, so you’re wrong.”

This is more or less exactly Mr Clancy’s position, echoing the position of the SCCRC. They know “something” that allows an entire book full of minute detail and closely-reasoned argument to be dismissed, but no hint at all is given of what this something might be. I find the secrecy over this point very disturbing.

The best guess I can make is that Operation Sandwood, Mr Macaskill, the SCCRC and Mr Clancy are placing the supposed confession of Abu Agila Masoud to having been involved in the smuggling of the bomb on board Flight KM180 in Malta above my analysis. However, this “confession” is a highly contradictory and confusing document, in places flatly contradicting evidence relied on to convict Megrahi. False confessions are one of the most frequent causes of miscarriages of justice and wrongful convictions, and indeed in this case the lord advocate was unable to assure Justice for Megrahi that he was confident that the confession had not been obtained by torture. My position on this matter is that if someone confesses to doing something that provably didn’t happen, it still didn’t happen.

My analysis of the evidence, which is entirely theoretical, has recently been independently confirmed experimentally.[1] A Dutch forensic scientist, Dr Erwin Vermeij, carried out multiple test explosions using used aluminium LD3 containers with mocked-up suitcases and IEDs made to simulate the Lockerbie bomb, with the bomb suitcase in various positions in the container. These experiments were far more rigorously designed and executed than the botched tests carried out in the USA in 1989. His conclusion states:

Regarding the damage to the luggage containers, experiment 7 where the IED suitcase was in the first (bottom) layer with one end slightly elevated on to the horizontal strut comes closest to replicating the damage observed on LD3 luggage container AVE4041. This suggests that the reported so called Claiden spot is probably too high, presuming that 450g explosive was used. If the center of the Lockerbie bomb was really on the Claiden spot, the only possibility is that the explosive charge must have been larger than 450g.

It was demonstrated in court that it was impossible to get more than 450g of Semtex inside the radio-cassette player used to construct the IED. The position that “comes closest” to the damage observed on the Lockerbie luggage container is the one described in my book.

The luggage tags

The single piece of actual evidence discussed by Mr Clancy is the peripheral matter of an entry in the diary of Lamin Fhimah, Megrahi’s co-accused, relating to his obtaining “taggs” (sic) for Megrahi. As a statement by someone other than Megrahi himself, this was held by the trial court not to be evidence against him. However, it was admitted by the court in the 2021 appeal in order to “considerably bolster” the evidence that the bomb was infiltrated in Malta. There’s no evidence that these tags were even obtained, let alone given to Megrahi, or what he did with them if they were. The accuseds’ explanation was that they were needed as samples to get a printing quote. The re-introduction of this extremely trivial and non-probative evidence suggests to me that someone was getting a bit desperate.

The identification evidence

This is barely touched on by Mr Clancy, despite its actually being the central issue as regards Megrahi’s conviction. He describes it as “qualified (resemblance) identification”, which is being remarkably kind. Frankly, no normal human being, as opposed to angels dancing on the heads of pins, could possibly imagine that the bribed and cajoled Tony Gauci’s fifty-year-old, over six feet tall, dark-skinned, heavily-built customer was in fact the 36-year-old, five feet eight, light-skinned, slightly built Megrahi. Even Tony prefaced his line-up “identification” with “Not the man I saw in my shop, but…” The identification is in fact the shaky hook on which the entire daisy-chain of circular reasoning dreamed up by the police investigation and embellished by the trial court was hung. It has been challenged by four eminent experts in the psychology of memory – Prof Timothy Valentine (70 pages, 2008), Professor Steven Clark (49 pages, 2008), Professor David Canter (105 pages, 2010) and Professor Elizabeth Loftus (seven page journal publication, 2013[2]). The full list of problems with it is much too long to go into here, and it seems yet another problem has now arisen.

One of the things Masoud allegedly confessed to doing, in these interviews in the prison dungeon in Tripoli, was buying the clothes from Tony Gauci. Tony described one customer, not two, and as he has since died, the police have no further opportunity to go back and persuade him to change his statement on that point also. If Masoud bought the clothes, Megrahi didn’t, and if he didn’t, the entire case is a pile of daisy-heads on the floor. However, if Masoud’s confession is required in order to refute the suitcase evidence, this must create a bit of a dilemma for his prosecutors.

Conclusion

Over many years Justice for Megrahi has raised serious, evidence-based concerns about the conviction. These concerns have never been addressed in detail, or at all, by the Crown Office or by any of those who support the conviction – they have simply been cavalierly dismissed and those raising them stigmatised as conspiracy theorists. That must now change. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dared to challenge the conviction of Oscar Slater, the response of the prosecution authorities was as dismissive as that of the Crown Office in relation to the Megrahi conviction. But history proved Conan Doyle to be right. 

Reference 1: Vermeij, E. (2024) Survivability of IED components, suitcases, their contents and luggage containers in suitcase bombs. Elsevier: Forensic Science International: Reports, vol 9, July 2024.

Reference 2: Loftus, E. F. (2013) Eyewitness testimony in the Lockerbie bombing case. Memory, vol 21 issue 5, pp 584-590.