Sunday 6 October 2013

Media coverage of Ashton book publication

[Links to media coverage following on from the publication of John Ashton's Scotland's Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters can be found here on his website. In addition, an opinion piece by Magnus Linklater is to be found (behind the paywall) in Friday's edition of The Times. It reads as follows:]

Jim Swire has been relentless, resolute, and single-minded in pursuit of his campaign for the truth about the Lockerbie atrocity that killed his daughter, Flora.

In all the 25 years that he has spent examining the case, travelling the world to track down evidence, he has never been less than dignified, or given way in public to the frustration and anger he must have felt towards those who stood in the way of his quest. He has dealt with inquiries from the media with patience and courtesy. Throughout, what has driven him is solely the need to find justice in the name of his daughter.

The reasons he now gives for stepping back from his cause are characteristically honest.

“My campaign has been my means of survival,” he says. “I think Flora would be saying ‘You’ve done your very best dad. It’s time to leave it to others, to younger men’.”

Such dedication is hard to challenge: taking issue with Dr Swire’s arguments is to venture into intensely personal territory. Yet his central contention — that Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi was innocent, and that Libya was not involved in the Lockerbie bombing — remains short of the kind of evidence that would stand up in court.

For all the many thousands of words that have been written suggesting that the prosecution case was flawed, and that the Scottish legal system presided over a spectacular miscarriage of justice, the alternative theories are well short of sustaining proof.

It is one thing to challenge the evidence on which al-Megrahi was convicted, another to sustain a case that is not, itself, threadbare.

Dr Swire believes that the bomb was not put on board Pan Am 103 on Malta, but that it was smuggled onto the plane at Heathrow Airport. This, along with other theories, was advanced at the time of the trial, examined, and dismissed for want of evidence.

It may, as Dr Swire, maintains, be the truth, but so far no reliable witness has come forward to confirm it. Yet surely this must be as important as challenging the prosecution case. After all, the al-Megrahi defence suggests that eight Scottish judges, five Lords Advocate, senior Scottish detectives and US intelligence agencies were involved in what must count as one of the most serious conspiracy theories of our time, to deflect blame away from Syria or Iran and point towards Libya.

Of course, at one time that might have been achieved in the best forum of all, a court of law. Yet al-Megrahi chose to drop his appeal, a decision that has never been properly explained.

It remains the weakest plank in the al-Megrahi campaign and for Dr Swire, it must, to this day, be a cause for anguish and frustration.

[With the exception of the well-deserved tribute to Dr Swire, this article is as wrong-headed as Magnus Linklater's other contributions on Lockerbie and Megrahi.]

2 comments:

  1. Breaking News !
    MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2013 > (google translation, german/english):

    Edwin Bollier (MEBO Ltd.) was decreed by the Court, that he can inspect in confidential documents at the Swiss public prosecutor's Office in Bern, in connection with the investigation into the PanAm 103, attack; and can make copies.

    The Documents was created under mutual legal assistance Switzerland-Scotland (1990-2009).
    Among several very insightful documents, a police log revealed, inter alia, the fact that obviously only the Scottish Criminal Cases Reappeal Commission (SCCRC) opened in one of the 33 appendices of the 800 pages of reports, that Eng. Ulrich Lumpert, ex MEBO Ltd., after a police interrogation, he had confirmed that he delivered to an Officer from "BUPO", next to a brown Prototype MST-13 circuit board --- he have got thrown away, also: 11 pieces of
    MST-13, circuit boards, one side covered with green solder mask !!!
    What really happened with the 11 pieces MST-13 circuit boards, on one side with green solder mask ?
    Mysterious:
    Alleged a MST-13 timer seized in Togo was identified the "evidence" of Lockerbie. But therein lies a crystal quartz with the last digit 4, which it did not exist in 1985/86 in Switzerland.. For the timer supplied to Libya Crystals were only the last digit 3 marked ?

    The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office must be incorporate from the Scottish Police and Scottish Justiciary, on the basis of the completed each other legal assistance, to find the truth in these political criminal case.
    A criminal complaint filed by Edwin Bollier (MEBO Ltd.) against known and unknown Swiss official servants, supported on an AFFIDAVIT, by Ingenieur Ulrich. Lumpert, was delayed since November 2011, until today. (again a clear law delay)!

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Telecommunication Switzerland. Webpage: www.lockerbie.ch

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  2. MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2013. Lasting Scottish "Right Delay":

    The longer it takes for an new investigation about the "bombing of PanAm 103", adopted by the 'Lockerbie Investigation Operational Team' (led by Detective Superintendent Michael Dalgleish) - ever more and more Conspiracy Theories will be created...

    Among other "FLOP's" into the Scottish 'Lockerbie Judgement', in Kamp van Zeist pronounced (2001) - is the manipulated evidence fraud from a crucial "MST-13" timer fragment (PT-35) --- one of the biggest FRAUD in the history of Scotland, against Libya (Libya Now)!

    by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Telecommunication Switzerland. Webpage: www.lockerbie.ch

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