Thursday, 6 August 2015
AAIB Lockerbie report submitted 25 years ago
On this date in 1990, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) submitted its report on the destruction of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie to the Secretary of State for Transport, Cecil Parkinson. The 58-page report was prepared by a team headed by M M Charles and can be read here.
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One very strange thing in that report. Why does it include the assertion that the bomb wasn't in the suitcase on the floor of the container, the floor "having been protected by, presumably, a piece of luggage"? That sort of issue is surely not part of the remit of the AAIB, but rather of the forensic scientists.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the final report was submitted in August 1990, the quoted phrase was already in the first draft of the report (which dealt only with the damaged luggage container and airframe) which was written by Peter Claiden and published in April 1989. This is the first documentary example of the all-consuming desire of the investigators to absolve the case on the bottom of the stack, and so rule the case Bedford saw out if the inquiry.
Why did Claiden include that in his April 1989 report? Were his forensic colleagues from RARDE even then pushing the line that the bottom case had to be excluded? To my mind, it's all very very murky.