'Insult' to injury

[This is the headline over an article in the current issue of Private Eye.  It reads as follows:]

David Cameron would have done better to read a detailed new book on the Lockerbie atrocity before dismissing it in a soundbite as an “insult” to the families of the 270 who  perished just before Christmas 1988. Families want and deserve the truth.

The book reveals fresh scientific evidence relating to a tiny fragment of electrical circuit board which the prosecution claimed had in effect solved the mass murder. Had there been a second appeal, the new evidence would have shown that not only did Abdelbaset al-Megrahi suffer injustice, but also that there was no evidence tying Libya to the atrocity.

The book, Megrahi: You Are My Jury, by John Ashton, a researcher, writer and one of the Libyan’s defence team, also claims that the results of forensic tests carried out by British government scientists on the circuit board cast doubt on prosecution claims but were kept from the trial and defence team. In fact they were not disclosed until a month before Megrahi was freed to return to Libya.

The tiny fragment of board was said to have been found among remains of a man’s shirt at the crash site. The shirt was traced to Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who said more than two years alter the bombing that Megrah resembled a man who bought the clothing. As Eye readers know, Megrahi bore no resemblance to the man originally described by Gauci to investigators.

The board fragment was said to have been found by Dr Thomas Hayes at Rarde, the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment, on 12 May 1989. At trial his colleague Allen Feraday said it was “similar in all respects” to circuit boards used in timing devices from a Swiss company Mebo, which had supplied the Libyans with 20 such devices.

But it was never revealed that Feraday had overseen tests on the metallic content of the fragment which found it was different from a control sample of one of the Mebo boards. Had the results been disclosed, not only would Feraday had been called to answer for them, but defence experts could have been called upon to examine the metal mix, including under blast conditions. According to Ashton’s book, Megrahi’s legal team recently did exactly that and two experts, Chris McArdle and Dr Jess Cawley, confirmed the fragment was no match for Mebo and was probably not commercially made.

Eye readers have long been aware of concerns about the discovery of the fragment and its handling. Relevant pages on Dr Hayes’s notes had been renumbered and the shirt’s exhibit label had been altered.

It seems that by the time of Megrahi’s 2001 trial, prosecutors had learned few lessons from scathing criticisms eight years earlier from the May inquiry, which heard in essence that an Irish family had been wrongly convicted of handling IRA explosives largely thanks to the activities - including hidden results and altered notebooks of Rarde scientists.

This new material, coupled with doubts over Gauci’s identification evidence, destroy the two main pillars of Megrahi’s conviction. It also confirms the fears of observers who sat through the original trial in the Netherlands. One of those was Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the Atrocity. He is convinced that a grave injustice has allowed the real killers to go free and is now at the forefront of demands for a public inquiry.

Dr Swire told the Eye that it was Cameron’s attempt to dismiss the book without reading it that was the “insult” to families, who are now confronted by what appears to be a deliberate cover-up. The question is, how high does the cover-up go?

Airport security chief's concern at Megrahi verdict

[This is the headline over a report by Ben Borland in today’s edition of the Sunday Express.  It reads as follows:]

The head of security at Heathrow Airport at the time of the Lockerbie bombing has broken his silence on how Britain's worst terror atrocity could have been carried out.

Norman Shanks said the bomb could "easily" have been smuggled in to the country by foreign agents acting with the help of a Middle Eastern airline, such as Iran Air.

It would have been equally possible for somebody using one of around 70,000 airside passes to simply carry the bomb unchecked in to Terminal 3.

His revelations cast further doubt on the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, following the publication of a book based on the Libyan's abandoned appeal.

Mr Shanks, now one of the world's leading airline security experts, said there were now "legitimate questions" over Megrahi's involvement in the 1988 bombing, which claimed 270 lives.

He confirmed that he had raised his fears with the Metropolitan Police at an early stage of the investigation.

Judges at Megrahi's trial accepted the Crown's case that the bomb, hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player and placed inside a suitcase, was loaded at Malta's Luqa Airport.

It was then transferred at Frankfurt Airport onto a feeder flight for Pan Am 103, before being transferred again at Heathrow, landing in the baggage hold in the "ideal position to destroy the plane".

Megrahi's claim that the bombing was the work of a Palestinian terror cell in Germany, acting on behalf of Iran in revenge for the US Navy shooting down a passenger jet, was dismissed.

However, after his conviction, it emerged there had been an overnight break-in at Heathrow, near the Pan Am baggage area, just hours before the fateful flight.

This information had never been made public or even disclosed to the defence, despite the fact the Metropolitan Police had known about it for almost 13 years.

Now, speaking about the break-in for the first time, Mr Shanks denied any involvement in the cover-up.

He said: "The police were fully aware of the discovery of the broken padlock so if anything was hidden it was not because of the airport."

The door leading to the airside part of Terminal 3 was left unlocked during the day, and Mr Shanks believes the padlock was broken by a night shift worker looking for a short cut.

He said: "This was way before we had screening of staff and a lot of staff felt they had the right to go anywhere they wanted. It was out of the ordinary but it was not exceptional.

"The public would have had no reason to be there. A member of the public hovering in that area at night would probably appear somewhat suspicious and be investigated."

He added: "It would have been much simpler for the rogue suitcase to have been brought in by an aircraft and transferred airside.

"That would have been equally possible and less likely to cause any prospect of being discovered. Any country that flew into Heathrow could have done it, several airlines had Heathrow engineering stores brought in and transferred to some area without having to come landside."

He added: "Iran Air were one of the Middle Eastern airlines with that access."

Western intelligence has long suspected there are close links between the Iranian state carrier and the country's shadowy secret services. 

Mr Shanks added: "At some point, it probably was raised [with the police] but I can't say why, when or who to.

"Equally, it would have been easy for somebody to take something through to airside. There was no screening of staff, no restriction on people walking through with items in bags. There was no reason for anyone to be stopped and questioned about anything they were carrying.

"Any authorised person with a pass was able to go airside, and that was around 70,000 people."

Mr Shanks led the complete overhaul of airport security, at Heathrow and across the rest of the UK, in the wake of the Lockerbie bombing.

And despite his desire to be "apolitical", he is sure that recent revelations have "raised what I would regard as legitimate questions" over Megrahi's conviction.

At the Camp Zeist trial, baggage handler John Bedford testified that he had seen a brown hard-sided suitcase - exactly like the one containing the bomb - in the Pan Am baggage area before the feeder flight from Frankfurt had arrived.

The judges admitted this "could fit the forensic description of the primary suitcase" and said Bedford was a "clear and impressive witness", but dismissed his evidence in favour of the prosecution case. 


[The following comments come from Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph's lockerbietruth.com website:]


The multi-national operations at Heathrow, plus the presence on-site of major reconstruction work for Terminal Two, meant that on 21st December 1988 the 70,000 users of airside passes were of all nationalities, all skin-colours, many and various jobs, employed by many and various companies, some with little connection to air-traffic matters. To this number must be added the staff of the many airlines arriving and departing, including Iran-Air.

In short, Heathrow authorities had no knowledge as to who was using the passes, nor where on the airport they were going, nor when, nor what was the purpose of their presence. Professor Shanks states: "This was way before we had screening of staff and a lot of staff felt they had the right to go anywhere they wanted."

A rogue suitcase could "have been brought in by an aircraft and transferred airside... It would have been equally possible [for] any country that flew into Heathrow... Several airlines had engineering stores brought in and transferred to some areas without having to come landside."  

"Iran Air were one of the Middle Eastern airlines with that access."

Professor Shanks now admits that there are "legitimate questions" over the conviction of Mr Al-Megrahi. 

So now - after twenty three years of cover-up - we know the truth.  It is a pity that Professor Shanks did not reveal this during the nine years that elapsed before the Lockerbie trial.  He and others close to him also had the opportunity to say these things during the three years leading to Al-Megrahi's first appeal, but they stayed silent. 

Lockerbie evidence 'was not given to Megrahi's lawyers'

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The Independent on Sunday.  It reads in part:]

Key evidence that could have acquitted Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi of the Lockerbie bombing was not given to his defence team, according to the author of a new book.


Crucial information about a fragment of electrical circuit board that was alleged to have come from the bomb which destroyed a passenger aircraft over the skies of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people in 1988, was given to police in the run-up to Megrahi's trial in 2000 but never disclosed, it is claimed.

The allegations are made in the book Megrahi: You Are My Jury, by John Ashton. The book has been condemned by David Cameron, who called it "a disgrace" to the families of the murdered. It claims that a key fragment of circuit board, found at the Lockerbie crash site and said by the prosecution to be from a timer which detonated the bomb, could not have been one of a batch that was sold to Libya by the manufacturers.

The fragment was a vital link in the prosecution argument that the bomb was placed in the aircraft by Megrahi. Last night experts who have closely followed the case said the claim, if true, meant the case against Megrahi is now "blown out of the water".

During Megrahi's trial it was accepted the fragment from the timer came from the Swiss company Mebo. The company admitted selling 20 such timers to the Libyans, but new evidence points to the Lockerbie fragment not being one of them. The one at Lockerbie was coated in tin, whereas those sold to Libya were coated with a tin and lead alloy, Mr Ashton says. A sworn affidavit from the production manager said the company only ever used alloy, rather than pure tin.

Megrahi's trial heard evidence from two prosecution witnesses that the lack of lead on the coating could be explained by it having been burned off in the heat of the explosion. Neither witness was an electronics expert.

However, the book reveals that Megrahi's solicitor, Tony Kelly, commissioned two scientists, Dr Chris McArdle, a former adviser to the Government, and Dr Jess Cawley, a consultant to the engineering industry, to test the suggestion. Both concluded this could not have happened.

The book also claims that notes by a prosecution forensics expert, Alan Feraday, during his original examination of the circuit board fragment in 1991, reveal he was aware of a difference in the make-up of the circuit board. However, his notes, which were given to police on 8 November 1999, were not disclosed to Megrahi's defence team until 2009.

"Had these documents been disclosed to the defence team, they would have provided the basis for a vigorous cross-examination of Feraday but, in the event, his claim that the fragment was 'similar in all respects' to the control samples went unchallenged," said Mr Ashton. "I don't believe the police would have withheld the documents from the Crown, which raises the second question: why was it not disclosed to the defence?

"Whether it was deliberate or not, I don't know. But it was appalling, and someone should be held to account for it. They did not meet their duty of disclosure. That is a huge scandal."

The Independent on Sunday sent the relevant pages of the book to Mr Feraday but received no response.

Defence lawyer Gareth Peirce said yesterday: "What the research makes unarguable is that any claimed investigation to date has been determinedly false and has robbed them of a truthful and transparent account."

Peter Biddulph, a researcher for Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the tragedy, said the allegations would further victims relatives' push for a new inquiry. He said: "[These allegations] show the case against Megrahi is totally blown out of the water."

A Crown Office spokesperson said: "In respect of the timer fragment, the defence experts were satisfied it had suffered damage consistent with it having been closely associated with an explosion and that it had come from an MST-13 timer."

Data protection concerns over release of SCCRC Megrahi report "wrong-headed"

[The following are excerpts from a recent post on the 2040 Information Law Blog:]

One of the perennial Data Protection annoyances is the way that people cover ignorance, laziness or downright dishonesty by hiding behind the Data Protection Act as the excuse not to do something (it’s almost always the justification for not providing personal data to someone else in entirely justifiable circumstances). (...)

However, the Scottish Government’s current claim http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-17198577 that the DPA prevents disclosure of information about Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi’s conviction and appeal are wrong-headed, and risk damaging perceptions of the Act at a time when phone-hacking and online security have finally broken though and made more people concerned about how their data is used. The most recent stage in this farrago sees Kenny MacAskill asking Kenneth Clarke to allow Scotland an exception from the DPA so that they can finally put Megrahi’s records out there. They claim that the DPA hurdle is the only thing stopping them from giving the information out. (...)

Firstly, Clarke – or any other member of the coalition – cannot give the Scottish Government an exception from the DPA, because no such power exists. They would have to amend the whole Act. A cynic might suggest that they know this, and hope to implicate the UK government in whatever problem that Megrahi’s non-death and the alleged miscarriage of justice presents. There are those who accuse the Scottish Government of using the release as a bargaining chip to get Megrahi’s appeal dropped. The Scottish Government and Kenny MacAskilll refute this entirely. But asking for an exception is hogwash – either the DPA offers a solution on its own terms or it doesn’t. If MacAskill wanted a pragmatic solution, he could ask the Information Commissioner Chris Graham if he would be willing to exercise his discretion and not take any action should there be some complaint about the release. Admittedly, the ICO is not the most bold or imaginative regulator, but while Clarke cannot wish the DPA away, Graham can choose not to take forceful and painful action when a breach takes place, if he has a justification for doing so. As FOI regulator, he would hardly struggle to identify a public interest in transparency that justifies stepping back.

If the Scottish Government publishes, Megrahi could of course sue under Section 13 of the Act for the damage caused to him by the disclosure. A gentleman in the South West did just that recently http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/Man-s-pound-18k-payout-ex-girlfriend-viewed/story-15061425-detail/story.html, but it’s odd for Salmond and his colleagues to back away from a fight, especially as they would surely consider any damages to be a small price to pay for transparency. There is, in any case, a precedent for a politician ignoring the normal rules of privacy and confidentiality in favour of expediency, when the Coalition published the Baby P Serious Case Review http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/oct/26/baby-p-death-should-have-been-prevented despite the fact – for good public interest reasons – they are normally kept secret. And besides, the man is dying. He has other things on his mind.

But the Scottish Government is still in luck. There is a routine way of disclosing information about Megrahi’s appeal without breaching the Data Protection Act. The issue breaks down like this: to process the records (in this case, to publish them), the Scottish Government needs to ensure that the processing of his records is fair, lawful and meets two conditions, one for Schedule 2 and one from Schedule 3. And all they need is Megrahi’s consent. This would make the disclosure fair, lawful and would meet the two conditions. Megrahi has already said that as long as all the documents relevant to the case are disclosed, he will consent. There’s a lot more about that here: http://www.megrahiyouaremyjury.net/?p=159

Rather than a time-wasting trip to Ken Clarke that everyone in Holyrood must know is a dead end, why not just put everything in front of the court of public opinion?  So I see two possibilities: either the Scottish Government doesn’t employ people who understand the Data Protection Act (I’ve met some of them, and they absolutely do), or there are things that Megrahi wants in the public domain that the Scottish Government doesn’t. I don’t know if Megrahi is guilty or innocent, and I don’t care. The families of the 270 people who died in the Lockerbie outrage are absolutely blameless, and they deserve total transparency regardless, so what possible objection could there be?

The author John Ashton has already suggested that the Scottish Government might be looking for reasons to delay publication (http://www.megrahiyouaremyjury.net/?p=324) and waving the DP card is not a sign of good faith in my experience. Given that I subscribe to the Bill Hicks Theory of Government, I’m not the best person to judge a politician’s motives. But motives are irrelevant to the main point here: Data Protection does not prevent the disclosure of the records, and the Scottish Government should not say that it does. Such statements are a red rag to every idiot who wants to ignore DP because they don’t have the patience to follow its sensible principles. All the Scottish Government needs is Megrahi’s consent, and he has explained what they need to do to get it. All he asks for is further transparency, which is surely what we should all want. Too many people died to mess this one around any longer.

And one final thought: if MacAskill really does want transparency, all he has to do is wait. The biggest exception to Data Protection is mortality – when Megrahi dies, the DP objections go with him.

Libya rules out visit by British police to investigate Lockerbie ...

… Demands clarification of Blair’s role as dictator’s advisor 

[This is the headline over a report published today on the website of the Libyan English-language newspaper The Tripoli Post.  It reads in part:]

Libya's interior minister on 6 March ruled out a visit by British police to investigate the 1988 Lockerbie bombing or the killing of British policewoman Yvonne Fletcher almost two decades ago.

"There is no treaty between Britain and Libya to allow such a thing," Fawzi Abdelali told AFP in a joint interview with a British newspaper, adding that London had some explaining to do on its own dealings with dead brutal dictator Gaddafi and his regime. (...)

Abdelali implied the timing of British demand is a sort of pressuring the country at a sensitive time faced by the newly liberated Libya which is trying to rebuild everything from scratch.

"Why did they shut up about this all these years and bring it up now, when we are in a period of transition and building up our institutions from scratch after decades of dictatorship," the minister asked.

"Do you remember when Fletcher was killed? We are now in 2012. Where was the British government from 1984 until 2011?" said the former district attorney who now has access to tens of thousands of files on Gaddafi’s dealings with world leaders.

For his part, Abdelali said he wanted allegations to be investigated by the ousted leader's jailed son Seif al-Islam that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair had acted as a political adviser to his father.

Blair played a key role in repairing diplomatic ties between the two countries and visited the Libya several times after 2004.

"Why did the British government improve its relations with Gaddafi? Something happened in this case between the former Libyan regime and the British government to end this dispute," said the minister.

"Didn't America and Britain accept millions of dollars from Gaddafi as the price to end this case (Lockerbie)? Who let Abdelbaset al-Megrahi go? Did we?" he asked, referring to the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing in which 270 people died.

A Scottish court in 2001 convicted Megrahi but he was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after doctors said he had terminal cancer and only three months left to live.

The interior minister proposed that the British government ask Libyan authorities to open an investigation inside Libya, and the Libyan side would then share its findings with police in Britain.

But any decision would have to await the election of a new government in Libya, which is expected to vote on a constituent assembly in the last week of June, Abdelali stressed.

Hillary Clinton on Megrahi

At a US State Department press conference held yesterday after a meeting in Washington DC with Libyan Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the following:]

SECRETARY CLINTON: Good morning, everyone. I just have to express that it is not only an honor, but a personal pleasure to welcome the prime minister of a free Libya on his visit to Washington, where he’s had excellent consultations in the White House meeting with, among others, the President, and an excellent presentation before the UN Security Council yesterday in New York. Just think, this time last year, the United States was working to build an international coalition of support for the Libyan people, and today we are proud to continue that support as the people of Libya build a new democracy that will bring about peace and prosperity and protect the rights and dignity of every citizen. (...)

QUESTION: ... I’m wondering if you can tell us if you received any new assurances on the Megrahi case in your discussions today.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Andy, I, of course, raised the Megrahi Pan Am 103 issue as I do whenever I meet with Libyan officials. You know where I stand. I believe that Megrahi should still be behind bars. And we know that Libya faces a multitude of challenges, but at the same time they have assured us that they understand the sensitivities of this case, and they will give the matter the consideration it deserves. We will continue to fight for justice for all the victims of Qadhafi and his regime. And in this particular case, the US Department of Justice has an open case, and it will remain open while we work together on it.