Tuesday 14 January 2014

Megrahi's trial

[This is the heading over a letter from Farouk Araie published today on the website of the Khaleej Times, an English language newspaper published in the United Arab Emirates.  It reads as follows:]

Twenty-five years ago, Pan Am 103 was destroyed by a bomb over Lockerbie in Scotland.

The truth about Pan Am 103 continues to be covered up by a blanket of lies. It exposes the cruellest international cover-up in modern history, one that makes Watergate and Irangate pale by comparison.

Two Libyan intelligence agents were charged with mass murder, in connection with the destruction of Pan Am 103. The trial was held at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the killing of 270 people. His co-accused was found not guilty.

The conviction of Al Megrahi is legally puzzling. How could the court come out with a verdict of guilty for one and innocent for the other when they were both being tried with the same evidence? The judgment appears to be politically motivated.

The key forensic witness in the Lockerbie trial, Allen Feraday, gave false evidence about the fragment of the bomb timer said to have been found at Lockerbie. The only identification witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, extorted money from Western intelligence for his confused evidence.

Al Megrahi died on May 20, 2012. The evidence produced at his trial was fabricated and manipulated in Europe and North America. Legal scholars believed that many aspects of the Lockerbie prosecution were at best incompetent and at worst amounted to an attempt to pervert the course of justice. It is glaringly evident that at least six nations were involved in the downing of Pan Am 103. It was decided at the highest level to pin the blame on Libya.

On January 31, 2001, Al Megrahi, was found guilty. It took a total 84 days’ evidence, spread out over eight months, during which 230 witnesses were called, 10,232 pages of transcript compiled, and 621 items exhibited. The cost of the trial came to 80 million pounds. It was one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in international history. If the truth is ever revealed, it will cause a firestorm that will rock Western nations. The culprits got away with mass murder.

8 comments:

  1. How much would it cost Boeing and US if a known design fault was responsible for Pan Am 103?

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  2. [Rolfe looks round for a handy wall to bash her head against.]

    A lot less than the terrorist attack cost them. The investigation cost the governments of the US and the UK many many millions. Planes crash. Concorde, Air France 447 (which was partly due to the design of the Airbus), the list is endless. And there is a reason why everyone breathes a heartfelt sigh of relief when it's established it was an accident and not terrorism.

    Dave, read my lips. Maid of the Seas was brought down by a charge of high explosive inside a suitcase loaded in the bottom front left-hand corner of baggage container AVE4041. That is as certain as the fact that the sun rose this morning.

    The physical evidence is absolutely compelling. Incontrovertible. It is absolutely impossible for it to have been faked. The entire carcass of the plane, brought in piecemeal from all over the landscape, reassembles to show exactly where the fuselage was breached and how.

    The very very specific damage to one specific part of the airframe ("pitting and sooting"), and to that baggage container alone of all the containers on the plane, and to a couple of dozen (out of several hundred) of the suitcases recovered, demonstrates this without any doubt whatsoever.

    It is impossible for anyone to have faked all that. For any purpose, and even with prior knowledge, quite frankly. Let alone to cover up a simple accident with no warning at all.

    It is well understood how the expolsive charge caused the rapid break-up of the plane. There is no mystery about it at all.

    You may ask, if it's so clear, why does John Barry Smith claim something else? I have no idea. He is one person, and it is clear he has not had access to all the evidence the we have access to. He quotes sentences out of context, without apparently being aware of the evidence that contradicts the inferences he is drawing. He has a long-standing bee in his bonnet about a fault in the 747, but whether or not there is any truth in that, that was not what brought down Maid of the Seas.

    Boeing 747s are still flying, too, and they are not falling out of the sky every other week because of a fault that has been covered up in order to avoid dealing with it.

    Accidents happen, and sometimes they are due to inherent faults in machinery. People and companies deal with this all the time. It's orders of magnitude less costly and disruptive than an international terrorist hunt.

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  3. "It is glaringly evident that at least six nations were involved in the downing of flight Pan Am 103." Well not to me.

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. See-saw hai kwai fhang!
    "Playing the violin for an ox"
    (Thai proverb)

    But well written, Rolfe, as always.

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  6. Dear Dave,

    I repeat here, entirely for my own convenience, what I said to you on an earlier thread.

    "The thing is that, albeit that I know you respect JFM and its works (though I am a tad confused as to why given your own theory regarding a hold door failure as having been responsible for the downing of 103), the galactic chasm between us lies in your apparent assertion that there was clearly no bomb despite the fact that there is a petalated hole in the fuselage at an area of the hold that is peppered with explosive reside. Obviously no bomb there then and it was all down to a structural failure on one of the safest planes on the planet.

    "Frankly, this is as certifiably bonkers as Patrick Haseldine's delusions that the South African government decided it would be a jolly good wheeze to murder 259 folk just to get at one of them! Now think, really carefully, do you really want to end up in the same padded cell as Patrick?"

    Plus, you really must get some pathologists round to your baker's to test whether or not the grain used in your bread is contaminated with Ergot. You are showing all the signs, old bean.

    Pip, pip,
    Robert.

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  7. His fingers and toes are turning black and falling off?

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