Dr Jim Swire calls on Scottish Government to institute inquiry into Crown Office Lockerbie failings

[What follows is the text of a letter sent on 21 February by Dr Jim Swire to Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill:]

Almost a year ago, the book Megrahi: You are my Jury was published in Edinburgh. Much of the key evidence it contains derives from the prosecution’s own documents, some of them only shared with the defence a few weeks before Mr Megrahi withdrew his appeal. The book and other sources contain material which demonstrates that the Crown Office and their agents behaved in ways contrary to the proper prosecution of a case under Scottish Criminal law. Two outstanding examples amongst many others are the emergence, and reliance upon, the circuit board fragment known as PT35b with its ‘pure tin’ plating, and the concealment of the break-in evidence from Heathrow airport.

This letter is not an attack upon the verdict. It is a request to you to investigate what errors were made by the prosecution during the conduct of the investigation, the trial and in the subsequent years, and also in the SCCRC investigation.

It was claimed by the prosecution that PT35b had been found within a police evidence bag, and that it had come from the crash site. Yet we now know that this fragment simply could not have come from the timer circuitry of the Lockerbie bomb, if that bomb had been driven by a Libyan timer as cited.  The plating metallurgy is simply irreconcilably different.

Even the Crown’s forensic officer Feraday’s marginal notes show he was aware of the plating discrepancy long before the trial, by 1991 in fact, before the indictments had even been issued. Yet he signed a forensic document claiming that the fragment was ‘similar in all respects’ to the Libyan boards.

The work initiated by Feraday on PT35b, showed the plating discrepancy and was  available to the prosecution  long before the trial. The police did not pursue this matter with Thüring, who have confirmed that their sole plating process was with the tin/lead alloy as on DP347a, a sample Libyan type board. Finally the scientific evidence provided to the defence by Dr Chris McArdle and Dr Jess Cawley just before Mr Megrahi went home, confirmed the ‘pure tin’ plating of PT35b but also proved that proximity to exploding Semtex could not alter tin/lead plating to resemble ‘pure tin’ plating. This was work the prosecution had failed to initiate.

The court was thus misled into believing that PT35b could have been part of one of the Libyan timers which the prosecution had cited. The adoption of this belief was due to the failure of the prosecution to share all relevant evidence with the defence or the court, and to initiate all the appropriate testing. That belief is now demonstrably false.

As you are aware, Kenny, since you have had access to their materials, the SCCRC also knew that the prosecution had withheld evidence from the defence, but did not seem to realise that Thüring simply had no equipment capable of manufacturing circuit boards using the ‘pure tin’ process, failing to understand that in the industry ‘tinning’ refers equally to tin/lead as to ‘pure tin’ plating.

No other origin for PT35b other than the wreckage was ever suggested in court. PT35b was an optically perfect copy of circuitry demonstrated by the prosecution to have been present on the cited Libyan boards. The Crown Office and its agents were responsible for the sanctity of the evidence chain and the evidence bags. No one knows whence PT35b could have come, where it was made nor how it came to be found in the police evidence bag. All we know is that PT35b’s origin could not have been from a Libyan owned timer as cited by the prosecution.

I found that two weeks ago neither the Crown Office nor the police had even bothered to contact the Thüring firm’s Urs Bonfadelli, nor the scientists responsible for the discovery that PT35b’s plating could not have been changed even by a Semtex explosion, in all the more than eleven months since the book was published. Why not?

The concealment of the PT35b plating discrepancy by the Crown’s chief forensics officer, Feraday, the police and the Crown Office, allowed the court to presume that PT35b must have been part of a cited Libyan owned timer, when it clearly could not have been. The relevant documents were available to the prosecution long before the trial, but only discovered by the defence after the trial was over.

In February 2012 the Lord Advocate himself invited us relatives to a meeting in London to explain new moves being made in the criminal investigation. I chose to ask him for an explanation as to why the Heathrow break-in evidence had not been passed to the defence and the court as part of the relevant evidence. He claimed he had also wondered why, but did not know the answer. I then asked the current Chief Constable of the Dumfries and Galloway police, to see if he could discover the answer on our behalf. He did so most courteously and promptly. His letter is enclosed. It shows that the Dumfries and Galloway police of the day knew of the break-in from January 1989, kept this to themselves for a full decade, passed it to the Crown Office only in 1999 and then, together with the Crown Office, kept it hidden from the defence and the court until after the trial was over. Why?

The evidence concerning the break-in only surfaced in 2001 after the trial  had finished. Even then the only reason it did so was that the Heathrow guard who had discovered the break-in was bold enough to ask publicly why his evidence had been ignored by the court.

The prosecution appears to have failed us all  in this case, the Heathrow break-in and the PT35b plating are but two of many other examples. There is a special obligation upon Governments to make available the evidence to the families of victims of murder. There is also an obligation upon our prosecution service to bring fair and prompt justice upon murderers. Thanks to the failures of the Crown Office, and their searchers as your prosecuting authority, it falls to your Government to investigate all these failures. I therefore request that you immediately arrange for  the creation of a properly endowed and objectively led inquiry into the apparent failings of the Crown Office in prosecuting this dreadful case, selecting as members and chairperson individuals acceptable as impartial to the relatives and to the people of Scotland.

I will make this letter available to the Scottish public also. They too deserve to know whether steps are now to be taken by their Government to explore the performance of the Crown Office prosecution in this  case and to enact legislation to curtail any future such deviation from their duty, as may be found by such an inquiry.

The court was misled

What follows is the text of an item published on this blog on this date in 2013:

Dr Jim Swire calls on Scottish Government to institute inquiry into Crown Office Lockerbie failings

[What follows is the text of a letter sent on 21 February by Dr Jim Swire to Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, and the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill:]

Almost a year ago, the book Megrahi: You are my Jury was published in Edinburgh. Much of the key evidence it contains derives from the prosecution’s own documents, some of them only shared with the defence a few weeks before Mr Megrahi withdrew his appeal. The book and other sources contain material which demonstrates that the Crown Office and their agents behaved in ways contrary to the proper prosecution of a case under Scottish Criminal law. Two outstanding examples amongst many others are the emergence, and reliance upon, the circuit board fragment known as PT35b with its ‘pure tin’ plating, and the concealment of the break-in evidence from Heathrow airport.

This letter is not an attack upon the verdict. It is a request to you to investigate what errors were made by the prosecution during the conduct of the investigation, the trial and in the subsequent years, and also in the SCCRC investigation.

It was claimed by the prosecution that PT35b had been found within a police evidence bag, and that it had come from the crash site. Yet we now know that this fragment simply could not have come from the timer circuitry of the Lockerbie bomb, if that bomb had been driven by a Libyan timer as cited.  The plating metallurgy is simply irreconcilably different.

Even the Crown’s forensic officer Feraday’s marginal notes show he was aware of the plating discrepancy long before the trial, by 1991 in fact, before the indictments had even been issued. Yet he signed a forensic document claiming that the fragment was ‘similar in all respects’ to the Libyan boards.

The work initiated by Feraday on PT35b, showed the plating discrepancy and was  available to the prosecution  long before the trial. The police did not pursue this matter with Thüring, who have confirmed that their sole plating process was with the tin/lead alloy as on DP347a, a sample Libyan type board. Finally the scientific evidence provided to the defence by Dr Chris McArdle and Dr Jess Cawley just before Mr Megrahi went home, confirmed the ‘pure tin’ plating of PT35b but also proved that proximity to exploding Semtex could not alter tin/lead plating to resemble ‘pure tin’ plating. This was work the prosecution had failed to initiate.

The court was thus misled into believing that PT35b could have been part of one of the Libyan timers which the prosecution had cited. The adoption of this belief was due to the failure of the prosecution to share all relevant evidence with the defence or the court, and to initiate all the appropriate testing. That belief is now demonstrably false.

As you are aware, Kenny, since you have had access to their materials, the SCCRC also knew that the prosecution had withheld evidence from the defence, but did not seem to realise that Thüring simply had no equipment capable of manufacturing circuit boards using the ‘pure tin’ process, failing to understand that in the industry ‘tinning’ refers equally to tin/lead as to ‘pure tin’ plating.

No other origin for PT35b other than the wreckage was ever suggested in court. PT35b was an optically perfect copy of circuitry demonstrated by the prosecution to have been present on the cited Libyan boards. The Crown Office and its agents were responsible for the sanctity of the evidence chain and the evidence bags. No one knows whence PT35b could have come, where it was made nor how it came to be found in the police evidence bag. All we know is that PT35b’s origin could not have been from a Libyan owned timer as cited by the prosecution.

I found that two weeks ago neither the Crown Office nor the police had even bothered to contact the Thüring firm’s Urs Bonfadelli, nor the scientists responsible for the discovery that PT35b’s plating could not have been changed even by a Semtex explosion, in all the more than eleven months since the book was published. Why not?

The concealment of the PT35b plating discrepancy by the Crown’s chief forensics officer, Feraday, the police and the Crown Office, allowed the court to presume that PT35b must have been part of a cited Libyan owned timer, when it clearly could not have been. The relevant documents were available to the prosecution long before the trial, but only discovered by the defence after the trial was over.

In February 2012 the Lord Advocate himself invited us relatives to a meeting in London to explain new moves being made in the criminal investigation. I chose to ask him for an explanation as to why the Heathrow break-in evidence had not been passed to the defence and the court as part of the relevant evidence. He claimed he had also wondered why, but did not know the answer. I then asked the current Chief Constable of the Dumfries and Galloway police, to see if he could discover the answer on our behalf. He did so most courteously and promptly. His letter is enclosed. It shows that the Dumfries and Galloway police of the day knew of the break-in from January 1989, kept this to themselves for a full decade, passed it to the Crown Office only in 1999 and then, together with the Crown Office, kept it hidden from the defence and the court until after the trial was over. Why?

The evidence concerning the break-in only surfaced in 2001 after the trial  had finished. Even then the only reason it did so was that the Heathrow guard who had discovered the break-in was bold enough to ask publicly why his evidence had been ignored by the court.

The prosecution appears to have failed us all in this case, the Heathrow break-in and the PT35b plating are but two of many other examples. There is a special obligation upon Governments to make available the evidence to the families of victims of murder. There is also an obligation upon our prosecution service to bring fair and prompt justice upon murderers. Thanks to the failures of the Crown Office, and their searchers as your prosecuting authority, it falls to your Government to investigate all these failures. I therefore request that you immediately arrange for  the creation of a properly endowed and objectively led inquiry into the apparent failings of the Crown Office in prosecuting this dreadful case, selecting as members and chairperson individuals acceptable as impartial to the relatives and to the people of Scotland.

I will make this letter available to the Scottish public also. They too deserve to know whether steps are now to be taken by their Government to explore the performance of the Crown Office prosecution in this  case and to enact legislation to curtail any future such deviation from their duty, as may be found by such an inquiry.

Can you believe it?

[What follows is Dr Jim Swire’s account of the showing of Gideon Levy’s Lockerbie Revisited in the Scottish Parliament the previous evening:]

I saw the film last night in the Scottish Parliament. Lord Fraser, Stuart Henderson, Richard Marquise, Fred Whitehurst, Tom Thurman, Prof Hans Koechler and Robert Baer all made contributions in it.

The subject was the famous 'timer circuit board fragment', called PT35B in the court records.

There was evidence of widespread confusion over what was supposed to have been the way in which PT35B was handled, some claimed it had been to the USA others that it had not. The impression was that at least some of these were trying to contribute to a story the truth of which they did not want us to know.

Their stories could not all be true, for they differ widely.

'Oh what a complex web we weave when first we practice to deceive'

For me Robert Baer of the CIA was the most significant. His view was basically that of course it was a Iranian/Syrian job, but that even the USA (and therefore the UK) could not confront Iran militarily over it. That would, without question, have been to strangle the straits of Hormuz and therefore US oil supplies for a start. That sounds common sense to me.

The interviewer of these men was Gideon Levy himself [the film-maker], who showed great skill in extracting a maximum of information from them.

There was one criticism and that was that the film did show the famous picture of a tiny piece of circuit board on someone's finger tip. This is a picture of a shattered piece from a domestic cct board such as a tape recorder. It carried the codes of the former components printed in white on the fragment which appeared to have been of 'Paxolin' (mid brown) and bore no resemblance to a piece of fibre-glass board.

Use of this image will cause some confusion and allow the critics to get their knives in.

Otherwise it gave excellent support to the idea that the PT35B fragment has a very suspicious history, lacking the confirmed freedom from interference required of any significant item of 'evidence' for use in a murder trial.

I was able to point out at the end that PT35B also appeared to be something that could hardly have survived such close proximity to the Semtex charge, and that at least two independent explosives firms have confirmed this. Also that its police evidence bag had had its label interfered with, while its entry into the UK forensic report appeared to have been a hasty afterthought, requiring renumbering of the subsequent pages.

There is also said to be evidence that PT35B was never tested prior to the trial, for explosives residues, but that this has now been done and shown no trace of such residues.

Incredibly one contributor to the film claimed that the failure to do this was 'for reasons of economy'. Can you believe it? PT35B was only the most important forensic item in the entire 'evidence' armoury.

The Dutch TV documentary and reactions

[The Herald's report on the film shown last night in the Scottish Parliament can be read here. A letter from Dr Jim Swire in the same newspaper can be read here. The following are two accounts of the film from persons who attended the showing, and to whom I am extremely grateful.]

1. From Dr Swire

I saw the film last night in the Scottish Parliament. Lord Fraser, Stuart Henderson, Richard Marquise, Fred Whitehurst, Tom Thurman, Prof Hans Koechler and Robert Baer all made contributions in it.

The subject was the famous 'timer circuit board fragment', called PT35B in the court records.

There was evidence of widespread confusion over what was supposed to have been the way in which PT35B was handled, some claimed it had been to the USA others that it had not. The impression was that at least some of these were trying to contribute to a story the truth of which they did not want us to know.

Their stories could not all be true, for they differ widely.

'Oh what a complex web we weave when first we practice to deceive'

For me Robert Baer of the CIA was the most significant. His view was basically that of course it was a Iranian/Syrian job, but that even the USA (and therefore the UK) could not confront Iran militarily over it. That would, without question, have been to strangle the straits of Hormuz and therefore US oil supplies for a start. That sounds common sense to me.

The interviewer of these men was Gideon Levy himself [the film-maker], who showed great skill in extracting a maximum of information from them.

There was one criticism and that was that the film did show the famous picture of a tiny piece of circuit board on someone's finger tip. This is a picture of a shattered piece from a domestic cct board such as a tape recorder. It carried the codes of the former components printed in white on the fragment which appeared to have been of 'Paxolin' (mid brown) and bore no resemblance to a piece of fibre-glass board.

Use of this image will cause some confusion and allow the critics to get their knives in.

Otherwise it gave excellent support to the idea that the PT35B fragment has a very suspicious history, lacking the confirmed freedom from interference required of any significant item of 'evidence' for use in a murder trial.

I was able to point out at the end that PT35B also appeared to be something that could hardly have survived such close proximity to the Semtex charge, and that at least two independent explosives firms have confirmed this. Also that its police evidence bag had had its label interfered with, while its entry into the UK forensic report appeared to have been a hasty afterthought, requiring renumbering of the subsequent pages.

There is also said to be evidence that PT35B was never tested prior to the trial, for explosives residues, but that this has now been done and shown no trace of such residues.

Incredibly one contributor to the film claimed that the failure to do this was ' for reasons of economy'. Can you believe it? PT35B was only the most important forensic item in the entire 'evidence' armoury.

2. From an interested observer

Although the film obviously had the approval of all (or most?) of those present, my own feeling is that it required the audience to already know something – of course it did the usual intro.

Around 18:05, Christine Grahame (MSP) introduced one or two of the better known names. Then hands over to Gideon Levy who introduces his film – played, I think, from his laptop to a beamer (not the BMW variety). His preamble is simply to say we will see conflicting statement between CIA and Scottish authorities.

*Film starts

*Initially just various quotes for effect, giving cause to doubt the verdict. And then showing that he has been to a ceremony for the 20th anniversary at Arlington.

*In charge of the investigation were Marquise (FBI) and Stewart Henderson, Scottish Police.

*Interview with Hans Köchler and a review of his opinion; why one guilty verdict and one not guilty? Initial indictment based on conspiracy, so how could it change?

*Interview with Ian Ferguson [co-author of Cover-Up of Convenience: The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie] (who turns up at other times in film).

*Chopping of interviews with Bob Baer (ex CIA), Fred Whitehurst (FBI), and Marquise and Lord Fraser; he (Levy) required of all his interviewees a handshake on their saying that they’d tell him the truth. They all agreed (although one of them – possibly Marquise, can’t remember – did reserve the right not to answer a question).

*Fraser says his successors (4 or 5 of different parties) could have stopped the proceeding

*Marquise shown Bob Baer saying he had been a bomb maker for the CIA. He (BB) found it very unlikely that anyone would have a bomb transferred from Malta to Frankfurt to Heathrow and onwards.

*BB mentions PFLP-GC (on behalf of Iran) being responsible after the USS Vincennes/Iran Air

*Why was the agent Khreesat released back to Jordan by the German BKA; Fraser said K was double agent of PFLP and CIA; Marquise suggested double agent of PFLP and Jordan spying agency.

*Ferguson (on film) now says there was a change of focus in the investigation because the U.S. was somehow involved.

*A video is shown of Gaddafi (we have to rely on subtitles naturally) saying U.S. companies have had to pay to get back in to Libya – the same amount as Libya has paid out to relatives of victims.

*Marquise says no money paid to witnesses prior to the trial; does not answer regarding after the trial.

*Fraser says he gave instructions, there should be no money to be paid to witnesses; admits he was conscious of the effects if discovered afterwards.

*Tom Thurman explains his analysis of the circuit chip which he found – it is pointed out by Gideon Levy that T.T’s degree is in political science.

*Whitehurst says that Thurman altered his (W.’s) reports. W. also asks why the chip was given to the FBI when the Brits should have experts to look at it. (Fraser denies knowing chip was ever in USA). W. claims it is Thurman’s finger behind the chip fragment in the photo ‘going the rounds’ – later in film, TT seems to agree, or at least lets the comment of Levy go without any complaint. Marquise says it was brought to the U.S. – Fraser is seen raising his eyebrows!

*Ferguson asks why fragment not tested for explosive residue – talk of cost, but various people waffle (sorry can’t really explain what was going on here, except that people could not really believe cost was a factor).

*Fraser states that he was never satisfied with the investigation that went into the PFLP-GC – should have been pushed further to show that they were not involved.

*Thurman denies that he was thrown out of his job, he retired voluntarily; his opinion regarding the fragment was verified in England.

*Marquise acknowledges “People don’t trust government”

*Then Marquise at Arlington (in company of Henderson) says the fragment was never in the U.S., but the circuit board was in the U.S. (yes, I am confused – perhaps he was talking of an example of such a circuit board). Henderson confirms fragment never left the U.K. Henderson says loudly in walking away ‘culprit is in custody’.

*Film ends, but Levy now adds that he received a letter from Marquise after the shooting while the film was being completed to say that (effectively) to clarify the interview he had given, he agrees that the fragment did come to Washington but under the control of Faraday of the U.K.

After the film, the two MSPs Christine Grahame and Margo MacDonald lead the ‘discussion’ – not much is actually discussed – mostly just points people want to draw attention to. Dr Swire speaks first on the film, and then to the question of the break-in at Heathrow the night before the crash. Asks why there were no restrictions on flights because of that breach of security. Also wanted to know why details of the break-in only became public knowledge (or at least available to defence) very late. Prof John Grant gives his opinion and is asked a couple of legal questions by one of the MSPs. Swire also asks Grant about the break-in and whether it can still be used in argument. Grant wants to know why Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission have not published their reasons – says they do publish a couple of wishy-washy (my words) paragraphs, but no detail.

Only truth, not revenge, allows us to heal and forgive

[This is part of the headline over an article by Dr Jim Swire published in today's edition of Scotland on Sunday. A longer version of the article reads as follows:]

Looking at the situation in the Middle East, we may never have a better opportunity to decry the use of brute force, public deception and material power as a route to bettering our future than we have at this moment. 

On 3rd July 1988 the USS Vincennes a cutting edge American missile cruiser equipped with a state of the art Aegis weapons control system, and commanded by (the late) Captain Will C Rogers III was in the Persian Gulf. American warships then were busy protecting international oil tanker traffic in the straits of Hormuz from Iranian attacks. History repeats itself.

Back in 1988 the Vincennes’ helicopter had reported coming under fire from Iranian speedboats, and though unscathed was ordered back to the Vincennes. The ship herself turned into Iranian waters in order to fire back at the Iranian speedboats, known as ‘Boghammers’, with which she then immediately engaged. At this time the ship’s radar picked up the trace of an aircraft climbing out of Bandar Abbas Airport (Iran). This was Iran Air Flight 655 an airliner with 290 people aboard. The airport supported both civil and military aircraft. Those interested to learn more might attempt to get access to a copy of STORM CENTER the USS Vincennes and Iran Air Flight 655 published by the (US) Naval Institute Press ISBN 1 755750 727 9, a personal account of tragedy and terrorism by Will and Sharon Rogers. It is a riveting account from the cutting edge by the Vincennes’ captain and his family.

Back on that 3rd of July 1988, the ship’s captain Will C Rogers III was led to misinterpret the radar trace of IR Flight 655 as being an attacking Iranian warplane, but it must be remembered this occurred in the tense circumstances of the fire from the Boghammers, and the restrictions placed on his ship’s duties from higher levels of the US navy. 

We humans do all make mistakes. 

Two of the ships missiles were fired and destroyed the airliner: the wreckage and the 290 bodies plunged into the waters of the Hormuz straits, killing all aboard; among cheers over the threat-resolution from the crew [and a from a media team who happened to be recording the amazing facilities of the ship and her technology that day.]

Captain Rogers remained in charge of his ship, and was later awarded the Legion of Merit decoration "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer of USS Vincennes from April 1987 to May 1989”, though IR655 was downed in 1988. The award was given for his service as the Commanding Officer of Vincennes, specifically highlighting his tactical skills and leadership in the Persian Gulf, including engagements with Iranian surface craft. There was no mention there of flight IR655.

Iranian sources immediately publicly swore revenge upon “The Great Satan”, over the tragic loss of IR655 with all those people aboard. 

In November 1991, Scottish and American prosecutors simultaneously indicted Libyans Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. Both were identified as members of the Libyan intelligence service. This was a sudden dramatic reversal of the previous years of work between the disaster in 1988 at Lockerbie and 1991, in which time intelligence services had concluded, as do we now, that the Lockerbie bombing was a revenge attack by Iran in return for the fate of IR 655. 

Within some ten days of this startling about turn [published simultaneously in the USA and by Scotland’s Lord Advocate], to blaming Libya, for the Lockerbie disaster, two Western hostages, one of whom happened to be the British Terry Waite an emissary of the UK’s then archbishop of Canterbury and both having been held by Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, were released, others soon followed. 

Now that the Persian Gulf is again sporting US warships, with Iran’s leaders no doubt plotting how to manage the repercussions of being bombed this time by US and Israeli warplanes, and also with US marine groups on their way. We need to heed the words of German philosopher Georg Hegel: “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” 

For starters the subsequent bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 has been shown for our group ‘’UK Families-Flight 103’ by our own careful researches over more than 38 years, to have been the work of Iran, through the use of Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP-GC terrorist group in Damascus acting as mercenaries and financed - just as Hezbollah in the Bekaa has always been - by the Iranian Ayatollas. The PFLP-GC workshop in Damascus was where a set of cunning IED bombs intended to destroy aircraft in flight was made, under Jordanian Marwan Khreesat meanwhile the capture of a terrorist intermediary had confirmed to us [through incriminating documents found on his person by CIA assets], the passage of funds from Iran to Jibril’s group.

We had also obtained in early 1989 access to an illustrated warning sent in July 1988 to the UK Government, [among many others], by the German BKA police group under Herr Rainer Gobel. Containing colour photographs and descriptions of bombs recovered by them from members of Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP-GC Palestinian terrorist group now caught in the small German town of Neuss, convenient to Frankfurt airport.

Please study the story contained in our book LOCKERBIE: a father’s search for justice (ISBN 978 1 78027 920 6: Birlinn, Edinburgh, reprinted 2025) to understand how our search for the truth as to who had murdered our families was pressed forward over the decades, and how it came to fundamentally differ from the official account. It has had no driving force other than the need for us to know the truth about who really had murdered our family members, and to improve, if we could, the protection for other air travellers in the future. Many who have attempted to understand what is said to be the complex story of why Lockerbie happened, seem unaware of how it was shown that the one seemingly solid link between the bomb used at Lockerbie is nothing other than fake news. The link to Malta for the bomb simply did not exist. Its main support among the story tellers of the world was a tiny fingernail sized fragment of circuit board, named from the Zeist trial onwards as PT35b, and allegedly recovered from the crash debris at the site of the tragedy.

The first pointer we got as to the significance of this forensic element ‘PT35b’ found inside a Scottish police evidence bag and produced in court as proof of the concept of the bomb’s travel from Malta, was words from the USA attributed to Richard Marquise working on the tragedy for the FBI from the USA, who is alleged to have said that a court trial without this tiny piece of evidence would not have been possible.

This fragment now known as ‘PT35b’ was treated with great gravity by those attempting to defend the two accused Libyans. The fragment was submitted to electron microscopic and spectroscopic analysis. What that showed was that in the two surviving tracks on it’s small surface, the copper had been plated with pure tin.

At first this seemed part of the normal manufacturing processes used by a reputable Swiss firm ‘Turing’ who were supplying circuit boards to MEBO, who in turn had made the ‘MST13’ digital timers some of which were supplied by MEBO to the Libyans, and which the prosecution decided had been used for the Lockerbie bomb.

There were however two major problems: FIRST,During the intervening years between the disaster and the trial, the electronics industry had undergone a significant change. Those responsible at an international level for industrial and domestic waste disposal practices had become acutely aware of the risks to human health from the metal lead both in the domestic environment and when deposited in landfill. Rapidly it was decided that the metal lead must be removed from domestic use and in the platings on electronic circuit boards. With the cooperation of the EU, Japan and America in particular, it was agreed that all lead should be forbidden in the manufacture of electronic printed circuit boards. Meanwhile statements from Turing about their circuit board manufacture until after December 1988 confirmed that their output was universally made from boards plated in the standard electronic platings of the time, in which the blend of metals used always consisted of tin and lead.

Turing’s director Bonfadelli signed a sworn statement that his firm had been equipped solely for the application of tin/lead platings, before 1988 and so could not have made the board from which ‘PT35b’ would have had to have come. 

Second, the police evidence bag in which the fragment PT35b was found was unique in having had its label altered, and in such a way as to make it evident that debris within should be examined, rather than only the charred cloth also within, (which was readily shown to have originated from Malta). The Zeist court failed to have the details of who might have altered the label and what his/her motives might have been for doing so probed.

It was clear that neither the Scottish police nor any agent for the Crown Office were remotely likely to be responsible for originating ‘PT35b’, for we know that the investigating Scots police were in possession of pristine circuit boards given to them by MEBO, and that these were coated with a tin/lead alloy from which the lead could not be removed by the heat or blast of a Semtex explosion.

The likely origin for PT35b therefore seems to lie outwith the investigating team in Scotland, even though ‘PT35b’ was first revealed from a police evidence bag, and access to the police evidential bags seems to have been most generous for American agents from the FBI or intelligence agents also from the US. Without the ability to investigate the detailed behaviour of US agents in the investigation, we were made aware that a MEBO type timer had been acquired by the CIA from a site in Togo and that that evidence was passed from the CIA to the FBI, to an operative called James Thurman working in the FBI’s laboratories. This man broke the news to US media that he was the man who identified the CIA materials given to him which carried with them Libyan tainted details. He was lauded as man of the month, for establishing in many US minds the concept that this was a link to Libya. Unfortunately Mr James Thurman was soon removed from his position in the FBI labs after it came to light that internal investigations had shown persistent distortions by him of evidence in other FBI major investigations, his removal seems to have been the work of his superior ‘line manager’ Whitehurst. 

There can be no doubt that access to potentially evidential materials was gained by US agents right from the earliest hours following the disaster itself, and that this was found shocking by some who were honestly engaged in extensive searching of the disaster crash site. The late Labour MP Tam Dalyell had experienced the doubts of many who had been witnesses to the early evolution of the police investigations. We had hoped that people within the US would gather what evidence they could, and we never have wanted to disturb any ‘closure’ that American bereaved families might feel they had obtained for themselves.

Recent international political and military events, particularly some emanating from the USA have confirmed what we had already discovered the hard way: truth had been suborned into US foreign policy and there crushed underfoot along with the interests of those bereaved families in the UK who merely sought that truth. Inability to reach that truth is echoed in the subheading of the Washington Post newspaper: ‘democracy dies in darkness’.

Knowingly or not those currently assaulting Iran and her people from above will now find themselves embedded in asymmetrical warfare. The story of how Vincennes captain Will Rogers III’s wife Sharon came to escape miraculously from the shrapnel of a powerful pipe-bomb placed underneath the family’s van within the Continental USA itself in 1989 should leave no doubt about that prediction. American investigators were ‘unable to discover’ who had planted that pipe bomb.

Just so long as those in power in Iran, (Ayatollahs or not), remain in power and able to slake their lust for revenge, so long will the world be a needlessly dangerous place. The Iranian people on the other hand have tried to make their dissatisfaction with their regime known with the greatest bravery, losing around10,000 citizens' lives to the weapons of their own rulers recently.

It is a desperately sad aspect of humanity that the first visceral reaction that comes into so many of our human brains when we are attacked, or worse still those we love are killed, is to seek revenge. Yet it does not have to be so. We do not in our group ‘UK Families-Flight 103’ seek revenge against Iran for the Lockerbie atrocity. We have sought the truth, and not simply in ’Truth Social’ either. 

Knowledge of what the truth really is about the origins of the dreadful attack on Pan Am 103, has only reinforced the realisation for us that revenge is self-defeating and generates hatred and the lust for revenge. 

Revenge attempted by Iran against the family of the Captain of the Vincennes was amplified for many through the killing of 270 people at Lockerbie. Yet there still is another way; from accepting the truth of where blame lies could spring the roots of healing. If on the other hand, for reasons of State, of International Politics or simply from our own human nature we were to enlarge or repeat the words and acts of revenge, where then would be the route to forgiveness or healing? One cannot forget, but can forgive. Even for that, we need to know the truth.

Sometimes it is educational to remember days long past when young. As an eight year old boy, the writer living in the Scottish Island of Skye was aware of family links to Canada, whose current leader speaks so much free common sense nowadays. There, like so many in Scotland we had Canadian cousins, who unlike us in 1946 had freedom already to buy as much food as they required, and who sometimes were able to send to us food parcels to help fill the limitations of post World War 2 rationing. One day a large parcel from Canada arrived for us, inside were large packets of tea and white sugar, sent with love.

Seated around a dining room table in Skye our family were set to work, the younger ones with sharp eyes, but the adults also dedicated to the task of disentangling the contents of those bags, for they had burst and the sugar and the tea leaves so precious to us in those days had mixed in the jumbling of their travels. We were separating tea leaves from grains of sugar. It took all day, with the rain beating on the windows as though it disapproved of this affront to the limits of the post war rationing. Sometimes it is all too easy to think of people together as if all were to be tarred with the same brush and to think that all the parcel contents were good for would be to make cups of exceedingly sweet tea, or plates of sweet but tannin laden porridge. Dealing with Iran can be like failing to disentangle the sweet from the sour. It would be wise to think of Iranian people not as evil but like a mixed up parcel, just like we are here. Iran, after all is the remaining rootstock of one of the greatest civilisations the world has ever seen and its people of today may hold the seed-corn of a great future.

Not being Iranians ourselves we should not seek to distinguish between one Iranian and another, we are not this time best placed to tell the ‘sugar' from the 'tea leaves' and can only say that those who claim to run their Iranian 'theocracy’ have, over many years, held themselves free to attack and destroy the lives of others indiscriminately, whether or not those others appeared to have any connection other than just their nation or even just their common language with any acts of violence or hatred.

True, Iranians have emerged to find themselves governed by a ‘theocracy’ which they themselves may have summoned back from France, but which, given the reins of power, corrupted itself through the lust for even greater influence through militarism and terrorist-related bloody revenge.

Our Western bible does tell us stories of the life of Jesus, and at Easter we are there bidden to remember even stories of resurrection and glory. Let us though not forget, believers or not, how, in one such story when a woman was to be stoned to death for adultery, none of the accusing rabble of men could convincingly tell himself that he ‘at least’ was free of sin, and so they did not cast the first stone, but slunk away, and the woman lived. Elsewhere in that book we are told ‘judge not, that you be not judged, and forgive even those who have sinned grievously against us.

Both Iran and the UK whether Muslim, Christian, agnostic, or atheist can read or listen to the teachings which Jesus Christ left behind, namely that judgement of others should be the realm of God, not us, and that our privilege is to love one another.

By chance it so happens that only last week in England was enthroned a fresh Archbishop of Canterbury, for the first time ever in history a woman. How healing it would be if the people of Iran who have suffered so much already could somehow come to forgive their Western assailants. How hard that would be today with bombs and missiles being showered on them.

But meanwhile here in an act of amnesty towards our little group of Lockerbie victims, (‘UK Families - Flight 103’) now that the bonds between our own country and the USA have loosened considerably, and the truth has been so often crushed, perhaps the restrictions upon being allowed to know the contents of all the files that our own country keeps relevant to Lockerbie, but has kept out of public or media sight in Kew all these years, could be released for us to see. It was after all our loved ones who were killed, and time must have loosened both the need for security over the events of December 1988 and the need to protect any ongoing idea of prosecuting the guilty. We only seek to know the truth and after so many years surely the whole of the truth known, by our Government at least, about the atrocity over Lockerbie could be allowed out into the daylight? As the Washington Post heading proclaims ‘Democracy dies in Darkness'.

We are being cheated of the truth

[What follows is Dr Jim Swire’s reaction to the Crown Office’s intemperate statement about Justice for Megrahi’s letter to Kenny MacAskill alleging serious wrongdoing in the Lockerbie investigation and prosecution:]

This is not the time for the Crown Office to proclaim their innocence. It is the time for them to produce credible proof, if such there be, that the very serious allegations lodged against them by the Justice for Megrahi group are false.

According to an article in The Scotsman, the Crown Office recently quoted the SCCRC as having pointed out it had found no basis for the allegation that any 'police officers or officials' fabricated evidence.

So far as I am aware  no one alleges that Scottish police officers or Scottish 'officials' might have fabricated evidence. This claim presumably refers to the circuit board fragment known as PT35b

PT35b, was a crucial prop for the story of a long running timer having  been used from Malta. We now know that it could not have come, as the Crown claimed in court, from the batch of timers sold to the Libyans by the MEBO company of Zurich and manufactured by Thuring AG..

The pattern of tracks on PT35b were a perfect optical mimic of those on a corner of the Libyan boards, yet as John Ashton's book Megrahi: You are my Jury showed in May of this year, the metallurgy used for PT35b was novel and simply not available to Thuring AG, the manufacturer of the Libyan boards.

This combination of optical mimicry in an item incapable of having come from the crucial Libyan owned boards, certainly seems to carry the stigma of fabrication, including that word's modern gloss of 'the deliberate presentation of an object or story with the  intention to deceive'.

There is however as yet no evidence as to who might have fabricated PT35b, only questions about the way it seems to have entered the evidence chain, claimed to have been found inside a Scottish police evidence bag, whose label had been improperly altered by an unknown hand.

Simpler and very serious in its own right is the question of why the Crown Office (and that includes the Dumfries and Galloway police) withheld information about the Heathrow break-in from the defence and the Zeist court.

The defence would have divulged to the CO well before the trial had even started that they intended to lead a defence of incrimination, and this must have included the intention of incriminating the Syrian group called the PFLP-GC and the use of one of their specialised IEDs (bombs).

The details of these bombs were well known to the (West German) police experts with whom the Scottish police had multiple meetings.

The police (and therefore the CO) knew, or should have known, that these bombs were available to terrorists in 1988 and were inert until they sensed a drop in air pressure following take-off. They also knew or should have known that once triggered following take off, these IEDs would always explode 30-45 minutes into a flight.

The Lockerbie flight lasted 38 minutes out of Heathrow.

The Zeist court was told that the Syrian timers were not adjustable, therefore access to the airport of take-off of the targeted aircraft itself was mandatory for the terrorist.

We now know (courtesy of Chief Constable Patrick Shearer in a letter to myself) that the D & G police were aware by January 1989 that Heathrow had been broken into 16 hours before Lockerbie, close to where the PA103 bags were loaded that evening. Yet the defence and the court were denied this evidence until after the verdict had been reached at Zeist.

Why?

For the UN special observer to the trial, Prof Hans Koechler, the failure by the Crown to share information such as this with the defence team guaranteed that the trial could not be described as fair.

For me as a father the thought that the terrorist infiltrator might have been so close to my daughter below the corridors of Heathrow airport that night, as to be able to hear their chatter as the passengers headed for the excitement of Christmas in America still makes me very angry. Nothing useful had been done to trace the intruder.

We know that Lockerbie was a revenge attack, however to seek revenge for mistakes made by Heathrow or the Crown Office and their investigators as individuals smacks of a sinking towards the level of the terrorists themselves.

Our search as UK relatives has always been for truth and justice. To that we would dearly love to add a contribution to building something good out of something so evil as this atrocity.

Just as in medicine, curing a cancer may mean curetting out the last vestiges of the tumour, so in this dreadful case we must define what went wrong in the greatest possible detail, if the best corrective steps are to be imposed.for the future benefit of all our people.

As a mature society we need to pass the investigation of and the fall-out from serious crime to a justice system immune to extrinsic interference or the favouring of any interests outside the pursuit of truth. The blindfold on the eyes of justice needs to fit perfectly.

We need to have confidence that this is so, and we need to see justice done and done promptly.

Frankly, I was shocked when the current Lord Advocate, in February of this year, told us relatives that he had wondered why the Heathrow evidence had not been available to the Zeist court but had been unable to find out.

The complaints from JFM surely demand independent and prompt investigation, and their call is for a full and independent inquiry.

As relatives, we have a right to know who killed our families and why they were not protected. How sad that nearly 25 years after their brutal murders we still find that we are being cheated of the truth.

I do not wish to know whether the Crown Office considers itself innocent. I have known the answer to that for years. I wish to see independent and fully empowered minds brought to bear at last upon these issues, to our enlightenment, and to the lasting benefit of all of Scotland's people.

The origin of the Lockerbie bomb

[This is the headline over a letter from Dr Jim Swire published in today's edition of The Sunday Times of Malta, following an article in last Sunday's edition of the newspaper. The letter reads as follows:]

After all these years of attempting to discover the truth about the murder of my daughter, Flora and all those 269 others, our group UK Families-Flight 103 have researched the allegations in depth. That search has always and only been for truth.

If there is one aspect of the tragedy about which we are certain, it is that the Lockerbie bomb did not start its journey from Malta.

There seems no robust evidence to show that it did do so, other than the bought ‘evidence’ given by Tony Gauci concerning the buying of clothes from Mary’s House in Sliema and the discovery of a fragment of circuit board produced in the Zeist court from within a Scots police evidence bag.

It is clear that the fragment of circuit board, which was labelled PT35b in the Zeist court, was planted false evidence. It has been repeatedly carefully analysed in the UK by a series of responsible and academic authorities. These analyses showed that the copper tracks on PT35b had been plated with pure tin, not the alloy of tin and lead which was in universal professional use in 1988.

In addition, a series of trial explosions were conducted for the Zeist defence team by a UK based explosives expert of many years standing which found that the circuit board of the bomb would have been reduced to a brown powder by the blast and heat of the IED bomb. PT35b simply could not be genuine, yet, it was said in America to be the one thing that enabled the Zeist trial to be set up.

The court chose both to ignore these findings and failed to explore how a clearly false item could have entered an official Scots police evidence bag. 

If PT35b had been genuine, it would have proved that a digital electronic timer had been used. The flight time from Luqa to Frankfurt is around two hours and 45 minutes and digital timers like that from which PT35b was alleged to have come can be user settable and encompass delays of many hours. Our work shows that an analogue timing circuit with a maximum run time of around 45 minutes was what really triggered the bomb, so no one could have sent it on its way from Luqa without it exploding over the Mediterranean or continental Europe.

We hope that some aspect of truth may emerge from the upcoming trial of the Libyan Masud but there is no way that that trial can be made to bridge this two hours and 45 minutes between your lovely island and the now peaceful fields surrounding the little town of Lockerbie.

We must lift the burden of false incrimination against a dying man

[This is the heading over a letter from Dr Jim Swire published in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads as follows:]

In a villa, within a high walled garden in Tripoli, Libya, there lies a man wracked by the pain of widespread cancer, living out the last days of his life, cared for by his wife and children.

His name is known around the world as Megrahi, "the Lockerbie bomber".

He is what we would call middle class. His work was as a part-time international entrepreneur, part time employee of his State's airline, where his role involved the unusual task of trying to obtain spares for that airline's Boeing airliners in the face of international sanctions against his state. His work took him often to Malta where he may have had a mistress. It also took him from time to time to Zurich.

Yes, he also had a state-issued passport in a false name, to facilitate and conceal his journeyings and no doubt his trysts. Later when both Abdelbasel Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, pictured, and his family were confined to Tripoli, awaiting trial, (which he had volunteered to attend, in order as he believed to clear his name), he arranged for two of his children also to be issued with false passports so that they could attend a children's festival in another country. Such were the mores of his country, such were the uses of false passports.

The Scottish court at Camp Zeist was told that an investigating Scottish policeman had kept a diary but he was not told to go and get it from Glasgow. Yet we now know it contained contemporaneous evidence that the Scottish investigators knew the Americans were offering multi million dollar rewards "with $10,000 up front" and that those who falsely identified Megrahi were also aware of rewards long before they gave their evidence ("Six key points that cast doubt on Megrahi's guilt", The Herald, March 13).

We now know through the foresight of Megrahi's latter-day defence solicitor (now Professor) Tony Kelly of Glasgow,that it is not possible that the fragment found after the bombing could have come from a genuine Zurich timer board. That is unassailable scientific fact.

I hope that anyone reading this letter will consider the responsibility which Scotland carries for the failures that emerged in the delivery of justice at Zeist. We were responsible for failing to analyse "the fragment" fully, to discover whether it was genuine or not. We seem also to have been responsible for failing to produce evidence of the break-in at Heathrow which may have indicated a much simpler solution than the premeditated, contrived, cruel and criminal perversion of justice reached at Zeist.

It is time to lobby MSPs, to see if we can lift the terrible burden of false incrimination against this individual and his family, for which our court was in part responsible, before he dies. We may only have days or weeks to do so if he is to be alive to hear of it. Surely we owe that to him and to his family, currently cast as pariahs throughout the world. We also owe the truth about all that is known about the real killers, to the relatives of the victims.

We should remember the words of Nelson Mandela when the Zeist trial was announced: "No one country should be complainant, prosecutor and judge." 

[The letter as published is an edited version of two letters that Dr Swire submitted to the newspaper.  With his permission I reproduce here the full text of both.]

Letter 1

In a villa, within a high walled garden in Tripoli, Libya, there lies a man wracked by the pain of widespread cancer, living out the last days of his life, cared for by his still devoted wife and children.

His name is known around the world as Megrahi, 'the Lockerbie bomber'.

He is what we would call middle class, his work was as part time international entrepreneur, part time employee of his State's airline, where his work involved the unusual task of trying to obtain spares for that airline's Boeing airliners in the face of international sanctions against his State. His work took him often to Malta where he had a mistress, it also took him from time to time to Zurich.

Ah yes, he also had a State issued passport in a false name, to facilitate and conceal his journeyings and no doubt his trysts. Later when both he and his family were confined to Tripoli, awaiting trial, (which he had volunteered to attend, in order as he believed to clear his name), he arranged for two of his children also to be issued with false passports so that they could attend a children's festival in another country. Such were the mores of his country, such were the uses of false passports.

Feeling guilty over his Maltese mistress, he admitted that he had lied to at least one prominent international journalist as to the reasons for his own visits to Malta.  But the judges at his trial recorded that 'it was a serious problem for the prosecution' that there was no evidence of any sinister action by this man as he passed through Luqa airport on the day of the Lockerbie disaster,on his way back to Tripoli.

Upon his eventual release from a Scottish prison after ten years and the gathering intrusion of his fatal illness, he recorded that he had no grudge against the people of our country, still less against those who had cared for him in prison. Nor did he rail against those who may really have been responsible for the terrible crime of which he had been falsely accused for fear such accusations might themselves turn out to be false..

For those who had deliberately contrived his false conviction or born false witness against him for money, he warned of the judgement they must one day face at least at the bar of history if they believe they have no God.

But it was by means of the innate provision for compassion built into our justice system that we in Scotland were able to free him to die at home. This element of compassion was rightly praised, compared with the judicial systems of America, with their death sentences, and their brooding 'culture of vengeance' by the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal O'Brien, immediately following Megrahi's release to Tripoli.

I had the privilege of begging Kenny MacAskill to free Megrahi, who I was sure by then had played no part in the atrocity. Megrahi was dying, segregated from his family and innocent of this dreadful crime. Kenny on the other hand had at least to maintain that he still did believe Megrahi guilty, but we can now no longer hold such a belief with integrity.

We have known for years that those who identified this man as the buyer of objects from a Maltese shop were offered at least two million American dollars, if they would give evidence identifying Megrahi as the buyer. The Scottish court at Zeist was told that an investigating Scottish policeman had kept a diary, he was never told to go and get it from Glasgow. Yet we now know it contained contemporaneous  evidence that the Scottish investigators knew the Americans were offering multi million dollar rewards 'with $10,000 up front' and that those who falsely identified Megrahi were also aware of rewards long before they gave their evidence.

The faltering giver of the 'identification' evidence, one apple short of a picnic or not, had been bribed.

A central item of forensic 'evidence' found inside a Scottish police evidence bag, where the label had been deliberately altered so as to alert the searching forensic officers to contents other than just 'cloth', was a tiny piece of circuit board, carefully crafted to mimic a piece of a timer supplied by a Zurich firm to Libya. But there is now scientific confirmation that this key item could never have been part of a Zurich/Libyan bomb timer. The patterns traced on the fragment were near perfect copies of the real thing, but  a human error had allowed the fragment copy to be coated with  pure tin, by a process never ever used by Thuring, the Swiss manufacturers of the genuine boards, who always used a tin/lead eutectic solder alloy instead.

With the demise of the authenticity of this fragment the last shreds of support for the verdict against Megrahi and the Malta story also died. A long running digital timer was necessary if the bomb was to survive the time from Malta to Lockerbie.

The prosecution was warned by its forensic officers, before the trial, of the difference between the circuit board fragment 'PT35b' and the real timer boards, but failed to investigate.

Our SCCRC was also aware of this anomaly, yet despite their special 53 page report on 'PT35b' they claimed to have found nothing to show that it was not genuine.

We now know through the foresight of Megrahi's latter day defence solicitor (now Professor) Tony Kelly of Glasgow, that it is not possible that this fragment could have come from a genuine Zurich timer board.

That is unassailable scientific fact.

It is now clear that others, outwith Scotland were determined to pin this terrible crime upon Libya and chose Megrahi as their scapegoat, using hi-tech subterfuge to create the illusion that the bomb, through its timer could have survived the interval between Luqa and Lockerbie. What a price Megrahi has paid for his adultery.

It still remains perfectly possible that Gaddafi might have played a role in facilitating the atrocity for he had a deep hatred against America for that country's attempt to assassinate him in 1986. Perhaps if the current Lord Advocate persists in his plan to send investigators to Libya, evidence will emerge from the fog that follows civil war there, but many are those who would try to save their own skins by alleging the guilt of others, not least Sennousi.

I hope that anyone reading these lines will consider the responsibility which Scotland carries for the failures that emerged in the delivery of Justice at Zeist. We were responsible for the contents of that police evidence bag, we were responsible for analysing 'the fragment' fully, to discover whether it was genuine or not, we seem also to have been responsible for failing to produce evidence of the break-in at Heathrow which may have indicated a much simpler solution than the premeditated,contrived, cruel and criminal perversion of justice reached at Zeist.

Somebody created that clever deceitful fragment, someone intended that our court should seem to incriminate Libya, but surely our compassion, of which the Cardinal spoke in 2010 should now extend to an immediate setting aside of the verdict against this man Megrahi, accompanied by a profound apology. 

One MSP, Christine Grahame (MSP) has long realised the deception carried out here. Now that we all know that this was a premeditated framing of Megrahi, it is time to lobby your own MSP,  to see if we can lift the terrible burden of false incrimination against this individual and his family, for which our court was in part responsible, before he dies.

We may only have days or weeks to do so if he is to be alive to hear of it.

Surely we owe that to him and to his family, currently cast as pariahs throughout the world.

We also owe the truth about all that is known about the real killers, to the relatives of the victims.

Once we have done that we should be slow to attribute individual blame for how this disastrous case was conducted, instead we must urgently seek ways by which such a disaster can be avoided in future, starting with the obligation of our prosecution service to share all relevant information with the defence. Let us use the past with all its errors to learn how to do things better in future. Our criminal system got this case terribly wrong, we need to take transparent steps to minimise the chance of repetition of this disgrace. That would be a real benefit for all of us to extract from this whole miserable business.

Finally we might wish to consider what role our increasingly independent country should adopt towards the International Criminal Court, should a crime of international dimensions occur in our land again. As we consider that question, we might remember the words of Nelson Mandela issued in Edinburgh when the Zeist trial was announced.

Letter 2

Thanks to the book by Lockerbie defence researcher John Ashton, we now have a clear account of how the conviction of Megrahi was achieved.

It was not achieved because some alien group wanted to pervert the course of Scottish justice,  nor did it bear any relationship to the simple needs of the relatives of those killed at Lockerbie to know the truth as to who the murderers really were and why they were not stopped.

It was achieved in order to pin the blame specifically upon Libya, presumably in furtherance of perceived political advantage for the country contriving the deceit.

We now know that the famous timer board fragment PT35b was fabricated to match the circuit boards in a set of professional timers sold to the Libyans in the days of Gaddafi.

The patterns traced on PT35b were near perfect copies of those on the real Swiss/Libyan circuit boards, only human error in treating the surface of the copper tracks on them has now revealed the truth through scientific analysis. PT35b simply could never have been part of one of the Libyan owned and Swiss made timers.

It must be clear to all who are not 'blind because they do not wish to see', that the purpose of this slight of hand was to incriminate Libya in this dreadful mass murder, using the hapless Megrahi as scapegoat. 

In Scotland we too are guilty by association. Our prosecution authorities knew before the Megrahi trial had started  that the fragment had 'turned up' inside a Scottish police evidence bag with its label clumsily altered. They knew of the anachronistic insertions in the forensic record for PT35b. They knew that PT35b was not in fact 'similar in all respects' to the circuit boards of the Libyan timers, because the forensic officer who had made that claim had already pointed out that  in fact metallurgical differences existed.

Both our prosecution service, before the trial, and later our SCCRC after the trial knew, (or at least had access to, evidence which clearly showed) that in reality there were differences in the metallurgical details between PT35b and the real Libyan circuit boards. Both failed to investigate these differences, despite the SCCRC's special 53 page special report on the fragment.

It took the detailed diligence and foresight of Professor Tony Kelly of Glasgow (for Megrahi's defence), and John Ashton his researcher, to reveal that the differences between PT35b and the real Libyan boards were irreconcilable, and to show that even if the fragment had really been in a Semtex explosion, this gap was unbridgeable.

In addition we neglected the far more credible story, in view of PA103's flight time, that a Syrian pressure sensitive bomb with their inevitable flight time of 35-45 minutes might have been introduced at Heathrow, avoiding the detailed examination of exhibit PI/1588 which may have been the remains of a pressure sensitive switch from the wreckage field, and if so, pointing to Syria and Iran, not Libya. If that were not fault enough, the evidence of the break-in to Heathrow airport 16 hours before Lockerbie, investigated in January 1989 by the Met. was completely denied to the Zeist trial court. Only last month (Feb 2012) Lord Advocate Mulholland told us that he had still 'been unable to discover' why that evidence was not made available at the trial.

The determination to use this trial as a vehicle for deliberate deception, presumably in pursuance of international political ends did not come from within Scotland. But the multiple failures by our prosecution service responsibly to use the available material and share it with Megrahi's defence did.

For more than a decade some of us, the relatives, have realised that we are being denied the truth about what is really known about this horrible slaughter. We have had to watch Scottish justice twisting and turning to avoid blame for the way its manifest failures contributed to a foreign based wicked and premeditated perversion of justice. We were astonished by the defence position taken in Megrahi's first appeal in Zeist and have squirmed in front of the deliberate delaying tactics exhibited in Megrahi's second appeal in Edinburgh. Now we have learned that even our SCCRC were not astute enough to realise the real origins of PT35b despite their 53 page special report on it.

In contrast to a declaration from 10 Downing Street made just before Ashton's book had even been launched or read, that his book was 'an insult to the Lockerbie relatives', it throws light upon a devious and profoundly dirty aspect of international politics, which on top of our bereavemen,t has burdened us, like some noxious parasite for more than 23 years.

Is Scotland now man enough to investigate these failures, outclassed though they were by the malevolent misuse of our system by a foreign power? Justice delayed is justice  denied. Specially for Megrahi. In the end our system compounded the insults heaped upon the memory of those who died.

It has never been our policy as relatives to seek vengeance against individuals who failed us. Rather let us seek a full inquiry as requested by the group 'Justice for Megrahi', to see how we can do things better in future.  We cannot change the past, but we can and must learn from it. The people of Scotland too need to have faith in their justice system restored, all the more so as they perhaps approach independence.

There is also a middle class Libyan dying in great pain in Tripoli. It is thanks to the compassion built into our justice system that this innocent scapegoat is back home. Perhaps if we hurry we can give him the relief of knowing that his conviction was wrong, and that the incubus is lifted from his family.

We have the power within Scotland to remove this unjust verdict and issue an apology for the part our justice system played in this dreadful miscarriage. How wonderful if our compassion, displayed in allowing Megrahi home to his family could now extend to telling him at last, before his disease finally claims him, that we acknowledge his innocence.

Finally we might wish to consider what role our increasingly independent country should adopt towards the International Criminal Court, should a crime of international dimensions occur in our land again. As we consider that question, we might remember the words of Nelson Mandela issued in Edinburgh when the Zeist trial was first announced: 'No one country should be complainant, prosecutor and judge'. 


[Dr Swire also has a letter in today’s edition of The Scotsman.  It reads as follows:]

My visit to Tripoli in December 2011 showed the interim government there already assuming Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s guilt, without any apparent knowledge of his case.

The atmosphere was one of a determination to blame everything possible on the hated Gaddafi regime.

It would surely be best for truth and justice if Abdullah Senoussi, Gaddafi’s head butcher, were to be arraigned in front of the International Criminal Court (ICC), remembering Nelson Mandela’s famous comment in Edinburgh when the Zeist trial was first announced, that: “No one country should be complainant, prosecutor and judge.”

Bullies are usually cowards when cornered. Senoussi will want to oblige with information blackening the Gaddafi regime (except for his part in it all, of course).

Funny how he surfaced just after John Ashton’s book had revealed beyond any doubt that the central forensic evidence, (the alleged fragment of an exclusively Libyan timer), which the Lockerbie court had relied on to implicate Malta and Megrahi, had been deliberately fabricated to incriminate the Gaddafi regime.

Could there be any connection between “extraordinary rendition” and Senoussi’s appearance? After all, it seems the UK was providing information on selected UK citizens for “scourging” by Senoussi and Co.

It would be almost poetic to reverse the process and “render” him indirectly to the interim government.

What a pity that over the years the US has tended to be antagonistic to the ICC.