The following are references to two articles published, in French, on 14 September 2007 in Le Figaro. The first is entitled Lockerbie: and if Libya were innocent... and the second Jim Swire, father of a victim 'I want the true culprit found'.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070914.FIG000000142_lockerbie_et_si_la_libye_etait_innocente.html
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20070914.FIG000000141_jim_swire_pere_d_une_victime_je_veux_que_soit_trouve_le_vrai_coupable.html
All the hype about Lumpert is only that. A close examination of what he claims shows it to be inconsistent with the facts. How could he have delivered somehting to a Scottish police officer in June 1989 when the police there had no clue about MEBO until informed by the FBI a year later that the small fragment found was actually a piece of a MEBO timer. Bollier and his group have had a close working relationship with the Libyan Government for many years. One must recall that Bollier himself (anonymously) tried to direct the investigation to Libya as early as January 1989 and it was only through painstaking investigation that MEBO and Bollier were identified. This is all a bit much and do we think it has anything to do with oil? One only has to look and see how the son of LIbyan intelligence leader Sanussi has been treated in LOndon after he allegedly assaulted several local women.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I said on 29 August, when the Lumpert story broke:
ReplyDelete"Ulrich Lumpert, an engineer at one time employed by MEBO in Zurich, gave evidence at the Lockerbie trial that a fragment of circuit board allegedly found amongst the aircraft debris (and which was absolutely crucial to the prosecution contention that the bomb which destroyed Pan Am 103 was linked to Libya) was part of an operative MST-13 timer manufactured by MEBO. In an affidavit sworn in Switzerland in July 2007 (available on the website www.lockerbie.ch) Lumpert now states that the fragment produced in court was in fact part of a non-operational demonstration circuit board that he himself had removed from the premises of MEBO and had handed over to a Lockerbie investigator on 22 June 1989 (six months AFTER the destruction of Pan Am 103).
"If this is true, then it totally demolishes the prosecution version of how the aircraft was destroyed, as well, of course, as demonstrating deliberate fabrication of evidence laid before the court.
"At the forthcoming appeal resulting from the SCCRC’s report on the Megrahi conviction, will the appeal court have an opportunity to assess the truth of Lumpert’s revised version of events? The hurdles are formidable. Section 106 (3C) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 provides that an appeal may not be founded upon evidence from a witness at the original trial which is different from, or additional to, the evidence that he gave at that trial, unless there is a reasonable explanation as to why the new evidence was not given by him at the original trial and that explanation is itself supported by independent evidence. In this context 'independent evidence' means evidence which was not heard at the original trial; which comes from a source other than the witness himself; and which is accepted by the appeal court as credible and reliable. It might well be extremely difficult to convince a court that these conditions were satisfied in Lumpert’s case."
I still think that the content and provenance of the affidavit require close scrutiny and that it is unlikely to play a major part in Megrahi's forthcoming appeal.