Additional police officers have been drafted into the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary team investigating the Lockerbie bombing in 1988.
The inquiry has been
scaled up following regime change in Libya.
Chief Constable Patrick Shearer said that the extra resources required for the probe had been supplied by the Scottish government. (...)
The overthrow and death
of Col Muammar Gaddafi last year opened up a possible opportunity for
investigators to explore the role of others in the bombing.
The Crown Office has already asked the new authorities in Libya for help with the inquiry.
As a result, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, which has led the Lockerbie investigation from the start, has increased staffing levels within its inquiry team.
Detectives from the local force have already
questioned Libya's former Foreign Minister Musa Kusa who fled
to London when Col Gaddafi's regime started to fall.A spokesman for Dumfries
and Galloway Constabulary said that for operational reasons it could not reveal
the number of officers it had added to its inquiry team.
[Unless the police inquiry is prepared to investigate
conscientiously the material that has come to light casting grave doubt on the
Zeist trial's verdict against Abdelbaset Megrahi (including material uncovered
by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) the new staffing and
resources will be a complete waste of time and money and will achieve no more
than the "one man with a feather duster" that has been the pretext
over the years for the police and Crown Office claim that the Lockerbie
investigation was still live.
The treatment of this issue by Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm can be found here. The coverage of the story in the edition of The Herald for Wednesday 25 January contains the following: 'The Crown Office said: "The transitional Government of Libya has agreed to allow officers from Dumfries and Galloway police to travel to Libya for inquiries into the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi."' So here we have confirmation from the horse's mouth of the scope of this "investigation".]
The treatment of this issue by Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm can be found here. The coverage of the story in the edition of The Herald for Wednesday 25 January contains the following: 'The Crown Office said: "The transitional Government of Libya has agreed to allow officers from Dumfries and Galloway police to travel to Libya for inquiries into the involvement of others with Mr Megrahi."' So here we have confirmation from the horse's mouth of the scope of this "investigation".]
Yes, I remember Robin Cook telling Parliament that there would be no Public Inquiry into Lockerbie until the criminal investigation was completed.
ReplyDeleteIt seems the criminal investigation will never end, for that very reason?
The charade will involve more visits to Libya, but not yet, because our bombing has triggered a civil war!
Pity they are not looking at the blatant fabrication of evidence by RARDE. (Which I'm sure the SCCRC ignored). I'm not sure if "Camp Zeist" allowed for later prosecutions forperjury.
ReplyDeleteThere is plenty they could investigate (for example how Dr Hayes could have discovered the fragment of MST-13 timer AND the undamaged fragment of Toshiba manual in June 1989 when he had claimed to David Leppard to have discovered the former, but not the latter, a year later after his retirement)!
ReplyDeleteOh, come on Baz. Leppard is fascinating, but he's also as confused as all get out, in a number of places. The closer he gets to the end the worse he gets, I suspect deadline problems. For an unrelated example, look at his internally contradictory and flat wrong account of how the Frankfurt luggage was transferred at Heathrow - including it all being wheeled into the interline shed for Kamboj to x-ray.
ReplyDeleteHe has merely confused Hayes with Thurman, who identified the fragment as coming from an MST-13 in June 1990. His account is reasonably in line with what is actually supposed to have happened, but for being attributed to the wrong person.
Much more to the point, ask Hayes when that photo with the red circle was taken, and make him prove it.
"He" (Who Leppard? myself?) has merely confused Hayes with Thurman". Says who? Even by Rolfe's high standards a particularly asinine comment.
ReplyDeleteLeppard specifically acknowledged Dr Thomas Hayes by name "who was kind enough to explain to me some of the details of the forensic examination".
Thurman's claims to have identified the fragment of MST 13 timer (from a photograph or the original) were not made on oath. Hayes claim to have discovered the fragment of MST 13 time (together with the miraculous survival of the piece of Toshibe manual) in June 1989 was made on oath although he could not explain why his notes were stapled in and the pages renumbered. Unfortunately the defence team did not pick up on Hayes claims to Leppard but perhaps they had an incompetent researcher who did not pick up on it.
Interestingly in view of Rolfe's comments about a deadline Hayes' supposed identification of the timer fragment between June and August 1990 features in the last few pages on the book in the chapter titled "The Libyan Connection". If he had discovered it a year earlier as he claimed on oath this supposed discovery would have featured much earlier in the book. Of course Hayes also claimed to have recovered at the same time (June 1989 the fragment of Toshiba manual that had miraculously survived the explosion - "ye canna change the laws of physics!). Curiously Leppard's key source Hayes never bothered to mention this at all!