Obituary of Lockerbie activist Martin Cadman

[What follows is an obituary by Tam Dalyell of Martin Cadman which has been published today on the website of The Independent:]

Martin Cadman: Geologist and pressure-group activist whose son was killed in the Lockerbie bombing

Cadman was forensic in his search for the truth

Bill Cadman, a young theatre sound designer taking a Christmas holiday, was one of those who perished when the Pan Am airliner Maid of the Seas was brought down by a bomb over the Scottish town of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 on its way to New York. His father, Martin, and his mother, Rita, became prominent members of that doggedly determined band of remarkable individuals widely known over the years as the British Lockerbie Relatives.

Dr Jim Swire, their chairman, told me, “It was a pleasure to have worked with Martin Cadman in trying to establish the truth about who murdered his son, Bill, and my daughter, Flora. Martin and I soon acquired a healthy distrust of the information provided by the governments of the US and the UK.”

I became publicly involved in the case following a visit to my house by a police sergeant, a constituent from South Queensferry, who had been assigned to the Lockerbie crash site. He had been shocked by the behaviour of US officials, which would have been totally unacceptable in a Scottish murder investigation.

After I raised these concerns in the House of Commons, Cadman contacted me to give vent to his huge dissatisfaction at the way the relatives were represented at the Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry. Lawyers could not pull the wool over Cadman’s eyes – and that would be the case for the next 25 years.

Cadman, by profession a geological scientist, was forensic in his search for the truth. Did the tragic events originate in the shooting down of an Iranian airliner carrying pilgrims to Mecca by the USS Vincennes in 1988? What was the role of Ali Akbar Mohtashami, Interior Minister in Tehran at the time of the incident – and Iran’s ambassador to Damascus from 1982-86, when he had contact with the terrorist gangs of the Bekaa Valley, particularly that led by Ahmed Jibril?

Above all, Cadman demanded – but never received – an explanation for why, on 24 December 1988, three days after the Lockerbie disaster, $10m from Iranian sources was paid into the coffers of the General Command of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Given his background, it was scarcely surprising that Cadman should focus on such issues. His father had been chief chemist of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, while his uncle, John Cadman, created first Baron Cadman of Silverdale in 1937, was an influential member of the Royal Commission which reported on Iran’s oilfields. Martin Cadman told me he believed that much trouble had originated in the way the British government had toppled Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.

From Merchant Taylors’, Cadman went into the RAF in 1942. To his regret, he saw no action: he was so gifted a pilot that he was detailed to go to Miami to train others. Taking the view that being away from his family for long periods would be unfair, he eschewed the idea of becoming a commercial pilot and went instead to Selwyn College, Cambridge to read geology. In 1989, after Bill’s death, he took up flying and gliding again, and would fly solo around the East Anglian skies as a mid-octogenarian.

His working life began in the scientific section of the Coal Board. One of his mentors was, in his words, “its inspiring director [of research], Dr Jacob Bronowski.” There followed a period at ICI’s Millbank headquarters in London, with Sir Paul Chambers at the helm. “The only main board member my colleagues and I could not stand,” Cadman told me, “was Dr Richard Beeching, the rudest and most sarcastic man in England.”

Somewhat ruefully, because he knew I was a friend and colleague, Cadman told me that he moved to the Department of Energy, but did not have a high regard for his Minister, Tony Benn – “albeit the politest man in England.” Cadman’s career culminated in a senior position with the engineering firm WS Atkins.

My lasting memory of Martin Cadman is of his clarity of thought during the course of many, many telephone calls. It was ironic that so gifted an RAF instructor should be involved in Lockerbie.

Martin Henry Cadman, geologist: born Merton, London 26 September 1924; married 1950 Rita Allen (two daughters, one son, and one son deceased); died East Bilney, Norfolk 7 October 2015.

Megrahi was innocent, says Lockerbie victim's father, Martin Cadman

[What follows is taken from a report published today on the EDP24 website:]

For more than 20 years Norfolk man Martin Cadman has fought to uncover the true story behind his son Bill’s death in the Lockerbie disaster. Now Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the convicted bomber, is dead - but in this interview published in the EDP in April, Mr Cadman and the author of a new book explain why they believe he was innocent.

As Martin Cadman prepared to leave a meeting at London’s US Embassy just over a year after his son’s death aboard Pan Am flight 103, a member of the American Presidential Commission drew him to one side. “Keep up the fight,” he said. “Your government and ours know exactly what happened but they are never going to tell.”

Since then he has kept fighting and today, more than 23 years after Bill Cadman and 269 other people were killed, Mr Cadman has a filing cabinet in the study of his Burnham Market home crammed with folders relating to the disaster and the subsequent investigation. Despite this dogged research, exactly what happened remains a mystery to him, though he has his suspicions. But one thing of which he is certain is that it did not involve Libya or Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man who was convicted for the Lockerbie bombing in January 2001 at a trial under Scottish law in the Netherlands, spent eight years in a Scottish prison and was released on compassionate grounds after his diagnosis with terminal prostate cancer.

Now comes the publication of a book, co-authored by Megrahi, that presents new evidence seemingly undermining what many considered an already flimsy case for is prosecution, and this strengthens Mr Cadman’s view that there has been a serious miscarriage of justice.

“I don’t think that Megrahi or Libya had anything to do with it,” he said. “He has been made a scapegoat.” The bulk of Megrahi: You are my Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence is written by John Ashton, a Brighton-based author who has studied the case for 18 years and worked as part of Megrahi’s defence team between 2006 and 2009. Italicised passages written by Megrahi in the first person are interspersed through Ashton’s detailed analysis of the bombing and its aftermath. The book draws from a long-suppressed 800-page report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which was compiled in 2007 and would have featured in Megrahi’s second appeal against his conviction – but as is well known, he dropped his appeal and accepted a quicker release on compassionate grounds while remaining tainted with guilt as the convicted bomber.

Three major points emerge from the report and Mr Ashton’s own research. First, the most significant new evidence concerns the Toshiba cassette player that is believed to have been converted into an explosive device and stowed within a brown Samsonite suitcase in the luggage hold. This device featured a timer supposedly identical to those known to have been purchased by Libya from a company called Mebo, which purchased its circuit boards from a German firm called Thuring.

Mr Ashton said: “This is something that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission miss, and it relates to the forensics. The crucial forensic item in the case that really ties Megrahi and Libya in was this fragment of circuit board. We can demonstrate forensically that the prosecution claim that this originated from a timing device that was supplied to Libya is not true, because in the circuit boards in those timing devices, the copper circuitry was coated with an alloy of tin and lead. The Lockerbie one was coated with pure tin, which requires a completely different manufacturing process, and one that was not used by Thuring, the company that supplied those circuit boards.”

The second point concerns the Crown’s most important witness, a Maltese shopkeeper named Tony Gauci who, two months before the bombing, sold a man some clothes that were later used to wrap the tape-recorder bomb within the suitcase. In Mr Ashton’s words, Gauci’s initial “descriptions of the clothes purchaser all suggested the man was around 50 years old, 6ft tall and with dark skin, whereas Megrahi was 36, is 5ft 8in and has light skin”.

But in 1991, Gauci identified Megrahi as the man who entered his shop, selecting him from a line-up of photographs, and in 1999, he picked Megrahi out again, this time in person. “Before picking him out of the identity parade it turns out he’d had a magazine that featured Megrahi’s photo for months, so he would have been familiar with him. He’d had other newspaper and magazine articles as well, it turned out.”

The SCCRC report also established that he only gave evidence after asking for a $2m reward, and that the Scottish police persuaded the US Department of Justice to pay this sum, along with $1m for his brother, Paul. This fact was not disclosed to the defence during the trial, and would have been of great value as they sought to cast aspersions on the quality of Gauci’s evidence.

So if Mr Cadman, Mr Ashton and Megrahi are correct, who really was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing? Herein lies the third major aspect of the book’s case.

In July 1988, an American warship, the USS Vincennes, shot down Iran Air flight 655 from Bandar Abbas to Dubai as it flew over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 passengers.

“This Iranian airbus was taking people to the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca,” said Mr Cadman, aged 87. “We never got an answer from the Americans as to why they shot down an innocent airbus.”

Instead of issuing an explanation or apology for the loss of innocent lives, the Ronald Reagan administration gave the USS Vincennes crew the Combat Action Ribbon. Five months after this attack, on December 21, 1988, came the Lockerbie bombing.

“It was a revenge thing, probably – Iran saying ‘we’re going to have the same number of yours as you killed of ours’,” said Mr Cadman. The investigators’ initial suspicion was indeed directed at Iran – specifically an Iranian-backed Palestinian terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC). This group had splintered from the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and had already massacred civilians in Israel and Europe. In particular, the focus was on one man, Mohammed Abu Talb, who was given a life sentence in 1989 for attacks on Jewish targets. He is believed to have been freed from prison in 2009, shortly after Megrahi.

Mr Ashton said: “The key things about this group are: one, they built bombs into Toshiba radio cassette players; two, they built bombs that were designed to blow up aircraft; and three, the cell was based in West Germany, which is where the flight began its journey. There was a feeder flight called Pan Am 103A, and the flight that exploded was Pan Am flight 103.

“Although some of the group were rounded up two months before Lockerbie, some of their bombs went missing and some of the personnel were not rounded up. There was a warning issued in December 1988... The State Department circulated a warning which said that a group of Palestinian militants were heading to Europe and were planning to target Pan Am.” Mr Ashton said that that warning’s existence was not revealed until seven years after the Lockerbie disaster. He added: “So those things combine to make me think they did it – and Iran, of course, had the motive.”

Bill Cadman and his girlfriend were among 259 people to have died in the aeroplane on December 21, 1988, along with 11 more at the crash site in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. Bill was 32 and building a successful career as a sound engineer responsible for the audio quality at West End musicals such as Les Miserables. He and his girlfriend were en route to America for Christmas. “They shouldn’t have been on the flight,” said Mr Cadman. “I think my son was trying to buy the tickets last minute, and he hadn’t got the money, but his girlfriend produced the money, otherwise they wouldn’t have been on the flight.”

Over the years he and his wife Rita, who now lives in a care home in Fakenham, had the support of a number of politicians such as Henry Bellingham, the Conservative MP for North-West Norfolk, and Tam Dalyell, the former Labour member for Linlithgow.

Both politicians had great respect for Mr Cadman – as does Mr Ashton. “I’ve dealt with Martin, he’s a very good man,” he said. “He’s been very dogged over the years. He deserves better than he’s got, all the relatives do. It’s only with the help of people like him that we keep all this on the agenda.”

Mr Ashton’s hope is that this book will result in a public inquiry in Scotland. “I think the chances of getting the people who really did it are very slight. The best we can hope for is a full inquiry. At the very least it needs to look into why all this evidence was withheld, but what we really need is the full inquiry which will answer the questions of Martin and others, which are: why were the warnings ignored, and what happened within the investigation that led to the PFLP-GC and Iran being dropped as suspects. And, on top of that, we need to get Megrahi’s case back to the appeal court. There is a mechanism for doing that – an application could be made to the SCCRC, and his family are being encouraged to do that.”

However, he is sure that Megrahi will not live to see this happen. When Megrahi returned home to Libya to die, his arrival prompted scenes of joy that disgusted many Britons and Americans, not least the many victims’ relatives who believe that he is a murderer.

Megrahi’s heroic status in his home country, however, owed nothing to the idea that he had struck a murderous blow against an American airliner; instead he is seen as an innocent man who sacrificed his liberty for the sake of the nation’s economy. In 2003, Muammar Gadaffi accepted Libyan responsibility for the atrocity and paid compensation to the victims’ families in order to have crippling sanctions lifted – and at the same time let it be known that he was doing so as an economic tactic rather than a true acceptance of guilt.

Megrahi describes his release from prison in the book: “The decision provoked a carnival of political pointscoring, which kept the issue at the top of the news agenda for over a fortnight. The controversy was entirely founded on the assumption that I was the Lockerbie bomber. Very little of the media and political comment acknowledged that I had had an appeal pending and that the SCCRC considered the original verdict was ‘at least arguably one which no reasonable court, properly directed, could have returned’.”

Mr Cadman does not know whether he will see someone else convicted for his son’s murder. He is sure of one thing, however, after that conversation at the embassy.

“I remember that he said ‘There are some things that you will hear about that are right, but you won’t hear all of it. And no one here is going to tell you everything.’ And that is rather frightening. There are these few people who are in the know, and the rest of us who are not.”

Megrahi: You are my Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence, by John Ashton, is published by Birlinn at £14.99.

Lockerbie inquiry commitment dishonoured

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Tam Dalyell MP entitled The Lockerbie scapegoat that was published in The Spectator in August 2002:]

At no point did Megrahi get the chance to tell his story. When I went to see him with his solicitor, Mr Eddie McKechnie, in Barlinnie, he expressed his dismay that his previous defence team had prevailed upon him, against his every instinct, not to go into the witness box. Had he done so, he would have made the convincing case that he was not a member of the Libyan intelligence services, but a sanctions-buster, scouring Africa and South America and the Boeing Company for spare parts to allow Libyan Arab Airlines to continue operating in the face of sanctions. (...)

There should have been an inquiry. For an adversarial system of justice to arrive at the truth requires both of the adversaries to place before the court all information that was available to them. In the Lockerbie trial, the defence team of Abdelbaset al Megrahi chose not to do so. In such circumstances, the adversarial system simply does not work, and the objective becomes not to uncover the truth, but to find someone to shoulder the blame.

The British relatives of the Lockerbie victims were, as far back as 19 September 1989, offered an inquiry by the then secretary of state for transport, Cecil Parkinson — subject, he said, as they filed out of his room, to the agreement of colleagues. Somewhat sheepishly on 5 December 1989 Parkinson told the relatives that it had been decided at the highest level that there would be no inquiry.

[RB: In January 1995 Mr Dalyell had asked the Prime Minister, John Major, about the Parkinson meetings. Here is the Hansard report:]

Mr Dalyell To ask the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library his correspondence with Mr Martin Cadman, of the Lockerbie victims' relatives association, and in particular his response to Mr Cadman's letter of 18 December 1994, concerning Lord Parkinson's meetings on 19 September 1989 and 5 December 1989 with the relatives, and his answer of 15 December [1994], Official Report, column 1068.

The Prime Minister No, it is not my normal practice to do so.

Mr Dalyell To ask the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library a copy of his response to Lockerbie victim relative Rev John Mosey's letter to him of 28 December 1994.

The Prime Minister No, it is not my normal practice to do so.

Mr Dalyell To ask the Prime Minister if, following communications from Mr Martin Cadman, Pamela Dix, Rev John Mosey and Dr Jim Swire, relatives of Lockerbie victims, he has anything to add to his oral answer to the hon Member for Linlithgow of 15 December [1994], Official Report, column 1068.

The Prime Minister I understand that the meeting between Lord Parkinson and a group of British relatives of the Lockerbie victims to which I referred in my reply to the hon Gentleman on 15 December took place in December 1989, not in 1990. At that meeting, Lord Parkinson explained the Government's decision not to hold a confidential inquiry into the disaster, but said that the Lord Advocate was likely to hold a public fatal accident inquiry. I have received representations from several relatives of Lockerbie victims calling for a further inquiry. However, in view of all the investigations that have already been carried out, and the need to avoid the danger of prejudicing a criminal trial of the two accused, I do not believe such an inquiry is warranted.

'Let Megrahi die in peace' says Lockerbie victim's father

[This is the headline over a report published this afternoon on the website of The Independent. It reads in part:]

The father of one of the victims of the Lockerbie bombing today called for the man convicted of the atrocity to be left in peace to die.

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora, 23, said that he would treat Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi himself, if he could, to allow him a dignified death. (...)

Today American news channel CNN aired images of the convicted bomber, apparently comatose and near death, in his villa in the Libyan capital. (...)

Speaking about the CNN footage, Dr Swire, who has always maintained Megrahi's innocence, said: "It is obvious he is sufficiently ill and in need of pain relief and medical care. His medical treatment has been withdrawn due to the circumstances in Tripoli, and his family are saying his drugs have been stolen.

"I feel in view of all he's been through that he should have been accorded a peaceful end in Tripoli with his family. The idea of extraditing him is a monstrous one.

"I would be happy to go and try to look after him if that could be arranged, but I don't know how that could be. He will need pain relief and medication to allow him a dignified end.

"This is a man who withdrew his appeal so that he could be allowed to die close to his family and he deserves to be left in peace for his last days." (...)

Dr Swire dismissed the idea of extradition, saying: "Mr al-Megrahi has never wavered in his claim he was innocent and the evidence led against him was so polluted by political influence that it should never have led to his conviction.

"It's a great shame the overturning of the verdict will not happen while he is still alive to see it." (...)

Martin Cadman, whose son Bill, 32, died in the Lockerbie bombing, said British relatives still had questions as to the circumstances surrounding the attack.

Speaking from his home in Norfolk, Mr Cadman said he believed the Americans knew more than had already emerged.

He said: "Megrahi was not the only person, if he was any person, in this thing. At some time we've got to have the truth about it and the Americans have got to come clean about it."

Mr Cadman said he did not believe "any evidence" had been shown that Megrahi was involved in the bombing, adding: "I do hope that somehow this event now, Megrahi on the point of death, is going to make someone own up."

[Similar views about allowing Megrahi to die in peace have been expressed by First Minister Alex Salmond.]

A clear-headed analysis?

[The following are two letters from today’s edition of the Sunday Herald:]

John Laverie may find it illuminating to peruse John Ashton's book Megrahi: You Are My Jury (Libya's gulag: questions linger, Letters, June 19). It contains a number of references to Moussa Koussa, former head of Libyan intelligence. Ashton states that Koussa was debriefed at an MI6 safe house in the spring of 2011 and shortly after was interviewed about Lockerbie by the Scottish police. He was then allowed to leave the country and his assets were unfrozen. Ashton suggests that one obvious reason for Koussa not being arrested was that the UK Government was well aware that neither he nor Gaddafi had anything to do with Lockerbie. A less obvious explanation was that Koussa was a long-time MI6 asset. On March 30, 2011, the Daily Telegraph stated: "As head of Libyan external intelligence, Mr Koussa was an MI6 asset for almost two decades."

In his book, John Ashton recounts the experience of Martin Cadman who lost his son Bill in the Lockerbie bombing. In February 1990, Mr Cadman was invited to the US embassy in London to meet the members of a presidential commission established to examine aviation security policy with particular reference to Lockerbie. At the end of the meeting Mr Cadman was taken aside by one of the commission's seven members who said to him: "Your government and ours know exactly what happened [regarding Lockerbie] but they are never going to tell." Alan Woodcock

I read John S Laverie's letter with particular interest as I had just finished Kenny MacAskill's book, The Lockerbie Bombing – The Search For Justice (Libya's gulag: question linger, Letters, June 19). MacAskill, who was Justice Secretary and responsible for making the decision to release Megrahi on compassionate grounds, brings clarity to a subject muddied by conspiracy theories – he covers the issues of rendition, the involvement of MI6 and the role of Moussa Koussa, and I thoroughly recommend the book to Mr Laverie and all those interested in a clear-headed analysis of the Lockerbie atrocity. Ian D Cochrane

[RB: Mr Cochrane’s view that Kenny MacAskill’s book brings clarity to the subject is a minority one. Reviews of the book can be found here and here and here and here.]

Pan Am 103 Lockerbie bombing: Fresh appeal launched to clear Megrahi

[This is the headline over an article by Steve James published today on the WSWS.org website. It reads in part:]

Relatives ... of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi have won the right to posthumously appeal his 2001 conviction for murder following a decision by the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC). (...)

The Lockerbie attack came only six months after an Iranair Airbus, IR655, was shot down in an unprovoked act of mass murder, by the US missile cruiser, the USS Vincennes. In that instance 290 passengers and crew were killed. At the time, most commentary and media coverage assumed that the Lockerbie atrocity was an act of revenge.

From the outset, however, it was apparent there was some level of foreknowledge or complicity on behalf of the US and British intelligence services. Warnings of an attack on Pan Am flights had been issued. PA103, flying just before Christmas, was half empty because of cancellations. On the crash site in Scotland, numerous reports emerged of unrecorded activity by the FBI, items of wreckage being removed under armed guard, and luggage interfered with.

In 1990, UK citizen Martin Cadman, whose son Bill was killed on the flight, attended a briefing at the US Embassy for relatives of victims of the attack. Cadman was, without prompting, told by an unnamed member of the US President’s Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism, “Your government and ours know exactly what happened and they are never going to tell.”

By 1991, around the time the Iranian government declared its neutrality during the US Desert Storm war on Iraq, the British and US authorities shifted responsibility for Lockerbie to Libya.

Pinning the blame on Libya served to isolate and pressure the government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and provided a pretext for punitive economic sanctions, which undermined the North African country’s oil-based economy.

Magrahi’s trial, at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, was held under Scots law as part of a deal brokered by South African leader Nelson Mandela between the British and Libyan governments. Its purpose was to allow some veneer of legal process on the rapprochement between the two countries, as Gaddafi abandoned his former radical posturing and US and British imperialism eyed the country’s oil resources.

The trial, however, revealed extraordinary inconsistencies in the Scottish Crown Office case. Not least was that there was no proof that Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, had ever loaded a comparable suitcase in Luqa airport in Malta, no proof that any unaccompanied suitcase had travelled from Malta via Frankfurt to Heathrow, to be loaded onto PA103, and no explanation of how Luqa airport’s rigorous security was overcome.

Nevertheless, Magrahi was convicted and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, later increased to 27.

In another of countless inconsistencies, Megrahi’s co-accused, Llamen Fhimah was set free. For his part, Gaddafi duly offered compensation to the attack’s victims without accepting Libyan responsibility. [RB: Libya accepted "responsibility for the actions of its officials" and nothing more.]

Megrahi had an initial appeal rejected in 2002, but the passage of time has only increased the perception that he was the victim of a politically motivated frame-up and show trial.

In 2007, the SCCRC authorised another appeal, reporting there was “no reasonable basis” to place Megrahi in Malta where he had been identified as allegedly purchasing clothing identified as being in a suitcase containing the bomb. However, in 2009 Megrahi, in prison in Greenock, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was allowed to return to Libya following an understanding reached with the Scottish government that his appeal should be dropped. Megrahi died in 2012, still protesting his innocence.

In 2011, 10 years after the trial, US, French and British imperialism launched a bloody neo-colonial war to overthrow Gaddafi. It ended with Gaddafi being hunted down and butchered. The country was pitched into a catastrophic civil war, which continues to this day.

This latest appeal was launched by Megrahi’s family and [supported by] the Justice for Megrahi (JFM) campaign. This includes relatives of several victims of the disaster such as Dr Jim Swire, who has steadfastly campaigned for the truth around his 23-year-old daughter’s murder on PA103.

JFM members include Robert Black, a lawyer and one of the architects of the original Camp Zeist trial. Another member is former police superintendent Iain McKie, whose daughter Shirley was the subject of a debacle which, in the end, discredited the Scottish Criminal Records Office entire finger-printing methodology. Shirley McKie was charged with perjury before finally being exonerated and compensated.

A SCCRC press statement reported grounds for allowing the new appeal. Referring to the identification of Megrahi as the purchaser of clothing in the bomb suitcase by Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, the SCCRC concluded that “a miscarriage of justice may have occurred because no reasonable trial court, relying on the evidence led at trial, could have held the case against Mr Megrahi was proved beyond reasonable doubt.”

The SCCRC statement found that the Crown failed to “disclose a statement and a police report” confirming that Gauci had photographs of Megrahi in his possession before he identified him. This “deprived Mr Megrahi a real chance of an acquittal.” The commission also found that “reward money to be paid to Mr Gauci under a scheme administered by the US Department of State” meant that “Mr Megrahi was denied a fair trial.”

Gauci was coached by the Scottish police and bribed by the US government—$2 million was eventually said to have been handed over.

The SCCRC rejected further grounds for appeal relating to:

The date on which Megrahi was identified as having been in Gauci’s shop in Malta

* Evidence emerged of the date at which Christmas lights were switched on in Sliema, Malta and which contradicts the prosecution claim that Megrahi made the purchases. Yet, the SCCRC “decided that the fresh evidence in question is not likely to have assisted Mr. Megrahi’s cause.” In a repeated theme, the SCCRC’s pointed to the fact that Megrahi’s defence team “chose not to lead it in connection with his appeal in 2002.”

The metallurgical characteristics of circuit board fragment PT/35(b)

* This fragment was claimed to be part of an MST-13 timer constructed by MEBO AG of Switzerland. The fragment appeared late in the investigation with records of its discovery apparently altered. PT/35(b)’s significance in the case against Megrahi is that it implicated the Libyan government, which had purchased 20 such timers.

Evidence emerged, and was available early in the investigation, to confirm that the MST-13 circuit board fragment could not have been part of the batch of timers sold to Libya, as the board’s soldering had different characteristics from control samples provided by MEBO. When this was made available to Megrahi’s original defence team, they again, for reasons unclear, declined to use it.

The SCCRC nevertheless found that “the decision by the defence team to proceed without investigating the metallurgy issue did not mean that Mr. Megrahi’s defence was not presented to the court.”

Suitcase ingestion at Heathrow

* This is most damaging to the entire case against Megrahi and was clearly explained in the 2013 book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? by JFM member, Dr Morag Kerr.

Kerr makes a detailed and methodical examination of the recorded progress of all items of luggage through Luqa, Frankfurt and Heathrow airports, their position in the luggage container AVE4041 at Heathrow airport, and their subsequent condition and location when discovered on the hills around Lockerbie. Her conclusion is that the bomb suitcase, a Samsonite Silhouette 400, was introduced in London prior to a feeder flight, PA 103A, arriving from Frankfurt carrying any luggage from Malta.

Kerr makes clear that, despite the vast and complex investigation, this suitcase has no known provenance and its owner has never been identified. It was noticed by several airline staff prior to and during transfer to PA 103. It appeared the day after a highly unusual break-in to the Heathrow luggage storage area adjacent to where AVE4041 was loaded.

The SCCRC agreed that “If accepted, this would fatally undermine the Crown case,” but claimed the allegation lacked information highlighted by Operation Sandwood—a four-year police inquiry into allegations of police criminality during the Lockerbie investigation made by JFM.

This counterclaim is not substantiated. Operation Sandwood concluded in 2018 that “no criminality” had been found. Its report has not been published, nor the basis of its findings released.

Learning of the news of the appeal being allowed, Megrahi’s youngest son, Ali, told The Times “If the world discovers the identity of the true bomber, it will have to accept that it was not my father. Those who lost their loved ones deserve to know the truth, who was responsible and why it happened.”

The legacy of Lockerbie

[This is part of the headline over an article published on the website of The Independent on this date in 2009. The following are excerpts:]

The saga of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was already murky enough, but now, to the doubts about the evidence against him, the alleged multi-million payouts to the prime prosecution witness, and the far-from-told story of US and British intelligence involvement, we can add suggestions of secret talks and trade deals, and the possibility that his release was not done in the name of compassionate justice, but that of oil, financial services and hotel-building.

This weekend, suspicious minds don't have to seek very far for the material to construct explanations other than the official ones. There is the meeting in 2007 between Colonel Gaddafi and Tony Blair, then still Prime Minister. Oil and gas deals mingled with the fate of Megrahi (then yet to be diagnosed with cancer), according to the Libyans. There's the meeting between Gaddafi's son and Peter Mandelson in the inevitable setting of a Rothschild villa. The Duke of York, batting for Britain as ever, is involved. There may have been, say some sources, many more meetings between British and Libyan officials – something which, one might think, a simple release on compassionate grounds would not warrant. There are British business leaders now openly rubbing their hands together at the suddenly revitalised opportunity for UK banks, oil interests, security contractors, and stores to move in on Libya's considerable available funds.

And then, underpinning all these, is another conspiracy, the one it all started with – the fact that some group of people somewhere conspired to blow up Pan Am flight 103, and succeeded. Today, 21 years, millions of words of testimony, countless investigations, and a trial on neutral territory under Scottish law later, we are really none the wiser about who murdered Flora Swire, Theodora Cohen, Richard Monetti, Alistair Berkley, Bill Cadman and 265 other victims of Britain's worst terrorist atrocity. And so, given all that is now emerging, doubters of the official line ask: do our governments even want to know who planted the bomb? Do they, perhaps, think that a can of worms is best left unopened in the cause of pacifying former pariah states?

These, then, are the over-heated speculations that have bubbled up in the absence of hard, reliable facts, of which there has always been a shortage in this case. The situation, until last autumn was this: Megrahi, head of security for Libyan Airlines based in Malta, and tied to his country's intelligence services, had been convicted in 2001 on circumstantial evidence of planting the bomb which brought down the American plane over the Scottish village of Lockerbie in December 1988. An appeal was being prepared, and the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had examined the evidence against Megrahi and found six grounds for a possible miscarriage of justice. The result of this could well have been the release of Megrahi, and avid calls for a re-opening of the case – the 2003 acceptance by Libya of responsibility for the bombing not withstanding.

But Megrahi had been feeling unwell, and in September last year he was taken from HMP Greenock to Inverclyde Royal Hospital for tests. A month later, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Meanwhile, the appeal process ground on, getting into court on 28 April this year in Edinburgh. A day later, a prisoner transfer agreement between the UK and Libya, negotiated by Tony Blair as part of thawing relations between the two countries, came into force. The Libyans duly made an application for Megrahi to be moved to a Libyan jail, thereby handing the hottest of legal potatoes to the Holyrood government.

But as Megrahi's cancer was declared terminal, the Libyan applied for release on compassionate grounds. It fell to the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, to decide on this. After representations – including the vehemently opposed ones of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and leading figures such as Senator John Kerry – he delivered his decision in 20 minutes on Thursday (...)

The reaction from relatives of US victims was unequivocal. Stan Maslowski of New Jersey, whose daughter Diane died on the flight, said: "This shows a terrorist can get away with murder." British families, meanwhile, were mainly supportive of Mr MacAskill. Martin Cadman, whose son Bill died in the bombing, said: "The trial was a farce. I think he was innocent." Anyone puzzled by this difference need look no further than the coverage of the case against Megrahi down the years. In Britain, doubts about the case against him have been long, and widely, aired. In the US, this has not been so. Thus, the extent of the compassion that people were prepared to extend to Megrahi was largely a matter of whether they felt he was guilty or innocent.

The case against him depended on the testimony of one Tony Gauci, a Maltese shop owner who says he sold Megrahi several items of clothing that were subsequently found to have been in the same case as the bomb. Mr Gauci was interviewed no fewer than 23 times by investigators, was alleged to have been coached by them, and subsequently said to have received payments of up to $2m from the US. Some, like former Scottish Lord Advocate Lord Fraser, say he is an unreliable witness ("not the full shilling", and "an apple short of a picnic" were his exact words). (...)

In the short term, a lot depends on Megrahi's illness. There must be many in Edinburgh and Westminster who will, without voicing such thoughts, be hoping his cancer runs its vicious course sooner rather than later. For if he were to survive much beyond three months, there would be many, especially in the US, pointing out that expedience, rather than compassion, was what really tempered British justice.

There is no evidence for such dealings, and so, in all likelihood, we will be left with only one true conspiracy: the one that caused it all – the one that sent 270 people to their deaths on a terrifying December night 21 years ago.

Lockerbie theory vindicated

[This is the heading over a letter published in today’s edition of The Independent.  It reads as follows:]

The theory put forward in your article “New Lockerbie report says Libyan framed to conceal the real bombers” (12 March) has long been considered the most probable explanation for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, on which my brother Bill Cadman and his girlfriend lost their lives.

You report that there may have been was political interference from Washington and London to protect Syria and Iran. The cover-up, however, grew out of control with the very expensive Camp Zeist trial, and what has always puzzled us is why such a cover-up was necessary. In the vacuum created by false information and manipulation of facts dark fears emerge, and our worst-case scenario remains that the bombing was allowed to happen, and that my brother and the other 278 people on board were offered up as sacrificial victims to appease Iran.

We felt right from the beginning that something was being kept from us: the CIA were out in force on Scottish soil before the work of identifying bodies had been properly undertaken, and the brave Dr David Fieldhouse who worked tirelessly on the night of 21 December finding and labelling bodies, and who gave evidence in the Scottish fatal accident inquiry, was discredited publicly, although he later received an apology.

One theory was that Flight 103 was regularly used in the drugs-for-arms circuit connecting Nicaragua  to Iran, and that the message instructing carriers to  “put suspect packages in the hold” was in some way connected to this. It would have been relatively easy to slip a bomb on to a plane in this context.

My father, Martin Cadman, was haunted by the memory of being told by a member of the American Presidential Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism that our government knew what had happened but that the truth would not come out. He has now lost his memory and it is very bitter to me that now truths that he shouted from the rooftops against the prevailing wind are commonly reported as facts.

Marion Irvine

Claims of Lockerbie cover-up as only man convicted of bombing drops appeal

Relatives of Lockerbie victims were denied their final chance of discovering the truth yesterday when the only man convicted of the atrocity abruptly dropped his appeal.

The decision of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, who is expected to be freed from prison in Scotland next week allowing his return to Libya, sparked charges of a top-level cover-up.

Politicians, relatives and experts accused the Scottish government of striking a deal with the convicted terrorist: that in return for his repatriation he would abandon an appeal that might have exposed a grave miscarriage of justice. “It’s pretty likely there was a deal,” said Oliver Miles, a former British Ambassador to Libya, who told The Times that the British and Scottish governments had been very anxious to avoid the appeal.

Christine Grahame, a member of the Scottish Parliament, said: “There are a number of vested interests who have been deeply opposed to this appeal because they know it would go a considerable way towards exposing the truth behind Lockerbie.”

Robert Black, the Edinburgh law professor who was one of the architects of al-Megrahi’s trial before a special Scottish court in the Netherlands, said: “There would have been strong pressure from civil servants in the justice department and the Crown Office to bring this appeal to an end . . . I’m convinced they have never wanted it to go the full distance. Legitimate concerns about the events leading up to his conviction will not be heard.” (...)

The Libyan’s decision to drop his appeal gives Mr MacAskill the slightly less controversial option of transferring him to a Libyan jail under a prisoner transfer agreement that Britain and Libya finalised in April. Such transfers cannot take place until all legal proceedings have ended.

Either way the Obama Administration will be angered, and the victims’ relatives will be deprived of an appeal that they saw as their last chance, short of the independent public inquiry that they have long demanded, of finding out who really killed their sons, daughter, spouses and parents when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie in December 1988.

They and other experts have long doubted the evidence used to convict al-Megrahi and asked how a single man could have carried out such a deadly attack. They have questioned whether Syria or Iran was really responsible. (...)

Pamela Dix, of Woking, Surrey, whose brother died in the bombing, said she felt “great disappointment . . . At the moment there is no other process or procedure ongoing to tell us how the bombing was carried out, why it was done, the motivation for it and who ordered it.”

Martin Cadman, of Burnham Market in Norfolk, who lost his son, said: “If this means that this is the end of the story then I’m very disappointed. It’s been nearly 21 years since the event and where are we? Nowhere.”

Al-Megrahi’s lawyers said he had dropped his appeal because his health had deteriorated sharply, though Scottish law would permit the appeal to continue even after his death.

Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, strenuously denied that any pressure had been put on him. “We have no interest in pressurising people to drop appeals. Why on earth should we? That’s not our position — never has been,” he said.

But the Scottish government faced a wave of scepticism. Mr Miles called al-Megrahi’s original trial “deeply flawed” and said that both Scottish and British governments wanted no appeal because it would be very embarrassing.

Ms Grahame, a backbench member of Mr Salmond’s Scottish Nationalist Party, had visited al-Megrahi in prison and said he was desperate to clear his name. She claimed to have seen a leaked e-mail from the Scottish justice department showing that senior officials were pressing him to drop his appeal.

Tam Dalyell, the former Labour MP who has long proclaimed al-Megrahi’s innocence, said: “If he abandons his appeal, it means that Lockerbie will be one of those mysteries like the assassination of President Kennedy that will remain unsolved for a long time — possibly forever.”

He added: “It would come as a mighty relief to officials at the Crown Office in Edinburgh, to certain officials in the stratosphere of Whitehall, and above all to officials in Washington.”

[The above are excerpts from a report in The Times. The full text can be read here.]

A cynical spoiling operation?

Intriguing, is it not, that on the very day that UK Families-Flight 103 submits a letter to the Prime Minister calling for a full, independent inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster (and gains the support of a major national newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph) the story breaks, citing Crown Office sources, that the investigation is not closed and that a police review is being carried out?

Not, of course, that the case against Abdelbaset Megrahi will be scrutinised. He has been convicted by a Scottish court and so is indubitably guilty. Forget the concerns of a bunch of meddlesome do-gooders like the UN observer, Professor Hans Köchler, and the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. Forget the material that has been placed into the public domain on Mr Megrahi's website. If three Scottish judges say he is guilty, then guilty he must be. The fact that the SCCRC regarded those judges' findings on crucial matters as conclusions that, on the evidence, no reasonable court could have reached, can be either completely ignored or treated with lofty contempt. If the establishment decides that a man is guilty, then guilty he is and most assuredly will remain.

What follows are excerpts from the coverage of this story in the "serious" press and The Scotsman.

The Times: "Lockerbie relatives suspect investigation will head off public inquiry"

'Relatives of those who died in the Lockerbie disaster are worried that the police investigation into the atrocity is being stepped up in an attempt to scupper their demands for a full public inquiry. (...)

'Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing, said: “The argument which has been consistently used against us having the public inquiry we want is that there is an ongoing criminal investigation.

'“I find it an extraordinary coincidence that the latest development in the police case emerged on the same day the families demanded a proper investigation from Gordon Brown.” (...)

'Martin Cadman, who lost his son William in the 1988 bombing, also raised concerns. He said: “It’s very curious the way the law is going about things. We’ve been led up the garden path by the authorities for a long time. I’m deeply suspicious of this.”'

The Herald: "Lockerbie relatives cautiously welcome review"

'Relatives of the Lockerbie bombing victims have welcomed a review of the criminal investigation into the atrocity but warned that it should not stand in the way of a full public inquiry.

'Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was among the 270 killed, said yesterday a desktop review of the criminal inquiry has always been the excuse to block a full investigation into how Pan Am flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie on December 21 1988.'

The Scotsman: "Lockerbie: eight other 'high-level' suspects"

'Eight suspects who may have been involved in the Lockerbie bombing have never been investigated because the Libyan government refused to co-operate with Scottish police, The Scotsman has learned. The individuals emerged as possible "high-level" suspects as part of the original inquiry into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 following the atrocity in December 1988.

'Now The Scotsman can reveal that the eight – all thought to be male – were never ruled out of the investigation because Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi refused to release them for questioning. (...)

'Meanwhile, the Crown Office moved to play down suggestions that a wholesale review of the case was under way, stressing that there was no question of the Crown reopening the case against Megrahi himself.

'A spokeswoman added: "The open case concerns only the involvement of others with Megrahi in the murder of 270 people, and the Crown will continue to pursue such lines of inquiry that become available.

'"The trial court accepted the Crown's position that Mr Megrahi acted in furtherance of the Libyan intelligence services and did not act alone." (...)

'The UK Families Flight 103 group revealed it had written to the Prime Minister demanding a full independent inquiry, a development quickly overtaken by news of the revived police investigation. Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter, Flora, died on the plane, said he was concerned the ongoing police work might be used as an excuse to block any independent public inquiry.

'His concerns were echoed by the Rev John Mosey, who lost his daughter, Helga, in the attack. He said: "It may be a damage-limitation exercise on behalf of the government in order to say, 'We are doing this instead of giving you an independent inquiry'. That would not be acceptable."'

[This cartoon from The Guardian sums things up beautifully.]

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi had secret £1.8m

[The following are excerpts from yet another breathless article in The Sunday Times.]

The Lockerbie bomber had £1.8m in a Swiss bank account when he was convicted eight years ago, it has been revealed.

The Crown Office, Scotland’s equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service, has confirmed it refused to grant bail to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi as recently as November last year because of concerns he might try to gain access to the money.

[Note by RB: At no time during the bail hearing, which I attended, did the Crown oppose interim liberation on the basis that Mr Megrahi had a bank account in Switzerland with large amounts of money in it. Nor was this one of the reasons for refusing bail given by the court in its judgment. Is the Crown Office being economical with the truth here, or did the ST journalist misunderstand what was being said to him?]

The existence of such a large sum in a personal account casts doubt on claims by the Libyan government that Megrahi was a low-ranking airline worker. (...)

[Note by RB: It has never been claimed by the Libyan government or by Mr Megrahi or his lawyers that he was "a low-ranking airline employee". He was Head of Security for Libyan Arab Airlines, a very high-level post. But that obviously does not fit the spurious case that The Sunday Times is trying to punt.]

Sources close to Megrahi’s defence team said they were aware of the bank account and had several explanations prepared ahead of his trial in the Netherlands in 2000.

They included the claim that he had been given the money by Libyan Arab Airlines, his employer, to buy aircraft parts abroad in breach of the western trade embargo in place against his country at the time of the 1988 bombing of the Pan Am plane over Scotland, in which 270 people died.

Another explanation would have been that Megrahi had been entrusted with the funds to finance an attempt to include Libya in the Paris to Dakar rally. The issue of the account was never raised by the prosecution because it came too late to be introduced as evidence at his trial. (...)

Frank Duggan, president of Victims of Pan Am 103, which represents American families, said: “This new evidence shows one more reason why Megrahi was not willing to testify.

“It seems to me that he was never the little family man who was unjustly incarcerated, as he has portrayed. He was a lifetime terrorist. The latest revelations about the money in Megrahi’s bank account are devastating to those who still say he was an innocent, low-level airline employee.”

However, Martin Cadman, whose son Bill, 32, died in the bombing, said: “I believe the case wasn’t proved against Megrahi and the easiest thing to do was to ship him back to Libya before we could hear his appeal. The money doesn’t mean he carried out the bombing.” (...)

[The following is an excerpt from the High Court's judgment in Mr Megrahi's bail application:

"[13] Another factor which can bear on release on bail is any risk of flight. The Advocate depute submitted that, although the Crown had no information to suggest that the applicant, if released on bail, had any intention of absconding, there were elements in his history, including his involvement with the Libyan intelligence services, which presented a possible risk of flight. He urged the court not to rely on the recent undertakings given by a senior official of the Libyan Diplomatic Corps to the effect that the applicant would not, if he were to attempt to abscond, be received into Libya.

"[14] The Court is not persuaded that there is a material risk of the applicant absconding, particularly if any liberation ad interim was made subject to the kind of conditions which the Crown would seek or which the applicant would accept. The applicant's historical connection with security services, which at some time may have given him access to false passports and other like facilities, does not, standing the Libyan Government's assurances, appear to the Court to be of significant current relevance."

The Journalists blog has some harsh things to say about Mark Macaskill, the journalist responsible for this and other Lockerbie stories in The Sunday Times.]