Friday 24 January 2014

There's none so blind as those who will not see

[Two years ago today, I posted on this blog an item headed Lockerbie bombing inquiry police officer numbers raised based on a BBC News report. It contained the following:]

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.

I commented: “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 [2012] 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’."

Nothing in the police and Crown Office stance has changed in the succeeding two years, notwithstanding the emergence of yet more evidence fatally undermining the Megrahi conviction.

3 comments:

  1. MISSION LIFE WITH LOCKERBIE, 2014

    SHAME - Obvious legal delay in Scotland and Switzerland - against the Human Rights!

    by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd telecommunication, Switzerland. Web page: www.lockerbie.ch

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  2. In the paragraph
    ”The treatment of this issue by Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm can be found here"
    the link on 'here' was broken when I wrote this.

    This seems to be the correct link:
    http://www.firmmagazine.com/lockerbie-additional-police-claim-a-waste-of-time-and-money-says-qc/

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  3. Well of course the Police investigation (if any) is just theatre. I presume they have put some chawallah in charge. Why after 25 years and Megrahi's conviction should they suddenly have a proper investigation. I wrote to the Chief Constable in 1994 pointing out the primary suitcase was introduced at Heathrow. The reply by return of post was that "this was outwith the scope of my investigation."

    When Patrick Shearer was interviewed for the rank-inflated post of Chief Constable and was asked if he had any doubts about the safety of Megrahi's conviction would he have got the job if he had expressed a scintilla of doubt. Rule 1 for successful Police work (or indeed in any walk of life) is "know which side your bread is buttered".

    When PM John Major claimed to the House of Commons the investigation was "open" was he in any way being sincere? Of course not. The Government knew exactly who had carried out the bombing any why. The spooks created the "Libyan Solution" in support of the objectives of the Major Government. (I have been involved in other, less successful, prosecutions brought to serve the Government's agenda.)

    For anybody interested in why the "Libyan Solution" was created (but not who bombed flight PA103 and why) Peter Taylor's documentary "10 Days of Terror" can be seen on the BBC iplayer. The "L" word isn't mentioned but it gives some real insight into why Libya was blamed.

    ReplyDelete