Lockerbie bomb 'in suitcase'

[This is the headline over a report that appeared on the BBC News website on this date in 2000. It reads in part:]

A forensic expert has told the Lockerbie trial that he located the plane's bomb inside a radio cassette recorder placed in a suitcase.

Alan Feraday said the explosion, which destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 and killed 270 people, exploded 25 inches inside the fuselage.

He explained he had pinpointed the precise location of the blast after a detailed study of damage suffered by all 24 cases in the same hold as the bomb.

Mr Feraday said during the trial of the two accused Libyans that he found that at least 13 items of clothing and an umbrella were inside the Samsonite case at the time of detonation.

It was on the second layer of luggage, resting in the angled container overhang - roughly parallel to the fuselage - or leaning upright, propped against another luggage stack.

The 400 grams of "high performance" Semtex plastic explosive inside the Toshiba radio cassette recorder was attached to a long-delay electronic timer.

The timer was made by the MEBO company of Switzerland, Mr Feraday - former head of the forensics explosives laboratory at the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency in Kent - told the trial at Camp Zeist in Holland.

Mr Feraday, now retired, said that such a long-delay timer would not require any other attachment in order to act as "a viable improvised explosive device capable of repeated flights before detonating at a pre-set time".

Asked by defence lawyer Richard Keen QC whether the bomb could have been in any other position than set out in his forensic conclusions, Mr Feraday replied: "I can't think of any other position.

"I am not saying there isn't any other position, I just can't find it myself." (...)

Mr Keen asked Mr Feraday if he was aware that the Lockerbie inquiry had centred for a time on a possible connection between the bomb and a Palestinian terror group.

At the start of the trial last month the court heard that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command quickly became the "focus of attention" for the inquiry team because of arrests of some of its members in Germany just two months before the Pan AM 103 explosion.

The forensics expert agreed today that there had been a strong belief that the PFLP-GC was behind the bomb, but he added: "It played no part in my thoughts at all."

Mr Feraday acknowledged that early in the inquiry he had produced a report stating that the Lockerbie bomb had been contained inside a white Toshiba RT 8016 or 8026 radio-cassette player, and not, as he now testifies, inside a black Toshiba RT SF 16 model.

The dead still wait...

[This is the heading over an item posted yesterday on the Lockerbie Truth website of Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph.  It reads as follows:]

It is true that Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi was found guilty in a court of law and his conviction confirmed by five senior judges. [RB: For the restricted scope of this appeal and the issues which it did not address, see Lockerbie: A satisfactory process but a flawed result, section headed “The Appeal”.]

This - as Scottish government spokespersons continually remind us - remains the situation.

But those judges at trial and appeal are now proven to have been misled and mis-informed by senior British scientists and senior police officers who failed in their duty to the truth and the society they were entrusted to serve.  

This also – as Scottish government spokespersons continually ignore – remains the situation.

During the Lockerbie trial, RARDE scientist Alan Feraday in his evidence stated as follows:

"The conducting pad and tracks present on the fragment PT/35(b) are of copper covered by a layer of pure tin."  

(In other words, the tracking was 100% tin. And Feraday had written in long hand on his notebook just those numbers "100% tin".)  

And later in his evidence Feraday stated:

".. it has been conclusively established that the [PT/35(b)] fragment materials and tracking pattern are similar in all respects to the area around the connection pad for the output relay of the MST-13 timer."  

Unfortunately for Feraday is has now been conclusively established that the conducting pad and tracks present on all timer boards supplied to Libya by Swiss suppliers MEBO, and from which - according to the prosecution - came fragment PT/35(b), were of copper covered by a layer of 70/30% alloy of tin and lead.

Indeed, Feraday was aware of the difference and asked two scientists to look at the reason for the difference.  They did not do so.

In his evidence at trial, Feraday never mentioned the discrepancy.  The judges remained in ignorance of the discrepancy.  The defence team knew nothing of it.

So the fragment materials were and are not "similar in all respects" to those used on the MEBO MST-13 timer boards.

This phrase "similar in all respects" formed the kernel of the judgement against al-Megrahi.

No-one knows the origin of the Lockerbie fragment, and we will not speculate as to where it came from or who made it. It is, however, clear that PT/35(b) did not originate from any timer boards which the prosecution claimed were used by Al-Megrahi.

The prosecution did not, incidentally, produce any evidence as to where Al-Megrahi had used such timers, nor where or how he had constructed a bomb, nor where he had stored it or deployed it.  The judges, misled as they were by the remaining evidence, accepted such innuendo as fact.

The timer fragment PT/35(b) was not the only matter central to the verdict in which misinformation and concealment by the prosecution and their witnesses occurred. These are serious matters which cry out for independent investigation.  

Earlier this year Prime Minister David Cameron, just two days after the revelation of the above information, claimed that such revelations were "an insult" to the Lockerbie dead.  

We must leave it to objective historians to form their own conclusions on such a statement.

An independent inquiry into the Lockerbie tragedy and its investigation and evidence submitted at trial is long overdue.

It is now almost a quarter of a century since the December 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The two hundred and seventy dead of Lockerbie still wait for truth and justice.

Open letter from Dr Swire to President Obama

In a speech in Cairo in June 2009 you said:

"I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world. One based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition."

"No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust," you said, and speaking of the Palestinians you went on: "For more than 60 years, they have endured the pain of dislocation," but "It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus," ..... "That's not how moral authority is claimed; that's how it is surrendered."

The piece below is written by the father of one of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster of 1988 in which 270 died including children, students, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters and old women, all of them deeply missed, as a result not of a bus, but of an aircraft bombing now widely believed to have been engineered by a group claiming to pursue the interests of those same Palestinians, though centered itself in Syria.

In a recent YouGov poll in the Muslim world in October 2009, following a debate on Lockerbie held under the auspices of the Qatar foundation, over half the 1047 respondents thought Megrahi (the alleged Lockerbie bomber) innocent, and in a grim reminder of how the US is perceived in the Arab World, whereas 12% thought that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, 21% thought that the US was 'directly or indirectly responsible'.

So as you Mr President predicted, the impact of your dramatic Cairo speech has not been able to dispel the hatreds and distrust of 60 years. But for 20 of those years a group of families bereaved at Lockerbie have laboured towards obtaining the truth as to why the slaughter happened and who was responsible for it, by default or by commission.

That is why the piece below has been written. The hope is that recognising that some of us wish to see some benefit to the world come out of the horror of the Lockerbie slaughter, may empower a new effort to reach the truth. Maybe disclosing the truth behind the atrocity can actually be turned around to improve relations between the West and the Muslim world, and earn the USA a new respect.

That requires prior certainty as to what the truth actually was.

Those who put their hand up and admit that they previously made mistakes gain respect, those who acquiesce in allowing the truth to remain hidden may come to be despised at the bar of history.

As John Donne wrote : "On a huge hill, cragged and steep, truth stands, and he that will reach her, about must, and about must go." (John Donne 1571? - 1631). The piece below is distilled from 20 years of 'going about' in search of the truth, and the path is indeed cragged. On that path we have met with Presidents and dictators, Prime Ministers, a Secretary General of the UN and his foremost legal advisers, and more of the great and the good than can be named here. Perhaps it is worth reading on. I am confident that you want to stand on that hilltop, and that you have the humility to find the path that leads to it.

Dr Jim Swire, father of Flora, age 23 murdered at Lockerbie, 21/12/88

The audacity to hope for change.

President Obama and the Lockerbie case

The truth has a positive contribution to make to US Middle East problems.

When President Obama assumed office a year ago, many thought that the American attitude to those who she regarded as her enemies would become more careful and knowledge based. His compelling writings and oratory supported this hope, as have many of his actions since election. His Nobel prize is a magnificent endorsement of the hope for change which he has brought to office with him.

A new administration, particularly when based on an entirely distinct support base in its own community from that enjoyed by its predecessors, may find it difficult to resolve issues they left over for it to solve. To ease this difficulty a new leader will often co-opt supporters of his preceding administration; at the same time such individuals may make it harder to break with previous ethical norms. The new President's refusal publicly to attack the record of his predecessors can only be admired.

In no field will his task be more difficult than in the conduct of foreign relations, where the support bases of interacting nations will usually not have changed simultaneously, so that previous problems tend to persist. The solution must be for the incoming President to apply a logical re-analysis of how these difficult issues may have arisen, based on the objective re-assessment of the available evidence. This process requires both time and resources, and is finely shown by President Obama's evident careful assessment of the decisions necessary over Afghanistan. But as evidenced by his visit to Cairo in June 2009 and his speech there, nowhere is this more difficult than in relations with the Muslim world.

This re-evaluation process requires even more caution where the work of a nation's intelligence services have been involved, they need to have strong allegiance to the mindset of their current President. This allegiance can lead those intelligence services, in the interests of serving what was their current administration at the time, to overstep the limits which their citizens and their new President would approve, were they aware of them.

True justice should be the great bulwark of citizens the world over against wrongful intrusion into their lives by politicians of their own or any other nation, whether expressed through force or other misuse of power. The Lockerbie trial was of two Libyan individuals, not of the Libyan regime. National justice should protect the rights of its individual citizens, irrespective of the wishes of the politicians and intelligence services of any other nations however relevant to the cases involved, its effectiveness is a measure of the quality of the community it should protect.

For protection at an international level, there are increasing moves towards empowered international justice, such as the International Criminal Court. The US in the past has not pulled her weight there, maybe President Obama will change that. The seeming past belief that US law should run right across the planet causes great resentment.

Almost unnoticed at the time that President Clinton, backed by UK Foreign Secretary (the late) Robin Cook gave the go ahead for the Lockerbie court in Holland, Nelson Mandela issued an urgent warning; speaking from a CHOGM* meeting in Edinburgh he said "No one country should be complainant prosecutor and judge".

The time has now come for the new President to assess whether ignoring the warning from this wise man over this terrible case has led to very unfortunate consequences internationally.

Where several states are all involved in the same case, the danger arises that if one such state is much more powerful than the others, then the protection provided by their own legal systems to those who live in the lesser involved states may be overridden by that power. Intelligence is a form of power. In the Lockerbie case, those who attended the Zeist trial were treated to repeated demonstrations of how some individuals in the Scottish prosecuting authority had developed a sychophantic relationship towards US sources of investigation and technical expertise. Such a relationship gave real meaning to the concept that the UK and the US were indeed to be considered 'one nation' as in Mandela's warning on this matter.

The justice system which President Obama has inherited appears to many observers to be flawed. The mindset of the US Department of Justice, when it boasts of its use of financial inducement to obtain evidence is risky. The US DoJ sports on its website a list of named individuals, allegedly terrorists, who have been brought to 'justice' by the application of financial inducements. There is a fine line between innocent inducement and bribery leading to the perversion of justice. The role of certain Scottish entities in a similar use of 'inducements' also needs investigation.

Megrahi, the alleged Lockerbie bomber is on the DoJ's list of those whose convictions have been assisted by financial inducements to witnesses. It is now known, from records kept by one of the Scottish police force visiting Malta (Harry Bell) that the DoJ wanted to offer $10,000 'up front' with $2,000,000 to follow, to a key prosecution witness, the Maltese clothing-shop keeper, Tony Gauci. This long before he had given his evidence in court. It has not increased faith in the DoJ's probity that Megrahi's name was removed from their front page some time ago after attention was drawn to it by those seeking the truth over Lockerbie.

During the years since Lockerbie, the writer has had the privilege of meeting with Hans Corell, one time under Secretary General and legal Counsel to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, with Nelson Mandela, and with Kofi Annan himself. In addition I have the firm friendship of Professor Robert Black, emeritus professor of Scots law in Edinburgh, whose idea the neutral country Lockerbie trial was, and who, like the writer is convinced that Megrahi should never have been found guilty. There could have been no better tutorial in teaching the need for a better way of resolving international criminal cases based on terrorism and the guilt of individuals.

In the case of the Lockerbie disaster there are compelling reasons for fearing that international political expediency, aided by a litany of pre-existing established patterns of hatred, and serviced by national intelligence services, may have overcome Scotland's hope that she would be able to display to the US and the world an independent but impartial judicial process. International terrorism cases carry a great risk of 'conflict of interest' for national authorities attempting to bring them to justice, for it is the policies of national governments which often decide a terrorist's target, and a nation may well not wish those policies questioned by her own or any other citizens.

Instead it seems inevitable that the truth will out, sooner or later, namely that the Lockerbie trial has deeply undermined the previously high reputation of Scotland's independent criminal justice system, and convicted an individual innocent of the crime with which he had been charged, further bedevilling relations between the West and the Muslim world in the process.

The doubts that exist about the use of the Scottish criminal system in this case keep growing. A number of respected legal authorities, particularly in the UK, such as Scotland's Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) have come to the conclusion that the verdict against the Libyan, Megrahi, may be unjustified and was politically/economically influenced. Some of these doubts are cogently set out in an article by one of the UK's most prominent champions of true justice and the overturning of improper verdicts, Gareth Peirce.

Any unbiased reader of her article published in the London Review of Books will see some of the reasons why the Megrahi verdict is being increasingly criticised. Her article does not bear a title dwelling on passive failure of justice but reads 'The framing of Al-Megrahi'.

This title bears witness to the widespread belief that not only was there serious blocking of some material arising from the Scottish investigation, which should certainly have been made known to the defence, but also a naive amateurishness about the acquisition of information concerning at least one potential source of motivation for the crime. There is also deep suspicion that weaknesses were not confined to being so passive as this, for a key piece of the forensic evidence seemed to bear the stamp of deliberate fabrication, aspects of this are discussed below, and need to be set in the context of the quality of the forensic staff involved, both in the UK and in the US.

A few of the reasons for questioning the findings and verdict in the Lockerbie trial.

Unfortunately there appears to be a very grave risk that a key piece of forensic evidence, a piece of timer circuit board designated PT35B was fraudulently introduced into the evidence chain and accepted by the British forensic 'experts' who described it to the court. Among all the evidence led, the doubts about the story of this item's alleged recovery and subsequent treatment are unique and gather like vultures round a corpse.

Also unique is the significance that this item would have, if genuine. There was no other physical evidence led capable of giving such support to the prosecution's extraordinary and circumstantial story that the IED had originated from the island of Malta. If true, this story would have required the use of just such a long-running timer as the one from which the fragment called PT35B was alleged to have come, and there simply was no other item which seemed to show that such a timer had been used. The timing of the explosion so early in the Lockerbie aircraft's flight would have been a phenomenal error by any terrorist having complete control over the timing of the explosion. Anyone using a timer such as that from which 'PT35B' was alleged to have come would have had such complete control.

What of involved American intelligence or forensic 'experts'? An agent of the FBI, Thomas Thurman held up in front of public TV cameras in the US a photograph of a pristine timer circuit board through which, he claimed to have linked the crime irrefutably to Libya. It was instantly clear that his photograph was of a circuit board which had not been involved in proximity to any explosion. It was also clearly not the circuit board from which PT35B was said to have come, but was of a separate daughter board adjacent to the PT35B board within such timers.

Before long it became clear (and later confirmed in court evidence) that the CIA had already been in possession of timers containing such circuit boards. The FBI agent Thurman was subsequently cited by a more senior FBI officer for the deliberate distortion of prosecution evidence in other criminal cases, in order to assist the prosecution. He was hastily removed from his position. His Lockerbie related contribution remains in place.

As for his UK counterparts, one was Alan Feraday from RARDE# the comment below on his prior performance in an IRA case cannot be ignored:

"The Crown's chief forensic scientist ... Mr Alan Feraday, upon whom so much depended as to the integrity of his theories and the integrity of himself as an expert witness, has since been severely criticised by the Lord Chief Justice in the case of R v Berry (1991). Mr. Feraday was brought forward as an expert in electronics. He is only qualified to a Higher National Certificate level. The Lord Chief Justice declared that the nature of his evidence was 'dogmatic in the extreme ' and that he should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in this field. In a recent development the Home Office has agreed to pay out compensation from the public purse to Mr. Berry because he was jailed on the erroneous evidence of Feraday."

The comment of the Lord Chief Justice above was available to those who selected Feraday to handle forensics for the Lockerbie case well before the case opened. Indeed the R v Berry case cited above occurred in 1991, and it was in December of that year that indictments against the two Libyans were first issued, and the Lockerbie trial did not start till May 2000. At least the FBI did not discover their problems over Thomas Thurman until after he had spoken out over his interpretation of the Lockerbie forensic position.

The problems over Feraday were known to the UK authorities well before they decided to give him a critical role in the Lockerbie forensic determinations. That the above quotation centres on electronics is particularly crucial to the Lockerbie case in view of the unique position of 'PT35B' within it.

Then in an amazing prequel to the Lockerbie case - that of Danny McNamee we see:

"In the course of the investigation [into the McNamee case] documents were discovered which prove that the police and prosecution knew of the existence of Desmond Ellis and that the evidence pointed to him fully 4 years before Mr. McNamee's arrest. They had matched prints in the arms caches to Ellis. In clear breach of their legal responsibilities they deliberately did not disclose this to Mr. McNamee's defence at the 1987 trial or the appeal in 1991.

"During the McNamee case Mr.Alan Feraday, the Crown's main scientific witness, said that 'the two (circuit boards, one found at the bomb site, the other contained in an IRA arms cache) were matched in design 'artwork' and were therefore made by the same master bombmaker.' The circuit board fragment put forward by the Crown as the link between McNamee and an actual explosion was never forensically tested for explosive contamination although other items from the scene of the explosion were subjected to such tests."

The circuit board fragment known as PT35B in the Lockerbie case was never tested by Feraday for explosives residues either.

The writer knows of no evidence that Mr Feraday received any further education in electronics, or the ethics of forensic presentation in criminal trials between 1987 (the McNamee case) and 2000 when he took such a crucial role in the Lockerbie case.

So who authorised the employment of Feraday in the Lockerbie case, and why? Was this really the best our nation could offer in attempting honestly to reach the truth about the worst terrorist outrage ever to occur in the UK?

Why was the Lord Chief Justice's warning about Feraday following the R v Berry case of 1991 ignored, despite our Home Office having had to make compensation payments because of the findings over Feraday's incompetence at that time?

We now also know that evidence (the Heathrow break-in) supportive of a totally different explanation for the atrocity, and which might have excluded both Megrahi and Malta from the case, was known to the Metropolitan police by January 1989, as Mr Manly of Heathrow security told the appeal court, and recorded in the trial transcripts as follows:

"In January 1989 I was called in for an interview by the anti-terrorist squad. I was interviewed by a Mr. Robson ..."

The prosecuting authorities (Crown Office) have claimed in writing to me that they were unaware of the break-in till after the verdict against Megrahi had been reached 12 years after this 'preventable' disaster. The question here must be whether the prosecuting authorities are correct and whether the break-in was or was not known to the police force (Dumfries and Galloway) charged by the Westminster government of the day with conducting the case, and if not, why did the 'anti terrorist squad', 'Mr Robson' and the Heathrow authorities themselves not pass it on to the investigation?

Remember the words of the Lord Chief justice from 1991? "Mr Feraday was brought forward as an expert in electronics. He is only qualified to a Higher National Certificate level. The Lord Chief Justice declared that the nature of his evidence was 'dogmatic in the extreme ' and that he should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in this field."

Why should the Lockerbie case still be important to President Obama in 2009?

President Obama has inherited so many problems, but resolution of the Lockerbie question is not the least of them, despite the many years since the disaster itself.

In a recent YouGov poll in the Arab world, fieldwork was conducted from the 21st to 25th of October 2009. Over half the 1047 respondents thought Megrahi innocent, and in a grim reminder of how the US is perceived in the Arab World, whereas 12% thought that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, 21% thought that the US was 'directly or indirectly responsible'.

President Obama will recall no doubt that a previous holder of his office (Ronald Reagan), strongly supported by Lady Thatcher, used the USAF to bomb Tripoli and Bengazi in 1986. Thus it may be that Arab belief in America's responsibility for Lockerbie lies partly in the motivation given to Libya to get revenge for that bombing, which had killed Gaddafi's adopted daughter.

Alternatively a few may also be remembering the destruction of an Iranian airbus with 290 pilgrims on board over the Gulf in July 1988, five months before Lockerbie by a US missile cruiser.

Against this background it would seem logical for the new President to set up a new inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster and particularly into how the verdict against a Libyan came to be reached. It would seem that contributors to such an inquiry would have to be required to give evidence under oath, and that it would be necessary to exercise extreme caution as to how members of the FBI, the CIA and the US Department of Justice should be handled.

In any event if the Lockerbie trial was indeed fatally flawed by the intrusion of international politics then that will be known in the Muslim world, particularly in those nations in which the actual perpetrators and their collaborators are domiciled. These are believed to include Iran and Syria.

If President Obama fails to take all reasonable steps to resolve the doubts surrounding the trial verdict, then he and his country will find it much harder to make progress in reducing tensions in the Middle East, since his country is already suspected of foul play over this case.

If he decides to investigate the case objectively and if that investigation confirms the worst, namely that this was a gross miscarriage of justice, he and his country would surely gain in reputation for integrity and honesty by admitting past mistakes and apologising.

In respect of apologising for miscarriages of justice, there is of course precedent, again provided by the UK.

In February 2005 Prime Minister Tony Blair officially apologised to the families and friends of those falsely convicted over the Guildford and Woolwich IRA bombings. By a twist of fate these tragic miscarriages of justice directly affected America too, for one of those falsely convicted, Paul Hill, had married Caroline Kennedy, daughter of another of President Obama's predecessors in office, President John F Kennedy.

President Obama may consider that the use of those who contributed to the above debacles over IRA cases were again employed in reaching the Lockerbie verdict, dictates a need to re-examine how the Lockerbie verdict came to be reached, even if that process casts painful doubt upon the ethics of involved Americans also.

Why is the Lockerbie trial at Zeist important to the Lockerbie relatives?

Since 1989 we have been requesting a full and objective inquiry into the failure to protect the flight, from every single UK Prime MInister, and have been as often rebuffed, usually with the excuse that there was 'an ongoing criminal investigation which must not be compromised', then by the mantra that 'the trial and appeal must take precedence'.

During those long years a Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry (=inquest) was held. It knew nothing of the Heathrow break-in mentioned above, but nevertheless concluded that the disaster was preventable and that the aircraft had been under the Host State protection of the UK while being loaded with its deadly cargo at Heathrow airport.

President Obama will understand at once that we have a need to know why no effective steps were taken by either the US or UK authorities to save those 270 lives. He will find that many of his own country's families who lost loved ones then (but not all of them) believe that justice was done at Zeist. Their sincerity cannot be doubted.

He will find that most of those active in US intelligence in 1988 will swear that they worked with integrity to reach the trial verdict in 2001. No doubt most of them did. But for those of us who cannot believe that more should not have been done to provide protection, and those who believe that the Zeist verdict was a disgrace, there seems a poisonous miasma of deceit choking the truth over just why and by whom our beloved families were left innocent, vulnerable and then were brutally slaughtered. It is a dilemma which embraces both our nations, so the new President will need to approach our current Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, also, if a comprehensive inquiry is to be realised.

This we have of course done, both individually and as a group, but without even a reply to the group's request at the time of writing.

Yes it is hard to question the 'closure' obtained for many by the Zeist verdict, but eventually the truth will come out, and then what will those who have contributed to this terrible deception have to say to us?

We should all remember that 'it is only necessary for good men to do nothing, for evil to triumph'. Some of us believe that honest re-appraisal of this dreadful case could be a force for integrity and the benefit of humanity, whereas the present deceit poisons international relations and makes the work of the great, such as President Obama, all the more difficult.

In the interests of integrity, truth and the healing of past mistakes Mr President I believe you should give this tragedy your attention.

In the name of human love and family rejoice that it did not afflict you or your lovely family, may terrorism never do so. But surely at this time of year especially we know in our hearts that the way to defeat terrorism is by handling perpetrators with firmness, yes, but also with fairness and true justice and eschewing the natural human urge to seek revenge? It is sometimes possible to wrest something good even out of something profoundly evil. Surely this case now offers just that.

Dr Jim Swire, father of Flora, murdered at Lockerbie, and a seeker after truth. 20th December 2009

* CHOGM Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

# RARDE Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment.

~ The research was conducted using YouGovSiraj’s regional online panel of 200,000+ respondents. Respondents from across the region (Arab world) were invited to participate in the survey. Fieldwork was conducted from the 21st to 25th of October 2009. The poll was completed during the third week of October by more than 1,000 respondents from 18 Arab countries.Over half – 55 percent - of those interviewed cast doubt on Al Megrahi's conviction for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

Key Lockerbie Witness Admits Perjury

[This is the headline over a long article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer that was published on the Global Research website on this date in 2007. The whole article is well worth reading. The following are excerpts from six of its fourteen sections:]

The Lockerbie Affair has taken yet another extraordinary twist. On Friday, August 31st, I received from Edwin Bollier, head of the Zurich-based MeBo AG, a copy of a German original of an Affidavit.

The document is dated July 18th 2007 and signed by Ulrich Lumpert who worked as an electronic engineer at MeBo from 1978 to 1994. I have scrutinized the document carefully and concluded that I have no reason to doubt its authenticity or the truthfulness of its content.

Lumpert was a key witness (no 550) at the Camp Zeist trial, where a three Judges panel convicted a Libyan citizen of murdering 270 persons who died in the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.

In his testimony, Lumpert stated that: “of the 3 pieces of hand-made prototypes MST-13 Timer PC-Boards, the third MST-13 PC-Board was broken and [he] had thrown it away.”

In his affidavit, certified by [notary] Walter Wieland, Lumpert admits having committed perjury.

“I confirm today on July 18th 2007, that I stole the third hand-manufactured MST-13 Timer PC-Board consisting of 8 layers of fibre-glass from MEBO Ltd. and gave it without permission on June 22nd 1989 to a person officially investigating in the Lockerbie case,” Lumpert wrote. (The identity of the official is known.)

“It did not escape me that the MST-13 fragment shown [at the Lockerbie trial] on the police photograph No PT/35(b) came from the non-operational MST-13 prototype PC-board that I had stolen,” Lumpert added.

“I am sorry for the consequences of my silence at that time, for the innocent Libyan Mr. Abdelbaset Al Megrahi sentenced to life imprisonment, and for the country of Libya.”

In just seven paragraphs, the Lumpert affidavit elucidates the longstanding mysteries surrounding the infamous MST-13 timer, which allegedly triggered the bomb that exploded Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie on December 21st 1988.

The discovery of the MST-13 timer fragment

In the months following the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, someone discovered a piece of a grey Slalom-brand shirt in a wooded area located about 25 miles away from the town. According to a forensics expert, the cloth contained a tiny fragment – 4 mm square – of a circuit board. The testimony of three expert witnesses allowed the prosecutors to link this circuit board, described as part of the bomb trigger, to Megrahi.

There have been different accounts concerning the discovery of the timer fragment. A police source close to the investigation reported that it had been discovered by lovers. Some have said that it was picked up by a man walking his dog. Others have claimed that it was found by a policeman “combing the ground on his hands and knees.”

At the trial, the third explanation became official. “On 13 January 1989, DC Gilchrist and DC McColm were engaged together in line searches in an area near Newcastleton. A piece of charred material was found by them which was given the police number PI/995 and which subsequently became label 168.”

The alteration of the label

The officer had initially labelled the bag ‘cloth (charred)’ but had later overwritten the word ‘cloth’ with ‘debris’.

The bag contained pieces of a shirt collar and fragments of materials said to have been extracted from it, including the tiny piece of circuit board identified as coming from an MST-13 timer made by the Swiss firm MeBo.

“The original inscription on the label, which we are satisfied, was written by DC Gilchrist, was “Cloth (charred)”. The word ‘cloth’ has been overwritten by the word ‘debris’. There was no satisfactory explanation as to why this was done.”

The judges said in their judgement that Gilchrist’s evidence had been “at worst evasive and at best confusing”.

Yet the judges went on to admit the evidence. “We are, however, satisfied that this item was indeed found in the area described, and DC McColm who corroborated DC Gilchrist on the finding of the item was not cross-examined about the detail of the finding of this item.” (...)

The new page 51

According to documents obtained by Scotland on Sunday, the entry of the discovery is recorded at widely different times by UK and German investigators. Moreover, a new page 51 has been inserted in the record of evidence.

During the Lockerbie investigation, Dr Thomas Hayes and Allan Feraday were working at the DERA Forensic laboratory at Fort Halstead in Kent.

Dr Hayes was employed at the Royal Armament Research Development Establishment (RARDE). In 1995, RARDE was subsumed into the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA). In 2001, part of DERA became the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL).

Dr Hayes testified that he collected the tiny fragment of the circuit board on May 12th 1989. He testified that the fragment was green. (Keep in mind that the board stolen from Lumpert is brown.) His colleague, Allan Feraday, confirmed his story at the Zeist trial.

The record is inserted on a loose-leaf page with the five subsequent pages re-numbered by hand. Dr Hayes could not provide a reasonable explanation for this rather strange entry, and yet the Judges concluded that: “Pagination was of no materiality, because each item that was examined had the date of examination incorporated into the notes.”

The argument of the Court is illogical as the index number Dr Hayes gave to the piece is higher than some entry he made three months later.

And there is more. In September 1989, Feraday sent a Polaroid photograph of the piece and wrote in the attached memorandum that it was “the best he could do in such short time.” So, are we supposed to believe that it takes forensic experts several months to take a Polaroid picture?

Dr Hayes could not explain this. He merely suggested that the person to ask about it would be the author of the memorandum, Mr Feraday.

This however was not done. At the young age of 43, Hayes resigned just a few months after the discovery of the timer fragment.

Based on the forensic Dr Hayes had supplied, an entire family [The Maguire Seven] was sent to jail in 1976. They were acquitted in appeal in 1992. Sir John May was appointed to review Dr Hayes forensic evidence.

“The whole scientific basis on which the prosecution in [the trial of the alleged IRA Maguire Seven] was founded was in truth so vitiated that on this basis alone, the Court of Appeal should be invited to set aside the conviction,” said Sir John May.

In the Megrahi’s case, Dr Hayes did not even perform the basic test which would have established the presence of explosive residue on the sample. During the trial, he maintained that the fragment was too small while it is factually established that his laboratory has performed such test on smaller samples.

Had he performed such test, no residue would have been found. As noted by Lumpert, the fragment shown at the Zeist trial belongs to a timer that was never connected to a relay. In other words, that timer never triggered a bomb.

Allan Feraday’s reputation is hardly better. In three separated cases,where men were convicted on the basis of his forensic evidence, the initial ruling was overturned in appeal.

After one of these cases in 2005, a Lord of Justice said that Feraday should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in the field of electronics.

According to forensic scientist, Dr Michael Scott, who was interviewed in the documentary The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie, Feraday has no formal qualifications as a scientist.

The identification of the MeBo timer

Thomas Thurman worked for the FBI forensics laboratory in the late 80’s and most of the 90’s. Thurman has been publicly credited for identifying the fragment as part of a MST-13 timer produced by the Swiss company Mebo.

“When that identification was made, of the timer, I knew that we had it,” Thurman told ABC in 1991. “Absolute, positively euphoria. I was on cloud nine.”

Again, his record is far from pristine. The US attorney General has accused him of having altered lab reports in a way that rendered subsequent prosecutions all but impossible. He has been transferred out the FBI forensic laboratory.

“He’s very aggressive, but I think he made some mistakes that needed to be brought to the attention of FBI management,” says Frederic Whitehurst, a former FBI chemist who filed the complaints that led to the Inspector General’s report.

“We’re not necessarily going to get the truth out of what we’re doing here,” Whitehurst concluded.

The story shed some light on his formation. The report says “Williams and Thurman merit special censure for their work. It recommends that Thurman, who has a degree in political science, be reassigned outside the lab and that only scientists work in its explosives section.” (...)

The modification of the MST-13 timer fragment

Forensic analysis of the circuit board fragment allowed the investigators to identify its origin. The timer, known as MST-13, is fabricated by a Swiss Company named MeBo, which stands for Meister and Bollier.

The company has indeed sold about 20 MST-13 timers to Libyan military (machine-made 9 ply green boards), as well as a few units (hand-made 8 ply brown boards) to a Research Institute in Bernau, known to act as a front to the Stasi, the former East German secret police.

The two batches are very different but, as early as 1991, Bollier told the Scottish investigators that he could not identify the timer from a photograph alone. Yet, the Libyans were indicted in November 1991, without ever allowing Bollier to see the actual fragment, on the ground that the integrity of the evidence had to be protected.

But in 1998, Bollier obtained a copy of a blown-up photograph that Thurman had shown on ABC in 1991. Bollier could tell from certain characteristics that the fragment was part of a board of the timers made for East Germany, and definitely not one of the timers delivered by him to Libya.

In September 1999, Bollier was finally allowed to see the fragment. Unlike the one shown by Thurman on ABC, this one was machine-made, as the one sold to Libya. But, from the absence of traces of solder, it was obvious that the timer had never been used to trigger a bomb.

“As far as I’m concerned, and I told this to [Scottish Prosecutor Miriam Watson], this is a manufactured fragment,” Bollier says. “A fabricated fragment, never from a complete, functional timer.”

The next day, Bollier was shown the fragment once more. You may have already guessed that it now had the soldering traces. “It was different. I’m not crazy. It was different!” says Bollier.

Finally, at the trial, Bollier was presented a fragment of a circuit board completely burnt down. Thus, it was no longer possible to identify to which country that timer had been delivered. As he requested to explain the significance of the issue, Lord Shuterland told him that his request was denied.

How did the Judges account for all the mysterious changes in the appearance of the fragment? They simply dismissed Bollier as an unreliable witness.

“We have assessed carefully the evidence of these three witnesses about the activities of MEBO, and in particular their evidence relating to the MST-13 timers which the company made. All three, and notably Mr Bollier, were shown to be unreliable witnesses. Earlier statements which they made to the police and judicial authorities were at times in conflict with each other, and with the evidence they gave in court. On some occasions, particularly in the case of Mr Bollier, their evidence was self contradictory.” (para 45)

Dramatic shortcomings and errors

[What follows is the text of a press release issued by Professor Hans Köchler on this date in 2005:]

Vienna, 14 October 2005/P/RE/19402c-is

The Austrian professor who was appointed by the United Nations as international observer at the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands today commented on reports in the Scottish and British media about new doubts on the handling of the case by the judicial authorities.

Dr Hans Koechler said that the dramatic shortcomings and errors in the conduct of the trial that have been brought to the attention of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) confirm his earlier assessment that the Lockerbie trial resulted in a “spectacular miscarriage of justice.” (BBC News, 14 March 2002) Dr Koechler pointed to the following information that transpired in the media and that puts in doubt the very integrity of the judicial process in the Lockerbie case:

1.          The credibility of a key forensic expert in the trial, Mr Allen Feraday (UK), has been shattered. It was revealed that “in three separate cases men against whom Mr Feraday gave evidence have now had their convictions overturned” (BBC, 19 August 2005). Mr Feraday had told the Lockerbie court that a circuit board fragment found after the disaster was part of the detonator used in the bomb on board Pan Am flight 103. In the first case where Mr Feraday’s credibility had been questioned the Lord Chief Justice had stated that Mr Feraday should not be allowed to present himself an expert in electronics.

2.          A retired Scottish police officer has signed a statement confirming that the evidence that found Al-Megrahi guilty was fabricated. The police chief, whose identity has not yet been revealed, testified “that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan” for the bombing of the Pan Am jet (Scotland on Sunday, 28 August 2005). The fragment was supposedly part of the timing device that triggered the bomb. The circumstances of its discovery – in a wooded area many miles from Lockerbie months after the atrocity – have been mysterious from the very beginning.

3.          Much earlier, a forensic specialist of the American FBI, Tom Thurman, who was publicly credited with figuring out the fragment’s evidentiary importance, was later discredited as a forensic expert. A 1997 report by the US Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General found “that in a number of cases other than Lockerbie, Thurman rewrote lab reports, making them more favorable to the prosecution. The report also recommended Thurman be reassigned to a non-scientific job because he lacked a background in science.” (American RadioWorks / Public Radio, March 2000)

4.          The most recent revelation relates to a mix-up of forensic evidence recovered on the ground in Lockerbie with material used during a series of test explosions in the course of the investigation. In one case, a garment which was damaged in a test explosion was presented as if it was the original garment found on the ground (which was completely undamaged). This garment was supposedly placed in the suitcase containing the bomb. “It casts serious doubts over the prosecution case because certain items that should have been destroyed if they were in the case containing the bomb are now known to have survived the blast.” (The Observer, London, 9 October 2005)

All these facts – which are now before the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission – confirm the serious doubts about the Lockerbie proceedings originally raised by the UN-appointed observer, Dr Hans Koechler. In his comprehensive reports on and evaluation of the Lockerbie trial (2001) and appeal (2002) as well as in his statement on the compensation deal made between the US, UK and Libya in 2003, Dr Koechler had criticized the highly politicized circumstances in which the case was handled and drew the attention of the international public to the possible interference of intelligence services from more than one country.

New light is being shed on his original conclusion that the trial was not fair and that the basic requirements of due process had been neglected by what The Herald (Glasgow) most recently has referred to as a “distasteful political fix” (12 October 2005). It has been reported that secret talks are under way to transfer the convicted Libyan national to a North African country, which may frustrate the efforts at a retrial under Scottish law. It is worthy to note, in that regard, that the decision of the SCCRC about a retrial or new appeal has again been delayed until some time next year, Dr. Koechler said. As reported by The Herald, it appears that the key players – the three countries involved in the Lockerbie dispute – “are so anxious to avoid a retrial that officials are said to have held secret talks to secure a get-out clause.” Commenting on these revelations, Dr Koechler stated that only a retrial, if conducted in a fair, impartial and transparent manner according to the requirements set by UN Security Council resolution 1192 (1998), including the presence of international observers, will do justice to the convicted Libyan national and to the victims’ families who deserve to know the full truth about the case. This is also imperative under the fair trial standards set by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, he said.

Dr Koechler reiterated his call for an independent public inquiry about the background of the terrorist crime as well as the criminal investigation and prosecution by the Scottish judiciary and the institutions of the United Kingdom. He stated that the falsification of evidence, selective presentation of evidence,  manipulation of reports, interference into the conduct of judicial proceedings by intelligence services, etc. are criminal offenses in any country. In view of the above new revelations and in regard to previously known facts as reported in Dr Koechler’s reports, the question of possible criminal responsibility, under Scots law, of people involved in the Lockerbie trial should be carefully studied by the competent prosecutorial authorities.

In a TV talk with Anne Mackenzie for BBC Newsnight Scotland (1 September 2005) Dr Koechler said that, while he does not question the integrity of Scots law as such, the handling of the Lockerbie trial has nevertheless seriously damaged the reputation of the Scottish legal system. A “political fix” such as the one reported last week in the Scottish and British media would confirm these doubts and further undermine the confidence in the integrity of the Scottish judicial system. He also said that he is afraid that, because of the political interests involved in the case, the full truth – including the identity of those responsible for the planning, financing and actual perpetration of the crime – may never be known.

In today’s statement Dr Koechler emphasized that the “global war on terror” cannot be fought credibly and with a chance of success if – in the worst case of terrorism in the history of the United Kingdom – the search for truth is abandoned for political expediency and criminal justice, i.e. the rule of law, is sacrificed on the altar of political and commercial interests.