Two more nights for Lockerbie Bomber
Two more performance nights have been added to the drama The Lockerbie Bomber, following popular demand.
The play casts doubt on whether the man convicted for the Lockerbie bombing was really responsible for planting the bomb on an aircraft in Malta in 1988, before causing the UK’s worst terrorist attack.
Written by Kenneth Ross, the play will be staged again on November 15 and 16 at St James Cavalier, as well as this weekend.
Dr Jim Swire, whose 24-year-old daughter was killed in the bombing, last weekend held a question and answer session with audiences after the production.
The play is staged by DnA Theatre Productions, directed by Herman Grech and features Mikhail Basmadjian, Julia Calvert, Manuel Cauchi, Alan Montanaro, Denise Mulholland and Alan Paris.
[Nanette Brimmer, who attended a performance of the play at the weekend, wrote about it as follows:]
I knew what the subject of the play was, obviously, but wasn't prepared for the impact it would have on me. I had tears rolling down my cheeks within minutes. I was drawn in immediately, and I know that certain things I became aware of only this evening... images that were created in my mind... will never leave me. Dr Jim Swire and Mr Robert Forrester made the experience even more 'real' - although that is not quite the right word. The fatal plane crash, the victims and the contradictions surrounding the tragedy are, sadly, all too real. I can no longer be a spectator... I now feel "involved"... I, too, want the truth revealed. The Lockerbie Bomber is a must-see. Superbly directed, and interpreted by some of the most talented actors on the island, it is a thought-provoking piece of real-life drama. Well done all concerned. By popular demand, an extra weekend's performances have been added. Don't miss out.
Why hide a small ‘IED’ inside a radio inside a suitcase with clothing from Malta, when the ‘plot’ involves by-passing customs and boarding the suitcase at Heathrow?
ReplyDeleteInstead surely it would make more sense to fill the case with a larger bomb that would be effective even it was moved to another part of the container?
You mean, why the bombers didn't just assume that the theory 'We, or the bag, will not be checked' was correct, and for this reason worked with a bomb which even a superficial check at any time would reveal?
ReplyDeleteOr if a man is to commit a murder in the middle of the night where he finds it most likely that nobody would see him on his way there - why carry a concealed pistol, when he could just as well have taken a large and more effective rifle over the shoulder?
Or people trying to sneak over a border at a place where they expect that there will be no guards - why on earth bother to make and bring a fake passport?
Stupid!
SM is basically right.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the bombers had to handle that suitcase, to get it into the country and into the airport. Suppose they were stopped with it? It's not easy to pass off a suitcase full of Semtex as your holiday packing.
Second, consider the situation in the interline shed. The container was sitting within a few feet of - an x-ray screening machine. And although Bedford had gone off for a cuppa, there were still two security staff manning the machine. Everything that was put in the container was supposed to go through the machine and be passed by them.
My view is that the bomber was lucky and Kamboj and Parmar were in the nearby office getting a heat and possibly catching a nap, so he managed to get the case in the container unobserved. But suppose either security man had been at his post? Unless the bomber was going to give up at that point, he'd have had to present the case for x-ray (in his guise as a helpful baggage handler from another airline). Or if he'd been disturbed while putting the thing in the container, same sequence of events.
It's quite likely the radio disguise would have fooled either Kamboj or Parmar, because they didn't know about the Autumn Leaves warning. And that they would have let another baggage handler simply put the case in the container after that, job done. (It's not impossible this actually happened, but Kamboj denied it after realising he's passed the PA103 bomb.)
But if they were suspicious, it would only have been a suspicion. While they were calling the supervisor and firing up the pressure chamber all the rest of the malarkey, the bomber could just make himself scarce. Not his suitcase after all, he was just helping out by bringing the thing over. Whereas a suitcase filled with Semtex would be spotted at once and the person accompanying it would probably be detained.
Finally, these booby-trapped items of consumer electronics were what Khreesat did. He'd been making them for over a decade. Bomb-makers are surprisingly conservative in many ways, and usually stick to the same basic mode of action.
It's a reasonable question to ask, why not just put 20 kg of Semtex in the case. But when you understand the detail of the procedures, you can see why not.
Regarding the needed size of the bomb:
ReplyDeleteOn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_airliner_bombing_attacks
it says
"One list describes 86 cases related to airliner bombings, 53 of them resulting in deaths."
While this could look like "only" 2 out of 3, realities are different: proper explosives do their job, especially in high altitudes.
Because, the list
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/planes/q0283.shtml
also includes several cases where the bomb did not go off or was found, was a fire-bomb hurting no-one, several cases where the plane was on the ground, or where the bomb was "crude" and/or home-made, like a pipe-bomb (with carries little blasting potential) or too small (like "7 ounces of explosives").
Without explicit counting I'd say we end with something like 90% "success" in the cases where real explosives went off in the plane while flying.
Good enough for the advantage of a better concealed bomb.
It requires a leap of presumption to conclude a Khreesat IED was involved simply on the basis of when the cock-pit detached from the plane after take-off.
ReplyDeleteAn IED can be assembled by anyone and locally and any electronic equipment would attract scrutiny with or without a specific warning.
And if Bedford noticed the extra case so would the other two officials and all three would check with each other about its status.
The idea that an unknown case can be added in full view of security without being checked is a nonsense explanation, because even idle workers know that obvious security violations need to be investigated.
And if the ‘plot’ was to destroy the plane you would plant a bomb large enough to ensure it happened or not bother.
Indeed. And the modification with the capacitor allowed the plane to reach cruising height which made these things significantly more lethal.
ReplyDeleteHaving seen the animation of the AAIB report, I now understand better what they meant by "overpressure", and its role in causing bits of the plane quite some way from the petalled hole to peel away. Given that, I'm not so sure that the thing would have been non-lethal if it had been packed in the middle of the container completely sandbagged by suitcases. You'd need a specialist to determine that.
I tend to agree with Rolfe that it is possible that the Bedford suitcase was X-rayed and that the operator either preferred to deny that he’d let the bomb through or even forgot that he’d X-rayed it.
ReplyDeleteKhreesat’s great skill was that he could construct a device inside a Toshiba radio-cassette machine which would not only pass a security X-ray inspection and a depressurisation chamber test, but would also get past a basic manual inspection. He made these devices so that the radio (but not the cassette drive) would actually work if switched on. He took out some of the cassette mechanism and replaced it with Semtex explosive, a fuse/detonation system and aneroid barometer bellows of approximately the same weight as the stuff he’d removed. He also used the Toshiba’s normal batteries to trickle-charge the “ice-cube” capacitor which, in turn, powered the detonator in the Semtex. Khreesat really was an evil genius at this sort of thing. He even designed the priming switch using a mini-jack plug which was to be plugged into either the external antenna socket or a headphones socket (I’m not sure which). The priming circuit was completed by inserting a mini-jack covered in aluminium foil.
Incidentally, the official version has the MST timer OUTSIDE the radio-cassette machine (as it wouldn’t fit inside) and connected to the device by wires, which even the most laid-back X-ray operator would pick up and would be so much more likely to be detected if checked in at Malta and then sent via Frankfurt to London.
Aku, I don't actually think the Lockerbie bomb suitcase was x-rayed. There are a number of features of the evidence that lead me to believe it probably wasn't. I think it was made so that it could have been x-rayed if the occasion arose, and I don't rule out the possibility that might have happened (though I think it didn't).
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Joint Forensic Report, the damn thing would work as either a radio or a cassette player, even with the Semtex. It was apparently possible to get the cassette drive back in position after loading the explosive.
The official version has the timer taken out of its box and the components squirrelled among the components of the radio, in the same way Khreesat squirrelled his capacitor and barometer mechanism. There are photos of an identical radio Feraday put together in the way he believed the thing had been done, and the MST-13 bits are inside the case of the radio.
I see Dave has been assuming and imagining again, in a post I overlooked. I think I'll go on overlooking it.
ReplyDeleteI find it very strange that someone should spend so much time imagining to himself what he assumes must have happened, and no time at all finding out what actually did happen.
It requires a leap of presumption to conclude a Khreesat IED was involved simply on the basis of when the cock-pit detached from the plane after take-off.
ReplyDeleteYou're missing the point as usual, Dave. The timing of the explosion doesn't prove that an IED was the cause, and no-one is saying that. Rather, given the convincing evidence that an IED was used, the 38-minute delay is a 'signature' that strongly suggests it was Khreesat's work.
any electronic equipment would attract scrutiny with or without a specific warning.
In the wake of Autumn Leaves, the X-ray operators at Frankfurt had been warned to look out for electronic devices. The fact that a specific warning was necessary shows that it wasn't routine practice. This warning was not passed on to Heathrow.
And if Bedford noticed the extra case so would the other two officials and all three would check with each other about its status.
According to Bedford, the extra bag was pointed out by Kamboj, who said he had loaded it. Kamboj denied this. It's a matter of recorded fact that no-one checked the extra case. It's also clear that it was not a legitimate item, as no passenger had a case of that description.
The idea that an unknown case can be added in full view of security without being checked is a nonsense explanation, because even idle workers know that obvious security violations need to be investigated.
So what exactly are you saying, Dave? That Bedford, Kamboj and Parmar noticed the extra bag, checked it out carefully and found it to be legitimate, thus letting them off the hook, but chose to make it look as though they'd been negligent?
If they had examined the Bedford bag and found it to be an innocent piece of luggage, they would have said so when questioned by the police. And the Crown would have used that to rule out the Bedford bag as evidence of a Heathrow introduction.
And if the ‘plot’ was to destroy the plane you would plant a bomb large enough to ensure it happened or not bother.
The bomb did destroy the plane. Therefore, I think most of us would agree, it was large enough.
Really, Dave, I think we're all getting a bit fed up of spurious arguments based on how you think people should behave (as opposed to what they actually did) or how you think the laws of physics, chemistry or aerodynamics should operate (as opposed to what actually happened.) Please check your facts before you post. I know it's tedious, but the rest of us manage to do it.
Re. Lockerbie Case Forensic report on Lockerbie bombing.
ReplyDelete‘The police discovered that the baggage container AVE 4041 had been loaded with interline baggage at Heathrow.
The baggage had been x-rayed by Sulkash Kamboj of Alert Security, an affiliate company of Pan Am.
John Bedford, a loader-driver employed by Pan Am told police that he had placed a number of cases in the container before leaving for a tea break.
When he returned he found an additional two cases had been added, one of which was a distinctive brown Samsonite case.
Bedford said that Kamboj had told him he had added the two cases.
When questioned by the police, Kamboj denied he had added the cases or told Bedford he had done so.
This matter was only resolved at the trial when under cross examination Kamboj admitted that Bedford was telling the truth’.
If so, no ‘bomb plot’ would rely on a baggage handler loading an unidentified case in ‘just the right place to be effective’!
A more likely scenario is that a baggage handler would initially deny knowledge, not because they had unwittingly loaded a ‘bomb’, but because they had wittingly smuggled a harmless case which of course they had no authority to load!
Friend Dave brought up a very important question earlier.
ReplyDeleteI think it was never answered, pushed down below in the darkness below the time-horizon. So I put it up now.
The question was something like:
“How would clothes made in Malta end up in a suitcase prepared by Khreesat?”
I hope I did not overlook a discussion somewhere; I myself have missed out on the importance of this point.
'Clothes from Malta were in the bomb-suitcase' is supporting the official theory (actually, without this assumption there is no longer a case against Megrahi).
And in my copy of "Scotland's Shame" I can on page one read (about the bomb suitcase) "The suitcase was packed with clothes that Megrahi allegedly bought..."
But...
Has it ever been established that the clothes actually came from inside the bomb suitcase?
In the verdict they write:
“Other similar fragments were found in clothing which from their charred
appearance were considered to have been contained in the primary suitcase.”
“considered”??
Even if several suitcases each had contained the very same items (for easy comparison), you could not conclude that the most damaged one would come from the bomb-suitcase. Maybe it just happened to be right next to the bomb?
Here are three suitcases S1..S3 laid flat on top of each other, seen from the end. B is a bomb, C is three identical sets of identifiable clothes, dashes are other items.
S1: -----C-----
S2: B---------C
S3: C----------
When B explodes, the clothes in S3 will be damaged most. Good luck to the experts to convincingly determine with of the other clothes was in S1 and S2, i.e. end up with any reasonable assumption on what item was where.
I am not saying that it would impossible. Maybe in the items in S1 and S3 there should be more traces of the material of the suitcase walls blasted into them. This would at least take an elaborate quantitative/qualitative analysis of the material found in the clothes.
But was any such proof brought to trial?
Without it, all we can say is that the clothes came from a suitcase close to the one containing the bomb.
Note also: Most charred clothes will _not_ be from the bomb suitcase. There is only one such, but several around it.
Could Gauci simply have sold the clothes to a completely unrelated person?
- - -
There will have been blown-up debris from countless places in what was retrieved on the ground.
What justified the focus for the origin of these clothes in particular?
It wouldn't be, that the best reasons to focus on these clothes as associated with a bomb, are that
- they could be traced, as one of the few things (“we will go searching for the wallet where there is light”)
- that a timer fragment allegedly was found in them (which, even if it was truly there, would not exclude a neighboring suitcase)
- they could be taken as support for a preferred theory
?
- - -
Was the importance of this issue forgotten?
Should Ashton rather have written:
"The suitcase was allegedly packed with clothes that Megrahi allegedly bought..."
Or is it just me who didn't see it myself, and also missed the discussion?
"If so, no ‘bomb plot’ would rely on a baggage handler loading an unidentified case in ‘just the right place to be effective’!"
ReplyDeleteRight, probably no bomb plot would rely on that, unless it had to.
It didn't. The attackers will probably have assumed that blowing up a pound of proper explosives in a flying plane will near-certainly take it down.
As we can conclude from above list of cases of bombs in planes: they were right.
"A more likely scenario is that a baggage handler would initially deny knowledge, not because they had unwittingly loaded a ‘bomb’, but because they had wittingly smuggled a harmless case which of course they had no authority to load!"
Hey! A very likely scenario is then also, that they were involved in faking the evidence of a bomb explosion, just to hide their crime. So they travelled to Lockerbie to sign up as volunteers, under a fake name!
It all makes sense. Good thinking, Dave, and as well founded as ever!
And no ‘bomb plot’ allegedly backed by a State, would rely on an IED produced by an third party agent of the country they wished to attack, rather than a bomb planted by their own agents!
ReplyDeleteSM, I think it's very likely that some clothes bought from Mary's House were in the suitcase with the bomb. However the evidence isn't incontrovertible, and if a different explanation for these items (thinking particularly about the Yorkie trousers) comes up I'm definitely listening.
ReplyDeleteThe trousers are one of these clues that seems too good to be true. Some investigators, particularly George Thomson, see anomalies and suspect shenanigans. And at least some of the anomalies they note look distinctly strange.
But at the same time I simply cannot see any reasonable explanation other than that some clothes bought from Tony Gauci probably on 23rd November were in the suitcase with the bomb. I'm open to suggestions, but until something comes up, I'm sticking with that.
SM
ReplyDeleteThe prosecution allege that a suitcase containing a small IED and clothing from a Maltese tourist shop passed through Luqa airport unaccompanied and presumably unchecked.
And continued via Frankfurt unaccompanied and presumably unchecked to Heathrow!
The likelihood of this happening is the same as a bit of inflammable fragment surviving the inferno - so presumably Rolfe thinks it could happen?
But the official line requires the hidden IED and clothing to be in the case to explain how it could have passed through customs and also implicate Megrahi.
My point was why would you need to hide a small IED in a radio with clothing from a Maltese tourist shop if the ‘plot’ involved by-passing customs at Heathrow?
Rolfe side-stepped the question by saying if 450g was replaced with 20k of semtex (and no clothing) it would be spotted if the case was opened.
Yes but alternatively and on the basis that any unaccompanied baggage would be checked, why not 1k of hidden semtex with clothing from a London tourist shop?
In other words the Maltese clothing in the ‘bomb case’ and small IED only makes sense if the ‘plot’ involves passing it through customs at Luqa, but not by-passing customs at Heathrow!
But then again according to Bedford, Kamboj said he loaded the suitcase which he confirmed at Zeist.
Kamboj did not confirm loading the suitcase at Zeist. Kamboj consistently said he did not remember putting any suitcase into that container.
ReplyDeleteWhich is significant, because his memory of that afternoon was surprisingly good. He was the only one of the three who was correct about the airlines of origin of the interline cases loaded into the container (some BA, some Cyprus Air). He also remembered handling Michael Bernstein's heavy maroon suit carrier.
But he didn't remember putting anything into the container, and said so. He said so at Zeiat, repeatedly.
Stop making stuff up, Dave.
Oh, and Dave, your other point has been answered several times. The plot didn't rely on bypassing the security scren at Heathrow. There was always a chance the suitcase would have been x-rayed at Heathrow. (And if Kamboj actually DID put it in the container and then was struck by selective amnesia about it, then it WAS x-rayed at Heathrow.)
ReplyDeleteThe suitcase had to be capable of passing a security screen, because there was never any GUARANTEE they would be able to get it into the container without its being x-rayed.
The other point of course is that cunningly booby-trapped electronic items was what Khreesat did. He'd been making them for years. You don't abandon a winning formula like that.
Have you decided how you explain the explosion-damaged baggage container, airframe and suitcases yet?
Dave, still you keep on about an 'inflammable fragment surviving the inferno.' I've answered that point in detail in this thread and others, and it's going to be difficult to move on unless you either make a response based on valid science and empirical results, or just admit that your intuition on this point is wrong.
ReplyDeleteIf you'd like an additional point, the first effect that would have been experienced by the PCB was not the expanding bubble of hot gas, but the mechanical shock wave travelling ahead of it, which would have shattered the PCB and drove the fragments into surrounding material. That's what happened to the Toshiba radio PCB and casing.
It doesn't bother me that a fragment that large of a supposed timer PCB might survive, although we might ask, if it's genuine, why only the one fragment?
I suppose the answer to that is that the other fragments weren't found. There was a fall of 31,000 feet on to rough grazing fields. It's curious that the one piece that was found was probably the only 1 cm square piece that was distinctive enough to be matched visually to the MST-13 circuit board. Coincidences do happen though.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is that the physical evidence shows beyond any doubt whatsoever that a bomb exploded inside a suitcase in the bottom front left-hand corner of AVE4041. This is absolutely incontrovertible unless you take the view that someone spirited away the real crashed plane under cover of darkness and replaced it with a substitute crashed plane which HAD been destroyed in that way!
Dear Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteyou wrote:
"SM, I think it's very likely that some clothes bought from Mary's House were in the suitcase with the bomb. However the evidence isn't incontrovertible..."
So there is some evidence. I have tried to find it, both general googling and on lockerbiedivide.
Can you point me in the right direction? Maybe in the trial transscripts?
Unless something comes up, I'll remain clueless on why we should accept that these clothes would have come from the bomb suitcase.
I have an obvious question in this context: were there any suitcases from Malta in AVE4041?
"It's curious that the one piece that was found was probably the only 1 cm square piece that was distinctive enough to be matched visually to the MST-13 circuit board. Coincidences do happen though."
ReplyDeleteThey do, but does "too much" of the other debris brought up - and investigated - just happen to support the official theory?
It will always be odd if a major part of the traceable evidence you can find points towards a certain theory, when there would be no particular reason that blind leads would not coexist.
Let's say hundreds of people pass through an area, but all shoeprints are washed out, except one.
Unless there is a good reason why the murderers shoeprint would be the only identifiable one, this piece of evidence should be regarded with suspicion.
But if the police documents, that it recognized 200 shoeprints, followed them all, and one of them turned out to match the suspect, that is another matter.
- - -
Did the police have an overweight of luck in Lockerbie?
A minor thing:
ReplyDeleteI wrote:
"...when there would be no particular reason that blind leads would not coexist."
This is too weak, to an extent of being wrong.
What I meant was
"...when there would be very good reasons to expect that blind leads would coexist."
As to the clothes, the checked trousers are probably the clearest piece of evidence. These particular trousers were supplied to the shop on 18th November 1988, and showed up among the blast-damaged wreckage at Lockerbie. Tony Gauci remembered selling the trousers to a tall, heavily-built dark-skinned 50-year-old guy (who later transmogrified into the medium-height, medium-build light-skinned 36-year-old Megrahi).
ReplyDeleteYou may think that evidence is too good to be true, and George Thomson suspects tampering, but I can't see any practical way this could have been fabricated. (Maybe you can think of something?)
Other items, also found blast-damaged, also matched items that were for sale in Tony's shop, some of which he also remembered selling to the same customer.
Now these things were very close to the explosion. Realistically, there are only a few pieces of luggage they could have been in. Tricia Coyle's case, Karen Noonan's blue holdall, Bernt Carlsson's case - or the bomb suitcase. I know they tried to link one or more of the items to Karen, but didn't succeed. They don't seem to have belonged to any of these people, and there's no evidence linking any of these people with Tony's shop or even Malta.
Add to that the fact that the damage to these items is at least consistent with them having been in the bomb suitcase, and it's quite a persuasive circumstantial case. You might want to claim that they were all planted, but that gets into some very deep water including how might that square with Tony remembering selling the damn things before the plane came down.
As I said, it's not incontrovertible, but until someone comes up with an explanation that covers all the apparently known facts including Tony's evidence (and remember, Tony was a bear of very little brain), I'm sticking to the conclusion that some items bought from Tony's shop probaby on 23rd November 1988 were packed in the suitcase with the bomb.
There were no suitcases from Malta in AVE4041. The evidence that led the police to think there was such a case is a whole can of extremely confused worms, which adds up to "well we lost most of the evidence, so we're playing guessing games with the limited amount of data we managed to salvage".
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether they had an excessive amount of luck or not. The search of the crash site was extremely thorough, and the most important areas for debris recovery weren't deep forest. They found an awful lot of bits of things that weren't important, too. They also had some very bad luck, such as the loss of so much vital information from the Frankfurt baggage records.
It seems to me that the most incredible piece of luck was that the bomber put brand new clothes in the bomb suitcase. Clothes so new that they could be traced to their manufacturer, who still had the records of the retail outlet they were supplied to, and then the retailer was able to rememebr the sale. That one does boggle my mind a bit. Using second-hand clothes would have eliminated this possibility. You'd almost think the bombers wanted the police to be led to Malta....
The whole Malta thing was a blind lead. But when you look at how it happened, it's very understandable why the police firmly believed they had the real deal. Clothes bought on Malta, transfer baggage records indicating an illegitimate unaccompanied item of baggage being transferred to PA103A from a flight from Malta, and the man the FBI came up with as a possible suspect later discovered to have been at the airport on Malta, using a false passport, at the very time that flight departed.
The thing they have to explain is that they had the evidence of the bomb being loaded at Heathrow before they discovered the red herring leads to Malta. And yet they didn't follow that up. In fact, they appear to have done a Horatio Nelson on it.
Was this all pure wild coincidence plus gross incompetence, or did someone lay a deliberate trail to Malta for the investigators to follow? I have no freaking idea.
Thank you for all that!
ReplyDeleteWell, if you are right that there was no other suitcase origin for the charred clothes, that's it.
Pulling the fake-card is always an option, but it is nicer if it is not needed.
So yes, the official story is plausible, unless you look close enough.
"The thing they have to explain is that they had the evidence of the bomb being loaded at Heathrow before they discovered the red herring leads to Malta. And yet they didn't follow that up. In fact, they appear to have done a Horatio Nelson on it."
In a large case there will always be things that appear mysterious, even if no foul play was there.
It would be easier to believe the good intentions if change of heart had been demonstrated since then. But it is the other way around.
"... gross incompetence, or did did someone lay a deliberate trail to Malta for the investigators to follow?"
Alone the fact that they don't investigate the break-in in Heathrow -
- is it really adequately explained by stupidity? To me this in unthinkable.
Could we also imagine that somebody's house in Scotland would be burglarized, and your police would silently ignore a broken-up front door to explain how the thieves got in?
If we can't imagine that, then we must have a deliberate attempt to pull matters in a certain direction.
At current this is the only sustainable theory.
Looking forward to your book!
As regards the clothes again, Feraday criticised Hayes for his theory about how items in the bomb suitcase cound be identified. Hayes said, anything that had only bits of the IED in it but no bits of the suitcase material was inside it, while anything which had both bits of the IED (or the blue Babygro that seems to have been wrapped round the bomb) and bits of the bomb suitcase, was outside the bomb suitcase.
ReplyDeleteThis idea was Hayes's own, and never experimentally tested or written up in a peer-reviewed journal. Lots of people have criticised it for being over simiplistic and probably unsustainable. But when you look at what he was doing, I think you see something else.
Quite a number of blast-damaged items could be linked to one of the passengers. Most of that stuff was Karen's, apparently from her blue holdall that was in the angle of the overhang section more or less on top of the bomb. It was actually easier to separate the blast-damaged material according to who it seemed to belong to, than what bits of debris it contained. And I think he was actually doing that.
The question was, was the bomb in the brown Samsonite, or one of the other damaged items. Obviously, it was in the brown Samsonite. And we have these blast-damaged bits of clothing and so on that do not appear to have belonged to either of the girls (Karen or Tricia), so they were very very likely to have been in the Samsonite. And hey, these are the things that appear to have been bought from Tony Gauci.
I'm not aware that any of the blast-damaged clothing was linked to Bernt Carlsson, which is odd because his case was smashed to bits by the blast and the linig material suffered destructive charring. I think it's pretty damn unlikely that he had a jacket and trousers and some other stuff bought in a shop on Malta by a dark-skinned Arab though.
Bear in mind the title of the book ends in a question mark.
ReplyDeleteI honestly don't know. On even-numbered days I look at this and think, how could anyone possibly screw up so badly! Surely there must have been deliberate intent there. And the most suspicious thing to me is the insistence by both the AAIB inspectors and the RARDE scientists that the bomb suitcase couldn't possibly have been on the bottom layer of luggage. Why did they say that, when the evidence in front of them can't be interpreted with such certainty, even as they were considering it? Why was the first person to say it one of the AAIB inspectors, who wasn't an explosives expert and was working way outside his field of competence in making such a determination? Were they told to conclude that, and if so who by?
And then I look at the memos and the reports and I see nothing but incompetence. These guys were not the sharpest knives in the drawer. The paperwork seems to show complete failure to engage grey cells combined with an almost touching absence of guile.
This, to me, is what were really need the independent inquiry for. Yes, OK, PT/35b is important. But given that the forensic evidence clearly shows the bomb suitcase to have been the one Bedford saw, how the hell did they manage to miss that?
H. L. Mencken said, "No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people." I think he understated his case there, he could have included police and forensic scientists as well.