Busy doing nothing

[This is the heading over an item published yesterday on the Lockerbie Truth website of Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph.  It reads as follows:]

On the 9th February this year the following letter was addressed to the Scottish Lord Advocate. We feel it appropriate at this time to remind people of its contents.

Before reading it, please note the following:

• Evidence given to the Lockerbie trial by a key forensic witness was false.
• In 1989 he recorded in long-hand that a significant metallurgical difference existed between the Lockerbie fragment and a set of printed circuit boards similar to those supplied to Libya in 1985.
• Yet ten years later during the trial he stated that the Lockerbie fragment was "similar in all respects" to the PCBs supplied to Libya.
• Four new witnesses, including the production manager in charge of the manufacture of the Libyan PCBs, and two reputable metallurgical scientists, are willing to show important new scientific evidence and give statements to the Scottish police.
• But the senior police officer in charge of the Lockerbie investigation is refusing to interview any of the four witnesses.
• He claims that to do so would "interfere with an on-going investigation in Libya." [RB: Further information here.]
• How such interviews could "interfere" with matters in Libya is not explained. He has however indicated that the issue might be resolved "in a matter of weeks".

Dear Lord Advocate,

With the publication almost a year ago of the book Megrahi: You are my Jury, it became public knowledge that there is scientific proof that the fragment of circuit board led in evidence at Zeist and known as PT35b although mimicking circuit boards owned by Libya, could never have come from any such board.

This circuit board fragment was the crucial link at trial, suggesting that the bomb could have come from Malta, since it represented a fragment from a long running timer.

I am horrified to hear this week that Urs Bonfadelli (Thuring’s production manager, & maker of the MEBO boards), Dr Chris McArdle and Dr Jess Cawley, the three experts most involved in defining the significance of the discrepancy over the metallurgy of PT35b have never been approached by the Crown Office or the Dumfries and Galloway police in connection with this devastating discovery during the whole of the time since publication of Mr Ashton’s book.

I must therefore ask that you will immediately launch an inquiry into all matters surrounding PT35b, its origin, and its discovery inside a Dumfries and Galloway police evidence bag.

It is, Sir, now over 24 years since my daughter Flora was murdered at Lockerbie. As her father I have a right to know who murdered her and why her life was not protected. Such lethargy as this is intolerable.

Adherence to the Zeist verdict, in the face of the immediate criticisms of the UN’s special observer Professor Hans Koechler, and those of Professor Robert Black QC, and many others, along with the SCCRC findings, and now this metallurgical finding, while at the same time refusing to investigate all these apparently well supported allegations would in the event that those allegations are found to be justified, be seen as dereliction of the duty of the Crown Office to deliver timely justice. Effectively it would also amount to protection for the real perpetrators.

May I remind you of these words often attributed to philosopher Edmund Burke:  All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

I request therefore that you immediately commence a credible investigation, into all these matters, specifically including the circuit board fragment PT35b, its origin, and its finding inside a Dumfries and Galloway police evidence bag, without any further delay.

Further, in view of the extraordinary public statement made by the Crown Office concerning the 'allegations of criminality', lodged by the group known as JFM, before even receiving their supporting evidence, and accusing them of being fantasist conspiracy theorists, I feel that this letter should be made publicly available at once. I have therefore copied it elsewhere.

I am proud simply to be involved in a search for the truth, concerning my daughter’s murder, and not in any attempt to denigrate others in the process.

Yours faithfully,

Dr Jim Swire