[This is part of the headline over a long report by Chris Marshall in today's edition of The Scotsman. It reads in part:]
Thirty years on since the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, there remains as many questions as there have been answers about what took place that night.
From the bombing itself – the deadliest terrorist atrocity ever carried out in Britain – to the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands and the jailing and subsequent release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the night of 21 December, 1988 has come to define much that has happened since.
And while there are those satisfied of Megrahi’s guilt, there are others convinced of his innocence, and others still who believe the full truth of what took place may never be known. (...)
The youngest victim onboard the plane was two-month-old Brittany Williams, of New York; the oldest, Ibolya Gabor, 79, from Budapest, Hungary, who had survived two world wars and was travelling to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with her family. Other passengers included Bernt Carlsson, 50, the UN Commissioner for Namibia and Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s deputy station chief in Beirut.
There were a number of claims of responsibility in the immediate aftermath of the bombing, some far more credible than others.
A painstaking investigation carried out by Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) set about reconstructing the plane from fragments of wreckage scattered across more than 2,000 square kilometres.
The murder inquiry would see officers travel to 23 different countries, identifying victims, speaking to witnesses and gathering evidence.
From the wreckage, fragments of a Samsonite suitcase were recovered which it was thought had been used to conceal the bomb.
Clothing from the same suitcase was found to have come from a shop in Malta owned by Tony Gauci, who later would controversially identify Megrahi as the man who had bought the items.
Megrahi, an intelligence officer, had a role as chief of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, allowing him regular travel to Malta where the company had an office. It was here, prosecutors would later argue, that Megrahi bought the clothing used to help hide the bomb which was to bring down Pan Am Flight 103. Using fake passports [RB "coded" not "fake"], he was also able to travel to Zurich where the timer for the bomb was made. [RB: The only evidence at the trial that Megrahi was an intelligence officer came from Majid Giaka, whose evidence on every other issue was dismissed by the court as utterly unworthy of credit. The court gave no reason for accepting his testimony on this one point.]
The police investigation, which had taken around 15,000 witness statements, eventually led to Libya, and both Megrahi and his compatriot, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, were indicted for the bombing by the Lord Advocate and US attorney-general in 1991.
It was to be a further eight years, however, amid heavy pressure in the form of UN sanctions, before Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to hand over the two men for trial. [RB: The Libyan Government had never objected to the suspects standing trial in Scotland. It was the lawyers for the suspects -- Libyan and international, including Scottish -- who objected. The true story of how the Zeist trial came about can be read here.]
After protracted negotiations, it was decided the two Libyans would be tried under Scots law, but at a neutral location. Nelson Mandela met with Jim Swire, who became a spokesman for the UK families, and helped broker the deal. A former US Air Force base at Camp Zeist near Utrecht in the Netherlands was chosen and the trial got under way on 3 May, 2000 – nearly 12 years after the bombing.
On 31 January the following year, Megrahi was convicted of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges and sentenced to a minimum of 20 years behind bars. Fhimah was acquitted. But if observers thought that was to be the end of the legal case, they were wrong – it was only just beginning. (...)
An initial legal appeal was refused, but in September 2003 Megrahi applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) asking for a review of his conviction. Nearly four years later, the SCCRC announced it would be referring the case to the Court of Criminal Appeal after it found Megrahi “may have suffered a miscarriage of justice”.
The Libyan applied to have the appeal dropped, however, shortly before it emerged he was to be controversially released on compassionate grounds by then Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. Despite a doctor’s assessment that Megrahi, who had terminal prostate cancer, had only three months to live, he would survive for a further three years after his return to Libyan, his life reportedly extended by a drug which at that point was not available to Scottish cancer sufferers on the NHS.
Despite Megrahi’s death, attempts continue to overturn his conviction. Earlier this year, the SCCRC began reviewing his conviction for a second time, saying it believed Megrahi had abandoned his earlier appeal because he thought it would result in him being released from prison and allowed to return home to Libya.
Back in Lockerbie, only the memorials to the dead remain as visible signs of the terror that came from the skies one December night 30 years ago. But while the houses of Sherwood Crescent have been rebuilt and life has gone on, the story appears far from finished.
Monday 17 December 2018
Vital Lockerbie evidence ‘was made AFTER the doomed flight crashed’
[This is part of the headline over a report in today's edition of the Daily Mail. The following are excerpts:]
Evidence used in the trial of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is unconnected to the case, it has been claimed.
A circuit board used in the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi was probably made after the atrocity, investigators say.
The claims are backed by testimony from a British expert and by tests at a police forensics lab in Zurich.
Documentary-maker Bill Cran and his lead investigator George Thomson, a former Scottish police officer, are re-examining the 1988 bombing and later court case for a forthcoming film. (...)
The circuit board was linked to Swiss electronics firm Mebo, but it is claimed fresh forensic scrutiny has established the fragment did not match the Mebo boards.
It also appears the fragment was from a type of circuit-board not patented until 1991.
The British expert, who has asked not to be named but was interviewed for Cran’s film, said the fragment contained traces of copper foil, while the older Mebo timers sold to Libya did not.
He said the technique of adding foil coating to circuit boards only emerged at the end of the 1980s and was not patented until 1991.
The fragment of circuit board was said to match those made my Mebo and sold only to Libya and East Germany no later than 1986. (...)
Dr Jim Swire, 82, spokesman for the UK relatives among the 270 who died on December 21, 1988, said: ‘This evidence underlines that PT35b did not come from boards made by Mebo and sold to Libya.
'We need a full public inquiry to explore this and to deliver truth and justice before it’s too late for those of us who have the right to know why our loved ones died.’
[RB: An article headlined Doubts over Lockerbie bomb timer fragment appears in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]
A fragment of circuit board linked to Mebo, a Swiss electronics company, used to convict the late Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi for the bombing, does not match the relevant Mebo boards and was probably made after the tragedy on December 21, 1988. (...)
Since the trial verdict in 2001 and a failed first appeal, fresh scrutiny has established that, contrary to what the court was told, the fragment did not match the Mebo boards sold to Libya.
A British expert claims that the fragment also appeared to be from a type of board that was not patented until 1991. The expert, who we have been asked not to name but who has recorded an interview for the documentary [by film maker Bill Cran], said that the fragment contained traces of copper foil, while the Mebo timers sold to Libya did not.
The fragment of circuit board was said to match those made by Mebo and sold only to Libya and East Germany no later than 1986.
Edwin Bollier, Mebo’s co-founder, has also secured new evidence after winning the legal right to obtain government files on his company. They suggest that a named member of the Swiss secret services visited Mebo in 1989 and took away a modern circuit board he passed on to US investigators.
The fragment, known as PT35b, was entered as evidence in October 1990, and later that month the CIA went to Mebo and secured a packet of circuit boards of the type sold to Libya.
Mr Thomson said: “Somehow, the Americans knew 16 months or so before the fragment was found to send a local agent to Mebo to secure a circuit board. You have to wonder whether the investigation was already following a prepared script.”
The Swiss documents also confirmed that the police forensic lab in Zurich had concluded: “The fragment used as evidence in the Lockerbie trial does not match the timers made by Mebo.”
Evidence used in the trial of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing is unconnected to the case, it has been claimed.
A circuit board used in the case against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi was probably made after the atrocity, investigators say.
The claims are backed by testimony from a British expert and by tests at a police forensics lab in Zurich.
Documentary-maker Bill Cran and his lead investigator George Thomson, a former Scottish police officer, are re-examining the 1988 bombing and later court case for a forthcoming film. (...)
The circuit board was linked to Swiss electronics firm Mebo, but it is claimed fresh forensic scrutiny has established the fragment did not match the Mebo boards.
It also appears the fragment was from a type of circuit-board not patented until 1991.
The British expert, who has asked not to be named but was interviewed for Cran’s film, said the fragment contained traces of copper foil, while the older Mebo timers sold to Libya did not.
He said the technique of adding foil coating to circuit boards only emerged at the end of the 1980s and was not patented until 1991.
The fragment of circuit board was said to match those made my Mebo and sold only to Libya and East Germany no later than 1986. (...)
Dr Jim Swire, 82, spokesman for the UK relatives among the 270 who died on December 21, 1988, said: ‘This evidence underlines that PT35b did not come from boards made by Mebo and sold to Libya.
'We need a full public inquiry to explore this and to deliver truth and justice before it’s too late for those of us who have the right to know why our loved ones died.’
[RB: An article headlined Doubts over Lockerbie bomb timer fragment appears in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]
A fragment of circuit board linked to Mebo, a Swiss electronics company, used to convict the late Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi for the bombing, does not match the relevant Mebo boards and was probably made after the tragedy on December 21, 1988. (...)
Since the trial verdict in 2001 and a failed first appeal, fresh scrutiny has established that, contrary to what the court was told, the fragment did not match the Mebo boards sold to Libya.
A British expert claims that the fragment also appeared to be from a type of board that was not patented until 1991. The expert, who we have been asked not to name but who has recorded an interview for the documentary [by film maker Bill Cran], said that the fragment contained traces of copper foil, while the Mebo timers sold to Libya did not.
The fragment of circuit board was said to match those made by Mebo and sold only to Libya and East Germany no later than 1986.
Edwin Bollier, Mebo’s co-founder, has also secured new evidence after winning the legal right to obtain government files on his company. They suggest that a named member of the Swiss secret services visited Mebo in 1989 and took away a modern circuit board he passed on to US investigators.
The fragment, known as PT35b, was entered as evidence in October 1990, and later that month the CIA went to Mebo and secured a packet of circuit boards of the type sold to Libya.
Mr Thomson said: “Somehow, the Americans knew 16 months or so before the fragment was found to send a local agent to Mebo to secure a circuit board. You have to wonder whether the investigation was already following a prepared script.”
The Swiss documents also confirmed that the police forensic lab in Zurich had concluded: “The fragment used as evidence in the Lockerbie trial does not match the timers made by Mebo.”
Sunday 16 December 2018
"It happened to Lockerbie but it wasn't about Lockerbie"
[What follows is excerpted from an article published this afternoon on the website of The Sun:]
Residents of Lockerbie hope this year's anniversary will mark the moment when the town can finally move on.
Since the tragedy, locals have walked a fine line between commemorating the victims and trying to heal and go forward with their lives.
The disaster that struck 30 years ago made the name of their small town known around the world — and guaranteed it will never be forgotten.
But residents, community leaders and politicians hope this month's milestone will see the horror that happened that night start to slowly fade into the past.
Retired teacher David Wilson, 75, said: "The word Lockerbie will always have this atrocity attached to it — we're not known for anything else.
"I'm hopeful that this year moves Lockerbie from modern studies to history, but it will never be forgotten."
Controversy over the guilt of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi — the only person to be convicted of the bombing — has kept the attack in the news over the decades.
But while the families of those who were on board Flight 103 continue their quest for the truth, Lockerbie has opted out of the bid because it won't bring back the people they lost.
David said: "Lockerbie is like a jigsaw with pieces missing. It happened to Lockerbie but it wasn't about Lockerbie.
"The Americans have one view on Megrahi, Jim Swire — who lost his daughter, Flora — and his supporters have another and Lockerbie has been caught in between.
"The focus has always been in the US because most of the victims were from there. Lockerbie never really joined in with the international dimensions because we worked out pretty quickly we didn't have much useful input.
"Instead, we welcomed people from all over the world who came to our town and took care of them.
"But even if everyone involved in the murder had been caught, it won't bring our people back. A lot of people in Lockerbie just wish it would stop." (...)
John Gair lives yards from Sherwood Crescent where 11 people died when the fuel-packed wings of the Pan Am jet crashed into their home.
He has seen the town gradually learn to cope after the disaster — but believes the row over who was responsible for the atrocity has hindered their recovery.
He said: "In most respects the town has healed — life has to go on. We got into a cycle of coping and relative normality eventually.
"Although there are some people who may never fully get over it, we all have unpleasant memories. (...)
"I think people would be glad if there was some finality with the Megrahi situation.
"But who did it is like a wound that won't heal — some finality one way or another would help.
"I think Lockerbie would have faded into the 'historic event' category had there been no controversy over guilt." (...)
Local councillor Adam Wilson wasn't born when the disaster happened but has witnessed the dignified silence of residents who lived through the horror.
Adam said: "Most people in Lockerbie don't want to talk about it, living through it was enough.
"Everyone has their own story but they keep it to themselves. (...)
"I wasn't born when it happened but I had family who lived through it.
"My great gran lived on one street that was partly destroyed. It's important we mark it but we must also respect locals who don't want to be reminded."
Residents of Lockerbie hope this year's anniversary will mark the moment when the town can finally move on.
Since the tragedy, locals have walked a fine line between commemorating the victims and trying to heal and go forward with their lives.
The disaster that struck 30 years ago made the name of their small town known around the world — and guaranteed it will never be forgotten.
But residents, community leaders and politicians hope this month's milestone will see the horror that happened that night start to slowly fade into the past.
Retired teacher David Wilson, 75, said: "The word Lockerbie will always have this atrocity attached to it — we're not known for anything else.
"I'm hopeful that this year moves Lockerbie from modern studies to history, but it will never be forgotten."
Controversy over the guilt of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi — the only person to be convicted of the bombing — has kept the attack in the news over the decades.
But while the families of those who were on board Flight 103 continue their quest for the truth, Lockerbie has opted out of the bid because it won't bring back the people they lost.
David said: "Lockerbie is like a jigsaw with pieces missing. It happened to Lockerbie but it wasn't about Lockerbie.
"The Americans have one view on Megrahi, Jim Swire — who lost his daughter, Flora — and his supporters have another and Lockerbie has been caught in between.
"The focus has always been in the US because most of the victims were from there. Lockerbie never really joined in with the international dimensions because we worked out pretty quickly we didn't have much useful input.
"Instead, we welcomed people from all over the world who came to our town and took care of them.
"But even if everyone involved in the murder had been caught, it won't bring our people back. A lot of people in Lockerbie just wish it would stop." (...)
John Gair lives yards from Sherwood Crescent where 11 people died when the fuel-packed wings of the Pan Am jet crashed into their home.
He has seen the town gradually learn to cope after the disaster — but believes the row over who was responsible for the atrocity has hindered their recovery.
He said: "In most respects the town has healed — life has to go on. We got into a cycle of coping and relative normality eventually.
"Although there are some people who may never fully get over it, we all have unpleasant memories. (...)
"I think people would be glad if there was some finality with the Megrahi situation.
"But who did it is like a wound that won't heal — some finality one way or another would help.
"I think Lockerbie would have faded into the 'historic event' category had there been no controversy over guilt." (...)
Local councillor Adam Wilson wasn't born when the disaster happened but has witnessed the dignified silence of residents who lived through the horror.
Adam said: "Most people in Lockerbie don't want to talk about it, living through it was enough.
"Everyone has their own story but they keep it to themselves. (...)
"I wasn't born when it happened but I had family who lived through it.
"My great gran lived on one street that was partly destroyed. It's important we mark it but we must also respect locals who don't want to be reminded."
Lockerbie: Campaigners fight to clear bomber's name
[This is the headline over an article published today on the STV News website. It reads in part:]
It's been three decades since Pan Am flight 103 blew up over the town of Lockerbie.
Only one man has ever been brought to justice for the attack, which claimed 270 lives. (...)
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was jailed for 27 years in 2001 before being released in 2009 on compassionate grounds as he battled cancer, shortly after abandoning his appeal.
His supporters, though, to continue to contest his conviction and hope he will one day be cleared.
They include relatives of Lockerbie victims, including Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Fiona died in the bombing.
Al Megrahi's conviction is currently being studied by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC).
His family filed an application to have his conviction overturned in July last year.
In May this year, the SCCRC announced that it would carry out a full review and decide whether an appeal against the conviction could be made.
Speaking at the time, the family's solicitor Aamer Anwar said: "When Mr Megrahi abandoned his appeal it simply didn't make sense.
"He had maintained his innocence until his dying breath, so nobody could understand why all of sudden he would drop it.
"There have always been allegations that the UK Government applied pressure to him and others, including the Libyan government, over the appeal.
"That is a matter that will be addressed at a later stage.
"But the commission has accepted there was a genuine and reasonable belief by Mr Megrahi that unless he dropped his appeal then he would simply die in prison in Scotland."
They're expected to make their ruling early in 2019.
In November, a four-year Police Scotland probe, known as Operation Sandwood, into the handling of the bombing investigation and prosecution found no evidence of criminality.
It came after nine allegations were made by the Justice for Megrahi campaign group.
They welcomed the police report and said the findings will be of importance to many of the issues being considered by the SCCRC
The group said: "The Operation Sandwood investigation has resulted in a seminal report which has examined many of the controversies which have arisen over the past 30 years.
"We believe that Police Scotland conducted their enquiry with thoroughness and integrity and we thank them for the work they have carried out."
Materials gathered during Operation Sandwood have now been handed over to the Crown Office.
A Crown Office spokesman said: "The Lord Advocate has been informed by the chief constable of the findings of the Operation Sandwood investigation and of the chief constable's conclusion, informed by the advice of independent senior counsel, that no evidence of any criminality was found.
"The findings contain material relevant to the live investigation into the Lockerbie bombing and to the SCCRC consideration of the case.
"On that basis, the documents have been passed to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service team dealing with the live investigation so that they can be given appropriate consideration."
[RB : The article continues with a useful timeline on the Lockerbie criminal case. The headline is, of course, in need of improvement. In an article like this, Megrahi should rather be referred to as "the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing" as, for example, The Herald always does.]
It's been three decades since Pan Am flight 103 blew up over the town of Lockerbie.
Only one man has ever been brought to justice for the attack, which claimed 270 lives. (...)
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was jailed for 27 years in 2001 before being released in 2009 on compassionate grounds as he battled cancer, shortly after abandoning his appeal.
His supporters, though, to continue to contest his conviction and hope he will one day be cleared.
They include relatives of Lockerbie victims, including Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Fiona died in the bombing.
Al Megrahi's conviction is currently being studied by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC).
His family filed an application to have his conviction overturned in July last year.
In May this year, the SCCRC announced that it would carry out a full review and decide whether an appeal against the conviction could be made.
Speaking at the time, the family's solicitor Aamer Anwar said: "When Mr Megrahi abandoned his appeal it simply didn't make sense.
"He had maintained his innocence until his dying breath, so nobody could understand why all of sudden he would drop it.
"There have always been allegations that the UK Government applied pressure to him and others, including the Libyan government, over the appeal.
"That is a matter that will be addressed at a later stage.
"But the commission has accepted there was a genuine and reasonable belief by Mr Megrahi that unless he dropped his appeal then he would simply die in prison in Scotland."
They're expected to make their ruling early in 2019.
In November, a four-year Police Scotland probe, known as Operation Sandwood, into the handling of the bombing investigation and prosecution found no evidence of criminality.
It came after nine allegations were made by the Justice for Megrahi campaign group.
They welcomed the police report and said the findings will be of importance to many of the issues being considered by the SCCRC
The group said: "The Operation Sandwood investigation has resulted in a seminal report which has examined many of the controversies which have arisen over the past 30 years.
"We believe that Police Scotland conducted their enquiry with thoroughness and integrity and we thank them for the work they have carried out."
Materials gathered during Operation Sandwood have now been handed over to the Crown Office.
A Crown Office spokesman said: "The Lord Advocate has been informed by the chief constable of the findings of the Operation Sandwood investigation and of the chief constable's conclusion, informed by the advice of independent senior counsel, that no evidence of any criminality was found.
"The findings contain material relevant to the live investigation into the Lockerbie bombing and to the SCCRC consideration of the case.
"On that basis, the documents have been passed to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service team dealing with the live investigation so that they can be given appropriate consideration."
[RB : The article continues with a useful timeline on the Lockerbie criminal case. The headline is, of course, in need of improvement. In an article like this, Megrahi should rather be referred to as "the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing" as, for example, The Herald always does.]
Swiss forensic lab: Lockerbie circuit board fragment does not match timers supplied to Libya
[What follows is excerpted from a report by Marcello Mega today in the Scottish edition of The Sun:]
A key piece of evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial had no link to the atrocity, it has been alleged.
The shock claim emerged as relatives prepare to mark the disaster’s 30th anniversary.
Investigators suggest an electronics fragment that helped to convict Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was made after the jet blast which killed 270 on December 21, 1988.
The fresh revelations emerged in a probe by documentary filmmaker Bill Cran and ex-cop George Thomson, 73.
The tiny circuit board piece, given the court tag PT35b, was said to be part of the bomb that blew up Pam Am flight 103 over the Dumfriesshire town.
Prosecutors claimed it was made by Swiss firm Mebo and sold to Libya in the 1980s.
But a British expert told Cran the piece of board contained traces of copper foil — a technique that was not patented until 1991.
And a Swiss police forensic lab stated: “The fragment used as evidence in the Lockerbie trial doesn’t match the timers made by Mebo.”
The findings will be included in a new film about Lockerbie that Cran hopes to broadcast next year.
His lead investigator Thomson, of Kirkcaldy, was part of Megrahi’s 2009 appeal defence team.
Dr Jim Swire, 82, spokesman for the relatives of the UK victims, has said: “We need a public inquiry to explore this.”
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is considering an appeal for the family of Megrahi, who died in 2012, aged 60.
[RB: Another report by Marcello Mega appears in today's edition of The Sunday Times under the headline New evidence ‘undermines’ Lockerbie bomber trial. The subheading over the story reads "Circuit board fragment used to convict Megrahi was likely made after the atrocity, scientists say". The following are two paragraphs from the story:]
Other evidence that appears to undermine the case against Megrahi has come from Mebo’s co-founder Edwin Bollier, who recently won the right through the Swiss Federal Court to obtain government files relating to his firm.
The documents reveal that a member of the Swiss secret services visited Mebo in June 1989 and took away a circuit board made with copper foil. It was passed on to US investigators. The PT35b circuit board fragment entered the chain of evidence in the Lockerbie case in October 1990.
A key piece of evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial had no link to the atrocity, it has been alleged.
The shock claim emerged as relatives prepare to mark the disaster’s 30th anniversary.
Investigators suggest an electronics fragment that helped to convict Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was made after the jet blast which killed 270 on December 21, 1988.
The fresh revelations emerged in a probe by documentary filmmaker Bill Cran and ex-cop George Thomson, 73.
The tiny circuit board piece, given the court tag PT35b, was said to be part of the bomb that blew up Pam Am flight 103 over the Dumfriesshire town.
Prosecutors claimed it was made by Swiss firm Mebo and sold to Libya in the 1980s.
But a British expert told Cran the piece of board contained traces of copper foil — a technique that was not patented until 1991.
And a Swiss police forensic lab stated: “The fragment used as evidence in the Lockerbie trial doesn’t match the timers made by Mebo.”
The findings will be included in a new film about Lockerbie that Cran hopes to broadcast next year.
His lead investigator Thomson, of Kirkcaldy, was part of Megrahi’s 2009 appeal defence team.
Dr Jim Swire, 82, spokesman for the relatives of the UK victims, has said: “We need a public inquiry to explore this.”
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is considering an appeal for the family of Megrahi, who died in 2012, aged 60.
[RB: Another report by Marcello Mega appears in today's edition of The Sunday Times under the headline New evidence ‘undermines’ Lockerbie bomber trial. The subheading over the story reads "Circuit board fragment used to convict Megrahi was likely made after the atrocity, scientists say". The following are two paragraphs from the story:]
Other evidence that appears to undermine the case against Megrahi has come from Mebo’s co-founder Edwin Bollier, who recently won the right through the Swiss Federal Court to obtain government files relating to his firm.
The documents reveal that a member of the Swiss secret services visited Mebo in June 1989 and took away a circuit board made with copper foil. It was passed on to US investigators. The PT35b circuit board fragment entered the chain of evidence in the Lockerbie case in October 1990.
Friday 14 December 2018
Lockerbie truth campaigner dies 30 years on
[This is the headline over an article published yesterday on the website of the Hexham Courant. It reads as follows:]
Barrie Berkley, a driving force in the fight to discover the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing, has died at the age of 91.
The retired oil executive and his wife, Jean, had spent 30 years since that day in December 1988 seeking justice for the 270 people, including their 29-year-old son Alistair, who died when Pam Am Flight 103 was brought down over the town.
The Sandhoe couple helped run the UK Families Flight 103 pressure group, which represented the families of the 31 British people who died. Members believe the only person ever convicted of the crime, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was set up as a fall guy.
The Berkleys used their Libyan compensation money to launch the Alistair Berkley Charitable Trust.
[RB: Examples of interventions by Barrie and Jean Berkley in the Lockerbie saga can be found on this blog here.]
Barrie Berkley, a driving force in the fight to discover the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing, has died at the age of 91.
The retired oil executive and his wife, Jean, had spent 30 years since that day in December 1988 seeking justice for the 270 people, including their 29-year-old son Alistair, who died when Pam Am Flight 103 was brought down over the town.
The Sandhoe couple helped run the UK Families Flight 103 pressure group, which represented the families of the 31 British people who died. Members believe the only person ever convicted of the crime, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was set up as a fall guy.
The Berkleys used their Libyan compensation money to launch the Alistair Berkley Charitable Trust.
[RB: Examples of interventions by Barrie and Jean Berkley in the Lockerbie saga can be found on this blog here.]
Wednesday 12 December 2018
William Blum, 6 March 1933 - 9 December 2018
The death has been announced of William Blum, US author, historian and longtime critic of his country's foreign policy. Mr Blum wrote extensively about the Lockerbie case and was unconvinced of the guilt of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi or of the involvement of Libya. Links to his Lockerbie writings can be found here.
Saturday 8 December 2018
Thirty years is a long time to grieve…without answers
[What follows is excerpted from an article by Marcello Mega published in today's edition of the Daily Express:]
Flight PanAm 103 was only 38 minutes into its flight from London to New York in December 1988 when a bomb hidden in a Toshiba cassette recorder and smuggled into its hold exploded.
The force of the blast punched a 20-inch hole in the left hand side of the fuselage of the jumbo jet and a subsequent investigation concluded that the nose of the plane was blown off within three seconds of the bomb’s detonation.
Victims and debris were flung over an 81-mile corridor covering 845 square miles. One wing section hit number 13 Sherwood Crescent in the Scottish border town of Lockerbie at 500 miles per hour. Its occupants Doris and Maurice Henry were killed instantly and nine other residents of the street also died.
Disputes over who planted the bomb have raged ever since and, on this side of the Atlantic, Dr Jim Swire – who lost his daughter Flora in the disaster – has been the most prominent campaigner against the official version of events. Now aged 82 he fears he might not live to see justice done for his daughter.
Swire is always dignified and articulate despite the quiet fury that has burned within him since Flora was murdered, on the eve of her 24th birthday, along with 258 others on the plane.
On December 21, he and other relatives who lost loved ones will mark the 30th anniversary of Europe’s most devastating terrorist atrocity but Swire notes pointedly that their numbers are dwindling.
“Thirty years is a long time to grieve, especially without answers,” he says. “We are beginning to die out in this group of relatives. Justice has been slow and inconsiderate. We above all deserve to know who murdered our loved ones and why it was not prevented.”
Swire and the other UK relatives have never believed in the guilt of the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the bombing by a specially-created Scottish court in the Netherlands in 2001.
Three Scottish judges sat without a jury and concluded that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was guilty, while his co-accused, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was not.
Swire sat through every minute of evidence over many months firmly believing he would see and hear the proof of Libyan guilt but he was so sure after hearing all the witnesses that both men were innocent that he fainted on hearing the guilty verdict.
Those close to him in the court feared he had dropped dead from the shock as he was out cold for several minutes.
In the years between the verdict and Megrahi’s death from cancer aged 60 in 2012, having been released from prison on compassionate grounds in 2009, Swire befriended the “bomber” and visited him in jail and later at his home in Tripoli, even apologising for the injustice he had suffered.
“When I met Baset, I had no problem shaking his hand because I sat in court every day and listened to all the evidence and I knew his hands had not been involved in the murder of my daughter,” he says.
“There was a natural warmth between us and each could sympathise with the other. He understood how I might feel having lost my much-loved daughter in the most atrocious way and I understood the pain he and his family must feel at their separation. I could also imagine how devastating it must be to be labelled a mass murderer unfairly.
“We became friends. He comforted me over the loss of my daughter and I apologised to him for what he and his family were being put through by the Scottish justice system and most of the time we talked about how we could get to the truth.”
Totally convinced that Megrahi’s conviction had been engineered for political reasons after the West’s relationships with Middle-Eastern states changed because of the first Gulf War – when Iran allowed the US and UK to attack Iraq from its air bases – Swire has played his part in trying to discover the truth.
Five years ago, he travelled to Sweden to confront Mohammed Abo Talb, a convicted terrorist then recently released from a 20-year sentence in that country, hoping to question him over his suspected role in the bombing.
The terrorist hid from the then 77-year-old behind his wife, refusing even to talk through an open second-floor window.
In Scotland and in the US, the authorities continue to maintain that Megrahi was guilty and that the bombing was planned and paid for by Libya, though the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is expected to refer Megrahi’s case for a posthumous appeal shortly.
In 2007, the commission referred the case for appeal, stating there may have been a miscarriage of justice on six grounds, among them the fact that no reasonable court could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence presented, a damning condemnation of the verdict.
In 2009, Megrahi, by then diagnosed with terminal cancer, abandoned his appeal to secure a transfer home. Swire is certain that the SCCRC cannot ignore the evidence it had unearthed more than a decade earlier.
“I am certain there will be another appeal, and that the conviction cannot be maintained in the face of overwhelming evidence that points away from my friend,” he says. “But the authorities are in no hurry.
“They like to delay. They create the delays, and I wonder whether I will even see the conviction quashed, never mind the investigation that must follow into who really did it.”
Swire, like many informed Lockerbie watchers, believes the terror group, the PFLP-GC, the first suspects in the case, were the culprits, and that the bombing was ordered and paid for by Iran.
When an Iran Airbus carrying pilgrims to Mecca was shot down over the Gulf by the US vessel Vincennes five months before Lockerbie, killing all 290 on board, the Iranians said the skies would run with the blood of Americans.
Rather than offer an apology, the Americans further provoked the Iranians by giving William C Rogers III, the captain of the Vincennes, an award for “bravery”.
Swire was appalled by the disregard the US displayed for the victims and remains certain that it contributed to the awful fate endured by his daughter and 269 others.
His anger, however, is not confined to the real culprits, or even to the US and Scottish investigators, who he believes wilfully ignored the evidence against Iran and the PFLP-GC to pursue Libya for political reasons.
He is also angry with successive UK governments for allowing it to happen in the first place and then for failing to deliver truth and justice. He still craves the full public inquiry that would force senior politicians and senior intelligence figures to reveal what they knew.
“When Sheriff Principal John Mowatt QC published his report in October 1990 into the fatal accident inquiry he chaired, he said the bombing had been avoidable,” he says.
“Cecil Parkinson, who became Secretary of State for Transport in 1989, promised the relatives a full public inquiry, then had to let us down because Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t allow it.
“In the lead-up to Labour winning the election in 1997, we met with Robin Cook and Tony Blair and were promised it would be different when they won power. After they won, they stopped returning our calls.
“We know there were warnings to intelligence agencies about a threat to Pan Am flights at this time. We know this plane was only two-thirds full when every other flight from Heathrow to JFK in that week before Christmas flew at least at 95 per cent capacity and we know that some VIPs who were booked on the flight didn’t travel.
“We also believe the three-flights’ theory to be nonsense, and it was never proved in court. The judges said the Crown had failed to prove there was an unaccompanied case on the flight from Malta to Frankfurt and clung to the flimsiest possibility of an unaccompanied case on the flight to Heathrow.
“All the evidence tells us the bomb was loaded at Heathrow. It was our government’s responsibility to keep Flora and all the others safe.
“Any parent who lost a child in these circumstances would be shouting for answers, and 30 years on we are still shouting and we need to be heard.”
Flight PanAm 103 was only 38 minutes into its flight from London to New York in December 1988 when a bomb hidden in a Toshiba cassette recorder and smuggled into its hold exploded.
The force of the blast punched a 20-inch hole in the left hand side of the fuselage of the jumbo jet and a subsequent investigation concluded that the nose of the plane was blown off within three seconds of the bomb’s detonation.
Victims and debris were flung over an 81-mile corridor covering 845 square miles. One wing section hit number 13 Sherwood Crescent in the Scottish border town of Lockerbie at 500 miles per hour. Its occupants Doris and Maurice Henry were killed instantly and nine other residents of the street also died.
Disputes over who planted the bomb have raged ever since and, on this side of the Atlantic, Dr Jim Swire – who lost his daughter Flora in the disaster – has been the most prominent campaigner against the official version of events. Now aged 82 he fears he might not live to see justice done for his daughter.
Swire is always dignified and articulate despite the quiet fury that has burned within him since Flora was murdered, on the eve of her 24th birthday, along with 258 others on the plane.
On December 21, he and other relatives who lost loved ones will mark the 30th anniversary of Europe’s most devastating terrorist atrocity but Swire notes pointedly that their numbers are dwindling.
“Thirty years is a long time to grieve, especially without answers,” he says. “We are beginning to die out in this group of relatives. Justice has been slow and inconsiderate. We above all deserve to know who murdered our loved ones and why it was not prevented.”
Swire and the other UK relatives have never believed in the guilt of the Libyan intelligence agent convicted of the bombing by a specially-created Scottish court in the Netherlands in 2001.
Three Scottish judges sat without a jury and concluded that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was guilty, while his co-accused, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was not.
Swire sat through every minute of evidence over many months firmly believing he would see and hear the proof of Libyan guilt but he was so sure after hearing all the witnesses that both men were innocent that he fainted on hearing the guilty verdict.
Those close to him in the court feared he had dropped dead from the shock as he was out cold for several minutes.
In the years between the verdict and Megrahi’s death from cancer aged 60 in 2012, having been released from prison on compassionate grounds in 2009, Swire befriended the “bomber” and visited him in jail and later at his home in Tripoli, even apologising for the injustice he had suffered.
“When I met Baset, I had no problem shaking his hand because I sat in court every day and listened to all the evidence and I knew his hands had not been involved in the murder of my daughter,” he says.
“There was a natural warmth between us and each could sympathise with the other. He understood how I might feel having lost my much-loved daughter in the most atrocious way and I understood the pain he and his family must feel at their separation. I could also imagine how devastating it must be to be labelled a mass murderer unfairly.
“We became friends. He comforted me over the loss of my daughter and I apologised to him for what he and his family were being put through by the Scottish justice system and most of the time we talked about how we could get to the truth.”
Totally convinced that Megrahi’s conviction had been engineered for political reasons after the West’s relationships with Middle-Eastern states changed because of the first Gulf War – when Iran allowed the US and UK to attack Iraq from its air bases – Swire has played his part in trying to discover the truth.
Five years ago, he travelled to Sweden to confront Mohammed Abo Talb, a convicted terrorist then recently released from a 20-year sentence in that country, hoping to question him over his suspected role in the bombing.
The terrorist hid from the then 77-year-old behind his wife, refusing even to talk through an open second-floor window.
In Scotland and in the US, the authorities continue to maintain that Megrahi was guilty and that the bombing was planned and paid for by Libya, though the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is expected to refer Megrahi’s case for a posthumous appeal shortly.
In 2007, the commission referred the case for appeal, stating there may have been a miscarriage of justice on six grounds, among them the fact that no reasonable court could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence presented, a damning condemnation of the verdict.
In 2009, Megrahi, by then diagnosed with terminal cancer, abandoned his appeal to secure a transfer home. Swire is certain that the SCCRC cannot ignore the evidence it had unearthed more than a decade earlier.
“I am certain there will be another appeal, and that the conviction cannot be maintained in the face of overwhelming evidence that points away from my friend,” he says. “But the authorities are in no hurry.
“They like to delay. They create the delays, and I wonder whether I will even see the conviction quashed, never mind the investigation that must follow into who really did it.”
Swire, like many informed Lockerbie watchers, believes the terror group, the PFLP-GC, the first suspects in the case, were the culprits, and that the bombing was ordered and paid for by Iran.
When an Iran Airbus carrying pilgrims to Mecca was shot down over the Gulf by the US vessel Vincennes five months before Lockerbie, killing all 290 on board, the Iranians said the skies would run with the blood of Americans.
Rather than offer an apology, the Americans further provoked the Iranians by giving William C Rogers III, the captain of the Vincennes, an award for “bravery”.
Swire was appalled by the disregard the US displayed for the victims and remains certain that it contributed to the awful fate endured by his daughter and 269 others.
His anger, however, is not confined to the real culprits, or even to the US and Scottish investigators, who he believes wilfully ignored the evidence against Iran and the PFLP-GC to pursue Libya for political reasons.
He is also angry with successive UK governments for allowing it to happen in the first place and then for failing to deliver truth and justice. He still craves the full public inquiry that would force senior politicians and senior intelligence figures to reveal what they knew.
“When Sheriff Principal John Mowatt QC published his report in October 1990 into the fatal accident inquiry he chaired, he said the bombing had been avoidable,” he says.
“Cecil Parkinson, who became Secretary of State for Transport in 1989, promised the relatives a full public inquiry, then had to let us down because Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t allow it.
“In the lead-up to Labour winning the election in 1997, we met with Robin Cook and Tony Blair and were promised it would be different when they won power. After they won, they stopped returning our calls.
“We know there were warnings to intelligence agencies about a threat to Pan Am flights at this time. We know this plane was only two-thirds full when every other flight from Heathrow to JFK in that week before Christmas flew at least at 95 per cent capacity and we know that some VIPs who were booked on the flight didn’t travel.
“We also believe the three-flights’ theory to be nonsense, and it was never proved in court. The judges said the Crown had failed to prove there was an unaccompanied case on the flight from Malta to Frankfurt and clung to the flimsiest possibility of an unaccompanied case on the flight to Heathrow.
“All the evidence tells us the bomb was loaded at Heathrow. It was our government’s responsibility to keep Flora and all the others safe.
“Any parent who lost a child in these circumstances would be shouting for answers, and 30 years on we are still shouting and we need to be heard.”
Friday 7 December 2018
The Lockerbie Legacy
[This is the title of a programme to be broadcast in the Disclosure series on BBC One Scotland on Thursday, 13 December 2018 at 21.00 GMT. The programme description reads in part:]
Rare archive and untold personal testimony combine to reveal how the residents of Lockerbie have been forever changed since the downing of Pan Am flight 103.
Three decades on from the UK's worst terrorist atrocity, residents of Lockerbie reveal untold stories of how they have been affected by the downing of Pan Am flight 103. Piecing together rare archive with personal testimony of those who were there on the night and in the months after, the film charts how the quiet Dumfriesshire market town has been forever changed.
Rare archive and untold personal testimony combine to reveal how the residents of Lockerbie have been forever changed since the downing of Pan Am flight 103.
Three decades on from the UK's worst terrorist atrocity, residents of Lockerbie reveal untold stories of how they have been affected by the downing of Pan Am flight 103. Piecing together rare archive with personal testimony of those who were there on the night and in the months after, the film charts how the quiet Dumfriesshire market town has been forever changed.
Tuesday 4 December 2018
Justice has been devalued
[This is the headline over a letter from Iain Mckie published in today's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]
Congratulations to Kevin McKenna on his perceptive and timely critique of our justice system (“Do not believe the big lie that the British justice system is fair”, The Herald, December 1).
As a former police officer and justice campaigner, I am sad to say that the lessons of the past have not always been learned.
In both capacities, I have witnessed innocent people wrongly condemned to the Kafkaesque nightmare that is prison.
The root causes are much more than a collection of disparate individual failures. They are systemic in our whole approach to justice. The very court system we rely on to deliver justice is often an embarrassing shambles that affects victims and the accused alike and fails to deliver the checks and balances necessary to prevent injustice.
Many accused hand themselves over to a system that is slow, inefficient and increasingly expensive. It is also often overstretched and under resourced.
Real change will only result when there is the political will to re-assess and update our justice system and its institutions in the knowledge that blind faith in the judiciary, courts, law and police is no way to work towards a fairer and more just society. Unfortunately, I suspect Kevin McKenna’s pleas will fall on deaf ears as our justice system so often fails to deliver in these important areas.
We have a system that is rooted in the past with the maintenance of the status quo being of more importance than ensuring everyone is equal before the law.
As the 30th anniversary of Lockerbie approaches on December 22, we would do well to remember the words of Martin Luther King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
It is Scotland’s disgrace that, for nearly three decades, the truth about the UK’s worst terrorist atrocity has been sacrificed at the altar of expediency.
Time and time again political spin and vested interests have prevailed while our justice system has sat in denial with its collective head stuck firmly in the sand.
Where are the visionary voices offering escape from the old systems and self-serving values that have suffocated dissent and devalued justice?
Congratulations to Kevin McKenna on his perceptive and timely critique of our justice system (“Do not believe the big lie that the British justice system is fair”, The Herald, December 1).
As a former police officer and justice campaigner, I am sad to say that the lessons of the past have not always been learned.
In both capacities, I have witnessed innocent people wrongly condemned to the Kafkaesque nightmare that is prison.
The root causes are much more than a collection of disparate individual failures. They are systemic in our whole approach to justice. The very court system we rely on to deliver justice is often an embarrassing shambles that affects victims and the accused alike and fails to deliver the checks and balances necessary to prevent injustice.
Many accused hand themselves over to a system that is slow, inefficient and increasingly expensive. It is also often overstretched and under resourced.
Real change will only result when there is the political will to re-assess and update our justice system and its institutions in the knowledge that blind faith in the judiciary, courts, law and police is no way to work towards a fairer and more just society. Unfortunately, I suspect Kevin McKenna’s pleas will fall on deaf ears as our justice system so often fails to deliver in these important areas.
We have a system that is rooted in the past with the maintenance of the status quo being of more importance than ensuring everyone is equal before the law.
As the 30th anniversary of Lockerbie approaches on December 22, we would do well to remember the words of Martin Luther King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
It is Scotland’s disgrace that, for nearly three decades, the truth about the UK’s worst terrorist atrocity has been sacrificed at the altar of expediency.
Time and time again political spin and vested interests have prevailed while our justice system has sat in denial with its collective head stuck firmly in the sand.
Where are the visionary voices offering escape from the old systems and self-serving values that have suffocated dissent and devalued justice?
Monday 3 December 2018
Ministers must end the Lockerbie secrecy
[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]
Secrecy is the enemy of truth. It suggests the real facts are being withheld, encouraging suspicion, conspiracy theories and fake news. In the case of the Lockerbie bombing, it plays into the hands of those who believe that we have been hoodwinked about the evidence. They are adamant that prosecutors got the wrong man. The latest disclosures make the search for truth more complicated. (...)
It is 30 years since a PanAm plane crashed on to the town, and in that time the idea has grown that governments colluded in pointing the finger at Libya and away from the real perpetrators. According to this, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted, was innocent and the real plotters were Palestinians backed by Iran.
Why else, goes the theory, would British intelligence have been tapping phones and monitoring calls? As Marc Horne revealed in The Times last week, relatives of those who died are convinced that, in the aftermath of the atrocity, their conversations were recorded. They would hear “clinks and clunks” on the line; files disappeared from computers; odd people pretending to be journalists turned up to interview them. [RB: Marc Horne's articles can be read here and here.]
Papers released by the UK government from the national archives show that Lynda Chalker, a Foreign Office minister, wrote to the late Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, then Lord Advocate and in overall charge of the investigation, to express concern about victims’ groups on both sides of the Atlantic. They “will need careful watching”, she wrote.
Not surprisingly, the surviving relatives, or at least those who believe there has been a miscarriage of justice, smell a rat. They think ministers were worried lest they stumble on an inconvenient truth: that intelligence agencies were busy doctoring facts to implicate Libya.
The latest revelations seem to bolster that view. It is not just the sketchy evidence that has been revealed, but the dozens of documents that are being retained, and will not be released for another five years at least. They include, bizarrely, reports brought back from Libya by the late Labour MP Bernie Grant who travelled several times to Tripoli to interview members of Gaddafi’s regime and left his papers to a London college. They have been closed to members of the public by the government until 2025.
If you wanted to encourage the idea that there has been a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, you could hardly do better than that. As Aamer Anwar, the Megrahi family’s lawyer, who hopes to run another appeal, says: “It comes as no surprise that the security services were instructed to spy on those British relatives who to date have never given up in their pursuit of the truth.”
On closer examination, the revelations do little more than muddy the waters. It is intriguing to note, for instance, that the period in 1989 when phones were allegedly being tapped, long precedes the implication of the Libyans. The main suspect was a Palestinian group known as the PFLP-GC, allegedly backed by the Iranian government, seeking revenge for the sabotage of one of its planes. Briefings from Lord Fraser’s office pointed in that direction. Why officials should have wanted to tap the phones of relatives is far from clear.
In May 1989, a fragment of a bomb timer was found in the charred collar of a shirt packed in the suitcase that had held the bomb. The significance of its discovery was not immediately apparent but from it would stem an investigation that eventually pointed to Megrahi and the Libyans.
According to campaigners such as Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the attack, and Robert Black, QC, architect of the Lockerbie trial, that evidence was manufactured, probably by the CIA, because neither UK nor US governments wanted a confrontation with Iran at the time. Libya was a more convenient target, and Megrahi a disposable suspect. They believed their communications continued to be monitored.
Many thousands of words have been published to sustain the case. That does not mean it is true. For all the painstaking work done to cast doubt on the course of the trial and conviction of Megrahi, it takes a massive suspension of disbelief to accept that a decision was made at the highest level to suppress evidence, substitute false information and tilt the Scottish justice system in the direction of a miscarriage of justice. It would have involved hundreds of intelligence agents, criminal investigators and government officials, to say nothing of Scottish lawyers and judges.
Maybe that is what happened, but maybe is not enough. To allow the allegation to hover in the air is to undermine natural justice. It is unfair to the relatives, it casts doubt on the integrity of police and politicians, it clouds understanding of history.
Withholding evidence that might cast light on this matter is no way to resolve it. Many relatives have gone to the grave with uncertainty hanging over them. By 2025, when some or most of the papers are due to be released, others will have followed. There may be an appeal but, in the meantime, the government should come clean over its knowledge on Lockerbie and the investigation. It is hard to believe national security is still at risk 30 years on. Ministers have a responsibility to the dead and to the living. Justice suppressed, they should remember, is justice denied.
[RB: Mr Linklater once again contends that we Lockerbie dissentients are positing a grand conspiracy involving "hundreds of intelligence agents, criminal investigators and government officials, to say nothing of Scottish lawyers and judges". This is just nonsense. Here is what John Ashton wrote on a previous occasion when Mr Linklater made the same allegation:]
According to Mr Linklater's Times column of 13 August 2012, we allege a huge plot to shift the blame from Iran and the PFLP-GC to Libya, which involved: 'the planting or suppression of forensic evidence, the control of witnesses by intelligence services, the approval of senior politicians, the complicity of police officers, a prosecution team prepared to bend every rule to secure a conviction, and a set of senior Scottish judges willing to go along with that'. [RB: Responses to that article can be read here.]
The last sentence is key. It suggests that we claim that everyone from the police to the judges plotted with government and intelligence services to protect the likely bombers and convict those whom they knew to be innocent. The trouble is neither I, nor the great majority of Megrahi's supporters, have ever made such a claim.
To be clear, I believe that two different things happened: firstly, the US government ensured that blame was from Iran and the PFLP-GC to Libya; secondly, the Scottish criminal justice system screwed up massively. The first I consider likely, but unproven, the second I consider a cert. Both are based upon a rational evaluation of the available facts. I do not believe that the second occurred because the Americans told the Scots to exonerate the real culprits and frame innocents, indeed I find such suggestions fanciful.
In an email to me, Mr Linklater wrote: 'I've been in the [journalism] business for more than 40 years, and have learned over that time a simple principle of reporting: that good investigation requires sound proof'. Yet he has failed to produce any evidence that the majority of Megrahi's supporters have posited a grand conspiracy. The Justice for Megrahi campaign committee has formally alleged that some of the failures might have involved criminal conduct by certain Crown servants. They do not, however, claim that it happened at the behest of governments and intelligence services.
The US government was motivated to exonerate Iran, I believe, because the Iranians knew where the Iran-Contra skeletons lay and also held sway over the US hostages held in Lebanon – whose safe return was an obsession of the Reagan-Bush White House. Another obsession was Libya. As Watergate journalist Bob Woodward revealed, CIA director William Casey launched one of the biggest covert programmes in the agency's history, with the clear aim of toppling Gaddafi. Disinformation – that is, lying and fakery – was at its core.
The Lockerbie investigation was supposedly driven by old-fashioned detective work, but, as we have learned over the years, behind the scenes the CIA played a key role. We now know that the timer fragment was not from one of the 20 timers to Libya. Is it really far-fetched to suggest that the CIA planted it in order to conclusively link Libya to the bombing?
I have done many months of my own old-fashioned detective work among the hundreds of people who searched the crash site. They witnessed American officials in Lockerbie within two hours of the crash, CIA agents searching the site without police supervision, and substantial drug and cash finds – all things that have been officially denied. There may well be innocent explanations for these events, in which case the authorities should reveal them. And, instead of writing me off as a conspiracy theorist, perhaps Mr Linklater should do some door knocking of his own.
Secrecy is the enemy of truth. It suggests the real facts are being withheld, encouraging suspicion, conspiracy theories and fake news. In the case of the Lockerbie bombing, it plays into the hands of those who believe that we have been hoodwinked about the evidence. They are adamant that prosecutors got the wrong man. The latest disclosures make the search for truth more complicated. (...)
It is 30 years since a PanAm plane crashed on to the town, and in that time the idea has grown that governments colluded in pointing the finger at Libya and away from the real perpetrators. According to this, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted, was innocent and the real plotters were Palestinians backed by Iran.
Why else, goes the theory, would British intelligence have been tapping phones and monitoring calls? As Marc Horne revealed in The Times last week, relatives of those who died are convinced that, in the aftermath of the atrocity, their conversations were recorded. They would hear “clinks and clunks” on the line; files disappeared from computers; odd people pretending to be journalists turned up to interview them. [RB: Marc Horne's articles can be read here and here.]
Papers released by the UK government from the national archives show that Lynda Chalker, a Foreign Office minister, wrote to the late Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, then Lord Advocate and in overall charge of the investigation, to express concern about victims’ groups on both sides of the Atlantic. They “will need careful watching”, she wrote.
Not surprisingly, the surviving relatives, or at least those who believe there has been a miscarriage of justice, smell a rat. They think ministers were worried lest they stumble on an inconvenient truth: that intelligence agencies were busy doctoring facts to implicate Libya.
The latest revelations seem to bolster that view. It is not just the sketchy evidence that has been revealed, but the dozens of documents that are being retained, and will not be released for another five years at least. They include, bizarrely, reports brought back from Libya by the late Labour MP Bernie Grant who travelled several times to Tripoli to interview members of Gaddafi’s regime and left his papers to a London college. They have been closed to members of the public by the government until 2025.
If you wanted to encourage the idea that there has been a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, you could hardly do better than that. As Aamer Anwar, the Megrahi family’s lawyer, who hopes to run another appeal, says: “It comes as no surprise that the security services were instructed to spy on those British relatives who to date have never given up in their pursuit of the truth.”
On closer examination, the revelations do little more than muddy the waters. It is intriguing to note, for instance, that the period in 1989 when phones were allegedly being tapped, long precedes the implication of the Libyans. The main suspect was a Palestinian group known as the PFLP-GC, allegedly backed by the Iranian government, seeking revenge for the sabotage of one of its planes. Briefings from Lord Fraser’s office pointed in that direction. Why officials should have wanted to tap the phones of relatives is far from clear.
In May 1989, a fragment of a bomb timer was found in the charred collar of a shirt packed in the suitcase that had held the bomb. The significance of its discovery was not immediately apparent but from it would stem an investigation that eventually pointed to Megrahi and the Libyans.
According to campaigners such as Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the attack, and Robert Black, QC, architect of the Lockerbie trial, that evidence was manufactured, probably by the CIA, because neither UK nor US governments wanted a confrontation with Iran at the time. Libya was a more convenient target, and Megrahi a disposable suspect. They believed their communications continued to be monitored.
Many thousands of words have been published to sustain the case. That does not mean it is true. For all the painstaking work done to cast doubt on the course of the trial and conviction of Megrahi, it takes a massive suspension of disbelief to accept that a decision was made at the highest level to suppress evidence, substitute false information and tilt the Scottish justice system in the direction of a miscarriage of justice. It would have involved hundreds of intelligence agents, criminal investigators and government officials, to say nothing of Scottish lawyers and judges.
Maybe that is what happened, but maybe is not enough. To allow the allegation to hover in the air is to undermine natural justice. It is unfair to the relatives, it casts doubt on the integrity of police and politicians, it clouds understanding of history.
Withholding evidence that might cast light on this matter is no way to resolve it. Many relatives have gone to the grave with uncertainty hanging over them. By 2025, when some or most of the papers are due to be released, others will have followed. There may be an appeal but, in the meantime, the government should come clean over its knowledge on Lockerbie and the investigation. It is hard to believe national security is still at risk 30 years on. Ministers have a responsibility to the dead and to the living. Justice suppressed, they should remember, is justice denied.
[RB: Mr Linklater once again contends that we Lockerbie dissentients are positing a grand conspiracy involving "hundreds of intelligence agents, criminal investigators and government officials, to say nothing of Scottish lawyers and judges". This is just nonsense. Here is what John Ashton wrote on a previous occasion when Mr Linklater made the same allegation:]
According to Mr Linklater's Times column of 13 August 2012, we allege a huge plot to shift the blame from Iran and the PFLP-GC to Libya, which involved: 'the planting or suppression of forensic evidence, the control of witnesses by intelligence services, the approval of senior politicians, the complicity of police officers, a prosecution team prepared to bend every rule to secure a conviction, and a set of senior Scottish judges willing to go along with that'. [RB: Responses to that article can be read here.]
The last sentence is key. It suggests that we claim that everyone from the police to the judges plotted with government and intelligence services to protect the likely bombers and convict those whom they knew to be innocent. The trouble is neither I, nor the great majority of Megrahi's supporters, have ever made such a claim.
To be clear, I believe that two different things happened: firstly, the US government ensured that blame was from Iran and the PFLP-GC to Libya; secondly, the Scottish criminal justice system screwed up massively. The first I consider likely, but unproven, the second I consider a cert. Both are based upon a rational evaluation of the available facts. I do not believe that the second occurred because the Americans told the Scots to exonerate the real culprits and frame innocents, indeed I find such suggestions fanciful.
In an email to me, Mr Linklater wrote: 'I've been in the [journalism] business for more than 40 years, and have learned over that time a simple principle of reporting: that good investigation requires sound proof'. Yet he has failed to produce any evidence that the majority of Megrahi's supporters have posited a grand conspiracy. The Justice for Megrahi campaign committee has formally alleged that some of the failures might have involved criminal conduct by certain Crown servants. They do not, however, claim that it happened at the behest of governments and intelligence services.
The US government was motivated to exonerate Iran, I believe, because the Iranians knew where the Iran-Contra skeletons lay and also held sway over the US hostages held in Lebanon – whose safe return was an obsession of the Reagan-Bush White House. Another obsession was Libya. As Watergate journalist Bob Woodward revealed, CIA director William Casey launched one of the biggest covert programmes in the agency's history, with the clear aim of toppling Gaddafi. Disinformation – that is, lying and fakery – was at its core.
The Lockerbie investigation was supposedly driven by old-fashioned detective work, but, as we have learned over the years, behind the scenes the CIA played a key role. We now know that the timer fragment was not from one of the 20 timers to Libya. Is it really far-fetched to suggest that the CIA planted it in order to conclusively link Libya to the bombing?
I have done many months of my own old-fashioned detective work among the hundreds of people who searched the crash site. They witnessed American officials in Lockerbie within two hours of the crash, CIA agents searching the site without police supervision, and substantial drug and cash finds – all things that have been officially denied. There may well be innocent explanations for these events, in which case the authorities should reveal them. And, instead of writing me off as a conspiracy theorist, perhaps Mr Linklater should do some door knocking of his own.
Saturday 1 December 2018
Further claims by Lockerbie figures of monitoring of communications
[A report in today's edition of The Times carries the headline Lockerbie professor says secret service agents snooped on him. It reads in part:]
A senior legal figure who masterminded the Lockerbie trial believes that he was put under surveillance by the security services.
Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh, is convinced that his emails and telephone calls were intercepted at home and his campus office.
Professor Black spoke out after The Times published extracts from Foreign Office documents, circulated to Margaret Thatcher in 1989 when she was prime minister, which warned that relatives of the bomb victims were becoming increasingly vocal and required “careful watching”. (...)
Professor Black was the key architect of the arrangement that allowed Abdul Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, to stand trial under Scots law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2000.
After the trial, which ended with Megrahi being found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, the academic became convinced that a miscarriage of justice had taken place.
Professor Black believes that he and Jim Swire, a former GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, attracted the attention of the intelligence services. Mr Swire’s daughter Flora was killed in the bombing.
“I had suspicions about interception of email communications and monitoring of telephone conversations both at my home and at my university office,” Professor Black said.
“In telephone conversations Dr Swire and I would sometimes deliberately include misleading information. On other occasions, if clicks and hissing made the apparent monitoring more than usually obvious, Dr Swire would say: ‘Hi guys’.”
Professor Black, who was born and brought up in Lockerbie, added: “This was at a time when I had put forward my proposal for a non-jury Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands after getting Libyan agreement to it. Opposition to it was virulent and those pressing the scheme, including Dr Swire and myself, were very unpopular in government circles.”
Dr Swire and the Rev John Mosey, who lost his daughter Helga in the tragedy, also claimed that their phone calls were often disrupted and their computer equipment interfered with after they spoke publicly about the case.
Peter Biddulph, a researcher and author who has spent years investigating the bombing, is also convinced that he was put under surveillance,
He said: “Around two weeks after I had interviewed Jim [Swire] I sat down and found every one of the files in my computer folder had been accessed that morning.
“It was a bit of a shock and I was in a flat panic. I ended up in my solicitor’s office swearing an affidavit, which is still in his safe. After that I got a second computer and made sure it wasn’t connected to the internet.”
The claims were corroborated by Hans Köchler, an Austrian academic, who was appointed by the UN to be an independent observer at the Camp Zeist trial.
He told The Times: “I had similar experiences in the time after the publication of my first report on the Lockerbie trial in 2001 and the following years, in terms of intrusion into the computer systems in my office in two different locations, leading to data loss and destruction of the operating system.”
A spokesman for the Crown Office said that Lockerbie remained a live criminal investigation.
The Foreign Office declined to comment.
A senior legal figure who masterminded the Lockerbie trial believes that he was put under surveillance by the security services.
Robert Black, professor emeritus of Scots law at the University of Edinburgh, is convinced that his emails and telephone calls were intercepted at home and his campus office.
Professor Black spoke out after The Times published extracts from Foreign Office documents, circulated to Margaret Thatcher in 1989 when she was prime minister, which warned that relatives of the bomb victims were becoming increasingly vocal and required “careful watching”. (...)
Professor Black was the key architect of the arrangement that allowed Abdul Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, to stand trial under Scots law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2000.
After the trial, which ended with Megrahi being found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment, the academic became convinced that a miscarriage of justice had taken place.
Professor Black believes that he and Jim Swire, a former GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, attracted the attention of the intelligence services. Mr Swire’s daughter Flora was killed in the bombing.
“I had suspicions about interception of email communications and monitoring of telephone conversations both at my home and at my university office,” Professor Black said.
“In telephone conversations Dr Swire and I would sometimes deliberately include misleading information. On other occasions, if clicks and hissing made the apparent monitoring more than usually obvious, Dr Swire would say: ‘Hi guys’.”
Professor Black, who was born and brought up in Lockerbie, added: “This was at a time when I had put forward my proposal for a non-jury Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands after getting Libyan agreement to it. Opposition to it was virulent and those pressing the scheme, including Dr Swire and myself, were very unpopular in government circles.”
Dr Swire and the Rev John Mosey, who lost his daughter Helga in the tragedy, also claimed that their phone calls were often disrupted and their computer equipment interfered with after they spoke publicly about the case.
Peter Biddulph, a researcher and author who has spent years investigating the bombing, is also convinced that he was put under surveillance,
He said: “Around two weeks after I had interviewed Jim [Swire] I sat down and found every one of the files in my computer folder had been accessed that morning.
“It was a bit of a shock and I was in a flat panic. I ended up in my solicitor’s office swearing an affidavit, which is still in his safe. After that I got a second computer and made sure it wasn’t connected to the internet.”
The claims were corroborated by Hans Köchler, an Austrian academic, who was appointed by the UN to be an independent observer at the Camp Zeist trial.
He told The Times: “I had similar experiences in the time after the publication of my first report on the Lockerbie trial in 2001 and the following years, in terms of intrusion into the computer systems in my office in two different locations, leading to data loss and destruction of the operating system.”
A spokesman for the Crown Office said that Lockerbie remained a live criminal investigation.
The Foreign Office declined to comment.
Friday 30 November 2018
Lockerbie files: Bombing originally thought to be revenge by Iranian terrorists
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]
At the end of an eight-month trial that heard from 230 witnesses and pored over 621 pieces of evidence it took the presiding judge, Lord Cullen, seconds to announce the verdict. [RB: The presiding judge at the Lockerbie trial was Lord Sutherland. Lord Cullen's first involvement was to preside over the first appeal.]
Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was unanimously found guilty of the bombing in 1988 which led to the deaths of 270 people when Pan Am’s Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie. On January 31, 2001, at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. (...)
The verdict was hailed by the White House and Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, who described the attack as “among the most brutal acts of mass murder” but added “at last those relatives know that in a fair trial, before an open court, justice has been done”.
However, declassified documents seen by The Times reveal that the British and American governments originally believed that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), an Iranian-sponsored terrorist group based in Syria, was behind the atrocity, and that Flight 103 had been destroyed in revenge for the US downing an Iranian Airbus with 290 people on board.
Six weeks before the bombing, a West German anti-terrorist operation raided the Syrian terrorist cell, led by Hafez Dalkamoni, a Palestinian militant. It was to prove valuable to the investigation.
On February 6, 1989, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Margaret Thatcher’s chief legal officer in Scotland, wrote to Douglas Hurd, the home secretary, saying “Evidence has been obtained which has led to the firm conclusion that the bomb was contained in a radio cassette player of Toshiba make.
“A very similar radio cassette player of the same make was discovered by the German police during an operation last October when they raided a flat in Frankfurt occupied by Hafez Kassem Dalkamoni, who is said to be a member of the PFLP-GC. In that flat, plastic explosives were discovered and in his car the police found a Toshiba radio cassette player containing plastic explosive and sophisticated circuitry.”
On July 26, Lord Fraser went further, telling Hurd: “While there is, as yet, no direct evidence of Dalkamoni’s involvement in the Pan Am 103 bombing there is some information and circumstantial evidence of his complicity in its preparation.”
Dalkamoni was in custody at the time of the Lockerbie bombing but one of the five known Toshiba devices created by his cell has never been recovered. He was jailed in Germany, for separate terrorist offences, before being extradited to Syria in 1995.
A secret Ministry of Defence (MoD) briefing paper stated: “Those with the closest interests were the PFLP-GC.”
Some months earlier, on March 29, 1989, details of a meeting with Brent Scowcroft, the US national security adviser, and Lawrence Eagleburger, the deputy US secretary of state, were sent to the UK. It was noted: “Neither Eagleburger nor Scowcroft ruled out action against PFLP-GC bases. I urged them to keep in touch with us before developing ideas too strongly and Scowcroft agreed to do so.”
On May 29, an MoD document detailed the reports of a discussion with Alvin P Adams Jr, deputy director for counterterrorism at the US State Department, noting: “Adams indicated that there were a number of people in Washington who firmly believed that the Iranians had inspired the attack on Pan Am 103 and who wanted action taken against them.
“It was argued that the Iranians knew that they were responsible and that they knew that the Americans had a shrewd idea that this was the case.
“The possibility of military action against the Iranians should not be excluded. For example, a strike against the Iranian navy would have a significant effect on their capabilities.” It noted that Mr Adams also wanted measures to be taken against Syria but cautioned that he reflected “the more hawkish wing of opinion in Washington”.
A letter sent on behalf of William Waldegrave, a Foreign Office minister, hoped America could be persuaded to resist launching reprisals for Lockerbie. It suggested the European view was that Iran had acted in revenge for an “unjustified US attack”.
After the raids in 1988 the West German authorities had warned the British and Americans that radio cassettes could be used to blow up passenger planes. Tom King, the defence minister, feared this would be highlighted if the government agreed to a public inquiry,
In a letter he wrote: “The terms of reference would need to be drawn up with extreme care, so as to avoid the risk of classified matters of high sensitivity becoming disclosed publicly.”
John Major, the foreign secretary who would succeed Mrs Thatcher as prime minister within months, also privately lobbied against a public investigation into the disaster.
The Americans later discounted the Iranian/PFLP-GC connection and instead focused on Libya, whose leader, Colonel Gaddafi, was unabashed over his financial support for global terrorist groups, including the IRA.
The suggestion that the need for a new suspect was prompted by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and subsequent Gulf War, which required the tacit compliance of Iran and Syria, has been strongly rejected by successive British and US administrations.
At the end of an eight-month trial that heard from 230 witnesses and pored over 621 pieces of evidence it took the presiding judge, Lord Cullen, seconds to announce the verdict. [RB: The presiding judge at the Lockerbie trial was Lord Sutherland. Lord Cullen's first involvement was to preside over the first appeal.]
Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was unanimously found guilty of the bombing in 1988 which led to the deaths of 270 people when Pan Am’s Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie. On January 31, 2001, at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. (...)
The verdict was hailed by the White House and Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, who described the attack as “among the most brutal acts of mass murder” but added “at last those relatives know that in a fair trial, before an open court, justice has been done”.
However, declassified documents seen by The Times reveal that the British and American governments originally believed that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), an Iranian-sponsored terrorist group based in Syria, was behind the atrocity, and that Flight 103 had been destroyed in revenge for the US downing an Iranian Airbus with 290 people on board.
Six weeks before the bombing, a West German anti-terrorist operation raided the Syrian terrorist cell, led by Hafez Dalkamoni, a Palestinian militant. It was to prove valuable to the investigation.
On February 6, 1989, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Margaret Thatcher’s chief legal officer in Scotland, wrote to Douglas Hurd, the home secretary, saying “Evidence has been obtained which has led to the firm conclusion that the bomb was contained in a radio cassette player of Toshiba make.
“A very similar radio cassette player of the same make was discovered by the German police during an operation last October when they raided a flat in Frankfurt occupied by Hafez Kassem Dalkamoni, who is said to be a member of the PFLP-GC. In that flat, plastic explosives were discovered and in his car the police found a Toshiba radio cassette player containing plastic explosive and sophisticated circuitry.”
On July 26, Lord Fraser went further, telling Hurd: “While there is, as yet, no direct evidence of Dalkamoni’s involvement in the Pan Am 103 bombing there is some information and circumstantial evidence of his complicity in its preparation.”
Dalkamoni was in custody at the time of the Lockerbie bombing but one of the five known Toshiba devices created by his cell has never been recovered. He was jailed in Germany, for separate terrorist offences, before being extradited to Syria in 1995.
A secret Ministry of Defence (MoD) briefing paper stated: “Those with the closest interests were the PFLP-GC.”
Some months earlier, on March 29, 1989, details of a meeting with Brent Scowcroft, the US national security adviser, and Lawrence Eagleburger, the deputy US secretary of state, were sent to the UK. It was noted: “Neither Eagleburger nor Scowcroft ruled out action against PFLP-GC bases. I urged them to keep in touch with us before developing ideas too strongly and Scowcroft agreed to do so.”
On May 29, an MoD document detailed the reports of a discussion with Alvin P Adams Jr, deputy director for counterterrorism at the US State Department, noting: “Adams indicated that there were a number of people in Washington who firmly believed that the Iranians had inspired the attack on Pan Am 103 and who wanted action taken against them.
“It was argued that the Iranians knew that they were responsible and that they knew that the Americans had a shrewd idea that this was the case.
“The possibility of military action against the Iranians should not be excluded. For example, a strike against the Iranian navy would have a significant effect on their capabilities.” It noted that Mr Adams also wanted measures to be taken against Syria but cautioned that he reflected “the more hawkish wing of opinion in Washington”.
A letter sent on behalf of William Waldegrave, a Foreign Office minister, hoped America could be persuaded to resist launching reprisals for Lockerbie. It suggested the European view was that Iran had acted in revenge for an “unjustified US attack”.
After the raids in 1988 the West German authorities had warned the British and Americans that radio cassettes could be used to blow up passenger planes. Tom King, the defence minister, feared this would be highlighted if the government agreed to a public inquiry,
In a letter he wrote: “The terms of reference would need to be drawn up with extreme care, so as to avoid the risk of classified matters of high sensitivity becoming disclosed publicly.”
John Major, the foreign secretary who would succeed Mrs Thatcher as prime minister within months, also privately lobbied against a public investigation into the disaster.
The Americans later discounted the Iranian/PFLP-GC connection and instead focused on Libya, whose leader, Colonel Gaddafi, was unabashed over his financial support for global terrorist groups, including the IRA.
The suggestion that the need for a new suspect was prompted by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and subsequent Gulf War, which required the tacit compliance of Iran and Syria, has been strongly rejected by successive British and US administrations.
Lockerbie families: we were spied on by state
[This is the headline over a report published in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]
Relatives of the Lockerbie bomb victims said yesterday that they have been repeatedly bugged by the security services as it emerged that secret government documents suggested the families needed “careful watching”.
Previously classified government files, seen by The Times, reveal that Margaret Thatcher, when she was prime minister, had been warned that the families were becoming increasingly organised and it was suggested to her that they be put under observation.
Speaking about alleged state surveillance for the first time, the Rev John Mosey, a church minister who lost his teenage daughter, Helga, in the bombing, said that after speaking publicly his phone calls were often disrupted and documents relating to the bombing had gone missing from his computer.
Jim Swire, a GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, reported similar intrusions and claims that he was grilled by people he now believes were from the security services. (...)
Their stories were corroborated by Hans Koechler, who was appointed by the UN to be an independent observer at the trial of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person to be convicted for the worst act of terrorism in Britain. The academic and humanitarian, based in Vienna, revealed that his computers had been accessed and data removed after he compiled reports into the case.
Dr Swire and Mr Mosey believe that crucial evidence was withheld from Megrahi’s trial and that his conviction may have been wrongful.
The latest Lockerbie files have been released by the British government and sourced from the National Archives.
One of the documents is a letter sent from the Foreign Office on August 10, 1989, to Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Scotland’s most senior law officer, and circulated to Thatcher, which raises concerns about the families. It said: “Another aspect which will need careful watching is the activities of relatives of Pan Am 103 victims. The US relatives have for some time been well organised and vocal. More recently the UK relatives have formed the group ‘UK Families Flight 103’ and have written to various ministers. We must be totally consistent in our responses to them.”
Later documents suggest that the relatives were regarded as a nuisance by the government. Lord Fraser, then lord advocate, wrote: “I have recently received a letter from the UK families expressing a wish for a public inquiry. I have sought to head off this demand of relatives here and in the United States.”
Relatives believe the files finally confirm their long-standing belief that they were spied on.
Dr Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed, said: “I cannot believe that a supposedly decent country could behave in such a way towards grieving people whose only crime was to seek the truth. It is unethical, improper and totally unjustifiable.”
He claimed that his communications had been interfered with for decades after he spoke to two men in 1989 who claimed to be journalists.
“These two guys asked to meet me in the countryside near Cambridge,” he said. “They turned up in a high powered foreign sports car and made me feel quite uneasy, almost scared. They seemed satisfied with what I said, almost as if they discovered I didn’t know as much as they feared I might.”
Dr Swire claims that he deliberately included false information in private correspondence, only for it to appear in the press days later, adding: “It made me suspicious that Cheltenham [home of the spy agency GCHQ] made sure that everything I was doing was known beforehand.”
Mr Mosey, who is based in Lancaster, said: “I could hear little clicks and clunks when I was on the phone and documents regarding Lockerbie were disappearing from my computer.”
Dr Koechler said that the documents and the allegations of surveillance were a cause for deep concern.
“I had similar experiences in the time after the publication of my first report on the Lockerbie trial,” he said. “The state should respect the privacy of communication and should not interfere into lawful activities of civil society. These documents further confirm my doubts about the integrity of the investigation.” (...)
The Foreign Office said: “We will not be commenting on the contents of our archive files.”
[RB: For what it is worth, I also had suspicions about interception of email communications and monitoring of telephone conversations both at my home and at my university office. In telephone conversations Dr Swire and I would sometimes deliberately include misleading information and on other occasions, if clicks and hissing made the apparent monitoring more than usually obvious, Dr Swire would say "Hi, guys!"]
Relatives of the Lockerbie bomb victims said yesterday that they have been repeatedly bugged by the security services as it emerged that secret government documents suggested the families needed “careful watching”.
Previously classified government files, seen by The Times, reveal that Margaret Thatcher, when she was prime minister, had been warned that the families were becoming increasingly organised and it was suggested to her that they be put under observation.
Speaking about alleged state surveillance for the first time, the Rev John Mosey, a church minister who lost his teenage daughter, Helga, in the bombing, said that after speaking publicly his phone calls were often disrupted and documents relating to the bombing had gone missing from his computer.
Jim Swire, a GP who became the public face of the campaign to secure an independent inquiry into the atrocity, reported similar intrusions and claims that he was grilled by people he now believes were from the security services. (...)
Their stories were corroborated by Hans Koechler, who was appointed by the UN to be an independent observer at the trial of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person to be convicted for the worst act of terrorism in Britain. The academic and humanitarian, based in Vienna, revealed that his computers had been accessed and data removed after he compiled reports into the case.
Dr Swire and Mr Mosey believe that crucial evidence was withheld from Megrahi’s trial and that his conviction may have been wrongful.
The latest Lockerbie files have been released by the British government and sourced from the National Archives.
One of the documents is a letter sent from the Foreign Office on August 10, 1989, to Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Scotland’s most senior law officer, and circulated to Thatcher, which raises concerns about the families. It said: “Another aspect which will need careful watching is the activities of relatives of Pan Am 103 victims. The US relatives have for some time been well organised and vocal. More recently the UK relatives have formed the group ‘UK Families Flight 103’ and have written to various ministers. We must be totally consistent in our responses to them.”
Later documents suggest that the relatives were regarded as a nuisance by the government. Lord Fraser, then lord advocate, wrote: “I have recently received a letter from the UK families expressing a wish for a public inquiry. I have sought to head off this demand of relatives here and in the United States.”
Relatives believe the files finally confirm their long-standing belief that they were spied on.
Dr Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed, said: “I cannot believe that a supposedly decent country could behave in such a way towards grieving people whose only crime was to seek the truth. It is unethical, improper and totally unjustifiable.”
He claimed that his communications had been interfered with for decades after he spoke to two men in 1989 who claimed to be journalists.
“These two guys asked to meet me in the countryside near Cambridge,” he said. “They turned up in a high powered foreign sports car and made me feel quite uneasy, almost scared. They seemed satisfied with what I said, almost as if they discovered I didn’t know as much as they feared I might.”
Dr Swire claims that he deliberately included false information in private correspondence, only for it to appear in the press days later, adding: “It made me suspicious that Cheltenham [home of the spy agency GCHQ] made sure that everything I was doing was known beforehand.”
Mr Mosey, who is based in Lancaster, said: “I could hear little clicks and clunks when I was on the phone and documents regarding Lockerbie were disappearing from my computer.”
Dr Koechler said that the documents and the allegations of surveillance were a cause for deep concern.
“I had similar experiences in the time after the publication of my first report on the Lockerbie trial,” he said. “The state should respect the privacy of communication and should not interfere into lawful activities of civil society. These documents further confirm my doubts about the integrity of the investigation.” (...)
The Foreign Office said: “We will not be commenting on the contents of our archive files.”
[RB: For what it is worth, I also had suspicions about interception of email communications and monitoring of telephone conversations both at my home and at my university office. In telephone conversations Dr Swire and I would sometimes deliberately include misleading information and on other occasions, if clicks and hissing made the apparent monitoring more than usually obvious, Dr Swire would say "Hi, guys!"]
Monday 26 November 2018
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.
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.
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