"The White House took care of Lockerbie just as smoothly"

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Jack Cashill published on the WorldNetDaily website on this date in 2007 and referred to here on this blog:]

On the Sunday morning of July 3, 1988, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War, an Aegis cruiser, the USS Vincennes, fired two Standard Missiles at a commercial Iranian Airbus, IR655.

The first missile struck the tail and right wing and broke the aircraft in half. All 290 people aboard were killed. Misunderstanding America, the Iranians claimed that our Navy had intentionally destroyed the plane.

The Navy did no such thing. It does not destroy innocent commercial airliners intentionally. As retired Navy Capt David Carlson has well-documented, however, the shoot down was recklessly executed, relentlessly misreported, and dumped into the dustbin of history prematurely and all too consequentially.

Carlson was in a position to know. He commanded the USS Sides, a guided-missile frigate, just 20 miles from the Vincennes at the time of the incident and under its tactical control.

To this day he faults himself for not intervening in the Vincennes’ hasty command decision to launch the fatal missiles and for not speaking out sooner against “the corruption of professional ethics” that defined the incident’s assessment. (...)

As Carlson has reported, it served the career interests of the Vincennes’ command and the short-term national security interests of the White House to present the incident as an unfortunate result of an Iranian provocation.

In the waning days of the Reagan administration, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm William Crowe and Vice President George H W Bush took the lead in defending the Vincennes crew both against domestic critics and before the United Nations.

At the time, before the incident reports were complete, the two may have protested America’s innocence sincerely. Once voiced, however, these protests would prove difficult to rescind.

The Iranians were not pleased by the obfuscation. According to David Evans, former military affairs correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and Carlson’s writing partner, the Iranians responded by placing $12 million in a Swiss bank account to fund the revenge bombing of an American airliner.

Reportedly, the Palestinian terrorist group Ahmed Jibril took the Iranians up on the offer. This plot culminated less than six months after the IR655 incident in the destruction of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The on-board bomb killed 270 people, including 188 Americans and 11 sleeping Scotsmen below.

As might be expected, the media and Congress had no enduring interest in protecting a Republican administration. In July 1992, in the heat of the presidential election, Newsweek ran a bold cover story, “Sea of Lies,” which detailed the “cover-up” of this “tragic blunder.”

Following the article’s publication, Les Aspin, Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, held public hearings on the Vincennes incident and grilled Adm Crowe in the course of them.

“While it is not our policy to respond to every allegation that appears in print or goes out over the airwaves,” Aspin pontificated, “these charges go to heart of a very major historical event.”

On Sept. 19, 1992, a month after testifying before Aspin, the politically savvy Crowe made an unlikely pilgrimage to Little Rock, Ark. There, according to Carlson and Evans, Crowe “declared his fervent support for presidential candidate Bill Clinton.”

Upon being elected, Clinton appointed Aspin secretary of defense, and the probe into the Vincennes quietly died. Helping it stay dead was the newly appointed chairman of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, none other than Adm Crowe.

A lesson may have been learned here. To keep the TWA Flight 800 story dead and buried a decade later, the Clintons saw to it that the executioner of the TWA Flight 800 deception – then Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick – was appointed to the 9/11 Commission. (...)

The White House took care of Lockerbie just as smoothly. Wary of engaging either Iran or Iraq despite continued provocations from both, the Clinton White House put the squeeze on the defenseless Libya.

In 1999, Clinton convinced Libyan honcho Gadhafi to hand over a pair of his hapless subjects, one of whom was eventually acquitted and the other of whom continues to protest his innocence.

It seems likely that in turning the White House over to George W Bush in 2000, the Clintons had reason to believe that the state secrets they shared with the elder Bush would be protected by the son.

So far at least, they have been proved right.

The start of Megrahi's nightmare

[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s nightmare began twenty-three years ago today. Here is what I have written elsewhere about how it started:]

It was on 14 November 1991 that the prosecution authorities in Scotland (the Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC) and the United States (acting US Attorney General, William P Barr) simultaneously announced that they had brought criminal charges -- principally murder and conspiracy to murder -- arising out of the destruction of Pan Am 103 against two Libyan nationals, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah, who were alleged to be members, and to have been acting throughout as agents, of the Libyan intelligence service.

According to the Scottish and American prosecutors, what had happened was this.  The two Libyans had manufactured, or caused to be manufactured, a bomb using a Toshiba cassette recorder, Semtex explosive and a digital electric timer (supplied and manufactured by a Swiss company based in Zurich, MeBo AG, the principals of which were Erwin Meister and Edwin Bollier).  The device had been placed in a brown Samsonite suitcase in Malta, along with items of clothing purchased for the purpose from a particular shop (Mary's House) in Sliema owned by the Gauci family. Using stolen Air Malta luggage tags, the Libyans (one of whom -- Fhimah -- had occupied the post of station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta) introduced the suitcase at Luqa Airport into the interline baggage system as unaccompanied luggage on Air Malta Flight KM 180 from Malta to Frankfurt, with directions for its onward transmission (first) on to a feeder flight (PA 103A)  to Heathrow and (second) on to Pan Am flight 103 from Heathrow to J F Kennedy Airport in New York.

On 27 November 1991 the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States each issued a statement calling upon the Libyan government to hand over the two accused to either the Scottish or the American authorities for trial in Scotland or the United States.  Requests for their extradition were transmitted to the government of Libya through diplomatic channels.  No extradition treaties are in force between Libya on the one hand and United Kingdom and the United States on the other.

Libyan internal law, in common with the laws of many countries in the world, does not permit the extradition of its own nationals for trial overseas.  The government of Libya accordingly contended that the affair should be resolved through the application of the provisions of a 1971 civil aviation Convention concluded in Montreal to which all three relevant governments are signatories.  That Convention provides that a state in whose territory persons accused of terrorist offences against aircraft are resident has a choice aut dedere aut judicare, either to hand over the accused for trial in the courts of the state bringing the accusation or to take the necessary steps to have the accused brought to trial in its own domestic courts.  In purported compliance with the second of these options, the Libyan authorities arrested the two accused and appointed a Supreme Court judge as examining magistrate to consider the evidence and prepare the case against them.  Not surprisingly, perhaps, the UK and US governments refused to make available to the examining magistrate the evidence that they claimed to have amassed against the accused, who remained under house arrest in Libya until they were eventually handed over in April 1999 for trial at Camp Zeist.

The case for a public inquiry remains overwhelming

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on 13 November 2009:

The latest from Private Eye

The police “review” of the Lockerbie case appears to be little more than a sop to head off demands for a full public inquiry.

Any meaningful reinvestigation would involve another force being brought in to carry out the review – not an officer involved in the original investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103. It would also surely include a thorough review of the evidence upon which the independent Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) decided that Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi may have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice… But this is not to be.

Another new key area of concern is the forensic evidence underpinning the entire case: notably a small fragment of a circuit board for a bomb timer found in and among fragments of a man’s shirt recovered from the site. The shirt and other clothing recovered were said to have been traced back to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who said he had sold them to a man who resembled Megrahi.

The prosecution has always claimed that these tiny fragments were identified by Dr Thomas Hayes at the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment (Rarde) on 12 May 1989. There was concern at the time of the trial that the label on this crucial piece of evidence had been altered. Further, the pages in Hayes’ notes relating to this evidence had been curiously renumbered. Eye readers may recall that the work of Hayes and other Rarde scientists has subsequently been criticised in a series of high-profile miscarriage-of-justice cases involving IRA terrorism – in particular the inquiry by Sir John May into the wrongful conviction of the Maguire family, where scientific notebooks were found to have been altered.

Lawyers for Megrahi have now uncovered a similar pattern of inconsistencies, alterations, discrepancies and undisclosed material that again calls into question the integrity of the Rarde scientists. It comes from new scientific tests as well as a meticulous examination of evidence that was not disclosed or available at the time. Here are some examples …

* Photographs and evidence suggest that the circuit board and debris from the shirt had not been discovered until January 1990 – seven months later than Rarde claimed.

* Further evidence that scientific notes had been altered.

* Details of simulated explosions carried out in the US in July 1989 were not revealed, but debris from those blasts [was] taken both to Rarde and to Lockerbie for comparison.

* Exhibit labels were being written and attached by police more than a year after the debris was found.

* One man who was asked to put his name to the discovery of pieces of the charred shirt says he does not recall recovering the material. He also says the cloth shown to him by police was not the same grey colour as that identified in court as the shirt bought by Megrahi.

* Evidence to suggest the charred “bomb” shirt was in fact a child’s shirt.

* A wealth of conflicting evidence surrounding the discovery of charred pieces of a Babygro – also said to have been packed in the bomb suitcase and sold to Megrahi. One Babygro collected by investigators for comparison purposes was not accounted for.

The SCCRC which had some but not all of this material, rejected suggestions that the evidence had been deliberately fabricated. But it fell short of conducting its own forensic tests.

If this is a cock-up or incompetence, it is on such a scale that it recalls the verdict of Sir John May in the Maguire inquiry that the scientific basis on which the prosecution was founded should not be relied upon. Taken with Gauci’s highly dubious identification evidence …, the case for a public inquiry remains overwhelming.

[The above is the text of an article that appears on page 28 of the current edition (1249) of Private Eye. It does not feature on the magazine's website.]

On the same date Rolfe posted the following comment on the blog:

It would be nice to know the sources for these assertions.

It seems that the author is alleging, or at least suggesting, that the entire shebang contained in that evidence bag was fabricated, probably using material generated during the test detonations carried out in the USA in the summer of 1989. However, as I've said before, the existence of the red-circle photo would seem to argue against that hypothesis.

New viewers may start here.

Thomas Hayes's notes dated 12th May 1989 describe his examination of the contents of the bag in question. In the course of that examination he teased out a five-sheet-thick fragment of compacted paper (from the Toshiba manual) also found within the shirt collar.

The red-circle photo of the contents of the bag shows the timer fragment quite clearly - indeed, so clearly that it's possible to identify it as the same item as was exhibited at the trial in 2000. It also shows the fragment of paper - still compacted. Thus, unless it has been falsified, that picture was taken on (or before) 12th May 1989. And it shows the timer fragment.

The photo is not a polaroid, and thus should have a negative, which should establish the provenance of the photo to the date in question.

Or not, as the case may be.

Has anybody checked this out? Does the negative show up in a roll of film shot at the right time? This is absolutely crucial to the entire case, and I'd dearly love to know the answer.

My main sticking point on this issue is my doubt as to whether a group of law enforcement who were up to no good around Christmas 1989 would dare try to introduce this picture into the evidence trail retrospectively, with all the problems of negative provenance. The picture was circulated to the press, I believe - are we really to believe nobody noticed the negative wasn't from the date it was supposed to have been taken?

Nevertheless, this article seems to be suggesting they have exactly that sort of evidence.

Photographs and evidence suggest that the circuit board and debris from the shirt had not been discovered until January 1990 – seven months later than Rarde claimed.

Is this for real? Do they know something we don't? Or is this just Chinese Whispers and speculation?

Many relatives convinced that man eventually convicted was innocent

[What follows is an excerpt from a news agency report headed Where are the bodies, MH17 families ask published yesterday evening by Reuters:]

[O]n July 17 … the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot out of the sky.

All 298 passengers and crew - two-thirds of them Dutch – were killed. (...)

The Dutch are conducting two parallel investigations: one into the cause of the crash, and a criminal inquiry - the single largest in Dutch history. There are now 100 Dutch law enforcement officials involved in that case, including 10 prosecutors, said spokesman Wim de Bruin.

But no forensic investigators have made it to the crash site. That makes the recovery of evidence nearly impossible. (...)

The challenges facing the Dutch investigators are extreme.

The closest comparison is the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, which killed 254 people. [RB: actually 270] The investigation, conducted in peacetime Scotland, took three years, during which 4 million pieces of evidence were recovered from a crash site spanning 2,000 sq km (770 sq miles). It took a decade to go to trial.

"We searched rivers, lochs and reservoirs and recovered many personal effects, pieces of aircraft and debris, as well as other much more difficult 'recoveries' I'd rather not go into here," said one police diver involved in the search.

Even then, the trial of two Libyan intelligence agents, at a specially constituted Scottish court in a disused Dutch military base, secured only one conviction. To this day, many relatives are convinced that the man eventually convicted was innocent.

Letter from Edwin Bollier to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

[What follows is the text of an open letter sent today to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:]

Zurich / Switzerland, 11th November 2014

Reference: The Scottish 'Lockerbie Fraud'

Your Excellency,

With this orientation letter I would like to ask you to recall the 270 victims of the Lockerbie tragedy (1988) before the coming 26th anniversary and help to clarify the demonstrably false decision of Scottish Justice by means of a supplementary investigation. As you surely know, UN Commissioner for Namibia Bernt CARLSSON was also among the 270 victims.

The UN, as an involved party in the “Lockerbie saga” - or alternatively in connection with the 8-year, fatally affected UN sanctions against the State of Libya - has the obligation to help clarify an obviously politically motivated fraud perpetrated against the then Gaddafi regime in Libya and other aggrieved parties.

My name is Edwin Bollier. I am owner of MEBO AG in Zurich, Switzerland. After a trial in the years 2000/01 under Scottish jurisdiction, Edwin Bollier and MEBO AG were specified in the “Lockerbie trial” as the supplier of a MST-13 timer.

According to a legally valid decision, to this day it is said that an MST-13 timer activated the explosive charge (IED) so that the aircraft (Pan Am 103) crashed over Lockerbie. Accordingly, a Libyan official, Mr al-Megrahi, and Libya were held responsible for the attack, and Mr al-Megrahi was sentenced to life imprisonment. Mr al- Megrahi died on 20 May 2012.

According to a statement by Professor Dr Hans Köchler, international observer appointed by the United Nations to the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands (2000-2002), Prof Köchler also condemned during a conference at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo: “the Lockerbie process of that Scottish trial as inconsistent, irrational and politically motivated”.

After an appeal to the 'Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission' (SCCRC), on 28 June 2007 the SCCRC granted a new appeal due to potential miscarriage of justice in 6 points.

Unfortunately, the appeal was suspended under duress for obviously politically motivated reasons. Due to new forensic and technical evidence and investigations, today it can be 100% clarified whether the decisive piece of evidence stemmed from an MST-13 timer fragment of a timer delivered to Libya or not. For 3 years, Edwin Bollier and MEBO AG have been demanding an explanation in this matter from the Swiss justice system after a criminal complaint against a known and unknown government employee.

Due to a legal delay and other questionable opportunities, a criminal investigation which would be relevant for ascertaining the truth remains suspended...

Due to a court decision by the Swiss Federal Tribunal, a claim for damages submitted by Edwin Bollier and MEBO AG was rejected on 1 May 2014 as forfeited [RB: time-barred]; therefore the decision was appealed to the European Court of Justice on 11 November 2014.

It is incomprehensible that in one of the greatest criminal cases in history, the Swiss and Scottish justice system want to block pieces of evidence through a clarifying forensic investigation of the central MST-13 timer according to the latest methods by all possible means! Should the truth not be desired due to anticipated claims for damages, amounting to billions of US dollars, due to potential evidence of fraud?

It would be in the interest of the surviving dependants of the victims of Pan Am 103, the financially damaged parties and the UN’s world public reputation that you, Mr. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the UN, would stand up for ascertaining the truth by means of new facts and the UN would thereby call on its two members, the United Kingdom and Switzerland, to implement the forensic investigation.

Your Excellency,

We trust that you will use your authority to protect the UN and its integrity against conceivable evidence of fraud and to act in such a manner that the truth and only the truth comes to light. Thank you very much!

Yours respectfully,

Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier & MEBO AG >>> Webpage: www.lockerbie.ch

His guilt is doubted by ... experts who must be taken seriously

[What follows is the text beneath one of the photographs (number 21 out of 25) accompanying an article published yesterday on the Swiss Bluewin news website:]

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi aus Libyen wurde 2001 wegen des Bombenanschlags auf Pan Am Flug 103 über Lockerbie, Schottland, zu lebenslanger Haft verurteilt. 2009 wurde unheilbarer Prostatakrebs bei ihm diagnostiziert und er wurde in seine Heimat entlassen. Dort starb er drei Jahre später. Seine Schuld wird bis heute von vielen, auch ernst zu nehmenden Experten, bezweifelt.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi from Libya was sentenced in 2001 to life imprisonment for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In 2009 he was was diagnosed with incurable prostate cancer and he was discharged to his home. He died there three years later. To this day his guilt is doubted by many, including experts who must be taken seriously.

[Yet another sign perhaps that Justice for Megrahi is getting somewhere, internationally at least.]

A bizarre trial ... which did inestimable harm to the reputation of Scottish justice

[What follows is a letter from Dr Jim Swire published today on the website of The Telegraph and presumably due to appear in tomorrow’s print edition:]

The fascinating release today of recorded conversations between Margaret Thatcher while prime minister and President Ronald Reagan, dating from the 1983 American invasion of Grenada, may give hope of future penetration of the mysteries which still obscure the truth over Britain’s biggest ever loss of life to terrorism: the Lockerbie disaster of December 1988, when 270 innocent lives were lost, including that of my daughter Flora, aged 23.

Lady Thatcher recorded in The Downing Street Years (1993) that Reagan’s precipitate action over Grenada made Britain look impotent, and her references to previous exchanges between No 10 and the White House confirm this impotence.

In the case of Lockerbie, the target had been specifically American, but the plane had been loaded with the bomb at our Heathrow airport. The majority of deaths were American citizens, but upwards of 30 were British.

As the “management” of the Lockerbie disaster unfolded, there were again rumours of telephone exchanges between Downing Street and Washington, apparently agreeing to downplay the origins and implications of the disaster.

A bizarre trial of two accused Libyans followed in Holland, which did inestimable harm to the reputation of Scottish justice, through the gymnastics required to achieve a guilty verdict in the absence of trustworthy evidence.

To this has been added a sorry tale of buck-passing and foot-dragging between the English, the Scots and the US authorities, through all the intervening years. This involved the repeated use of public-interest immunity certificates denying documents to the Libyans’ defence team, and of course to us, the British relatives of the dead.

In The Downing Street Years Lady Thatcher dealt with the fall-out that followed her assistance to President Reagan in arranging the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986. She wrote: “The much vaunted Libyan counter attack did not and could not take place.” Who then was really responsible for Lockerbie?

Her book was published two years after the Libyans had simultaneously been indicted by Britain and America over the execution of the Lockerbie atrocity. I wrote to ask Lady Thatcher for an explanation, and a reply dated December 3 1993 said:

“Thank you for your letter about the Libyan raid. As you know in the book I went into some detail on this matter and I have tried to indicate the nature of the decision which took place. I don’t think I can add anything useful to that account.

“May I say how much I have thought of the parents and relatives of all those killed in the Lockerbie disaster. The fact that the terrorists responsible have not been brought to justice has added to your unhappiness and anxiety. It is a cause of great concern to me too.

“I most earnestly hope that the matter will be resolved and soon.”

Such are the emollients from the secret world. Her wish for prompt resolution could have been met at any time by her successors in office, all of whom have refused a full inquiry.

We understand that, despite current moves to reduce the influence of the European Convention on Human Rights currently enshrined in UK law, citizens still have the right to share the Government’s knowledge concerning who really killed their families and why those families were not protected.

We now know that Heathrow airside was broken into 16 hours before Lockerbie, but that, far from stopping all outgoing flights after that discovery till airside had been thoroughly searched, the airport took no action. This break-in was known to the Metropolitan Police within days and to the Scots within a month, but was concealed entirely from us, and from the court in Holland 10 years later.

The disaster appears to have been eminently preventable. Why did that prevention so spectacularly fail?

Protection of citizens against terrorism is still trumpeted as one of Government’s prime responsibilities. We are not alone in wondering just why the Lockerbie flight simply was not protected despite all the warnings received beforehand.

[The first comment published beneath the letter reads as follows:]

I am sorry to say that I think it unlikely this country will ever conduct a full and open enquiry into that dreadful event.

However, in passing I'm sure I'm not alone in admiring, and saluting, Dr Swire's tireless efforts to get at the truth. He is a shining example to us all in that he has turned a tragic loss into a worthwhile crusade to uncover the truth. May he find it soon.

The progress of Justice for Megrahi's Scottish Parliament petition

What follows is taken from an item posted on this blog on this date in 2010:

Media coverage of Justice for Megrahi petition hearing

[The best coverage of yesterday's hearing before the Holyrood Public Petitions Committee is to be found in The Times. It can be read -- but only by subscribers -- here. The report reads in part:]

The Scottish legal establishment was accused at a Holyrood committee yesterday of putting obstacles in the way of an independent inquiry into the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber.

The claim was made by Canon Patrick Keegans, who was the local Catholic priest in Lockerbie at the time of the disaster in December 1988.

He was giving evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s petitions committee in support of a 1600-signature petition organised by the Justice for Megrahi (JFM) campaign calling on the Scottish government to set up an inquiry.

Members of the group told MSPs a full independent inquiry was the only way to restore the reputation of the Scottish legal system. (...)

Canon Keegans told MSPs on the committee: “People have never found a full answer to Lockerbie and this will always be a source of distress.”

Canon Keegans, who lived in Sherwood Crescent, part of which was obliterated by falling debris from the aircraft said the case was about the “redemption of the Scottish justice system”.

He added: “We have been denied justice from the very beginning. I am very doubtful about the conviction of al-Megrahi. While doubt remains the victims are denied justice. What we need is the truth about Lockerbie.

He added: “Obstacles have been put in our way by the Crown Office and by the judiciary. There seems to be a desire to put a lid on this and keep it there.

“We need truth and we need justice to be at peace. Otherwise we are back in December 1988 in the darkness.”

Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died in the bombing, said the reputation of Scottish justice had been “shot to pieces”.

He said only an impartial inquiry could rebuild that reputation. Swire said the original criminal investigation was run by Scottish police forces and involved Scottish lawyers.

They were, he added, two obvious groups who might be interested in protecting their reputations.

“Speaking as a relative who has been looking for the truth for 22 years I think it would be vital that any inquiry is seen to be led impartially. Such an inquiry would be of little value if it was deemed to be in any way limited by groups involved in the trial.”

Mr Swire said an inquiry was the only way “we will be able to heal the terrible wounds done to our justice system”.

Professor Robert Black, emeritus professor of Scots Law at Edinburgh University, said: “The fact of the conviction is being used as an excuse for not holding a wide ranging inquiry.”

He added: “We are asking the Scottish government to set up an inquiry. The government cannot deny there is domestic and international concern. We are asking them to investigate these concerns.”

Both First Minister Alex Salmond and Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Secretary, have said they have confidence in the conviction of al-Megrahi.

After hearing from the campaigners, the committee agreed to write to the Scottish government asking them to respond to the request for an independent inquiry.

The petition has already attracted the support of Cardinal Keith O’Brien, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, as well as Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The progress of Justice for Megrahi’s petition to the Scottish Parliament from summer 2010 up to the present day can be followed here.

The question of guilt has never been resolved

[What follows are excerpts from an article headlined Wat kunnen resten MH17 vertellen? (“What can the remains of MH17 disclose?”) published yesterday on the Dutch website Nieuwsuur website:]

Bijna vier maanden na de ramp liggen de brokstukken van rampvlucht MH17 nog verspreid op de crashsite in Oost-Oekraïne. De Onderzoeksraad voor Veiligheid wil op korte termijn met de berging beginnen en in Nederland een reconstructie maken van het vliegtuigwrak. Wat kan zo'n reconstructie zeggen over de oorzaak? (...)

Het is de vraag of een reconstructie nieuw licht kan schijnen op de oorzaak van het neerstorten van MH17. In het verleden zijn twee keer eerder reconstructies van vliegrampen gemaakt: de Lockerbie-ramp en het ongeluk met TWA-vlucht 800. Die konden in beide gevallen uitsluitsel geven over de oorzaak.

Bij het Schotse plaatsje Lockerbie kwam in 1988 een toestel van de Amerikaanse luchtvaartmaatschappij PanAm neer. Uit de reconstructie van het ongeluk bleek dat een bom in het bagageruim de oorzaak van de crash was. Maar de schuldvraag is nooit opgelost. De enige die voor de aanslag is veroordeeld is de Libische oud-spion Megrahi. Hij had geregeld dat er een koffer met een bom aan boord kwam.

Almost four months after the disaster the debris of disaster flight MH17 is still scattered at the crash site in eastern Ukraine. The [Dutch] Investigation Safety Board wants to start the recovery in the short term and make a reconstruction in the Netherlands of the wreck. What can such a reconstruction say about the cause? (...)

The question is whether a reconstruction can shed new light on the cause of the crash of MH17. Twice in the past reconstructions of aviation disasters have been made: the Lockerbie disaster and the accident involving TWA flight 800. In both cases they provided information about the cause.

In the Scottish town of Lockerbie a plane of the US airline Pan Am came down in 1988. The reconstruction of the accident revealed that a bomb in the luggage hold was the cause of the crash. But the question of guilt has never been resolved. The only person convicted of the attack was the Libyan former spy Megrahi. He had arranged that a suitcase with a bomb was on board.

[RB: It is interesting that the article states that the question of guilt has never been resolved. Perhaps Justice for Megrahi is getting somewhere, internationally at least.]

Will justice be served?

[On this date in 2008 the following item from The Tripoli Post appeared on this blog:]

Will Justice be Served? Will Al-Megrahi be Released from Prison Soon?

By Zainab Al-Arabi

Yes I know that this week the eyes and ears of the world are concentrated on America and the new President-elect, Barack Obama; that the United Nations and various human rights organisations are calling for help concerning the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo. But my thoughts are with Abdul Basit Al-Megarhi, the Libyan man wrongly convicted of mass murder in the Lockerbie case, who has been in prison since 1999.

The news that he has been diagnosed with advanced-stage prostate cancer has stunned many Libyans. For years his appeals for a re-examination of the evidence against him had been refused, and only last year was this even considered a possibility.

The case for a re-trial is strongly put forward by many experts in the field of law, perhaps the most eminent of whom is Professor Robert Black (born and raised in Lockerbie, Scotland). Often referred to as the architect of the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, he has been sceptical of the grounds on which the court delivered its sentence for years.

Based on his assessment of the evidence and the witnesses, he is convinced that a gross miscarriage of justice has taken place. This seemed to be more evident when a British court ruled in early 2008, in answer to a request by the Appeals Court in October, 2007, that certain documents deliberately withheld from Al-Megarhi’s defence lawyers by the prosecution, could not be released due to reasons of ‘National Security’.

Finally in October 2008, the defence lawyers request for a hearing was approved. The next hearing in the High Court in Edinburgh is planned to take place on the 21st of November 2008. On the question of whether Al-Megarhi has the right to be released on bail while his case is under review by the Scottish court, Professor Black (on his website) answers,” yes.

What matters is whether the grounds of appeal (1) if successful, would lead to the conviction being quashed and (2) are arguable, ie not on the face of it doomed to failure. These tests are clearly satisfied in cases, such as Abdelbaset Megrahi’s, where an independent expert body (the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) has referred the case to the Criminal Appeal Court on the ground that the conviction may have amounted to a miscarriage of justice.”

Al-Megarhi has requested that the privacy of his family be respected, and that he would prefer to undergo medical treatment in Scotland if exonerated. The Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs has reportedly also informed Libya on the 25th of October that it would welcome Al-Megarhi for medical treatment on his release.

The Swiss company, Mebo Ltd, the makers of the device allegedly used in the Lockerbie bombing, have their own ‘Lockerbie’ website in which they call Al-Megarhi the ‘271st Lockerbie victim’.

Their claim is that the evidence produced by the prosecution was misleading and false.

In his most recent comment on the subject, The Scotsman reported on 7 July 2007 that the United Nations observer Dr Hans Köchler has written to Mr Salmond and Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary of Scotland, calling for experts from countries not involved in the case to investigate the way the investigation was conducted by UK and US authorities.

In his letter, Dr Köchler called for a full and independent public inquiry of the Lockerbie case and its handling by the Scottish judiciary as well as the British and US political and intelligence establishments.

He also called for the SCCRC’s full report to be made public. Although he was included in talks regarding prisoner exchange between Libya and Britain, Al-Megarhi has refused to leave his prison in Scotland until his innocence was proven.

According to Jim Swire, spokesman for the UK Family Group, whose daughter was among the victims of the Lockerbie tragedy, stated that the families of the UK victims agreed that Al-Megarhi should be released for compassionate reasons whatever the outcome of SCCRC hearing.

Even though they might not all be convinced of his innocence, they saw no reason to keep a dying man in prison far from his country and family.

Dr Swire has been to Libya on several occasions and has stated that he is not convinced of the court’s sentencing. He has continued to press the British government for a new investigation. Will justice be served?