al Megrahi and the Lockerbie bombing [Archive]

Rolfe

22nd June 2007, 06:09 AM

This is really a trawl for information.

Recently, the matter of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, has been back in the news for two reasons. First of all there was the controversy over the matter of the "Memorandum of Understanding" Tony Blair signed with Col. Gadaffi, and whether or not it was designed to pave the way for al Megrahi to be returned to a Middle East country to serve the remained of his sentence (controversy being because prisoner release is a matter for the Scottish government, not Westminster, and Tony Blair had unaccountably failed to mention the matter to Alex Salmond). Second, a detailed review of the evidence is about to be published, which might trigger a second appeal in the case, or even a retrial.

This has increased the amount of comment and correspondence on the matter, and highlighted the number of people who express doubts or even outright disbelief on the subject of al Megrahi's guilt. I've come across several letters expressing the view that the identities of the real guilty parties are known (Syria seems to be mentioned in this context), and that al Megrahi is essentially a fall guy.

I've even read a book about all this, and I'm damned if I can remember a word it said!

I'm sure this has been discussed before in this forum, but I'm sure it could bear another airing. It would make a change from the incessant Twin Towers CT threads if nothing else.

Are there people here who are familiar with the points at issue and who could give a clear explanation?

Here's today's newspaper article on the subject (http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1490702.0.0.php).

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing, said at the weekend: "I entered the court at Zeist at the beginning of the trial believing that this guy was responsible for killing my daughter. Having listened to the evidence, I came away convinced that Megrahi was a scapegoat and should never have been convicted."

Rolfe.

8den

22nd June 2007, 06:43 AM

Interesting article in the observer (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2104982,00.html)

The vital evidence that linked Megrahi to the bombing of Pan-Am 103 was a tiny fragment of circuit board found in a wooded area 25 miles from Lockerbie six months after the atrocity. Crucial to the prosecution's case was the use of expert witnesses to make the link between Megrahi and the circuit board timer which was said to have been part of the bomb's detonator.

Evidence considered by the commission cast doubt on the credibility of the three key forensic scientists used by the prosecution during the trial to make the connection between the timer and Megrahi. One of these, Allen Feraday, also gave evidence against defendants who have since had their convictions quashed. After one case, in July 2005, the Lord Chief Justice said Feraday should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in the field of electronics. Lord Woolf ruled that the conviction of Hassan Assali, 53, on terrorist conspiracy charges was unsound.

Another of the scientists who gave evidence in the trial, Dr Thomas Hayes, was involved in the case of the Maguire Seven, imprisoned in 1976 for handling explosives shortly after the Guildford bombings. They also won their appeal after major flaws in forensic science.

The involvement of a third expert witness has also been called into question. The FBI's Thomas Thurman identified the fragment of circuit board as part of a sophisticated timer device used to detonate explosives and as manufactured by Swedish firm Mebo, which supplied the component only to Libya and the East German Stasi. At one point Megrahi was such a regular visitor to Mebo that he had his own office in the firm's headquarters. The testimony enabled Libya - and Megrahi - to be placed at the centre of the investigation. Thurman, however, has subsequently been accused of doctoring scientific reports.

Rolfe

25th June 2007, 06:30 AM

Thanks, 8den, but I'm disappointed by the lack of response here. Anyone care to look at yesterday's newspaper report on the subject (http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1494316.0.0.php)?

Fabricated evidence, evidence tampered with, missing statements, a vital identification which was apparently not actually made - all suggested to have been carried out by the prosecuting authorities out of a desire to protect those believed to be truly guilty but political hot potatoes as regards prosecution, and so to fit up an innocent man for the crime.

Nobody have any thoughts on this at all? Or even an earlier thread to link to?

OK, the bomb was planted in Europe and the explosion happened over Scotland, but the plane was heading for New York and a substantial number of its passengers were US citizens. So I'm surprised the forum doesn't have anyone interested in the affair.

Here we have a full-blown conspiracy theory being widely proposed by quality newspapers (and News of the World!) and supported by many apparently sane and rational individuals.

Nobody have any thoughts?

Rolfe.

ktesibios

25th June 2007, 09:06 AM

One thing that has always struck me as odd about this case is the idea of a national secret service designing a bomb around a timer that's a special order which, if identified, will lead directly and inescapably back to them.

That's a dumb move just on G.P.; when you consider that designing a timer that's more than accurate enough for the application, from parts available off the shelf from ordinary electronics distributors, would be trivial for anyone with an associate-degree level of training, it becomes indescribably stupid.

IIRC, the disco bombing in Germany that was used by the Reagan administration as a pretext for bombing Khadafy's residence was later traced back to Syria, so it wouldn't be the first time the authorities got their bad guys mixed up; nor would it be the first time that they went off half-cocked on a politically attractive but dubious interpretation of evidence, e.g. "yellow rain".

We'll just have to see what, if anything, further examination turns up.

Rolfe

25th June 2007, 09:36 AM

8den

25th June 2007, 09:58 AM

I'm just so surprised that, given the apparently good reasons to suspect a conspiracy to frame Megahi and a coverup to protect whoever actually did it, this one isn't being crawled over by the CTers just as much as the Twin Towers.

Is this just not getting an airing because it happened before The Internet was widely available?

Rolfe.

Dunno look at Litveneko. Now theres a conspiracy thats got some meat to it, murdered spies, strange poison, an actual credible trail of evidence. But would the CTers touch it? Nah. Lets look at disorting the eyewitnesses testimonies instead.

Ditto Paris Hilton. They rage about a media that isn't interested in facts, yet start endless threads about her on LCF.

Honestly, kids these days.

Rolfe

25th June 2007, 10:10 AM

8den

25th June 2007, 10:14 AM

Big Les

25th June 2007, 10:43 AM

And there's not the thrill or kudos associated with spotting pointless apparent inconsistencies and discrepancies - it's all been done before the UK CTists have even rolled out of bed at 2pm to start their day with an episode of "Trisha".

Lyte Trip

25th June 2007, 11:04 AM

A FORMER Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated.

The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1855852005

American intelligence framing a muslim for a terrorist attack involving an airliner?

........naaaahhh.

scooby

25th June 2007, 02:07 PM

BillC

25th June 2007, 02:21 PM

Private Eye did a fairly deep analysis a few years back. It's been a while, but I recall that they came to the conclusion that al Megrahi was a patsy. A couple of the points from the story I do remember were supposed discrepancies about the number of bodies found in one particular field; and that luggage was mysteriously retrieved from another field, a cover story fed to the press about looters in order to prevent others doing so. (I do remember from the news a story about looters in the fields).

It was a special edition, so it might be possible to obtain a back-copy.

DGM

25th June 2007, 02:24 PM

Nobody's made a cheesy video yet and put it on youtube/google. Truthers don't want to go looking for things.

Architect

25th June 2007, 02:29 PM

American intelligence framing a muslim for a terrorist attack involving an airliner?

........naaaahhh.

And look! It's all coming out in court!! They couldn't keep it quiet!!!

So how did they pull off the great 911 conspiracy, which was many magnitudes larger (with all respect to the people of Lockerbie)? :boggled:

geni

25th June 2007, 02:44 PM

Is this just not getting an airing because it happened before The Internet was widely available?

Rolfe.

It happened in 1988 so before a fair number of the current CT generation were paying much attention to the news.

The angle is also a problem. Sure you can have the cia out and out did it option but that is problematical. On the other hand "syria did it but was covered up" also ins't very apealing since it ultimately blames a known enermy of the US.

Not to say such CTs don't exist:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_theories_into_the_bombing_of_Pan_Am_Fl ight_103

rwguinn

25th June 2007, 03:17 PM

That's a point. Litvenenko I mean.

Are you therefore implying that the CTers only get worked up about wildly implausible/impossible theories surrounding things which are actually pretty straightforward, and ignore genuine skullduggery where the evidence is plausible and it's staring them in the face?

Say not so!

Rolfe.

The biggest reason is that nobody filmed the event. Only video counts. The Kennedy assasinations, 9/11, all of those have videos/film attached. They just have to be conspiracies--why else would all those cameras be there?
If it is not on film, or (preferably) a compressed to hell-and-gone youtube video, then it actually never occurred.
As proof positive of that, look only to our own Truthseeker1234, who's comclusion is that there were no airplanes at 911, because the video was, in his opinion, faked.
Eyewitnesses do not count, regardless of how many there are of them, or how cohesive their story may be.

Architect

25th June 2007, 03:23 PM

As an aside, I sometimes wonder how Gravy (and others) get the energy to keep up their fight. But if I came across a bunch of clowns claiming that Lockerbie was faked (as opposed to a shady conspiracy possibly involving the Syrians), air traffic control in on it, police complicity, bodies planted, and so on then I would like to think that I'd be in their faces on a Saturday morning too.

stateofgrace

25th June 2007, 04:16 PM

I'm just so surprised that, given the apparently good reasons to suspect a conspiracy to frame Megahi and a coverup to protect whoever actually did it, this one isn't being crawled over by the CTers just as much as the Twin Towers.

It was, after all, a plane heading for New York that was brought down, a plane with a lot of US citizens on board. Crime against the US? But by whom, and why?

I note in the comments following that newspaper article that the point about the plane being only about half full in spite of the notorious difficulty of getting a flight from Heathrow to NY in the week running up to Christmas is being aired again. I'm not even sure if that's true or not, but if it is, the implications are quite startling.

Is this just not getting an airing because it happened before The Internet was widely available?

Rolfe.

I personally think this will get little airing in CT circles because there is very little they have to work with. They is no question this was a real plane, no question that there was a real bomb onboard it and no question it fell onto Lockerbie.

I live close to the town, although I wasn't here at the time many of my immediate neighbours were. In total one has spoken about the event to me and only for a brief time. He was walking his dog and glanced up and saw the fireball. This is the only time I have ever heard anybody from around here talk about it. It is unlikely cters would ever try to build up some magical conspiracy about this the way they have about 911, calling witnesses liars, no planes, space beams, prerigged buildings or controlled demolitions, etc. Of course as soon as anybody says the words CIA, planes and bombs in the same sentence all roads then lead to 911.

It does seem, though looking at what is coming to light, if true, there could be a miscarriage of justice here. I am sure or I would like to think, if that is the case it will be exposed by professionals that actually investigate this type of thing for a living rather than some you tuber.

Has as already been said I am sure that anybody who suddenly pitched up at Lockerbie with a placard saying “Lockerbie was an inside job" would quickly be put in their place. Although I naturally do not speak for all I simply speak for myself, I for one would welcome a full investigation and a complete discloser on all the facts and if there is anything new then it must be investigated.

For myself though I prefer not to speculate, I will wait and see how it develops.

peteweaver

25th June 2007, 04:21 PM

This makes very interesting reading:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2211327.stm

A former aide to Abu Nidal claimed that the Abu Nidal group were responsible for the lockerbie disaster.

This is possibly the motive for the bombing:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/3/newsid_4678000/4678707.stm

3rd July 1988 a US naval warship shot down an Iranian Airbus A300, after mistaking it for a hostile radar signature on attack course.

Iran has reacted with outrage, accusing the United States of a "barbaric massacre" and vowed to "avenge the blood of our martyrs".
President Reagan said the Vincennes had taken "a proper defensive action" and called the incident an "understandable accident", although he said he regretted the loss of life.

Rolfe

26th June 2007, 06:15 AM

American intelligence framing a muslim for a terrorist attack involving an airliner?

........naaaahhh.

Exactly.

The biggest reason is that nobody filmed the event. Only video counts....
There are quite a lot of still pictures of bit of aircraft on the ground and obliterated houses and so on. I'd have thought a competent CTer (oops that's a real oxymoron!) could have made something with that.

I personally think this will get little airing in CT circles because there is very little they have to work with. They is no question this was a real plane, no question that there was a real bomb onboard it and no question it fell onto Lockerbie....
Look, as far as I can see, there is no question that there were real planes on 11th September, no question that there were Arab terrorists on board who hijacked the planes by terrorising the passengers and crew, and no question that the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

So where's the difference?

I'm reading more now that Iran is the main suspect among the al Megrahi sceptics, though I had seen some mention of Syria. I don't have any firm views on the matter, but I'd like to be more familiar with the points at issue. I'd imagined there would be no shortage of people here who might be able to point me unerringly in the direction of the evidence as to whether or not the flight was only about half full, and whether or not the baby-gro was found intact and shredded later and so on, and I'm a bit surprised to trawl up so little.

I hope it will all come out in court, but recent experience is against that.

Shirley McKie, anyone?

Rolfe.

rwguinn

26th June 2007, 07:35 AM

Exactly.

There are quite a lot of still pictures of bit of aircraft on the ground and obliterated houses and so on. I'd have thought a competent CTer (oops that's a real oxymoron!) could have made something with that.

Look, as far as I can see, there is no question that there were real planes on 11th September, no question that there were Arab terrorists on board who hijacked the planes by terrorising the passengers and crew, and no question that the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

So where's the difference?

I'm reading more now that Iran is the main suspect among the al Megrahi sceptics, though I had seen some mention of Syria. I don't have any firm views on the matter, but I'd like to be more familiar with the points at issue. I'd imagined there would be no shortage of people here who might be able to point me unerringly in the direction of the evidence as to whether or not the flight was only about half full, and whether or not the baby-gro was found intact and shredded later and so on, and I'm a bit surprised to trawl up so little.

I hope it will all come out in court, but recent experience is against that.

Shirley McKie, anyone?

Rolfe.
Again, Rolfe:
There are no videos of the actual incident, therefore it couldn't have happened! You have to have actual videos of the plane blowing up in order for there to be an event. Anybody can fake still photographs (see: killtown).It takes a government and a conspiracy to generate videos:D :confused: :confused: :mad:

Rolfe

26th June 2007, 07:48 AM

I've got a headache now....

Rolfe.

rwguinn

26th June 2007, 08:42 AM

I've got a headache now....

Rolfe.

Welcome to the convoluted world of conspiracy theories...
Take 2 sugar pills and call a homeopath in the morning.

(Ducks and hides under desk)

Kevin_Lowe

26th June 2007, 10:05 AM

I guess this means you get to be our resident Lockerbie expert, Rolfe.

Rolfe

26th June 2007, 10:22 AM

Hell, I'd hoped for some actual insight into some actual evidence from all the experts here!

I've got a book about the affair, but it's somewhere in one of the many boxes in what I humorously call my study, i.e. I doubt very much I will be able to lay my hands on it any time soon.

Nobody even know if it's true that this plane (which one would expect to be a sellout given the route and the date) was only half full?

Rolfe.

Travis

26th June 2007, 06:10 PM

Other factors that determine the unpopularity of this in CT circles are as follows.

Most of the current generation of Conspiracy Theorists are young and were either just toddlers when 103 blew up or weren't even born yet. They are thus uninterested due to them having either only vague memories of it or none at all.

No war was started over the event and thus the stakes in misidentifying the perpetrator are not as high. The wrongly accused is only subject to being prosecuted in court and not subject to an invasion, occupation and transition to a new form of government.

The US and UK governments of the time are no longer in power and thus not subject to a possible revolution and removal from power if they were found complicit. Along with being young Conspiracy Theorists desire action and thus look for conspiracies that, if true, would warrant immediate actions to "topple" the perpetrators.

Anyways, just my opinion on the matter.

gumboot

27th June 2007, 05:46 AM

Travis has summed it up pretty well.

The reason the debunkers aren't interested is because there's no CTers interested, so no one to debunk. As it were.

A key thing, I think, is it's history. Conspiracy Theorists cling to an event that happens in their lives, and cannot move past it. Most of the moon hoaxers I have known or met were older people who were alive in the 1960's. CTers who eat the whole plate - like Alex Jones - will add it to the list of "examples of ebil gubmint" along with the Reichstag, JFK assassination, Liberty attack, Gulf of Tonkin, and so on, but unless they were actually alive when it happened, and actually bought the conspiracy theory soon after the event, they don't really care that much about it.

-Gumboot

Rolfe

27th June 2007, 06:01 AM

One interesting point is the credibility of the CT in this case.

Recently, when Tony Blair's "memorandum of understanding" with Gadaffi caused such a furore, many of the letters to the press on the subject said something like, I have grave doubts about al Megrahi's guilt, however that's not the point here, TB ought to know that whether or not he is returned to the Middle East is a matter for the Scottish government, not for him, etc....

Now that the latest appeal is in the news again, many newspapers are taking the public line that they believe al Megrahi was framed, and presenting the evidence for this belief.

This is what happens when the evidence for the CT is at least somewhat credible, and stands up to at least a degree of scrutiny. Ordinary people talk about it, and express their doubts. The media pick up on the subject and write features and articles about it. Serious commentators take the subject on board.

Contrast that with the Twin Towers CT discussion. Nothing but a few adolescent paranoids self-abusing in a corner, as far as I can see.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

29th June 2007, 02:54 AM

Today's (very large) newspaper headline (http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1506989.0.0.php) - "Lockerbie: will we ever know the truth?"

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said there were no fewer than six grounds on which Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice, and granted him leave to launch a second appeal....

Despite Megrahi's conviction, there have been persistent claims that Libya was not responsible, that some evidence was rigged, and that the finger of suspicion pointed elsewhere - in particular to Palestinian terrorist groups....

The commission also concluded yesterday new evidence about the unreliability of key witnesses, and the non-disclosure to the defence of important and classified information, were strong grounds to refer the case back....

Sir Oliver Miles, former British ambassador to Libya, said he doubted whether the full facts of Lockerbie would ever be known. He told the BBC: "No court is likely to get to the truth, now that various intelligence agencies have had the opportunity to corrupt the evidence."

Alex Salmond, the First Minister, said it was "in the interests of justice" that the case go back to court. "We must allow the independent legal process to take its course. Let us never forget that 270 men, women and children lost their lives in December 1988," he added.

The case will now go before five appeal judges, at a sitting likely to take place in Edinburgh next year.

See, that's what happens when there is genuine reason to doubt the official story, and suspect a conspiracy and a cover-up. Journalists make a fuss, people take notice, and the authorities in the end may be forced to respond.

So why aren't these same journalists making a huge fuss over the Twin Towers, if it's so darned obvous they were blown up in an inside job?

Oh sorry I forgot they're all in on it and the Lockerbie thing is part of it, designed to make it look as if they're independent.... Oh my sainted aunt!

Rolfe.

boloboffin

4th September 2007, 04:54 PM

Over at DU, we've gotten a Bushco tie-in: Apparently two people on board, Charles McKee and Matthew Gannon, were about to reveal crucial information about the Iran-Contra affair (http://pcapostate.blogspot.com/2007/08/corea-connection.html). So Poppy iced an entire airliner and framed the Libyans.

Rolfe

18th August 2009, 04:11 PM

Bump. Just because I find it very odd that this perfectly cromulent CT isn't getting any sort of an airing.

It's all over all the media here at the moment. Is Megrahi guilty, or was he framed?
Was Libya really behind it, or did Iran do it in retaliation?
If Iran did it, then why did Gaddhafi agree to shop megrahi?
Did the shopkeeper in Malta really identify Megrahi?
Were the clothes bought on a date when Megrahi was nowhere near Malta?
Was the bomb actually put on board at Heathrow?
Why was the plane half-empty, going from Europe to New York only 2 days before Christmas?
Is that even true?

What use is a CT section in August 2009 if you can't get at least three opinions on each of these points!

Rolfe.

Oh, and I don't know why this is under 9/11 CTs in the first place.

bill smith

18th August 2009, 04:32 PM

twinstead

18th August 2009, 04:37 PM

bill smith

18th August 2009, 04:40 PM

Is there ANYTHING that you don't think is a conspiracy?

Just an observation. A valid one unless you can tell me differently ?

Rolfe

18th August 2009, 05:01 PM

And you know, I really didn't think there was an angle to this that somebody hadn't dredged up.

Ah well, we live and learn.

Rolfe.

bill smith

18th August 2009, 05:06 PM

And you know, I really didn't think there was an angle to this that somebody hadn't dredged up.

Ah well, we live and learn.

Rolfe.

This is an entirely new angle coming from the current news bulletins. It will be interesting if we see the prostate cancer story being entirely withdrawn or transmogrified into something else.

beachnut

18th August 2009, 05:13 PM

I find it interesting that Al-M. is said to be dying of advanced prostate cancer. This is a slow growing, easily detectable cancer that the prison authorities clearly had a duty of care to screen for in such a long -term prisoner.
Given that prostate cancer is probably he most common cancer in men over 50 and that the symptoms lead to a simple early diagnosis and mostly successful teatment there is definitely culpable negligence involved.
....unless we are being led by the nose as usual.
No CT! My grandfather died of prostate cancer and to infer it is some sort of negligence is the same as the negligence you display getting every single you post about 911 wrong. It happens. A conscience. You lack the knowledge and the complete story to propose your failed negligence delusion.

As valid as all your failed 911 posts

twinstead

18th August 2009, 05:14 PM

Just an observation. A valid one unless you can tell me differently ?

Maybe he didn't report any symptoms?

Bobert

18th August 2009, 05:21 PM

Is there ANYTHING that you don't think is a conspiracy?
Notice also how truthers think they KNOW EVERYTHING?
Of course if he died quick of prostate cancer the TM would find that odd.
They are playing the same game over at the LCF saying how odd one of the bodies looks that was pictured at the Pentagon.
Now they are experts in how a burned body should look.

twinstead

18th August 2009, 05:23 PM

Notice also how truthers think they KNOW EVERYTHING?
Of course if he died quick of prostate cancer the TM would find that odd.
They are playing the same game over at the LCF saying how odd one of the bodies looks that was pictured at the Pentagon.
Now they are experts in how a burned body should look.

Yea. Armchair investigators ROCK!

bill smith

18th August 2009, 05:24 PM

Maybe he didn't report any symptoms?

Look it up Twinstead. Prisoners generally like time in the medical sections of prisons if only for the break in routine. The main symptom of difficulty urinating is considered important and recognisable. Al-M was right in the envelope for this extremely common disease. A simple blood test can often detect the condition.

beachnut

18th August 2009, 05:30 PM

Look it up Twinstead. Prisoners generally like time in the medical sections of prisons if only for the break in routine. The main symptom of difficulty urinating is considered important and recognisable. Al-M was right in the envelope for this extremely common disease. A simple blood test can often detect the condition.
What religion is the prisoner? After your perfect record of failure on 911 issues it seems super-nano-unlikely you will get close to being in the ball park on this one which is OK since I don't care if the bomber is dying! May it be as painful as my grandfather's death.

Justin39640

18th August 2009, 05:32 PM

bill smith

18th August 2009, 05:41 PM

What religion is the prisoner? After your perfect record of failure on 911 issues it seems super-nano-unlikely you will get close to being in the ball park on this one which is OK since I don't care if the bomber is dying! May it be as painful as my grandfather's death.

Easy on Beachnut. I suggest a more Buddhist influence on your thinking. The wheel goes round.

Rolfe

18th August 2009, 05:45 PM

This is an entirely new angle coming from the current news bulletins. It will be interesting if we see the prostate cancer story being entirely withdrawn or transmogrified into something else.

Sorry? It's been public knowledge for many months that Megrahi has prostate cancer. Are you saying that you're now seeing something in the news suggesting he's been misdiagnosed?

Rolfe.

bill smith

18th August 2009, 05:54 PM

Sorry? It's been public knowledge for many months that Megrahi has prostate cancer. Are you saying that you're now seeing something in the news suggesting he's been misdiagnosed?

Rolfe.

Given that he has been under the 24-hour direct care of the British authorities for many many years I am saying that prostate cancer- probably he most recognisable of cancers should have been diagnosed years ago. I am not askng your opinion on this- it is completely self evident.
Prostate cancer incidentally develops slowly over many years and is not to be confused with cancers that develop more quickly.

Rolfe

18th August 2009, 05:55 PM

I'm kind of interested in the idea that successive governments - Conservative, Labour and now SNP - have become apparently reluctant to delve too deep into this affair once they have come into power. The SNP has form in questioning the Libya story, but Kenny is now looking like someone who doesn't want to talk about it.

Megrahi had an appeal filed until today. If he wanted to have a prisoner transfer back to Libya he would have had to give up that appeal. Many of the families didn't want that to happen because they still hoped to find out more. However, compassionate release doesn't require the desertion of the appeal. He could have gone for compassionate release and kept the appeal going. However, I just heard his advocate ask leave of the court that he desert the appeal because he believes it will help him get the compassionate release. This after a private meeting with our own dear Justice Secretary.

The interesting wrinkle is that if he died while the appeal was still outstanding, then any interested party could then take it up. However, if he deserts the appeal (as he has now done), nobody else can revive it after his death. Why has he been persuaded now to desert the appeal when this is not necessary for his release, and when his one goal for many years has been to prove himself innocent?

Are there really influential parties that simply do not want any more enquiry into this affair? Or is it simply that the Scottish justice system is too embarrassed to allow any scrutiny of a process it knows or suspects to have been deeply flawed?

Was the ludicrous treatment of Shirley McKie in any way related to a desire not to allow any flaw to be seen in Scottish criminal justice, against the background of the need to keep the lid on the Lockerbie affair?

There's a seething mass of CT right here, most of which is given serious credence by respected quality journalists and people prominent in public life. And asking questions is something anyone can do....

Rolfe.

Rolfe

18th August 2009, 05:57 PM

Given that he has been under the 24-hour direct care of the British authorities for many many years I am saying that prostate cancer- probably he most recognisable of cancers should have been diagnosed years ago. I am not askng your opinion on this- it is completely self evident.
Prostate cancer incidentally develops slowly over many years and is not to be confused with cancers that develop more quickly.

You think nobody else in Scotland has had prostate cancer remain undiagnosed before it has reached the metastatic stage? I'd introduce you to my cousin's husband, if only he wasn't dead.

Rolfe.

bill smith

18th August 2009, 06:01 PM

You think nobody else in Scotland has had prostate cancer remain undiagnosed before it has reached the metastatic stage? I'd introduce you to my cousin's husband, if only he wasn't dead.

Rolfe.

Not people under direct 24-hour-a-day care. Are you really disputing this ?

Rolfe

18th August 2009, 06:09 PM

Sadly, there's no mystery about this. (http://news.scotsman.com/health/GPs-under-fire-over-.5342028.jp)

MEN in Glasgow are up to four times more likely to die of prostate cancer than in other parts of the UK because GPs are failing to detect the disease early, a leading surgeon has warned. Up to 100 deaths could be avoided every year in the west of Scotland if men were given routine tests for the disease, according to Professor Hing Leung, a consultant urological surgeon from the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow. He said the region had some of the worst rates of prostate cancer deaths in the country and called for more "well man" checks to save lives.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men, affecting about 2,500 patients each year in Scotland, and causing some 800 deaths. It mainly affects men over the age of 50.

Men show no symptoms during the early stages of the disease, but it can be picked up through routine blood tests.

However, Leung said doctors were not carrying out as many blood checks as they should. He said between 30 and 40 per cent of patients diagnosed with prostate cancer in Glasgow had cases that were so advanced they were incurable, compared with only 10 per cent in other parts of the UK.

In Glasgow and Lanarkshire, there are about 670 cases each year, and some 270 deaths. But up to 100 deaths could be prevented with better testing.

Leung said: "In the west of Scotland, patients come with more advanced cancer than anywhere else, because testing is not commonly used. We are still seeing a lot of patients who have advanced cancer and are beyond cure.

My cousin had no symptoms that were obvious to anyone but himself until he presented with back pain. Due to metastatic carcinoma. This is not unusual. We need a better screening programme, but there is controversy about how best to go about it.

Nobody in the west of Scotland is even faintly surprised by this diagnosis.

Rolfe.

bill smith

18th August 2009, 06:16 PM

Sadly, there's no mystery about this. (http://news.scotsman.com/health/GPs-under-fire-over-.5342028.jp)

My cousin had no symptoms that were obvious to anyone but himself until he presented with back pain. Due to metastatic carcinoma. This is not unusual. We need a better screening programme, but there is controversy about how best to go about it.

Nobody in the west of Scotland is even faintly surprised by this diagnosis.

Rolfe.

So I am entirely vindicated. Let's see if the news stories on the prostate cancer story continue or are ameliorated. (for instance 'a rare form of the disease') You know how it goes.

Rolfe

18th August 2009, 06:25 PM

You're vindicated? Sorry, where did that one come from? Where did the idea that the prostate cancer is a misdiagnosis come from?

Is this just some weird idea you've had all on your own, or is there actually any sensible suggestion to that effect?

Meh to the cancer story, it's the least contentious part of all of this. And I konw where the book is that I mentioned two years ago was buried in a box somewhere. Boxes all unpacked some time ago, books in good order in bookcase.

Maybe I can find some enlightenment there.

Rolfe.

ElMondoHummus

18th August 2009, 07:57 PM

Newtons Bit

18th August 2009, 08:25 PM

BigAl

18th August 2009, 08:40 PM

I have a distant memory of Iran being blamed before they shifted blame to Libya.

ElMondoHummus

18th August 2009, 08:55 PM

Well, the question is, how strong is the evidence that linked the Libyan operatives to the flight compared to whatever evidence exists that links Iran? Again, I haven't studied conspiracy charges in the Lockerbie bombing, so I'm unsure what the conspiratorial narrative is supposed to be.

Magenta

18th August 2009, 10:14 PM

Why was the plane half-empty, going from Europe to New York only 2 days before Christmas?
Is that even true?

There were 243 passengers and 16 crew on board. Certainly not full, but probably not "half-empty" either. Seating capacity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B747#Specifications) for the 747-100 version seems to vary between 366 and 452 depending on configuration. Also, it was mid-week and 4 days before Christmas. Would the flight normally be booked out? It was Pan Am's 3rd flight that day from Heathrow to New York, according to the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103), and presumably there were quite a few other carriers on the same route.

Perhaps this is connected to the so-called "Helsinki warning"?

On 13 December, the warning was posted on bulletin boards in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, USSR and eventually distributed to the entire American community there, including journalists and businessmen. As a result, a number of people allegedly booked on carriers other than Pan Am, leaving empty seats on PA103 that were later sold cheaply in "bucket shops". PA103 investigators subsequently said the telephone warning had been a hoax and a chilling coincidence.

Link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103#Helsinki_warning)

Although by that account shouldn't the plane have been full of people who'd got "last minute" tickets?

Oh, and I don't know why this is under 9/11 CTs in the first place.

The thread was started before the sub-forum was split into 9/11 CTs and CTs. I've asked the mods to move it.

Rolfe

19th August 2009, 03:07 AM

Rolfe, pay no attention to Bill Smith; he's the CT forum's current Village Idiot. I don't actually think he truly believes the stupidity he spreads here, I just think he likes yanking people's chains. No one's truly idiotic enough to think that 24-hour supervision means having begloved medical staff having fingers on a prisoner's prostate 24x7.

I don't think Megrahi was on 24-hour supervision anyway - or no more so than any other prisoner. Dammit, my cousin's husband was under 24-hour supervision by his wife, and he didn't present to his doctor until he was suffering back pain. Which was way too late.

Megrahi had the misfortune to be banged up in the NHS region with the worst detection rate for prostate cancer in the British Isles. And unlike the USA, we don't give our terrorist prisoners better healthcare than the general population gets. It wouldn't surprise me if one of Megrahi's prison warders got terminal prostate cancer himself because he didn't recognise the signs and didn't do anything about it.

You made reference to a book about this issue. Mind posting the title? I might be interested in reading it myself. I'm 100% unfamiliar with this topic.

I got the book out last night, and it's called Lockerbie: A Bum Rap? The author is David Rollo.

I'm afraid it's as I remember - terrible. It's little more than a pamphlet, with short chapters, and the author can't make a coherent argument to save his life. I suspect the facts are reasonably accurate however the book lacks any presentation or clear narrative. There may well be something better available.

The thing that interests me a little is that the book, published in 2001, is by way of being an internal SNP production. Not an official Party document of course, but written by a member who was previously a Party officebearer and printed by the SNP-supporting Scots Independent. And yet now we have an SNP government in power, and Kenny MacAskill the Justice Secretary seems to be behaving similarly to government ministers of the other parties when they were in power, and possibly facilitating a cover-up.

I don't know whether it's just a matter of perception and that everybody starts behaving like this when they get into government even if there's nothing to hide and they're not trying to hide it, or whether they're just trying to prevent the Scottish justice system from getting egg over its face because the thing was badly handled at Camp Zeist, or whether they're trying to keep the blame pinned on Megrahi even though he's a patsy for internal reasons, or whether they're caving to pressure from the USA, which wants the blame pinned on Megrahi even though he's a patsy.

The connection to the Shirley McKie affair is peripheral, but that's interesting too.

Rolfe.

Guybrush Threepwood

19th August 2009, 03:38 AM

As BillC mentioned 2 years ago Private Eye did an investigation on this, and their special report from 2001 is available to download for £5.00 Lockerbie Report (https://secure2.subscribeonline.co.uk/PEYE/digital_downloads.cfm)
I read most of the Private Eye stuff when it came out, and remember finding it reasonably convincing, but I didn't really analyse it.
On the other hand Nick Cohen (the most annoying running dog Blairite lickspittle in the world) says in his Observer (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/16/nick-cohen-lockerbie-bombing) article that Megrahi was fingered early on in the investigation, but doesn't provide any back up for it. Given his tendency to parrot the government position on any 'War for the Future of Civilization' stuff I'm not inclined to place too much credence on his opinion.

Rolfe

19th August 2009, 04:02 AM

Actually, the plot got even thicker this morning.

Remember, I said that Megrahi could not be considered for a prisoner transfer to Libya if he had an outstanding appeal. He has consistently maintained his innocence and was extremely reluctant to desert his appeal. However he is also reported to be desperate to see his wife and children again, and his elderly mother. Dilemma.

Then came the question of a compassionate release. In Scotland, any prisoner whose doctors estimate has less than three months to live is eligible for compassionate release. Megrahi is now in that situation. He doesn't have to abandon his appeal to be eligible for that.

Last week all the news was that he was likely to be granted compassionate release. Many people supported this, if for no other reason than that there seems to be genuine doubt over his guilt and if indeed he has been framed it would be sad if he had to die in jail. However the view in America was strongly against this.

Strangely, though, although it wasn't necessary for the compassionate release, Megrahi yesterday applied to abandon his appeal (http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2526227.0.Megrahi_drops_appeal_as_MacA skill_looks_sets_to_grant_transfer.php), saying that he believed it would improve his chances of getting home. Some of the victims' families were very unhappy about that, because it means that the appeal is dead, whereas if Megrahi had died while the appeal was still in progress they could have elected to continue it, as interested parties.

Why did Megrahi abandon the appeal? Hillary Clinton was making a big fuss last night, putting pressure on the Scottish government to keep him in jail in Scotland. But of course with the appeal abandoned, the question of a prisoner transfer is again on the table. Was Megrahi persuaded to abandon the appeal so that he could be dealt with by prisoner transfer rather than compassionate release?

Except, no, that's still not possible. It emerged this morning that Megrahi's appeal against his conviction is not the only appeal ongoing in the case. Back in at the time of the original conviction the Crown lodged an appeal against sentence (saying that 27 years was too short). However, that has been dormant ever since because appeal against conviction takes priority over appeal against sentence. But since that appeal is still active, prisoner transfer cannot be considered.

Well, appealing that a 27-year jail term is too short for a prisoner with less than three months to live is a bit pointless, and maybe the Crown will just drop it, and we'll be back to - do we give him compassionate release (in which case why did he have to drop his appeal?) or will we send him to Libya as a transferred prisoner, or will everybody cave in to Hillary and keep him here.

It does seem as if a lot of people wanted that appeal dropped. The reason it took so long was the refusal of the Crown to allow the defence team sight of certain documents it believed would aid Megrahi's case, which the Crown persistently said it would not do for reasons of national security. So far as I know these documents have never been released despite many applications and some rulings in Megrahi's favour.

The general opinion is that the UK and the US intelligence services have been engaged in some particularly unsavoury activities surrounding all this, and they really, really want the lid kept on it. And I'm not just quoting the tinfoil lunatic brigade here, this is all over the quality press and the main BBC news and current affairs programmes. Here's a newspaper letter from today (http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/letters/display.var.2526171.0.Worry_over_Megrahi_case.php) , written by a respected correspondent who is politically aligned with the SNP.

I actually don't know what to think. I just find it so surprising that the CT enthusiasts aren't all over this like a rash.

Rolfe.

volatile

19th August 2009, 04:16 AM

"Palestinian connection" seems to me to be the most plausible and supported by the evidence - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/736490.stm - particularly the seizure of identical radio-bombs from a Frankfurt-based Palestinian cell weeks before Lockerbie. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103_conspiracy_theories#PFLP-GC)

That also seems to be the defense team's case.

volatile

19th August 2009, 04:50 AM

zooterkin

19th August 2009, 07:33 AM

No one's truly idiotic enough to think that 24-hour supervision means having begloved medical staff having fingers on a prisoner's prostate 24x7.

Perhaps he's just a little naive, and thinks that is what happens when one drops the soap in the prison showers.

Rolfe

19th August 2009, 07:54 AM

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission considered his prosecution top have been based on some seriously flawed evidence, hence them granting him an appeal. It was exceedigly likely that he's have been acquitted at a re-trial.

Their full statement is online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28_06_07_reviewlockerbie.pdf - the sections 4 and 5 are most pertinent as they lay out in detail the evidence against al Megrahi, and the SCCRC's grounds for doubting it.

Thanks Volatile. Interesting to compare that with the Rollo book, and the more recent things that have come to light.

Anthony Gauci’s evidence that the purchaser of the items resembled
the applicant “a lot”.
Evidence from various sources that Mr Gauci sold the items on 7
December 1988, a date on which the applicant was proved to be in
Malta staying in a hotel close to Mary’s House.

These are the first two counts of evidence against Megrahi. According to Rollo, Gauci originally described the purchaser of the clothes as "over six feet tall" and "about 50 years old". Megrahi is 5 feet 8 inches and was 37 at the time. Gauci only identified Megrahi much later after his picture had been widely circulated by the US Department of Justice.

I have also read recently that the date of 7th December has been seriously questioned, with a more likely, earlier purchase date suggested at a time when Megrahi was not in Malta.

Rolfe.

Alt+F4

19th August 2009, 09:22 AM

Rolfe

19th August 2009, 04:12 PM

Well, compassionate release is set to be announced formally tomorrow, so Megrahi can go home for Ramadan which starts on Friday.

The Crown appeal is still in force, so a prisoner transfer is not on the table.

Megrahi's legal representative was interviewed saying his client was pressurised to drop his appeal. Why this was done is unclear, because it was not necessary for him to be released.

Newsnicht is discussing the politics of all this at the moment. It's being emphasised that the desertion of the appeal by Megrahi means that the evidence the Crown was resisting releasing will now never be seen. "We will never get to the bottom of what happened now."

By the way, the TV just quoted Prof. Karol Sikora, who is a hugely respected cancer specialist, saying that Megrahi has a particularly aggressive form of prostate cancer which is no longer responding to treatment.

Rolfe.

ddt

19th August 2009, 05:55 PM

My 2 cents on this matter.

I have never been very convinced of the guilt of this guy, but I haven't looked into it either over the years. Reading these two threads on it, and the wiki pages, it seems that the main evidence against him consists of:
1) baby clothes that were traced to a Maltese shop; the shopowner gave a totally different description of the buyer and only later changed that to fit the description of the accused;
2) pieces that allegedly were part of a timer; the employee of the manufacturer who testified to that in 2007 confessed to having perjuried himself, and to have handed an intact timer to the investigators before the trial.

Great. This seems like a classic case of "tunnel vision" by the investigators and the prosecution. Once you have a suspect that fits your preconceived notions, you go fit the evidence to that. Like with the Guildford Four. I'm not saying this is a British phenomenon, it's a global phenomenon - I could give a handful of (recent) Dutch cases too.

I haven't read the actual verdict (yet), but I remember how my dad, who followed the news on it at the time much more closely, summarized it to me: "the Court concluded that Al Megrahi couldn't have done it without Fhimah. They found Fhimah not guilty and Megrahi guilty."

At the time, there were numerous groups with an axe to grind against the US. Libya, Syria, Iran have been mentioned, as well as various Palestinian and other terrorist groups sponsored by one or more of those states. Why Libya? I don't know, but they were the most popular fall guy at the time for the US government. Remember the US/UK bombing of Libya two years earlier, in 1986, in which Khadafi's adopted daughter died? In any case, it's a bloody shame that the case was handled so flawed. And why did it take the review commission four years to investigate if they'd allow a new appeal?

Someone remarked why Libya extradited the two guys. You may remember that after the Lockerbie bombing and Libya was pointed at as the culprit, an international embargo was instituted against Libya which must have cost them a fortune.

Someone mentioned the Vincennes downing an Iranian airplane as possible motive. Could be. An interesting comparison between the two cases is also how much less an Iranian life is worth than an US life.

And as to the prostate cancer: in most cases, it grows indeed very slowly and you can get 120 and not die of it. However, a few percent of the cases is a very aggressive form that grows quickly.

Rolfe

19th August 2009, 06:05 PM

As I understand it, you've pretty much got it. Including the 1986 events, and the shooting down of the airbus.

Megrahi, very probably, was thrown to the lions to get various other people off the hook.

BTW, I mentioned this to my assistant this morning while we were waiting for something to happen, and he said he was serving on HMS York in the Persian Gulf and saw the airbus come down. Initially, the British ship was reported to have shot the plane down, though this was soon corrected. Calum said that the American ships in the area then simply buggered off, and he spent the next two weeks fishing body parts out of the Persian Gulf, matching up legs by pairing the shoes.

Thinking about it, he couldn't have been much more than 20 at the time. We don't think about these aspects of it very often.

Rolfe.

ddt

19th August 2009, 06:32 PM

Reading about this case, and writing a couple of comments here made me thin of another thing that does not rhyme.

The alleged timer was some exclusive Swiss make that was only sold to Libya and the GDR. Why would that had been needed? Even twenty years ago, any kid with a soldering iron could solder together a half-decent timer from standard components. Timing was absolutely not critical in this case. The objective was that the plane would blow up somewhere over the Atlantic, it is supposed - well, that's a four hour time span.

Am I missing something?

Rolfe

19th August 2009, 06:39 PM

ddt

19th August 2009, 06:54 PM

Depends where the bomb was put on board. It was supposed to have been transferred from a Malta flight at Frankfurt, then landed at Heathrow before taking off again. There was talk of pressure sensors too.
Old BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1998/12/98/lockerbie/235632.stm) on the pressure sensors. My point about the timer was that it didn't matter whether it went off in 4 hours or 6 hours - it didn't have to be very accurate.

It was supposed to blow up mid-Atlantic of course, and the evidence vanished. Lockerbie as such was a mistake.
The plane was delayed in Heathrow, that's what caused it to explode over Lockerbie instead of the Atlantic.

Rolfe

20th August 2009, 03:34 AM

manierisme

20th August 2009, 07:09 AM

www dot lrb dot co dot uk/v29/n12/mile01_.html

This is a good article. Virtually everything I've read about the Lockerbie case has nudged me more and more to the thinking that Megrahi is likely an innocent man-- this is an excellent encapsulation of many of the reasons why.

Rolfe

20th August 2009, 07:17 AM

Well, Kenny McAskill just released him on compassionate grounds about half an hour ago. The official line is that the conviction stands and this is entirely a response to the terminal nature of his illness. Oh, and that the decision to drop the appeal was entirely Megrahi's own.

So he wasn't pressurised to drop the appeal as a quid pro quo for the compassionate release, how could you think such a thing! And nobody would even have thought of putting such pressure on the man, because there's nothing at all that anyone wants to cover up about this, and no worries about what might come out in another examination of the evidence.... oh no of course not. :nope:

Rolfe.

ETA: Here is the linky. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n12/mile01_.html

The article has the narrative drive missing from the Rollo pamphlet. Of course it's hard to make up one's mind without reading a number of different viewpoints, but I really can't see this as a safe conviction "beyond reasonable doubt".

In July 1988, five months before the Lockerbie bombing, a US naval commander aboard USS Vincennes in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian airbus, apparently mistaking it for an attacker. On board Iran Air Flight 655 were 270 pilgrims en route to Mecca. Ayatollah Khomeini vowed the skies would ‘rain blood’ in revenge and offered a $10 million reward to anyone who ‘obtained justice’ for Iran. The suggestion is that the PFLP-GC was commissioned to undertake a retaliatory bombing.

We know at least that two months before Lockerbie, a PFLP-GC cell was active in the Frankfurt and Neuss areas of West Germany. On 26 October 1998, German police arrested 17 terrorist suspects who, surveillance showed, had cased Frankfurt airport and browsed Pan Am flight timetables. Four Semtex-based explosive devices were confiscated; a fifth is known to have gone missing. They were concealed inside Toshiba radios very similar to the one found at Lockerbie a few weeks later. One of the gang, a Palestinian known as Abu Talb, was later found to have a calendar in his flat in Sweden with the date of 21 December circled. New evidence, now in the hands of al-Megrahi’s defence, proves for the first time that Abu Talb was in Malta when the Lockerbie bombing took place. The Maltese man whose testimony convicted al-Megrahi has also identified Abu Talb. During al-Megrahi’s trial Abu Talb had a strange role. As part of a defence available in Scottish law, known as ‘incrimination’, Abu Talb was named as someone who – rather than the accused – might have carried out the bombing. At the time he was serving a life sentence in Sweden for the bombing of a synagogue, but he was summoned to Camp Zeist to give evidence. He ended up testifying as a prosecution witness, denying that he had anything to do with Lockerbie. In exchange for his testimony, he received lifelong immunity from prosecution.

Other evidence has emerged showing that the bomb could have been placed on the plane at Frankfurt airport, a possibility that the prosecution in al-Megrahi’s trial consistently ruled out (their case depended on the suitcase containing the bomb having been transferred from a connecting flight from Malta). Most significantly, German federal police have provided financial records showing that on 23 December 1988, two days after the bombing, the Iranian government deposited £5.9 million into a Swiss bank account that belonged to the arrested members of the PFLP-GC.

Rolfe

20th August 2009, 08:23 AM

Hmmmm. Thank you for that link. It explains the alternative theory (the CT if you like) in a way that I now understand. It's what I was hoping for when I bought Rollo's book back in 2001 or 2002.

I can now see why there have apparently been suggestions that Megrahi's illness may be a sham. I don't believe that, because there's a limit to the number of doctors you can buy off. And I do not believe that Karol Sikora is one of them. However, it's certainly extremely convenient for those who want to keep the lid on this.

The international ramifications are complex. If the appeal had gone ahead, it's possible that evidence might have emerged to show that the USA had deliberately suppressed evidence of Iranian involvement as a quid pro quo for Iran coming alongside in the first Gulf War. And that Libya had agreed to have two of its own nationals framed for the crime as a quid pro quo for the withdrawal of sanctions.

If Megrahi had been acquitted it would have opened the question of recompense to Libya for the miscarriage of justice and the millions paid to the relatives of the victims. It would also have allowed Megrahi potentially to sue for wrongful conviction, if a case can be made that the original trial was very substantially flawed.

Allowing Megrahi's death to draw a line under this is probably the dearest wish of many of those involved.

I can see that there has been politicking to get that appeal dropped for several years. First, the legal delays coming from the prosecution side have been inordinate. Then we had the "deal in the desert" where Tony Blair was clearly angling to be able to offer Megrahi the prisoner transfer option so long as he dropped the appeal. That went pear-shaped, because the Labour party unexpectedly lost the Scottish election only a week or two later, leaving the non-compliant SNP in charge. There were political reasons why the prisoner transfer was not a good idea, and Kenny McAskill outlined some of these in his speech.

The compassionate release has come as a great way out, because it avoids the problems inherent in the prisoner transfer scenario. Just one little snagette. There was no requirement to drop the appeal for that to happen. Which kind of removed the entire point of the whole thing.

Hands up anyone who thinks Megrahi wasn't told privately that if he wanted the compassionate release he'd better "choose" to drop the appeal? That's exactly what his own lawyer said had happened. Hands up anyone who thinks the person who did the telling wasn't Kenny McAskill?

The odd bit about this is that Kenny is an SNP Minister. The SNP were never part of the mainstream politicking about all this over the years. Received wisdom among party members was that Megrahi had probably been framed. Not only that, but that Shirley McKie was given such a hard time because the then Scottish government didn't want anything to get out that might suggest Scottish criminal investigation methods weren't 100% reliable while the Camp Zeist trial was going on.

Now Kenny is in a position of power, and possibly in a position to have found out a lot more about what's behind all this. And he's chosen to toe the orthodox line, reaffirm that he stands by the guilty verdict, pressurise Megrahi into dropping the appeal before he dies (so that it can't be resurrected by the families of the victims who believe in his innocence), and hustle him out of the country.

I would dearly love to get Kenny in a very quiet spot with some thumbscrews.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

20th August 2009, 08:34 AM

Because they haven't found a way to connect it to Bush and Cheney.

'Scuse me, but it's bloody obvious.

Lockerbie happened in December 1988 right at the tail end of the Reagan presidency, and Bush snr took office less than a month later. The four years of the Bush snr presidency is the time when all the misdirection and shenanigans seems to have happened. And these shenanigans are said to be directly related to the need to get Iran on-side at the time of the first Gulf War of 1990 to 1991.

OK, not the Bush the current crew are after, and I'm not sure if Cheney figured much, but for goodness sake. A perfectly plausibe, viable and non-tinfoil-hat CT involving a Bush, a crashed airliner and the murder of hundreds of American citizens. And none of them are interested?

Rolfe.

Dave Rogers

20th August 2009, 09:43 AM

A perfectly plausibe, viable and non-tinfoil-hat CT involving a Bush, a crashed airliner and the murder of hundreds of American citizens. And none of them are interested?

I think that's the problem. If they actually believed it, they might have to do something about it, rather than staying in the basement making YouTube videos. As George Monbiot put it, the virtue of a fake conspiracy is that it requires you do nothing.

Dave

ddt

20th August 2009, 04:49 PM

Thanks for reminding me about that bit, I'd forgotten a lot of the detail. It does seem unnecessarily complicated, and I've always thought so. I never realy understood why the pressure sensors were necessary in the first place. It almost suggests a lack of confidence in the timer, that it couldn't be started right from the inception to reliably hit the window when the plane was over the Atlantic. And even with all that complication, it still went a bit wrong.

I suppose, again, it depends on where the bomb actually left the control of the terrorist. If it was put on board at Heathrow, then a simple timer would surely have done it. However, if it was put on board at Malta, how far in advance would the timer have to be set for? What sort of technology that was easily available in 1988 would allow that sort of delay to be set. So maybe, that's why the pressure sensors, so that the timer didn't start until it was within its "range" for the detonation point.

I'm still confused though. According to that article, it was the drop in pressure on the Frankfurt leg that started the timer. But of course the plane still had its stopover at Heathrow, and it was there that the delay occurred, after the die was cast, so to speak. It does seem odd, to go to such lengths, but still leave such an obvious possibility for error. Why not go for a flight that didn't have a stopover after the timer was started?

Yeah, those are interesting questions. First of all, AFAIK, when it comes to a simple timer you won't even need an electronics gadget as I said before; a simple 2 pound alarm clock purchased at Woolworth will do the trick equally fine.

The theory of the pressure sensors seems a bit - ahem - pressing the things into a desired outcome. If indeed the suitcase entered the plane in Malta, then there's a big hole. The pressure sensor would have triggered somewhere over the Mediterranean when that plane had reached 8,000 ft altitude - after all, it had to cross the Alps. :) And if the system could have been programmed that it only triggered on the second trigger from the sensor, at the lift-off from Frankfurt, then why not on the third?

It fairly peripheral to the question of who did it nd why and why is there such a blatant coverup going on, but it makes it difficult to know whether we're dealing with some Middle Eastern version of Q, or a bunch of improvising amateurs.

I don't think they were amateurs. Semtex, or C4, or any other plastic explosive, is not easily come by. Whoever provided for the explosive, must have had some confidence in the professionality of the perpetrator(s).

ddt

20th August 2009, 04:50 PM

I would dearly love to get Kenny in a very quiet spot with some thumbscrews.

There's nothing in the Geneva Conventions that forbids you, as a private citizen, from carrying out such a plan. Just sayin'. :D

SpitfireIX

20th August 2009, 07:31 PM

All I can say is this case makes my head hurt :confused:. Well, that, and why was there never a credible claim of responsibility if the motive was revenge?

As a side note, despite my generally conservative worldview, even if the evidence of al Megrahi's guilt were incontrovertible (which it's clearly not), I'd still be in favor of compassionate release. No matter what he might have done, it's not an excuse for ill treatment.

tfk

21st August 2009, 05:31 AM

Twin,

I find it interesting that Al-M. is said to be dying of advanced prostate cancer. This is a slow growing, easily detectable cancer that the prison authorities clearly had a duty of care to screen for in such a long -term prisoner.
Given that prostate cancer is probably he most common cancer in men over 40 and that the symptoms lead to a simple early diagnosis and mostly successful teatment there is definitely culpable negligence involved.
....unless we are being led by the nose as usual.

Is there ANYTHING that you don't think is a conspiracy?

Tell BS for me that his rabbit hole goes deeper.

Much deeper.

UK Prostate Cancer Mortality stats: http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/prostate/mortality/

In 2007, there were 10,239 prostate cancer deaths. The conspiracy broadens. All those UK docs...

And don't they have socialized medicine? So, isn't EVERYONE under 24/7 care?

Bill appears to think that being a mass murderer entitles you to BETTER care than the, uh, "contributing" members of society.

Now, I wouldn't consider advocating worse care for prisoners than for the general public. But in this putz's case, it's really tempting ...

tk

Rolfe

21st August 2009, 05:58 AM

You may believe that the Greater Glasgow Health Board figures on prostate cancer detection are poor. I think I mentioned that in an earlier post. However, there is no realistic doubt that Megrahi has terminal prostate cancer. Thus this seems a pretty irrelevant point to focus on as regards the alleged stitch-up and cover-up.

Rolfe.

twinstead

21st August 2009, 06:35 AM

I'm just flabberghasted at some of the silly things that make some people go, "Hmmmmmm".

Rolfe

21st August 2009, 07:13 AM

There's so much about this affair to go hmmmmm about, even though that isn't one of them. It's very difficult to distinguish the genuine anomalies and questionable actions from the barnacle-like CT accretion that tends to grow on to any affair like this over the years.

It really needs someone like Gravy to do a detailed examination of which claims actually have evidence supporting them, and I don't think that's ever been done. Much more diffcult when the main events happened pre-internet I suppose. I keep hearing isolated factoids, like a babygro that was allegedly recovered intact but shredded later, and a policewoman being told not to report that she'd found a CIA badge in the wreckage, and a suitcase full of powder that was handed to the authorities but never referred to again, and I don't know how much of this is Chinese whispers and how much based on fact.

Much speculation surrounds the document that the defence team have been trying to get the prosecution to disclose, which has repeatedly been refused on the grounds that it contains material that might damage our relationship with a foreign power. Despite the court ordering it to be produced, I don't think that ever happened.

I don't think it's being ridiculous to speculate that Megrahi may have been pressurised to withdraw his appeal (as the price of getting the compassionate release) in order to prevent that document having to be handed over.

Rolfe.

gtc

21st August 2009, 07:16 AM

a policewoman being told not to report that she'd found a CIA badge in the wreckage,

Just looking at that claim, it seems a bit far fetched to think that the CIA would be clever enough to stage a bombing but sill enough to leave behind a badge.

Guybrush Threepwood

21st August 2009, 07:20 AM

Just looking at that claim, it seems a bit far fetched to think that the CIA would be clever enough to stage a bombing but sill enough to leave behind a badge.

This is from memory, so Rolfe may have better info, but the CT isn't that the CIA did the whole thing as a false flag operation, but that the perpetrators were not Libyan but Syrian/Palestinian/Iranian, and that there were CIA agents on the plane, and on the ground soon after the crash and that the US government did not wish this to be known.

Rolfe

21st August 2009, 07:22 AM

Just looking at that claim, it seems a bit far fetched to think that the CIA would be clever enough to stage a bombing but sill enough to leave behind a badge.

I don't think that was the claim. I'm struggling a bit here, but there's a part of the story that involves a CIA-sponsored drug-running operation which was using that flight, and the bomb was able to be smuggled on board because the bombers managed to hack the drug-smuggling operation.

I think that bit is probably barnacle.

Rolfe.

sophia8

21st August 2009, 07:33 AM

It was a special edition, so it might be possible to obtain a back-copy.You can buy a PDF of the report from the Eye website. (https://secure2.subscribeonline.co.uk/PEYE/digital_downloads.cfm)

Professor Yaffle

21st August 2009, 07:35 AM

sophia8

21st August 2009, 07:46 AM

Professor Yaffle

21st August 2009, 07:53 AM

Rolfe

21st August 2009, 07:58 AM

This is from memory, so Rolfe may have better info, but the CT isn't that the CIA did the whole thing as a false flag operation, but that the perpetrators were not Libyan but Syrian/Palestinian/Iranian, and that there were CIA agents on the plane, and on the ground soon after the crash and that the US government did not wish this to be known.

Something like that. The Official Theory is that Lockerbie was Libyan revenge for the US bombings of Tripoli and Benghasi in 1986 in which Gadaffi's step-daughter was killed (and which are believed to have been an attempt to assassinate Gadaffi himself). One argument against this is that Margaret Thatcher apparently didn't believe that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, stating in her memoires that these bombings were so successful that Libya was never able to retaliate.

The CT version is that Lockerbie was actually Iranian revenge for the shooting down of the Iranian Airbus over the Persian Gulf on 3rd July 1988, which killed 248 Iranians on their way to Mecca on a pilgrimage. That incident was due to a US naval captain mistaking the scheduled passenger flight for an attacking military aircraft. Subsequently the US tried to blame Iran for what happened, and the US captain was later awarded the Legion of Merit Medal.

Iran was reportedly livid about this, and publicly vowing revenge. However, the CT goes on to claim that Iran then contracted-out the actual carrying-out of the revenge, by some accounts offering a reward for doing the deed. Palestinian terrorists are the most popular choice for this role, however Syria has also been fingered. Some versions even turn back towards Libya, suggesting that Libya might have been only too happy to do Iran's dirty work for it.

The CT tends to suggest there has been a deliberate misdirection effort on the part of the USA (the CIA) to turn attention away from all this and towards Libya alone. The motive generally being that the CIA were up to something else they don't want revealed (that alleged drug-running operation?), however the other possibility is that the USA wanted Iran onside at the time of the First Gulf War in the early 1990s, so they really, really didn't want to have to deal with the revelation that Iran was behind Lockerbie.

Having said that, the official line is that they simply didn't find the evidence they needed to incriminate the Palestinians. They did, however, find enough to make them go after Megrahi and Fhimah.

As I said, a lot of the CT stuff is barnacle, but the bare bones of the thing are certainly given credence by many people not normally dosposed to CT promotion. The SCCRC report certainly dismisses some aspects, but even there, it's impossible to say whether this is because they've definitely been discounted, or simply that they didn't find sufficient evidence.

And yes, Sophia is right. The only CIA agents present immediately after the flight crashed were the dead ones who were on the plane.

Rolfe.

Professor Yaffle

21st August 2009, 07:58 AM

In one of the comments under the most recent blog entry there is this:

However one of the US relatives knows perfectly well that Megrahi had nothing to do with it and is a very credible suspect for the bombing and the further Lockerbie related murders.

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1073021351804532798&postID=496024392113518125&isPopup=true

Anyone know what flavour of CT he is referrring to here?

Rolfe

21st August 2009, 08:02 AM

I don't know if this has been posted before, but I found this blog on the Lockerbie case written by a professor of Scots law who was involved in setting up the original trial at Camp Zeist.

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html

Oh thanks. I speed-read the beginning of the newspaper version of that this morning as I was having breakfast. Must read more.

Rolfe.

Guybrush Threepwood

21st August 2009, 08:05 AM

I've heard the story about "CIA got to the wreckage before anybody else", but that has to be complete baloney. First, the wreckage was scattered across a couple of hundred square miles of extremely rural countryside; second, it happened on the longest night of the year, when there wouldn't have been any daylight to see anything by before about 9.30 am. The locals were already out with torches, searching for survivors, long before then. Any CIA agents around would have been reduced to "Hey bub, did you see any wreckage come down anywhere around here? Um, you think there might be something up in those hills? Oh, right...."
And that would have been after they managed the 6-hour journey up from London...

As I said, this is from memory, but the CT wasn't 'CIA miraculously appear 5 minutes after plane crash', more that while the police were searching the next day or so other people without clear identification were seen ambling about taking away suitcases and not being stopped by the D&G plods. Personally I think this is nonsense, but it's not as far fetched as gtcs version, which is all I was trying to counter.

The main CT I think is plausible is that the organisations being blamed for it were the ones that it was politically convenient for the UK/US government to blame, not necessarily the ones that the evidence pointed to.

Rolfe

21st August 2009, 08:06 AM

In one of the comments under the most recent blog entry there is this:

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1073021351804532798&postID=496024392113518125&isPopup=true

Anyone know what flavour of CT he is referrring to here?

No - that's a new one on me.

Rolfe.

Professor Yaffle

21st August 2009, 08:18 AM

And this article mentions an alternative suspect - Abo Talb of the "Syria-based Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, which worked closely with another Syria-backed terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)." (splitters)
http://links.org.au/node/809

Rolfe

21st August 2009, 08:26 AM

One little bit from the Rollo book struck me as interesting. Rollo reports that Martin Cadman, the father of one of the victims, said the following....

In February 1990, with some others from the UK Families Group, I met the American President's Commission on Aircraft Security and Terrorism in the American Embassy. At the end of the meeting after we had broken up, one of the members of the committee said to me....

Your government and ours know exactly what happened but they're never going to tell.

Just one more snippet that can no longer be reliably pegged as fact or barnacle.

Rolfe.

sophia8

21st August 2009, 08:58 AM

However, if it was put on board at Malta, how far in advance would the timer have to be set for? What sort of technology that was easily available in 1988 would allow that sort of delay to be set. The IRA used a 28-day timer for the Brighton bomb - and that was in 1984. Finding an accurate long-range timer would have been no problem in 1997.

ETA: ARGH; That should be 1987, 0f course.
ARGH no2; That should be 1988, of course.

sophia8

21st August 2009, 09:08 AM

As I said, this is from memory, but the CT wasn't 'CIA miraculously appear 5 minutes after plane crash', more that while the police were searching the next day or so other people without clear identification were seen ambling about taking away suitcases and not being stopped by the D&G plods. Personally I think this is nonsense, but it's not as far fetched as gtcs version, which is all I was trying to counter.Agreed, that's a more likely scenario - but barely. They would have had to amble off with an awful lot of luggage to find what they were looking for before the local plods got to it.

Guybrush Threepwood

21st August 2009, 09:20 AM

Agreed, that's a more likely scenario - but barely. They would have had to amble off with an awful lot of luggage to find what they were looking for before the local plods got to it.

Ok, I got sucked into this thing and I've downloaded the Private Eye special. I realise that may not be regarded as a completely reliable source by everyone here, but it's by Paul Foot who I have a fair bit of time for. It's long so it will take me a while to read, but I'll post any interesting bits later on.

GlennB

21st August 2009, 09:21 AM

The role of Thomas Thurman - FBI forensics, though allegedly unqualified - in the examination of timer fragments for both PanAm 103 and UTA 722 is interesting.
Also strange that the Lockerbie timer fragment was never tested for explosives residue.

Rolfe

21st August 2009, 09:22 AM

The IRA used a 28-day timer for the Brighton bomb - and that was in 1984. Finding an accurate long-range timer would have been no problem in 1997.

ETA: ARGH; That should be 1988, 0f course.

I'd forgotten about that one. I suppose it's peripheral, but the complexity of the detonation timing seems unnecessary. If you know you're going to get the bomb on the plane, then just set the timer to go off as late as possible before the plane will get to the other side of the Atlantic, assuming that it's up to time (or as far ahead of time as might realistically happen). Then, if it's late (which let's face it is more likely), it will still probably have cleared land when it detonates. I'm not sure how big a window that is, but I'd have thought it was big enough.

In any event, all that messing around with pressure sensors doesn't seem to have conferred any advantage, because the delay on the tarmac at Heathrow still led to a detonation over land, regardless.

I've just got one idea, which would depend on the bag being put on board on Malta. Suppose you don't know for sure which connecting flight the bag will be transferred to at Frankfurt. Then, the pressure sensor would make sense. It would confirm that the bag was actually on the plane which would cross the Atlantic, and that the journey had begun.

Someone said, well in that case why not start the timer on the third takeoff (from Heathrow) rather than the second one (from Frankfurt). Doing that would pretty much guarantee that the desired point in the journey would be hit. My guess on that one would be that perhaps that was one complication too far, and in fact the terrorists didn't care all that much whether the plane landed on British soil or not.

I don't know if this has ever been discussed in relation to any of the prevalent theories.

Rolfe.

ddt

21st August 2009, 10:26 AM

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html
Interesting tidbit from this writeup:
In an op-ed article for The Independent (London), Dr. Koechler has expressed serious doubts about the decision by Mr. Al Megrahi to withdraw his (second) appeal. His decision may have been made under duress and would thus be legally questionable, he said. According to Scots law, the termination of the ongoing appeal was not in any way required for compassionate release to be granted.

I suggested yesterday in the other thread that Megrahi just refile his appeal, claiming duress for the withdrawal. :)

And this article mentions an alternative suspect - Abo Talb of the "Syria-based Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, which worked closely with another Syria-backed terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)." (splitters)
http://links.org.au/node/809
The PFLP-GC is indeed the most popularly fingered terrorist group who'd been the gun-for-hire for Iran.

The German police rounded up some of their guys in the Frankfurt area, and found a cache with similar radio/cassette players, some 3 weeks before Lockerbie, plus PanAm timetables; and found some more of their equipment later, signifying that the first raid hadn't deprived them of all their stuff. From the description of their MO they seem a much more plausible suspect.

Rolfe

21st August 2009, 11:10 AM

The story is that they simply couldn't find the evidence to pin it on the Palestinians.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8211596.stm

Early suspicion fell on Ahmed Jibril, leader of Palestinian terror group the PFLP-GC, who intelligence sources suggested may have been working for Iran.

West German police mounted Operation Autumn Leaves, raiding flats near Frankfurt where the group was preparing bombs in radio cassette players.

They were similar to that used to blow up Pan Am flight 103.

But Dick Marquise, chief of the FBI "Scotbom Task Force" from 1988-1992, said investigators could find nothing later to link this plot with Lockerbie.

"We never found any evidence," he told the BBC. "There's a lot of information, there's a lot of intelligence that people have said there were meetings, there were discussions.

"But not one shred of evidence that a prosecutor could take into court to convict either an official in Iran or Ahmed Jibril for blowing up Pan Am flight 103."

Whether that means they didn't do it, or they simply covered their tracks too well, I don't suppose we'll ever know.

Rolfe.

ktesibios

21st August 2009, 03:27 PM

However, if it was put on board at Malta, how far in advance would the timer have to be set for? What sort of technology that was easily available in 1988 would allow that sort of delay to be set. So maybe, that's why the pressure sensors, so that the timer didn't start until it was within its "range" for the detonation point.
Rolfe.

By that time, single-chip digital alarm clock ICs which needed only power, a timebase, a seven-segment LED display and a few pushbutton switches to make a fully-functional alarm clock could be found in the ads in the back of Popular Electronics.

Give me one of those, a 32.768 kHz watch crystal and a 4017 to count how many times the alarm output has gone active and I could easily build a timer that could be set to go off at a particular time of day up to 10 days after setting- complete with a jack into which you could plug a display and setting switch assembly to set the detonation time (or to leave hooked up to the bomb for that "stupid action movie" look).

Simply counting off an hour or two- with +- 1 second accuracy- after a pressure sensor detects that the plane is at cruising altitude really would have been trivial even with late-80s technology.

BTW, the fuzing system for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima included a timer that started when the bomb was released and prevented detonation until it had fallen for a sufficient time to be far enough away from the airplane, a barometric sensor that also prevented detonation until the bomb had fallen to a set altitude and a radio altimeter circuit that triggered the bomb at a set height above ground level.

This was all done with vacuum tubes and relays- 1940s technology.

Rolfe

21st August 2009, 04:54 PM

ddt

22nd August 2009, 05:23 AM

Just one more mystery I suppose. Though how would your plan be varied if you were putting the bag on in Malta, to a feeder flight, from which it would then be transferred to the transatlantic airliner (maybe you're not 100% sure which one?) at Frankfurt, and the transatlantic flight would make a stopover at Heathrow before heading out over the ocean?

I can see the desire to get the timing started from a later leg, but if they were going to do that, why not home in on the actual transatlantic leg itself, rather than starting the timer on the Frankfurt leg?

That puzzles me too. Ktesibios is absolutely right that that technology already existed (I only would have said 7490 instead of 4017 - I fiddled a bit with an earlier generation IC's in the begin of the 80s :)).The prosecution claimed that the timer was triggered on the second leg of the journey - from Frankfurt to Heathrow - gaining height. So that means that between the pressure sensor and the timer there's a counter that counts how many times the pressure sensor has triggered before it triggers the timer into action. If you can count to 2, you can also count to 3.

Another thing that puzzles me is the timing. The plane exploded over land because it was delayed. However, the delay was only 25 minutes according to wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103). That means that even if the flight had been on schedule, it would barely have left the Scottish air, or not, falling down somewhere on the Outer Hebrides. As you said before, if you want the plane to go down over the Atlantic, you'd rather plan the detonation for just before the time it would reach North America, as planes never depart too early but frequently too late.

ddt

22nd August 2009, 05:31 AM

My google-fu by accident turned up a Daily Express article (http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/12732) from 2007, just after Megrahi was granted his appeal.

AN AMERICAN citizen living close to the White House has emerged as the real Lockerbie bomber, the Sunday Express can reveal.

In a sensational twist, Abu Elias, currently living near Washington DC, will be named with others believed to be in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) as part of a terror cell behind the Pan Am disaster.

[...]

Elias - who has a new identity the Sunday Express cannot divulge - is the nephew of the terror group's leader, Ahmed Jibril, the man believed to be the mastermind of the bombing.

Rolfe

22nd August 2009, 06:54 AM

Well, Daily Express, say no more....

Rolfe.

Rolfe

22nd August 2009, 08:13 AM

Another thing that puzzles me is the timing. The plane exploded over land because it was delayed. However, the delay was only 25 minutes according to wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103). That means that even if the flight had been on schedule, it would barely have left the Scottish air, or not, falling down somewhere on the Outer Hebrides. As you said before, if you want the plane to go down over the Atlantic, you'd rather plan the detonation for just before the time it would reach North America, as planes never depart too early but frequently too late.

I hadn't realised that. I hadn't really worked out how big the window was from the Outer Hebrides to Newfoundland, and I thought the plane was an hour late.

It doesn't make sense. It doesn't even make sense if the plane was intended to crash on British soil, because even though it was late, it nearly got far enough to clear habitation. In fact, once you're north of about Manchester, the chance of it hitting habitation gets relatively low, and it was very very bad luck that it actually hit an inhabited area.

I wonder if the timing system actually malfunctioned? They didn't find much of it, so I'm not sure they'd have been able to tell. And I still don't follow the need for the pressure trigger.

I'm guessing, but would the Outer Hebrides/Newfoundland window be about three hours? Four? How many planes are more than a couple of hours late? If you can be certain that you're going to get the bag on one particular flight, then surely there's no need for any pressure sensor at all? Just set the timer for half an hour before Newfoundland, and wait.

The pressure sensor would suggest either obsessive determination that nothing should go wrong, even if the plane was several hours late - in which case, why not start the timer with the Heathrow takeoff rather than Frankfurt, or some doubt about which flight the bag would actually go on.

The obsessive determination seems unlikely, given the setup, and the doubts about the flight - well, they never found out how the bag got on the plane anyway, so I suppose that's probably it. The whole thing set up ready to go, ready to enter the system at a moment's notice as soon as the opportunity came up.

Alternatively, I suppose, the cassette plater or even the bag, might have been given to some innocent courier whose exact flight wasn't known. Though if the whole case was packed by the bombers, as was alleged, again that seems unlikely.

I see the timer was part of the murky evidence that was set to go to appeal if Megrahi hadn't withdrawn that.

I'd just like to get my head round what's known and what's possible and what's fabrication and what's wild speculation on this affair. That's why I started the thread. Given the plausible and widely-credited nature of this CT, I imagined it would have been looked at in the context of 9/11. Given the amount of skullduggery alleged to have been perpetrated by the US government in connection with the affair, I thought I'd find CTers asserting that if the NWO could do that, it could do so much more in 2001. And then I'd be able to find some debunking. But no.

Looks like I have to do this the hard way, if I'm interested.

Rolfe.

Aidoneus

22nd August 2009, 12:36 PM

Given that he has been under the 24-hour direct care of the British authorities for many many years I am saying that prostate cancer- probably he most recognisable of cancers should have been diagnosed years ago. I am not askng your opinion on this- it is completely self evident.
Prostate cancer incidentally develops slowly over many years and is not to be confused with cancers that develop more quickly.

Diagnosed rather like this, you mean?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/7681387.stm

Rolfe

22nd August 2009, 01:47 PM

Why have they put a picture of Gadaffi with that story? :confused:

Rolfe.

Myron Proudfoot

22nd August 2009, 01:58 PM

As I said, this is from memory, but the CT wasn't 'CIA miraculously appear 5 minutes after plane crash', more that while the police were searching the next day or so other people without clear identification were seen ambling about taking away suitcases and not being stopped by the D&G plods. Personally I think this is nonsense, but it's not as far fetched as gtcs version, which is all I was trying to counter.

The main CT I think is plausible is that the organisations being blamed for it were the ones that it was politically convenient for the UK/US government to blame, not necessarily the ones that the evidence pointed to.

Hmm, anybody see a 1960-ish blue police box in the area???

geni

22nd August 2009, 02:07 PM

One argument against this is that Margaret Thatcher apparently didn't believe that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, stating in her memoires that these bombings were so successful that Libya was never able to retaliate.

Thatcher trying to put the best posible spin on the outcome of militry action even when such a claim conflicts with reality (consider arms Libya supplied to the IRA) is normal behaviour. It doesn't mean much.

Rolfe

22nd August 2009, 02:51 PM

Good point. That woman was only tenuously connected to reality a lot of the time. It's still a bit of a howler though. It's been suggested the spooks who were vetting the book missed it.

Rolfe.

8den

23rd August 2009, 03:53 AM

I can't believe the temerity of the American Right, complaining about this release. McAskill is a perfect place to ask pointed questions about Guantanamo; torture; rendition; failure to acknowledge international law and all the other stuff Americans are doing.

Rolfe

23rd August 2009, 10:05 AM

Well, it seems like a logical response from a country that kidnaps terrorist suspects and keeps them locked up in questionable conditions, to object when another country behaves differently....

Well, that's really for the Politics thread.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

23rd August 2009, 10:27 AM

Back on the CT, the main question coming uppermost in my mind is whether there has ever been an actual conspiracy, even if we assume Megrahi is innocent.

Some fairly heavy circumstantial evidence pointed to the Palestinians. (Working for money on behalf of Iran, as I most often encounter it, though others say Syria.) However, no actual evidence was presented to incriminate the Palestinian group, and the focus of investigation shifted to Libya.

There have been suggestions that evidence of Palestinian involvement was deliberately suppressed, allegedly to prevent the chain leading to Iran, because Bush senior wanted Iran onside at the time one the first Gulf War which was happening at that time. And that Libya was a much more convenient scapegoat.

However, I've mentioned the Barry George case in this context before. Jill Dando's murderer left virtually no clues at all. It was an extraordinarily slick operation. There were suspicions relating to some sort of Serbian reprisal for her support of Kosovo (or something like that), but no evidence was found. Police then turned to George, who was a complete inadequate who had been nearby and had been acting strangely. And they fitted him up, basically by massively exaggerating the significance of things which had nothing to do with the murder. The motive for this was simply that they felt they had to get someone for this high profile murder, and George was the best they could come up with. It took two appeals before he was released.

And then there was the Damilola Taylor murder. The first set of accused were again essentially fitted up by police desperate to get a conviction. The evidence was rightly thrown out by the jury, because the alibi was sound. That didn't stop the red-top press screaming for their blood, and asserting that the acquittal was a disgrace. Fortunately a re-examine of the forensics turned up the real culprits.

I wonder if the "conspiracy" here might be as simple as these. The real bombers (possibly the Palestinians) covered their tracks extremely well, and investigators were getting nowhere trying to construct a case. Meanwhile there were 270 dead people, and a lot of heavy public pressure to pin it on someone. Oh, here's these Libyan guys who were there or thereabouts at the right time....

Then the system goes into action, and the USA offers $4 million to one witness if they give evidence that leads to a conviction, and $2 million to another (and $1 million to his brother). So then that second witness, who is "an apple short of a picnic" anyway, somehow manages to decide that the person he saw wasn't over 6 feet tall and in his fifties after all, but was Megrahi (5' 8" and 36), and actually it was definitely 7th December, because that's the date that will get me untold wealth....

And there you are. Not clean, but not anything out of the ordinary

Rolfe.

St.Michael

23rd August 2009, 10:28 AM

I’m not sure if this is the right forum or thread to post this, but one of the most annoying things I find about CT people is the disservice they do when cases like this come up.
Lockerbie is a tragedy with so many unanswered questions surrounding it and the subsequent trial. Anyone investigating them is labelled a CT and get tarred with the same brush as those with outlandish ideas of faked moon landings, UFO conspiracies or Obama’s birth certificate.

One of the most nagging questions I have about Lockerbie is in regards to the break in at the Pan-Am loading area in Heathrow airport on the morning of the bombing.

Rolfe

23rd August 2009, 12:26 PM

Well, yes, but nobody is being called a CTer (yet) for questioning this one. Every time it comes up, there's a lot of mainstream voices saying the conviction is unsafe. The trouble is that the longer the evasions and suppression of evidence go on, the more it's open to CTers to complicate the issue with irrelevant and fabricated complications.

I think an important thing to remember is that in all the miscarriage of justice cases there have been so far, there has never been any serious suggestion that the police were turning a blind eye to the real culprit, or that they thought the person they were fitting up was innocent. Time and time again, they manage to convince themselves that some random bystander is the culprit, and all the dirty tricks that happen after that are just how they try to make sure the right person is convicted.

The Damilola Taylor case is a good parallel again. There was evidence pointing to the real culprit. It was overlooked. Nobody thinks the police were deliberately trying to shield this person, or that they deliberately ignored that bloodstain. They went after the first set of defendants because they seemed like the best bet at the time.

There have been so many. Barry George. The Guildford Six. Several recent cases where re-examination of old DNA evidence has resulted in innocent people being released. Nobody calls it a conspiracy. It's incompetence, in a way, but really it's a problem of police culture. And it's compounded by a tendency, once the favoured suspect has been identified, to start ignoring evidence that suggests they might not be guilty. Especially if all it does is throw the case back into confusion, rather than identify another probable suspect. I think that may be behind the reluctence to look at stuff like the Heathrow breakin. Look, we've got this case put together that the bomb went on board at Malta. Don't spoil it now!

However, it was never proved where the bomb actually got on board. It could have been Malta (or maybe another feeder flight, who knows), or Frankfurt, or Heathrow. That's why I'm interested in the odd logic of the timing device - why the pressure sensor was necessary at all, and why the explosion went off so early even given that the plane was late.

This doesn't have to be any more of a conspiracy than the Jill Dando case was, or the Damilola Taylor one, or the Guildford pub bombings, or any of the others. Even the US bribery of witnesses could easily be explained by excessive enthusiasm to convict someone they believed had done it.

By the way, here's what the priest who lived in the only house left standing in Sherwood Crescent after the crash said in today's paper (http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2526957.0.megrahi_the_legacy_in_locker bie.php) (and yes, he was in the house at the time, you don't get much closer than that).

"I'm very, very pleased that Mr Megrahi has gone home,'' he said. "From the very beginning, following the investigation very closely, the whole thrust of it was towards Iran. Then suddenly that shifted and it switched to Libya. We were being told at the time by the American and British authorities that if we get the Libyans, it will lead to all the others.

"I was suspicious about this sudden switch anyway. As we can see, time has shown that it has certainly not led to the conviction of other people. I feel an innocent man was convicted."

Rolfe.

Rolfe

23rd August 2009, 06:23 PM

It's a pity about the quote laws around here, because one hardly knows where to start with this one. The caveat is that it's from the Sunday Mail, with is a tabloid rag, nevertheless it's interesting. Like Krakatoa is interesting....
http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2009/08/23/cia-spook-says-megrahi-was-freed-before-appeal-humiliated-justice-system-78057-21618329/

A CIA terror expert who worked on the Lockerbie investigation has claimed Megrahi would have been freed on appeal.
In an exclusive interview, retired case officer Robert Baer has revealed details of the secret dossier of evidence Megrahi hoped would clear his name.
Baer claims the appeal, which he worked on, could have done serious damage to our legal system.
And he insists Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill had little option other than to release Megrahi.
Baer claimed: Key witnesses - including Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci - were "manipulated".
Vital details freely available to intelligence agencies were withheld from the original prosecution.
Megrahi's appeal papers would have proven beyond doubt the bombing was orchestrated by Iran.
[....]
The 57-year-old, who lives in Colorado, said: "Your justice secretary had two choices - sneak into Megrahi's cell and smother him with his pillow or release him.
"The end game came down to damage limitation because the evidence amassed by his appeal team is explosive and extremely damning to your system of justice.
"There is hard evidence of other nations - Iran particularly - being responsible for this atrocity.
"The CIA knew this almost from the moment the plane exploded. This decision to free Megrahi was about protecting the integrity of your justiciary because the appeal papers prove Iran was involved.
[....]
"The decision serves everybody's purpose. I don't think anyone wanted to face the consequences of that evidence being heard at appeal.
"The Maltese witness was manipulated and perjured himself at trial.
[...]
"If I were the prosecutors, I would not afford Megrahi the opportunity to state what his appeal team discovered. The investigators in the original case did not get all the information we had.
"If I knew this stuff, you can guarantee MI5 and MI6 knew it long before his conviction.
"It is at least an act of omission not to tell the Scottish authorities.
"It would be very clear there was some form of prosecutorial misconduct in this case and that Megrahi did not get a fair trial."

Well well.

Rolfe.

St.Michael

24th August 2009, 05:58 AM

Well, yes, but nobody is being called a CTer (yet) for questioning this one.

I was in a conversation I had last week, my friend could have been joking but I can be very touchy about being associated with CT/Truthers etc. :(

If the bomb was put on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt and then Heathrow would the luggage get rechecked when it is transfered internally? Or are X-rays/metal detectors only used to check luggage at the first leg of the journey?

Rolfe

24th August 2009, 06:14 AM

The bomb was disguised as a radio-casette player. At the time, it's very doubtful that routine airport security scans would have realised there was something fishy about it. The operatives weren't given detailed instructions about looking for excessive electronic components in these things, or checking them to see if they actually worked. It was only after this incident that operatives were supplied with wiring diagrams to check these items against, and told to check whether they would play.

We've got used to attention being paid to electrical items in our luggage. But remember, this happened in 1988. This is why they pay particular attention to electrical items now.

Rolfe.

Slayhamlet

28th August 2009, 07:13 PM

Not people under direct 24-hour-a-day care. Are you really disputing this ?

He didn't have 24-hour-a-day medical attention, obviously. What a bizarre assertion.

...oh wait, it's Bill Smith.

GlennB

29th August 2009, 06:13 AM

I was in a conversation I had last week, my friend could have been joking but I can be very touchy about being associated with CT/Truthers etc. :(

If the bomb was put on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt and then Heathrow would the luggage get rechecked when it is transfered internally? Or are X-rays/metal detectors only used to check luggage at the first leg of the journey?

In 1989 Air Malta apparently stated that the number of baggage items loaded into the hold was equal to the number checked in by passengers. i.e. there was no unaccompanied suitcase at the Malta end.

It also strikes me as bizarre that a timed bomb would have been put through a baggage transfer system involving three flights, a delay to any of which could have thrown the timing way out. 'Argument from incredulity' I suppose, but it would have been a strange way to go about it.

Rolfe

29th August 2009, 06:43 AM

If you want to hear what the man himself says about it all, here's the interview.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/megrahi-i-believe-in-destiny-but-i-wanted-to-die-at-home-1.825148

“I was supposed to receive a fair trial and I was supposed to be subject to fair procedure. From day one of the trial there were delays and delays from the Crown Office. I was supposed to receive the documents and the papers. Regarding the indictment, by law I was supposed to receive it within 110 days, but I was waiting more than 400 days. It was abnormal.

“The SCCRC found at least six grounds of appeal and said there were six grounds on which it may have been a miscarriage of justice. From that point we asked the Crown for more documents and more papers. We received only some of them and they were still redacted. Most of the pages were black and I think this is shameful. They were supposed to give us everything.”

Referring to the revelation by former MP Tam Dalyell that police notebooks recording the bombing’s aftermath were destroyed, he said: “It is very strange that the police forces that dealt with the case – and there were more than 400 officers – it is very strange that their notebooks went missing. When one officer was asked about the notebooks, he said they were all destroyed. I find this very strange. Surely the decision to destroy the notebooks of so many people is a decision that someone must have made? This is not fair and a big question mark about the case.”

He is also deeply critical of the Court of Session proceedings, where a special advocate was appointed to represent him because of the confidential nature of many pieces of evidence.

“I met the special advocate just one time and when I met him he said he doesn’t know anything about the documents and he said that he is not entitled to get in touch with me once he does know about it. Where is the justice in that? He is meant to represent my interests yet he cannot talk to me about a piece of crucial evidence. It could be of benefit to me and to the case, but they just say it is top secret and I am not entitled to see it or to see him again."

Rolfe.

GlennB

30th August 2009, 01:42 AM

In 1989 Air Malta apparently stated that the number of baggage items loaded into the hold was equal to the number checked in by passengers. i.e. there was no unaccompanied suitcase at the Malta end.

Further - Air Malta ended up suing UK tv company Granada for libel after yet another suggestion that the case went on in Malta. The case was settled out of court in Air Malta's favour.

Meanwhile, only 2 weeks after the bombing, strong testimony emerged stating that the case went on Pan Am 103 at Heathrow.

Rolfe

30th August 2009, 04:26 PM

Further - Air Malta ended up suing UK tv company Granada for libel after yet another suggestion that the case went on in Malta. The case was settled out of court in Air Malta's favour.

Meanwhile, only 2 weeks after the bombing, strong testimony emerged stating that the case went on Pan Am 103 at Heathrow.

I'm half way through the Private Eye report you recommended.

https://secure2.subscribeonline.co.uk/PEYE/digital_downloads.cfm

It seems to be relating the standard "CT" that I've heard piecemeal from so many sources. It's impossible to tell how sound the journalism is, but it's not exactly just the Eye, is it?

It seems to me that a lot of that was the basis for the appeal application that was lodged with the SCCRC. The SCCRC press release (http://www.sccrc.org.uk/ViewFile.aspx?id=293) claims to have investigated various points and found no evidence to support them - such as the suitcase with the hole in it, or the suitcase full of what might have been drugs. The grounds for appeal that were granted were all to do with Gauci's dodgy identification I think.

On one hand, it's easy to dismiss all the detail as CT, and suspect that in fact the investigation simply didn't find the evidence necessary to pin the crime on the Palestinians, so they just went after the Libyans who happened to be handy. Compare Barry George and the Jill Dando murder.

On the other hand, this isn't a bunch of misfits in their Mum's basement "just asking questions" based on laughably preposterous premises. This is a lot of serious journalists writing in respected publications (no, I don't necessarily include Private Eye in that but I do include the Herald). It's not reasonable just to dismiss it as a "CT" in the 9/11 mould simply because "debunking is what we do".

I do think it's unreasonable to believe that the CIA or whoever has subverted the SCCRC and who knows how many investigators and so on. What I don't know is just how well it might have been possible to "disappear" evidence so that a subseqent investigation wouldn't find it.

I'd really love to see this lot given the Gravy treatment, and then see whether anything was left standing.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

30th August 2009, 05:58 PM

OK, finished it. The sting is in the tail. Appendix 3.

Report on and evaluation of the Lockerbie Trial conducted by the special Scottish Court in the Netherlands at Kamp van Zeist
by Dr. Hans Köchler, University Professor, international observer of the International Progress Organization nominated by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the basis of Security Council resolution 1192 (1998)
Santiago de Chile, 3 February 2001/P/HK/17032

4. As far as the material aspects of due process and fairness of the trial are concerned, the presence of at least two representatives of a foreign government in the courtroom during the entire period of the trial was highly problematic. The two state prosecutors from the US Department of Justice were seated next to the prosecution team. They were not listed in any of the official information documents about the Court’s officers produced by the Scottish Court Service, yet they were seen talking to the prosecutors while the Court was in session, checking notes and passing on documents. [....]

5. This serious problem of due process became evident in the matter of the CIA cables concerning one of the Crown’s key witnesses, Mr. Giaka. Those cables were initially dismissed by the prosecution as “not relevant,” but proved to be of high relevance when finally (though only partially) released after a move from the part of the defense. Apart from this specific aspect – that seriously damaged the integrity of the whole legal procedure –, it has become obvious that the presence of representatives of foreign governments in a Scottish courtroom (or any courtroom, for that matter) on the side of the prosecution team jeopardizes the independence and integrity of legal procedures [....]

10. A general pattern of the trial consisted in the fact that virtually all people presented by the prosecution as key witnesses were proven to lack credibility to a very high extent, in certain cases even having openly lied to the Court. Particularly as regards Mr. Bollier and Mr. Giaka, there were so many inconsistencies in their statements and open contradictions to statements of other witnesses that the resulting confusion was much greater than any clarification that may have been obtained from parts of their statements. Their credibility as such was shaken. It seems highly arbitrary and irrational to choose only parts of their statements for the formulation of a verdict that requires certainty “beyond any reasonable doubt.”

16. On the basis of the above observations and evaluation, the undersigned has – to his great dismay – reached the conclusion that the trial, seen in its entirety, was not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner. Indeed, there are many more questions and doubts at the end of the trial than there were at its beginning. The trial has effectively created more confusion than clarity and no rational observer can make any statement on the complex subject matter “beyond any reasonable doubt”. [....]

19. The undersigned would like to express his humble opinion – or hope, for that matter – that an appeal, if granted, will correct the deficiencies of the trial as explained above. It goes without saying that all will depend on the integrity and independence of the five judges of an eventual Court of Appeal operating under Scottish law.

That is just so much dynamite. Not only that, it gives more credibility to the case as presented by Private Eye. I find their points regarding the timer device absolutely fascinating, putting a point of view I hadn't previously heard explained.

I've always known the verdict was unsound, but really just because a number of people I respected who were familiar with the details said so. My previous main attempt to understand the details (the Rollo book) was a bust because that book is rubbish. The Private Eye account was what I was really looking for.

I can feel myself turning into a Twoofer as I type.

I'd really like to see Gravy tackle this one.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

31st August 2009, 04:15 AM

If the bomb was put on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt and then Heathrow would the luggage get rechecked when it is transfered internally? Or are X-rays/metal detectors only used to check luggage at the first leg of the journey?

Going by the Private Eye account of the trial, which I think must be factually accurate, there was no evidence at all that the bomb was put on board at Luqa. I listened to the radio dramatisation of part of the trial and there was an attempt to show that it was possible to get round the checkin at Luqa, that there was a route round the back (I think through the Ladies' toilets) that Fhimah had used in the past to get diplomatic baggage on to planes. However, there was no evidence that Fhimah had been anywhere near the place on that particular day, and no evidence that any suspicious baggage was present on that flight. (Oddly, the Luqa checkin girl, who knew Fhimah very well, was not asked in court whether she'd seen him that day.)

In fact there seemed to be watertight evidence that only 15 bags were checked on at Luqa, all were matched with passengers who actually flew, all 15 were checked off at Frankfurt with no discrepancies, and none of these was booked to travel on the the USA. Which is why Air Malta won its libel action, one assumes.

However, things were a bit murkier at the Frankfurt end. The timing and records from the baggage clerks were unclear, and it couldn't be shown that it was impossible for a bag which had magically materialised from the Luqa flight to have been checked on at Frankfurt. It wasn't the sort of evidence you'd give anyone a parking ticket on, though.

What was impressive was the evidence of the man who did the x-ray screening of the luggage going on to Pan Am 103A at Frankfurt. He had been specifically warned to look out for bombs disguised as radio-cassette recorders, because of the warning which had been received earlier that month, describing a plot to do exactly that. (Which was dismissed by the security services as "coincidence".) He said he was confident that there was nothing of the sort on any of that luggage, because he was looking out for it, and if he'd seen anything at all suspicious he'd have called security and had the case opened. (He could have been lying to cover his back, I suppose, but nobody seems to have suggested this.)

The Heathrow location was where the most likely hole in security existed. One baggage handler gave evidence that when he came back from his break, while luggage for Pan Am 103 was being loaded, two new pieces of luggage had materialised from somewhere that he hadn't seen before. One was a brown Samsonite suitcase. It then got confused, because he claimed to have discussed this with a colleague, whose account differed. However, it seems to be the only credible mention of a Samsonite suitcase anywhere in the evidence.

I remember hearing in one account that the judges were dismissive of the idea that terrorists would even try to breach security at Heathrow "because that is well known to be very tight". Uh, no not really, and part of the new evidence that's being taked about is evidence of a breakin at Heathrow the evening before the disaster.

Another point made in the Private Eye account was that the luggage scrutiny at Heathrow wasn't anything like as rigorous as at Frankfurt, because Heathrow hadn't had the warning about a possible radio-cassette bomb passed on to them that Frankfurt knew about.

So I can see why the argument is being made that Heathrow is the most probable location for the bomb to have been introduced into the baggage system. The judges seem to have decided that the relatively small disagreement between the two Heathrow baggage handlers was enough to dismiss that account of a brown Samsonite suitcase, nevertheless the confused accounts of baggage going every which way at the Frankfurt checkin was enough to decide that it had come on there from the Malta flight, even though there were no discrepancies in the Air Malta records, and the Frankfurt x-ray scrutiny appeared to have been very much more rigorous than the Heathrow scrutiny. :confused:

Rolfe.

Caustic Logic

31st August 2009, 04:51 AM

Rolfe, just wanted to say kudos on this slab of useful research. I really should know this story better, and add something, but it looks like the injustice is correcting itself a bit at the moment and some very smart people are looking at it.

Kevin_Lowe

31st August 2009, 05:12 AM

I too have nothing useful to add to the thread, but I'm following it because it's fascinating. Kudos, Rolfe.

GlennB

31st August 2009, 05:54 AM

Of key witness Tony Gauci (the Maltese shopkeeper who supposedly sold a strange assortment of clothes - and an umbrella, a subject well worth discussion in itself - to the suspect. Clothes which included types found at Lockerbie) :

* " In all the interviews with police on this subject Mr Gauci was quite consistent on two points. The man was about fifty years old and more than six feet tall. During these interviews the police were hoping for an identification of their suspects, Abu Talb and Mohammed Salem, a Palestinian based in Malta. Later in the proceedings, as we have seen, their suspect changed, though the two basic descriptions by Gauci did not change at all. It was only when he came to give evidence that the shopkeeper became vague.

Q. What age would you say he was?
A. I said before – below six... , under 60. I don’t have experience. I don’t have experience on height or age.

In 1989, he was quite prepared to estimate the height and age of the man, but when he came to the trial he was not so sure about either."

Megrahi is 5'8" and was 37 at the time.

* from the Private Eye report by Paul Foot.

Rolfe

31st August 2009, 06:17 AM

That puzzles me too. Ktesibios is absolutely right that that technology already existed (I only would have said 7490 instead of 4017 - I fiddled a bit with an earlier generation IC's in the begin of the 80s :)).The prosecution claimed that the timer was triggered on the second leg of the journey - from Frankfurt to Heathrow - gaining height. So that means that between the pressure sensor and the timer there's a counter that counts how many times the pressure sensor has triggered before it triggers the timer into action. If you can count to 2, you can also count to 3.

Another thing that puzzles me is the timing. The plane exploded over land because it was delayed. However, the delay was only 25 minutes according to wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103). That means that even if the flight had been on schedule, it would barely have left the Scottish air, or not, falling down somewhere on the Outer Hebrides. As you said before, if you want the plane to go down over the Atlantic, you'd rather plan the detonation for just before the time it would reach North America, as planes never depart too early but frequently too late.

The Private Eye account says stuff that makes better sense of that.

The complications surrounding the alleged use of the MEBO timer and the pressure sensor that could count weren't really explored in that article. Just why any plotter would go for such a complicated scenario doesn't seem to have been explained by anyone. An alternative explanation that made a lot more sense was laid out though.

Going back to the Palestinian connection, apparently Palestinian terrorists had a history of using something called a "sugar-cube" timer which, for reasons not wholly explained was very restricted in what it could do. Essentially the sensor would detect the drop in pressure occurring when the plane reached cruising altitude, and then the timer would trigger the bomb 43 minutes later. No counting of pressure-rise incidents at all.

Guess what, Pan Am 301 exploded practically bang on schedule for 43 minutes after such a pressure device would have been triggered following the Heathrow take-off.

The article didn't explain why the 43-minute restriction. However, assuming that was built into the device, it would explain the odd timing of the explosion - much too early for an attempt to get the plane to disappear over the Atlantic whichever way you slice it. It was just a device to make sure the plane had taken off and was on its way before triggering the bomb, and there was no particular attempt to delay this until it was over the ocean.

This is where the CT starts to get complicated. The reason the MEBO timer was implicated was that a small fragment alleged to be a part of one was found in the wreckage. That's the bit of evidence that attracts the CTers. The provenance seems to be questionable, according to the Eye. It was found in the collar of a bit of a shirt that was retrieved from the ground, however that piece of evidence had its label altered by a policeman. There's also an oddity surrounding the page numbering of the notes of the forensic expert who was looking at the exhibits, just when that piece of evidence came up. This is the piece of evidence that was spirited away to America, and was never tested for explosive residues (something about cost, or resources, though that seems ridiculous).

If there's actually any significance to any of that, rather than just general bungling, it does point to conspiracy rather than cock-up.

As far as I can make out, that little fragment is all that was ever found of the actual bomb. Even if the suggestions that it was planted are unfounded, it's hard to know how sure anyone can be that it was a part of the device it was alleged to be part of, given how small it was. Also, there was evidence that devices of that nature were supplied to the East German Stazi as well as Libya, which could then have found their way into the hands of Palestinians.

All very confusing, really.

Rolfe.

GlennB

31st August 2009, 07:44 AM

As far as I can make out, that little fragment is all that was ever found of the actual bomb. Even if the suggestions that it was planted are unfounded, it's hard to know how sure anyone can be that it was a part of the device it was alleged to be part of, given how small it was.

A little under 1cm x 1cm, in fact.

Matthew Best

31st August 2009, 07:47 AM

Of course, the real conspiracy theory is that al-Megrahi is in fact Scottish. His real name is the giveaway - Ally McGrachey.

Rolfe

31st August 2009, 08:05 AM

Well, he apparently now speaks "English" with a pronounced Glasgow accent!

Rolfe.

Rolfe

31st August 2009, 08:25 AM

I had a very fragmented idea of this whole tale, gleaned from numerous individual articles focussing on various different aspects of the puzzle. The Private Eye article pulls most of that together, and makes the anomalies and question marks a lot easier to understand. (Nevertheless there are still several aspects it didn't cover, such as a babygro that is said to have been recovered intact but was later presented shredded at a later date.)

My understanding that Megrahi's conviction was unsafe was always separate from my thoughts about the CT. It's so much easier to assume that it was cock-up rather than conspiracy, and that failing sufficient evidence to bring the Palestinian suspects to trial, all concerned had simply gone after the Libyans who happened to have been in Malta at the wrong time, because it looked as if it might be possible to build a case against them to come to court.

Some of what the Eye reports is almost certainly barnacle. Extra bits growing on the factual skeleton, and obscuring it. However, the suggestions of a deliberate cover-up of the evidence against the Palestinians are quite wide-ranging.

On the one hand, this all has something of the air of "no smoke without fire" about it. On the other hand, just how many people is it being suggested were actually pressurised by the CIA to conceal/change evidence? I'm not sure, but I've a feeing it might be getting up there with the 9/11 NWO theories, which would make it just a tad unlikely.

Rolfe.

GlennB

31st August 2009, 09:02 AM

.....
On the one hand, this all has something of the air of "no smoke without fire" about it. On the other hand, just how many people is it being suggested were actually pressurised by the CIA to conceal/change evidence? I'm not sure, but I've a feeing it might be getting up there with the 9/11 NWO theories, which would make it just a tad unlikely.

Rolfe.

And as a person with a track record (or 'form' as it's known in UK crimespeak :) ) for over-enthusiasm for CT's, I'm trying to tread more carefully than usual.

However - a question for you Rolfe. One where you can act as theoretical debunker-in-chief here :

As a student of this subject, can you point to just one substantial piece of evidence that incriminates Megrahi to the confidence level of 'beyond reasonable doubt' ? And I don't mean that piece of evidence should - in itself - be sufficient to secure a conviction in court, merely that it should be solid enough to reach (say) an 80% chance of actually being true ? Then, perhaps, any such evidence could be analysed piece-by-piece to see how it adds up?

Cheers

Rolfe

31st August 2009, 10:42 AM

As a student of this subject, can you point to just one substantial piece of evidence that incriminates Megrahi to the confidence level of 'beyond reasonable doubt' ? And I don't mean that piece of evidence should - in itself - be sufficient to secure a conviction in court, merely that it should be solid enough to reach (say) an 80% chance of actually being true ? Then, perhaps, any such evidence could be analysed piece-by-piece to see how it adds up?

I think it's overstating the case to label me as "a student of the subject". As I said in the OP, I've been aware that there were huge doubts over the conviction since Camp Zeist in 2001. However, my information was piecemeal, from many different articles read over the years since the tragedy, many of which assumed basic knowledge that I either didn't have or had forgotten. I came to the CT section here looking for more information, and was a bit stunned to find nothing. Given that here we have an exploded airliner full(ish) of American citizens, middle eastern terrorism, obvious problems with the "official version" and some pretty well-grounded undebunked claims of a CIA coverup, I'm still astonished that the Twoofers aren't all over it like a rash.

Anyway, I'm not aware of any credible evidence to link Megrahi to the crime.

Giaka made a number of allegations, however his evidence was thrown out by the court as having been quite obviously fabricated to placate and curry favour with the CIA. Now, there are various allegations flying around that as well as keeping him on the payroll and supplying him with goodies, the CIA also offered him $4 million if he gave evidence that led to a conviction. If Private Eye is even close to accurate, Giaka just made it all up to please the CIA, who wanted him to implicate Megrahi and Fhimah. (Since Giaka's evidence was the only thing connecting Fhimah to the crime, Fhimah was duly acquitted. And that was a "not guilty", by the way, not a "not proven".)

A connection has been alleged between Megrahi and Bollier, who worked for the company that produced the MEBO timing devices. I'm fairly sure Megrahi had a strong connection with the company, at least. I'm not wholly clear about what has been proved about this, but I don't think it was ever shown that Megrahi took delivery of such a timer. And then of course that line of enquiry runs into the questionable provenance of the timer fragment.

Then we have Tony Gauci. Tony Gauci said that he sold the clothes found in the suitcase with the bomb to a man who was at least 6 feet tall and over 50 years old. He tried to pinpoint the day by saying that it was raining (he remembered the purchaser also buying an umbrella for that reason), and he was alone in his shop because his brother Paul had gone home to watch the football. He also said that this happened before the Christmas decorations were put up.

Paul Gauci looked at dates of football matches and said he thought this was probably 23rd November, but 7th December was also a possibility.

Meteorological data showed a light shower on 23rd November, but no evidence of rain on 7th December. However, when pressed, the met office said that while there was definitely no rain at Luqa that day, they couldn't completely exclude "a few drops" possibly having fallen in Sliema, which is three miles away.

One of the points stated in the SCCRC report which was grounds for the appeal was in relation to the Christmas lights. At the trial, it was asserted that the lights were either not yet up, or were in the process of going up, on the day the clothes were sold. It was said they were habitually put up "15 days before Christmas", which would be 10th December. However, it appears there is actually evidence they went up a month before Christmas, in late November, which would again push the date of the sale to the 23rd November rather than 7th December.

The problem is that Megrahi had an unbreakable alibi for 23rd November.

It seems to be absolutely agreed that without Gauci's evidence, there is nothing that would come even close to standing up in court. And it was precisely Gauci's evidence that the SCCRC said was grounds for appeal.

Now, as well as the allegations that Giaka was offered $4 million if he gave evidence to secure a conviction at Camp Zeist, there are allegations printed in respected media that Tony Gauci was given $2 million and Paul Gauci $1 million. I understand the brothers are now living in Australia, though whether there is evidence of them having that sort of money I don't know. The move to Australia seems to have been recent.

Megrahi was a senior officer in the Libyan secret service. His work took him to Malta fairly frequently. He had connections with the company that made the timing devices, a fragment of which was allegedly found in the wreckage of flight 103. He was in Malta using a false passport on the morning of the crash. He was also in Malta on 7th December, and could have purchased the clothes if that was the day they were sold.

However, he was never shown to have possessed one of the timing devices, it appears impossible for anyone to have got that suitcase bomb on board the plane at Malta, and it appears that 7th December was not the day the clothes were sold. He is also nowhere near 6 feet tall, and was 36 at the time. Gauci never identified him with any degree of certainty, he only said he was quite like the purchaser, but 10 years too young.

And a Libyan intelligence officer swanning around with a false passport is not exactly uncommon.

This has all the hallmarks of someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and quite possibly up to no good in some other respect unconnected with Pan Am 103.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

31st August 2009, 02:44 PM

Here is the link to the "listen-again" of the Saturday Play "Lockerbie on Trial", broadcast on 29th August (repeated from 2001). It's available till mid-afternoon on Saturday 5th September. I don't know how to save it as a file - I should have recorded it on casette tape when it was broadcast!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00760w8/Saturday_Play_Lockerbie_on_Trial/

Few would have predicted the verdict in February 2001, when Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah acquitted of blowing up Pam Am flight 103. The prosecution are sure they have got their men, but a succession of witnesses who prove to be CIA double agents, convicted terrorists and arms dealers with shady histories begin to undermine a case which is skilfully and passionately contested by the defence.

Not that the first few minutes of the file are actually the end of the previous programme - "Any Answers".

Rolfe.

Rolfe

31st August 2009, 03:07 PM

Going back to the Palestinian connection, apparently Palestinian terrorists had a history of using something called a "sugar-cube" timer which, for reasons not wholly explained was very restricted in what it could do. Essentially the sensor would detect the drop in pressure occurring when the plane reached cruising altitude, and then the timer would trigger the bomb 43 minutes later. No counting of pressure-rise incidents at all.

Guess what, Pan Am 301 exploded practically bang on schedule for 43 minutes after such a pressure device would have been triggered following the Heathrow take-off.

The article didn't explain why the 43-minute restriction. However, assuming that was built into the device, it would explain the odd timing of the explosion - much too early for an attempt to get the plane to disappear over the Atlantic whichever way you slice it. It was just a device to make sure the plane had taken off and was on its way before triggering the bomb, and there was no particular attempt to delay this until it was over the ocean.

My bad. Not a "sugar-cube" timer, an "ice-cube" timer. No wonder I couldn't find anything when I googled it!

Here is an article from the Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/libya-gives-acircpound17bn-to-the-victims-of-lockerbie-but-the-questions-remain-535924.html) dated 2003, which covers the issue.

Why, for instance, did Western investigators suddenly focus on Libya, when for several years they believed that two Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorist groups - the Frankfurt-based PFLP-GC and the lesser-known PPSF - were responsible? Why, Mr Swire has asked, did flight 103 explode 38 minutes after take-off from Heathrow en route to New York - a timescale that has the exact hallmark of the sort of "ice-cube" timer that the PFLP-GC had used before? What does one make of the evidence presented by the prosecution?

Why did the CIA need to pay its star witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, $2.7m (£1.7m) to give evidence? Why was that evidence only forthcoming after he had received the money?

Why did the Scottish judges choose to accept part of the testimony of the Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who sold Megrahi clothes that were later found wrapped around the bomb? Why was the court persuaded when he admitted he could not definitely identify the suspect?

This article by Dr. Ludwig de Braeckeleer (http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/7278) appears on more than one site. It's dated 2008, and takes the SCCRC report into consideration also.

At the trial, a German witness named Gobel explained in detail how the PFLP-GC bombs recovered at Frankfurt had been made.

Scientists at the BKA central physics laboratory in Weisbaden found that the pressure switch took about 7 minutes from take off, if in the fuselage of a 747 flying a normal passenger flight profile as 103 did that night, to switch to the ‘on’ condition.

The pressure inside a 747 fuselage is auto-regulated to about the equivalent of 8,000 ft above sea level. The baggage hold and passenger compartments are always at the same pressure as each other.

Gobel told the court that the range of timings available among the ‘ice-cube’ timers they had recovered ranged between about 35 and 45 minutes. NB. It is essential to realise that the user has no means of altering or resetting their running time.

It's all very, very confusing.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

31st August 2009, 03:29 PM

Two more very useful pages here.

The original 90-paragraph judgement from the 2001 trial (http://212.150.54.123/documents/documentdet.cfm?docid=41).

A site covering the original 2002 appeal (http://plane-truth.com/Aoude/geocities/appealweek1a.html).

Also, once more....

The press release outlining the grounds for appeal determined in 2007 (http://www.sccrc.org.uk/ViewFile.aspx?id=293).

One thing I'm confused about is the credibility of Jim Swire. He's widely respected, he's obviously intelligent, and he knows the case inside out. The thing that makes me wonder, is the web site of his campaign. http://www.lockerbietruth.com/

There's buggerall there. A front page, three short supplementary pages with stuff three people involved said about it, and a page taking pre-publication orders for a book he can't seem to find a publisher for.

Hmmmmm.

If you can't find a publisher these days, then you have two options. Self-publish, using a site like this. http://www.printondemand-worldwide.com/ This ought to circumvent any reservations a conventional publisher would have about legal ramifications.

Or put the damn thing up on the internet, and if you're really keen to make a buck from it, put it behind a pay-wall.

The site just seems to have "CT" all over it. And Jim Swire seems to be the main proponent of the "ice cube" theory.

There are an awful lot of people who have taken a lot of interest in all this, and nobody's really sure about anything.

However, I certainly can't see where the evidence is that Megrahi did it "beyond reasonable doubt". And listening to the dramatised version the BBC broadcast only two weeks after the verdict, neither can the editors of that little lot.

Rolfe.

JihadJane

31st August 2009, 03:51 PM

'I'll Reveal True Identity Of Bomber'

"AN AMERICAN citizen is to be named by the Lockerbie bomber as the man who really carried out the terrorist attack on Pan Am Flight 103.

Megrahi’s early release from prison on compassionate grounds.

Lawyers for the bomber were to argue that an 'elusive' terrorist codenamed Abu Elias planted the bomb in December 1988, causing the deaths of 270 innocent people.

Megrahi is now expected to identify the man behind this alias.

The Scottish Sunday Express tracked this man down to his home in the US, and he strongly denied having anything to do with the atrocity.

However, we can reveal that he has connections to at least two international terrorists and a Palestinian terror group, as well as links to the US intelligence services."

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/122299/-I-ll-reveal-true-identity-of-bomber

Architect

31st August 2009, 03:59 PM

I can tell you're not familiar with the Express, but you never know - it could be right.

GlennB

31st August 2009, 04:41 PM

-snip-
Given that here we have an exploded airliner full(ish) of American citizens, middle eastern terrorism, obvious problems with the "official version" and some pretty well-grounded undebunked claims of a CIA coverup, I'm still astonished that the Twoofers aren't all over it like a rash.

I'd suggest this is because Megrahi was so obviously fitted-up that it's an unattractive propostion even for a dedicated CTist. Just too mundane?

Anyway, I'm not aware of any credible evidence to link Megrahi to the crime.

Me neither. I'd be very interested, though, to hear otherwise from anybody.

Incidentally I totally agree with your description of the "barnacles" attached to the case presented by Paul Foot. Why do people do that? It's not as if he needed to sex it up to sell it to Sun readers. They were never going to be in sight anyway.

Bobby

31st August 2009, 05:04 PM

I'd suggest this is because Megrahi was so obviously fitted-up that it's an unattractive propostion even for a dedicated CTist. Just too mundane?

Me neither. I'd be very interested, though, to hear otherwise from anybody.

Incidentally I totally agree with your description of the "barnacles" attached to the case presented by Paul Foot. Why do people do that? It's not as if he needed to sex it up to sell it to Sun readers. They were never going to be in sight anyway.

Paul Foot (RIP) was not the biggest fan of the US, and that may some go way to explain the "barnacles", though, with respect to the possibility of there being a US sponsored drug smuggling operation involved, the farmer stating that he found a suitcase full of "white powder" and the CIA officers on board the flight, might, to some, suggest there's more to it that pure speculation...

JihadJane

31st August 2009, 05:07 PM

I can tell you're not familiar with the Express, but you never know - it could be right.

Unfortunately, I am familiar with The Express!

Rolfe

31st August 2009, 05:21 PM

I'd suggest this is because Megrahi was so obviously fitted-up that it's an unattractive propostion even for a dedicated CTist. Just too mundane?

Depends which view you take. If you think they just fitted up Megrahi in order to "get a conviction", then that is probably too mundane. Might make an episode of Ashes to Ashes, that's about all.

On the other hand, there's plenty meat on the story that the CIA fitted up Megrahi specifically to draw attention from Iran, the real culprit. Because Desert Storm was beginning, and Bush Snr needed Iran onside against Iraq, their ancient enemy. And that one might actually fly.

Then if you're a full-on twoofer, you can take in the barnacles as well. Cases full of drugs. Two CIA operatives on the flight. CIA sponsoring a drug-running operation, and I can't actually remember the details of where that one goes, but it's sanity itself compared to thermite and holographic planes and skyscrapers wired for demolition when nobody was looking.

I wonder if it's because if you start looking for Lockerbie analyses, you find quite sensible, mature, well-educated, knowledgeable people with serious doubts about it all, and maybe the twoofers don't fit in that sort of social circle?

Rolfe.

JihadJane

31st August 2009, 05:24 PM

Funny how paranoid of being labelled CTs ya all are! Hee hee!

Rolfe

31st August 2009, 05:42 PM

I also found this page, an article by a Maltese journalist who attended the trial at Camp Zeist. This seems to have been written during the trial, before the verdict.

http://www.mathaba.net/news/news1/lockerbie/gauci.htm

So now it's confirmed. After 19 statements by Tony Gauci, after an identification parade in April 1999 and after taking the witness stand during the Camp Zeist trial this week, he has not positively identified anyone that went to his shop and bought clothes, fragments of which were later found in the fields of Lockerbie months after the Pan Am tragedy.

Now we have learned that FBI where behind the first suggestion that Megrahi was the person who bought the clothes in Mary’s House. The Scottish investigators where invited to go to Malta and there a FBI officer would show him the photo of the suspect.

[....]

So there was no concrete identification of any person by Gauci.

Three more points that must be noted in Tony Gauci’s testimony are:
If the person that bought the items from Mary’s House was living at the Holiday Inn Hotel as the prosecution is claiming, less than five minutes away from the hotel, was it wise for the person who bought the items to walk to the taxi stand which is the same distance from the hotel and in the opposite direction? This point is very puzzling a lot and if the case were being heard here in Malta, the defence team would have a field day.

One of the points raised during Gauci’s testimony was regarding Christmas decorations. In his earlier statement to Scottish police he said that no lights where yet up. But in his testimony he said that lights where being put up. In Malta a month before Christmas, shops and streets are already decorated especially in shopping areas to attract Christmas shoppers.

[....]

Then there is the rain factor. The person, who bought the clothes, bought an umbrella because it was raining. On 7th December 1988, when the prosecution is alleging that clothes where both from Mary’s House it did not rain in the afternoon as checks with meteorological office will confirm. The day the defence is suggesting, from weather reports its seems that it was raining in the afternoon.

So Tony Gauci has not proved beyond reasonable doubt as requested by Scottish Criminal Law that Megrahi was the man who bought the cloths from his shop.

The index page for that citation looks seriously interesting too. News accounts and other material coming out actually during the trial.

http://www.mathaba.net/news/news1/lockerbie/

Rolfe.

Mr.D

31st August 2009, 06:50 PM

What was impressive was the evidence of the man who did the x-ray screening of the luggage going on to Pan Am 103A at Frankfurt. He had been specifically warned to look out for bombs disguised as radio-cassette recorders, because of the warning which had been received earlier that month, describing a plot to do exactly that. (Which was dismissed by the security services as "coincidence".)

Is there a primary source for this "security services" dismissal? Given the raid of a terrorist cell in Frankfurt several weeks before Lockerbie, in which a bomb concealed in a radio went "missing," (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=5025729#post5025729) it's a little had to tell what "dismissed ... as coincidence" means without context (not to mention, which security service?)

Bobby

31st August 2009, 07:32 PM

Depends which view you take. If you think they just fitted up Megrahi in order to "get a conviction", then that is probably too mundane. Might make an episode of Ashes to Ashes, that's about all.

On the other hand, there's plenty meat on the story that the CIA fitted up Megrahi specifically to draw attention from Iran, the real culprit. Because Desert Storm was beginning, and Bush Snr needed Iran onside against Iraq, their ancient enemy. And that one might actually fly.

Then if you're a full-on twoofer, you can take in the barnacles as well. Cases full of drugs. Two CIA operatives on the flight. CIA sponsoring a drug-running operation, and I can't actually remember the details of where that one goes, but it's sanity itself compared to thermite and holographic planes and skyscrapers wired for demolition when nobody was looking.

I wonder if it's because if you start looking for Lockerbie analyses, you find quite sensible, mature, well-educated, knowledgeable people with serious doubts about it all, and maybe the twoofers don't fit in that sort of social circle?

Rolfe.

I'd step back from suggesting Paul Foot was a twoofer. A leftist? Beyond doubt, but more in the Noam Chomsky model, i.e. a critic of US foreign policy, but not one to believe the US would initiate terrorist attacks against its own citizens. WRT CIA drug smuggling, back in the late 80s and early 90s it wasn't that far fetched to believe the CIA would provide aid and assistance to drug smugglers, at the very least it turned a blind eye to its Contra assets affiliations with drug smugglers, and this may have fed into Foot's barnacles ...

As you say, the barnacles are sanity compared to thermite, etc, given that the farmer saw the case of powder, there were CIA operatives on board the plane and the mysterious disappearing body. There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation to it all, but on the surface it's odd. But these details are barnacles when it comes to the guilt or otherwise of Megrahi.

GlennB

1st September 2009, 02:06 AM

Funny how paranoid of being labelled CTs ya all are! Hee hee!

JihadJane illuminates, as ever.

The label is no worry at all. But I was a CTist once upon a time, and I find it useful to consider whether I'm slipping into that mode of thinking again. So if it turns out that Megrahi is much taller than 5'8" or Gauci never actually stated the customer was at least 50, that's fine. Even though it puts a huge dent in the position I'm currently holding.

Rolfe

1st September 2009, 07:38 AM

Oooh look! (http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=5027&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=33e5dea6975e4263dae6fbcde29ff5df)

Either way Lockerbie is fundamental to what we're meant to be doing as part of the meta framework of "911 Truth" - until we as a community of activists broaden our research and move on from the narrow lens we see all too often on various media/online forums we're never going to make headway and by default we do the work of CoIntelPro type ops ourselves.

ETA: Look at this, from the second page! This is a new one on me.

There IS a conspiracy here - it is that MI6 has been pushing the line that it was an Iranian-backed group which carried out the attack. This line has been spread by their stooges in the MSM, and recently resurfaced when a former senior police officer went public about his concerns there had been a miscarriage of justice, and that the Iranians had sponsored the attack. The timing of this claim was interesting - the officer had waited until last year to make this claim, and did so at a time when Western governments were trying to ramp up the threat of Iran as a pretext for an attack.

Rolfe.

volatile

1st September 2009, 08:44 AM

ETA: Look at this, from the second page! This is a new one on me.

Soooo..... the government fitted up the wrong people, and then made sure lots of people *kinda* think it *may* have been a miscarriage of justice, in order to later drum up rumoured suspicion for another fabricated culprit. While doing this, they will prevent the original patsy from being properly exonerated, and will maintain, at the highest levels of diplomacy, that they are convinced that his conviction is safe.

That's definitely what happened. Crazy triple-bluff! Those sneaky government BASTARDS!

Rolfe

1st September 2009, 02:04 PM

Not sure. The range of speculation is impressive. I think that one is citing David Shayler, asserting that the Libyans are genuinely guilty and all the stuff about Iran and the Palestinians is disinfo.

Here's another on the same page.

Deliberate interference by MI6 should come as no great surprise to anyone, with its known close links to the CIA. Furthermore, like the CIA, MI6 was long ago deeply penetrated by agents of the State of Israel, prime suspects in the Lockerbie bombing. This was commented on earlier by the author in the investigation into WPC Yvonne Fletcher's murder outside the Libyan Embassy during 1984.

:hb:

Rolfe.

Rolfe

1st September 2009, 02:18 PM

I'm watching The Maltese Double Cross, the 1994 film that was banned in the USA.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7160854996287567609

I noticed one discrepancy with the Private Eye account. Dr. Fieldhouse is interviewed in the film, and complains that he labelled 58 bodies, and later all but two of his labels were removed and replaced by others. He says nothing at all about having labelled a 59th body that disappeared.

There's so much hearsay you just don't know where to start. However, Martin Cadman does give his account of having been told by a US official that both governments know who did it but they'll never tell. I'd read that, but it underlines it seeing him actually relate it to camera.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

1st September 2009, 02:53 PM

I found the explanation of the Baby-gro inconsistency (it was blue not pink).
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1494316.0.0.php

Al-Megrahi s team also found inconsistencies in the evidence surrounding a child s baby-gro, which the prosecution had claimed was wrapped around the Toshiba radio cassette which exploded in mid-air in the hold of the London Heathrow to New York flight.

The charred fragments of the child s clothing were apparently shown to the trial suggesting it was very close to the initial explosion.

However, statements casting doubt on the credibility of the cause of the blast came from two mountain rescuers whose evidence that they found an intact baby-gro was submitted to the SCCRB. The statement read: In the statements noted from these witnesses, they are both adamant that they remembered finding an intact baby-gro.

So that's what they one is about. I can't see how it relates to the price of fish. If the baby-gro was bought in Malta, and the rest of the evidence shows that the clothes bought in Malta were in the suitcase with the bomb, then where exactly would this be going?

Here's another take on the timing of the explosion.
http://www.indopedia.org/Pan_Am_flight_103.html

British forensic experts identified the timing device from a 0.4 inch (10 mm) particle found in Lockerbie, and the CIA provided information about a previous batch of such timers that were found with terrorists in Senegal. The information from the CIA allowed investigators to trace the MST-13 timer to a Swiss manufacturer, Edwin Bollier of MEBO AG in Zurich, Switzerland. It emerged at trial that Bollier had sold 20 such timers to a Libyan intelligence officer days before the bombing. The timers were capable of being set to between one minute and 999 hours

It is possible the terrorists intended the plane to disappear into the Irish Sea (http://www.indopedia.org/Irish_Sea.html) and had timed the IED to be detonated accordingly, but due to heavy winds that night, PA 103 was delayed for 30 minutes before flying north over Scotland, instead of by its usual western route over Ireland.

I still don't see why they would aim for the Irish Sea rather than the middle of the Atlantic. This account does acknowledge that the delay was relatively short and there was no way the plane would have been over the Atlantic at the time of the explosion even if it had been bang up to time.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

2nd September 2009, 03:59 AM

I feel a bit silly trying to get my brain round this at this stage, when so many people have been studying it in detail for 20 years, but it's intriguing.

I think it's perfectly clear that the clothes packed in the suitcase with the bomb were bought in Malta from Tony Gauci, and that he remembers the transaction. The difficulty is in his identification of the purchaser. I can see why it would be frustrating for the investigating officers, as Tony Gauci undoubtedly talked to one of the bombers, but if he can't identify that person with any certainty, then that's as far as it goes. And he really couldn't.

The timer fragment is much more interesting. If I'm picking up The Maltese Double Cross correctly, that wasn't actually found until more than two years after the crash. As in, it lay out in the forest for over two years before being brought in.

This would seem to explain the switch away from the Palestinians towards the Libyans at this stage, something which has been frequently remarked on. However, while the prosecution made much of an alleged link between the timer and Libya, that was one of the things that fell apart during the trial. Libya was just one of a number of places that had similar timers, and there's a lot of argument about the colour of the fragment (green or brown) and whether or not it was machine-manufactured or hand-made.

In particular it was the evidence of Bollier, the manufacturer of the timers, that came apart under cross-examination. The UN observer even singled him out for criticism.

[....] key witnesses were proven to lack credibility to a very high extent, in certain cases even having openly lied to the Court. Particularly as regards Mr. Bollier and Mr. Giaka, there were so many inconsistencies in their statements and open contradictions to statements of other witnesses that the resulting confusion was much greater than any clarification that may have been obtained from parts of their statements.

Even linking that timer fragment to Libya seems tenuous in the extreme, and there was never any evidence at all linking it to Megrahi himself. And that's even assuming the timer fragment is a genuine clue.

Rolfe.

Big Les

2nd September 2009, 06:41 AM

Great work Rolfe. THIS is how CTs should be investigoogled!

Rolfe

2nd September 2009, 07:30 AM

I feel I'm only scratching the surface!

There have been a number of assertions flying around the Scottish rumour-mill for years, concerning stuff seen (or not seen) by the myriad people who were around Lockerbie in the aftermath of the crash.

Mountain rescue personnel allegedly claim they found the blue baby-gro intact, although it was later exhibited charred and presented as having been wrapped round the bomb.
A farmer claims to have found a suitcase full of a brown powder that "looked like drugs", and reported its location. The suitcase vanished and was never heard of again.
A policewoman is said to have found a CIA badge, and been asked not to report or record this.
A round hole is said to have been cut in a suitcase belonging to one of the CIA personnel killed in the crash, apparently so that the contents could be inspected.
There's some vague story about a red tarpaulin and a helicopter.
And that's just the ones I can remember off the top of my head.

I suspect at least some of this is pure misunderstanding. There may have been more than one babygro in the plane's luggage, for example. Several of the stories are uncorroborated, and/or the SCCRC could find no evidence to indicate that they were true. However, something that recurrently surfaces is the impression that even from the very early stages there were American personnel around who had some agenda other than merely helping with the retrieval effort. Tam Dalyell goes into this in some detail in The Maltese Double Cross. It does appear that some Americans arrived a lot faster than transatlantic travel would allow (possibly having come from London?), and then more arrived post-haste from America.

I've always had the suspicion that there may have been something on that plane that the US authorities were concerned about, which may have been entirely unconnected to the terrorist attack. There were four US intelligence operatives on the passenger list, and one wonders what they might have been carrying that the CIA didn't want blowing randomly around Dumfriesshire. How much of that could foul up the recovery work, and give rise to suspicions about the CIA trying to effect a cover-up?

However, why should that not have been coincidence? It's possible that a significant proportion of transatlantic planes have US intelligence personnel on board, travelling in connection with their work. Why is it necessary to assume either that the plane was targeted because of their presence, or that nefarious CIA activity was involved in the actual bombing?

That's why I tend to take the rumours of odd things happening on the ground with a slight pinch of salt. Not that I necessarily dismiss all of them, but that I'm not convinced they're necessarily connected to any attempt to cover-up or misdirect the investigation into the identity of the terrorists.

The fragment of the Mebo timer is a different matter however.

Rolfe.

GlennB

2nd September 2009, 08:12 AM

I think it's perfectly clear that the clothes packed in the suitcase with the bomb were bought in Malta from Tony Gauci, and that he remembers the transaction.

Have you ever discovered an explanation for how they traced the clothes specifically to Gauci's shop (as I find this part quite mysterious) ?

Rolfe

2nd September 2009, 08:14 AM

I keep coming back to that timer.

I have the distinct impression that the prosecution case always contained the notion of a pressure sensor. I'm not sure where that information is, and I need to check it, but as we discussed earlier in the thread, there was the assertion that the case went on at Malta, with nothing being triggered on the Malta-Frankfurt leg, then when the plane took off at Frankfurt the timer was activated by a pressure sensor. It had a sufficient delay, at best, to get it just to the edge of British airspace before detonation, and in fact due to a combination of delay and re-routing, it exploded over Lockerbie.

This, as we said before, makes no sense. If you have a suffiently versatile timer, why do you need a pressure sensor at all? You know when the plane will be over the Atlantic (or wherever you want the bang to happen), within certain limits due to delays and so on. You just set the timer for the anticipated time, possibly days in advance if you like, and off you go. The Mebo timers were programmable up to 999 hours, so they'd have been ideal.

The only reason I can think of for requiring a pressure sensor in conjunction with the Mebo timer is that you don't know which plane you're actually going to get the bag on board. Suppose you're waiting for an opportunity to present itself, and you won't have any chance to get inside the bag to set the timer going before making your move, then a pressure sensor makes sense. You could have the bag primed and ready for several days, and as long as you don't take it up the Alps, nothing will happen. Then, once you've got it on the plane, the pressure changes will do the rest.

I don't know that there was ever any suggestion of that though. Still, it's a scenario worth considering if we're sure there was a pressure sensor at all.

However, there's still a problem. If you can get a pressure sensor to count, then surely it can count up to three if it can count up to two. If you want the explosion to happen after the take-off from Heathrow, why not start the timer after the Heathrow takeoff rather than the Frankfurt one?

I'm still seriously hazy about whether there is any evidence at all of a pressure sensor being involved, let alone that it was triggered by the Frankfurt takeoff, however, assuming that's fact, then one possibility presents itself. What if the device was originally anticipated to be going on a route that would only land once before heading across the ocean? I know little or nothing about transatlantic routes, however the most common itinerary if you're flying from a provincial airport to the USA is to make only one flight to the hub airport, and take off from there.

By this speculative theory (which depends entirely on the story that the timer was pressure-sensor-activated, after the second take-off), we assume that the terrorists prepared a suitcase bomb on the assumption that it would land once before heading out on the transatlantic leg of the flight. They thus programmed the timer to start with the second take-off, and put a time delay after that sufficient to take the device well out over the Atlantic before it detonated - exactly as one would anticipate they would want it to detonate. However, the opportunity that actually presented itself turned out to be a route with two preliminary legs, thus it hadn't got far from the third take-off before it detonated.

This is just brain-storming, as there seems to be no evidence at all that the bag was introduced into the system at Malta, or that it went through Frankfurt. Jim Swire was interviewed on the radio this morning while I was trying to eat my breakfast in peace, and he was highlighting the evidence that there had been a break-in at Heathrow the day before the crash, with access gained to the Pan Am operational area. He wanted to know why this evidence was withheld from the defence until after Camp Zeist, and whether in fact the prosecution had known about it at that time. He claimed that introduction of that evidence would have resulted in no convictions. I think he's still of the opinion that the bomb was most probably introduced at Heathrow.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

2nd September 2009, 08:17 AM

Have you ever discovered an explanation for how they traced the clothes specifically to Gauci's shop (as I find this part quite mysterious) ?

It seems to be fairly straighforward. They had the manufacturer's label on the baby-gro (and possibly other items), and the manufacturer was able to tell the investigators that this garment was one of a batch supplied to Mary's House, in Sliema - Gauci's shop. They then interviewed Gauci, who despite the delay actually remembered the transaction - possibly because of the odd assortment of clothes the purchaser bought.

Rolfe.

Kevin_Lowe

2nd September 2009, 02:41 PM

It seems to be fairly straighforward. They had the manufacturer's label on the baby-gro (and possibly other items), and the manufacturer was able to tell the investigators that this garment was one of a batch supplied to Mary's House, in Sliema - Gauci's shop. They then interviewed Gauci, who despite the delay actually remembered the transaction - possibly because of the odd assortment of clothes the purchaser bought.

Rolfe.

Forgive me if I've missed a move, but how do these clothes end up in the suitcase bomb if it was slipped into the system at Heathrow? Would that have been deliberate misdirection to make investigators think the bomb came on board at Malta, and if so what is the benefit of this manoeuvre to the bomber(s)?

Rolfe

2nd September 2009, 03:48 PM

The clothes were bought (probably) on 23rd November, or (possibly, according to the prosecution) on 7th December. The explosion happened on 21st December. The clothes could have been taken pretty much anywhere in that time. I can't see any reason to assume that the bomb was put on the plane at Luqa just because the clothes were bought in Sliema.

I was thinking about the purchase of the clothes. Presumably, the aim was to make the suitcase look normal and plausible if it was hand-searched - the bomb was disguised as a casette recorder. If they'd just padded the device with bubble-wrap to fill the case, someone might have been suspicious. Why not just use old clothes that were lying around? Maybe they didn't have access to sufficient stuff? Maybe they thought such clothes would be more traceable than brand new stuff?

Personally, I'd have headed to a branch of M&S, and similar stores. Do the checkout assistants there even look at most customers when they're ringing up the sale? The chances of anyone behind a till at M&S remembering who had bought a bunch of stuff weeks or months later seem remote.

But they didn't. They used a small shop on Malta. Even then, I'd have bet against the shopkeeper remembering the sale, but in fact he did. If this was careless (if the clothes were traced, then this would incriminate anyone who'd been on Malta at the time of the sale), does it mean the plane was supposed to land in the middle of the Atlantic?

However, there's no logical reason why the purchase of the clothes in Malta would imply that the bomb was put into the aircraft baggage system at Luqa. The only bomb-making factory found was in Frankfurt, I think. And I don't think the question of who might be a suspect and might have travelled to London on 20th December was even investigated.

Rolfe.

jproudj

2nd September 2009, 08:14 PM

Regarding illicit CIA material/men onboard the plane, the name Ian Spiro pops up in CTs, linking Libya, and the Security Services

Mentioned here by 'Barry Walker', no idea who that is http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/2009/05/24/l2.html

Here is his blog on heathrow
http://e-zeecon.blogspot.com/2008/11/lockerbie-heathrow-evidence.html

And on Ian Spiro, Iran hostages and Lockerbie (very long)
http://e-zeecon.blogspot.com/2008/11/poisoned-pill-mysterious-life-and-death.html

Also recently linking creature of the night Peter Mandelson to this
http://e-zeecon.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html

Rolfe

3rd September 2009, 06:52 AM

A lot of that comes over as complete wingnuttery, but there is interesting information in it. He goes into a lot more detail about the baggage transfers at Heathrow, compared to other sources. This at last makes it clear that Flight 103A from Frankfurt to Heathrow wasn't Maid of the Seas, and luggage was physically transferred from the Frankfurt plane to Maid of the Seas at Heathrow. Also that the orphan luggage was seen at Heathrow before Flight 103A touched down.

He makes what seems to be a perfectly reasonable point. If the brown Samsonite suitcase seen at Heathrow was not the bomb suitcase, whose was it? The assumption was that it was a suitcase from another transfer flight operated by a different airline. However, its owner never seems to have been identified, and it wasn't found at Lockerbie.

I don't understand why the judges at Camp Zeist were so ready to dismiss this bit of evidence. The baggage container involved in this tale was the one that contained the suitcase bomb. The involvement of this container seems to be the reason for the official certainty that the bomb came on the Frankfurt flight - because after the relatively small number of other transfer bags, including the mysterious Samsonite, the container was filled up with luggage from Flight 103A.

The official version seems to be that the reconstruction indicated that the bomb wasn't on the bottom layer of luggage, but the second one up. All the transfer bags (four or five, plus the two "orphan" suitcases) were believed to be on the bottom layer, as they were loaded first. Everything else in that container came from Frankfurt. Ergo, the "orphan" suitcase wasn't the bomb suitcase, because it was on the bottom while the bomb suitcase was on the second layer, which was all PA103A bags.

However, if the orphan brown Samsonite suitcase seen at Heathrow before 103A landed was on the bottom layer of the same container where the bomb suitcase (also brown Samsonite) was on the second layer, the two suitcases must have been pretty close to each other. Great attention was paid to suitcases recovered at Lockerbie which showed evidence of bomb damage, and it was this evidence (that almost all of them had come on 103A from Frankfurt) that "proved" that the bomb suitcase had also come by that route.

However, none of these other "close proximity" suitcases was another brown Samsonite. So where was it? I'm assuming here that the "Masonic Verses" blog is factually accurate in this respect.

In their summing-up the defence made a telling point concerning Bedford [the Heathrow baggage handler]'s evidence. According to the official scenario if the “Bedford Samsonite” was not the primary suitcase then it must have been in extremely close proximity to it. However as no bomb-damaged brown Samsonite was recovered, (or indeed any such Interline bag) save for the primary suitcase itself, then this must have been the primary suitcase.

In their Judgement their Lordships got around this difficulty by speculating that the contents of luggage container AVE4041 may or must have been re-arranged when the further bags from PA103A were added and the “Bedford Samsonite” was moved far away from the point of the explosion “to some far corner of the container”. (Judgement para. 25) In making such a claim their Lordships completely undermined the theory on which Heathrow had been “eliminated” and indeed the basis on which their fellow Judge Lord Hardie had given evidence to the Fatal Accident Enquiry.

Well, exactly. If the brown Samsonite was moved within the container during the addition of the 103A bags, then it could just as easily have found itself on the second layer, surrounded by Frankfurt baggage - i.e. it could have been the bomb suitcase.

Actually, it's not quite as clear-cut as all that. Only one non-Frankfurt bag seems to have been among those identified as "explosion-damaged", while we know there were 6 or 7 non-Frankfurt bags in the container. So it's possible that the "Bedford Samsonite" was one of the 5 or 6 that wasn't. Nevertheless, the conclusion that the bomb suitcase can't have been the "Bedford Samsonite" appears to depend entirely on the assumption that the Bedford Samsonite must have been on the bottom layer, while the bomb suitcase could not have been on the bottom layer.

And then the judges just suggest cavalierly that well, the luggage in the container could well have been rearranged while the Frankfurt baggage was being loaded.

This seems pretty glaring to me. Compare the evidence relating to the loading of the feeder flight at Malta. Only 15 bags in total went on to this flight at the small Luqa airport, all matched up with passengers who actually flew, all 15 collected at the other end and none of these passengers was booked to transfer to PA103A. Nobody has been able to punch any hole in this story, and Air Malta won a libel case against a TV programme which alleged the bomb had gone on there. And yet this is where the judges decided the bomb must have somehow gone into the system.

One can't help feeling that the reason for this certainty might have been because Megrahi was in Malta that day. Circular reasoning?

Then Frankfurt, where the unaccompanied bag is alleged somehow to have made it through the baggage system on to PA103A. This is the most mysterious part of all. If there is no record of any luggage checked-in to the Luqa flight having been booked to go on PA103A, then how the hell is that supposed to have been accomplished? The supposition seems to have been that someone (Fhimah?) got the bomb suitcase onto the plane with the appropriate transfer tags without it going through the Luqa check-in system. Leaving aside that there's no evidence this actually happened, there's also no evidence that a 16th bag with PA103A transfer tags was unloaded from that flight at Frankfurt.

And yet, their lordships decided this is what must have happened.

This seems to rest on the observation that, while there's no sign of the bag being on or being unloaded from the Luqa flight, it's not entirely impossible for a transfer bag from Luqa (if it existed) to have been loaded on to PA103A. Going by what Private Eye says, the baggage situation at Frankfurt was a bit confused. It all seems to have hinged on whether a check-in clerk's watch was exactly in synch with the airport clocks or not, and whether his handwriting (of the time he finished checking-in PA103A bags) said 10 past or 16 past the hour.

Note, no sighting of a brown Samsonite suitcase. No definite sighting, even, of any piece of luggage with transfer tags from Luqa to PA103A. Just the possibility, because of an overlap in timing, that one piece of luggage that went on to PA103A might have been from Luqa. Could have been a bag of golf clubs, as Private Eye observes.

But their lordships decided that's what must have happened.

Either there's more evidence we don't know about - in which case why wasn't it presented at the trial - or in fact the airport where the strongest evidence exists for the bomb bag to have been introduced to the system is Heathrow.

The rest of the politicking being alleged in these blogs, well, who knows. Middle Eastern politics is a murky business. Deals and counter-deals and Terry Waite's release and Gadaffi's arming of the IRA (which obviously MI6 wanted to stop) and allegations that Megrahi was being actively framed for this before it even happened - well, I ask you. How is any ordinary person ever going to figure out the truth of any of that?

But as far as a Heathrow introduction of the case is concerned, I don't see why it was ever ruled out.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

3rd September 2009, 08:18 AM

Rolfe

3rd September 2009, 09:02 AM

The timer fragment is much more interesting. If I'm picking up The Maltese Double Cross correctly, that wasn't actually found until more than two years after the crash. As in, it lay out in the forest for over two years before being brought in.

This would seem to explain the switch away from the Palestinians towards the Libyans at this stage, [....]

Mmmm, seems not. I've found a blog comments post entered twice on Robert Black's blog (http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/06/dr-swires-letter-to-lord-advocate.html) by Edwin Bollier, of all people, which refers to this. According to him, the fragment was found some time in January 1989 - only a few weeks after the crash.

During the painstaking search of a vast area of land police officers were asked to look out for items which might be charred and which might indicate that they had been close to an explosion.

On IP January 1989 in search sector 1, near Newcastleton, two police officers Thomas Gilchrist and Thomas McColm found a fragment of charred clothing.

While Bollier seems to be a very dodgy source for many things, and he was slated for his unreliable evidence at Camp Zeist, the rest of what I've picked up all suggests that the fragment was found fairly early on. So either I picked up The Maltese Double Cross wrongly, or the information in the film is wrong.

I'm still watching The Maltese Double Cross, but it's been late at night and I keep falling asleep, and the picture quality is abysmal - so bad it's very hard to read the subtitles when anyone speaks in a foreign language. It's creepy seeing a young Megrahi being interviewed, long before the extradition and trial. It seems to me to be heading off into a moderately wild CT, and if it can't even be trusted to get the date of the recovery of the timer fragmant right then it's not much cop. However, the interviews with people involved, from Dr. Fieldhouse to Megrahi, are interesting.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

3rd September 2009, 10:48 AM

I keep coming back to that timer fragment.

If the bomb went on board at Heathrow, the timing of the explosion was extremely suggestive of the "ice-cube" device known to be used by the Palestinians. These things were safe indefinitely at sea level, but the timer would be triggered to start its count-down by the decrease in pressure occurring when the plane took off. It would then explode some 40 minutes later, which is exactly what happened.

However, there seems to have been no evidence in the debris of anything that might have been part of such a device. Not only that, there seems to have been nothing in the debris that I've heard of to suggest any sort of pressure sensor. I don't know where all the versions of the official theory which include a pressure sensor come from. Is this story that the timer was set up to start ticking by the second take-off at Frankfurt just so much Chinese Whispers?

The ice-cube timers had a pressure sensor, that was how they worked. Is the whole pressure sensor story a relic from the early stages of the enquiry when it was speculated that something like that had been used, which has continued even when the attention switched to the MEBO timer? Or what? Because there's absolutely no need to postulate any sort of pressure device in conjunction with the MEBO timers unless, as I said earlier, the terrorists don't know which plane they're going to be able to get the bomb on board.

Timing apart, it does seem to be the finding of the MEBO fragment which caused the investigation to focus on Libya. All of that is very muddy because of the unreliability of Bollier as a witness, but the original intention of the prosecution was to prove that the timer was one that could only have been part of a batch sold to Libya. This seems to have gone pear-shaped in Camp Zeist. Was the circuit board green, or was it brown? Was it a machine-made timer, or a hand-made prototype? How many people or groups might have had access to such timers? God alone knows. The court doesn't seem to have found out.

The MEBO timer is what makes the timing of the explosion so odd. Wherever that was introduced into the system, so long as the terrorists knew which plane it would be going on, they could easily have achieved an explosion over the ocean. Only if there was some miscalculation (with or without a pressure sensor) regarding the route or flight involved, would such a premature triggering have happened. Doesn't really compute.

Then we havwe the various CTs that allege the MEBO timer was planted. The label on the exhibit which included the timer fragment was altered, and the policeman who was responsible for that piece of evidence couldn't explain this. However, there's no reason that couldn't have an innocent explanation, and if Bollier's account of how the fragment was discovered is correct, then there seems no reason to imagine it wasn't genuine.

It was examined there [Fort Halstead] on 12th of May 1989 by Dr Thomas Hayes. He teased out the cloth and found within it fragments of paper, fragments of black plastic and a piece of circuitry no larger than a fingernail. The cloth was found to be part of a grey slalom shirt - one of a number of items linked back to a little shop of Mary's House in Malta and the shopkeeper Tony Gauci.

The mesh fragments were found to be consistent with the loudspeaker grille and the black plastic fragments consistent with the composition of the case of the Toshiba radio cassette. It had already been identified by other fragments of circuit board and from the fragment of the instruction manual which had been found the day after the crash by Mrs Gwendoline Horton in her garden at Longhorsely in Northumberland in north east England. The paper recovered from the charred cloth by Dr Hayes also matched a control sample of this owner's manual.

MEBO addendum: The debris delivered to RARDE [Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment, Fort Halstead] were listed by Dr. Hayes on the EXAMINATION page No.51 on the 12th of May 1989. Together with a remnant of a grey "Slalom" T-shirt and other debris from a Toshiba radio cassette recorder PT-35 (B) an unknown "fragment of a green coloured circuit board" was registered and depictured (photo no.100, label PI-995, PP' 8932).

The first two quoted paragraphs seem to be the work of Colin Boyd the Lord Advocate, from a paper presented him about the case to a law conference. The third paragraph looks like Bollier's interpolation, and it leads on to a claim that the fragment found in the shirt was actually brown, not green, and was part of a prototype timer.

This seems to be related to the Private Eye version of the story which tells of Dr. Hayes re-numbering the pages of his notes at this point in his investigations. They connect that to the altration of the exhibit label (from "cloth" to "debris" I think) and imply some sort of shenanigans.

This lot leads on to various CTs which suggest either that the MEBO timer fragment was planted after the event in order to implicate Libya, or indeed that the whole thing was planned in advance (a false flag operation, apparently) in order to implicate Libya, with the aim of imposing sanctions and forcing Gadaffi to stop arming the IRA (among other things).

I'm inclined to think that's barking. Especially the false flag suggestions. I'm still inclined to think that the US attitudes had more to do with the CIA officers who were fortuitously on board the plane, and whatever they might coincidentally have been carryng that they didn't want strewn around the countryside.

Nevertheless, it's interesting to note how many parties seem to think that timer fragment was tampered with, and why.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

3rd September 2009, 11:02 AM

Well, I found this reference, identical text in two reference sites.

http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Pan_Am_Flight_103
http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Lockerbie_bombing/

The bomb was a 312 gram Semtex (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Semtex)-H bomb (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Bomb). The amount of Semtex was equivalent to about six hand grenades (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Grenade). The bomb was powered by one large battery (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Battery_(electricity)).

The bomb triggered by a barometric trigger set for 8,000 feet of pressure. The sensor came from an aneroid (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Aneroid) barometer (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Barometer), and it started a timer (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Timer). Four hours is the approximate amount of time the timer was set for. The device was concealed inside the cassette (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Compact_audio_cassette)-play motor of a Toshiba (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Toshiba) portable radio (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Radio) and cassette player inside a Samsonite suitcase. The bomb had been loaded into the forward cargo compartment in Frankfurt (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Frankfurt).

One theory on the reason why the timing was set to four hours is because, the timing would have set the bomb to explode when the plane was over the Atlantic Ocean (http://july.fixedreference.org/en/20040724/wikipedia/Atlantic_Ocean). If this had happened, the plane would have vanished over the ocean, so that nobody but the conspirators would know exactly what happened to the plane.
The plane was one hour behind schedule, so the bomb exploded sooner in flight.

I found no other reference to this, and I think it's horse-feathers. It would be interesting to know where it came from though.

Rolfe.

ricbritain

3rd September 2009, 11:22 AM

Is it not possible that they got the right man?

I'm in Libya right now and prefer to think/hope that they did.

Big Les

3rd September 2009, 01:06 PM

Perhaps you can tell us what the Libyans believe. Do they think their man did it?

Rolfe

3rd September 2009, 01:34 PM

Is it not possible that they got the right man?

I'm in Libya right now and prefer to think/hope that they did.

Indeed, what do people in Libya think? My impression, from the party at the airport, was that they thought they were welcoming home someone who had been unjustly convicted.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

3rd September 2009, 02:04 PM

Is it not possible that they got the right man?

I'm in Libya right now and prefer to think/hope that they did.

Well, I'm no expert, but I'm trying to find out more. Certainly, the common opinion in Scotland among people who are familiar with the details is that there's no evidence he did it.

There seem to have been three points where he was allegedly linked to the plot.

First, through Mebo, who manufactured the timers of the type found at Lockerbie. Megrahi did have links to the company, and they did supply timers like that to Libya. But there was no evidence linking Megrahi himself to one of the timers, and the evidence suggesting that the timer found at Lockerbie was one supplied to Libya was one of the parts that fell to pieces at the trial.

Second, through Tony Gauci. The person who bought these clothes from Tony Gauci was definitely one of the bombers. If that was Megrahi, then he was guilty. However, Gauci never positively identified the man as Megrahi, and it was the circumstances of his tentative identification that made up the main grounds for the appeal listed by the SCCRC. It seems very unlikely that man was Megrahi.

Third, because of his actions on 21st December. He was in Luqa airport travelling on a false passport. To make this a connection, you have to assert that the bomb was inserted into the baggage system at Luqa that morning. However, there is no evidence that any illicit baggage went through Luqa that day.

The threadbare nature of this evidence is the reason for the general astonishment surrounding the guilty verdict. It really doesn't come close to "beyond reasonable doubt".

Big Les said in another thread that he'd feel differently if it could be proved that Megrahi didn't do it. I don't see how you could do that. However, at what point does absence of evidence become sufficient to acknowledge that someone has been improperly convicted?

Rolfe.

Big Les

3rd September 2009, 03:06 PM

I think we're past that point. I'm quite conflicted actually - I tend to come down on the side of principle - in principle he's convicted of the crime, and so I don't think that he should have been released. But the evidence is so patently poor that I can't feel too aggrieved about him actualy being released. I suspect others feel the same way. This whole mess could have been prevented if they'd actually admitted that they had no legitimate suspect that they could bring to justice.

Rolfe

3rd September 2009, 05:27 PM

This whole mess could have been prevented if they'd actually admitted that they had no legitimate suspect that they could bring to justice.

That'll be the day! Compare the Shirley McKie case. She spoke of feeling that the reason they escalated the case against her was to avoid having it on the record that the Scottish forensic service had made a mistake, right at the time the Camp Zeist trial was on the go.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

3rd September 2009, 06:04 PM

OK, found what seems to be a very good and up-to-date summary of the state of play. It's an episode of the BBC Conspiracy Files series, dated 2007. I never saw this before, possibly because I was involved in a complicated house move in 2007 and not paying attention. I just watched it, and it hits the important points as I see them.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-327765978162851498&hl=en#

It first knocks the "Helsinki warning" on the head, showing good evidence that this was a hoax, and pure coincidence.

It goes into the whole Palestinian thing, and simply leaves it open that all this circumstantial evidence was found, but absolutely nothing concrete that would stand up in court.

It goes into the conspiracy theory proposed by The Maltese Double Cross, which to be honest is pretty far-fetched and as The Conspiracy Files says, requires that far too many people must have known about it for it to be kept secret.

It finally goes into the "official version" and ends up showing that the case against Megrahi is just as threadbare as we thought it was.

It ends by declaring that the appeal is expected to come to court "next year", which would have been 2008, and that it may leave the Scottish criminal justice system looking very bad indeed.

Well of course we know that the appeal didn't come to court on 2008, not least because the Crown were fighting a court order requiring them to release an extremely top-secret document to the defence team. Here's a BBC report on that (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/7254822.stm). It seems to be more about the Mebo timer and its provenance. The deal was that a special advocate was to be appointed by the Crown to look at the document on behalf of Megrahi, and after he'd seen it he would not be allowed to communicate with either Megrahi or his defence team. Did you ever hear anything like it?

This was still dragging on when Megrahi was diagnosed with cancer, and the rest is current events.

The one thing I wasn't sure about as regards the Conspiracy Files version was that they were much more definite about an unaccompanied bag from Malta having been loaded on to PA103A at Frankfurt, than I thought was the case from reading other accounts. It was presented as quite clear and unambiguous, one bag, definitely from Malta, definitely loaded. But other versions based on the Camp Zeist evidence have been much less categorical.

Anyway, good programme, very watchable and very even-handed. Not a word about Heathrow of course, but that's only come up again recently.

Rolfe.

Big Les

4th September 2009, 03:08 AM

What do you think the chances are that the Scottish Government went with compassionate release (at least partly?) to save their own blushes over Camp Zeist?

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 03:21 AM

Moderately high.

ETA: I think the "compassionate motives" were perfectly genuine. What I don't think was genuine was Kenny's condemnatory attitude in his statement, declaring that Megrahi was guilty. Kenny is a lawyer, all paid up. He knows perfectly well that he cannot allow a single syllable to suggest that he as Justice Minister is de facto over-ruling a legal conviction. However, you can't be an active member of the SNP without at least being aware of the credible position that Megrahi was framed. So I think that the "compassionate" motives were strengthened by a private suspicion that the conviction may well have been unsound.

Then we have the second reason. I think Kenny was :rule10-scared of Megrahi dying of cancer in a Scottish jail, or even on Scottish soil, because of the long-term damage that would do the middle-eastern relations. OK, maybe it's going to piss-off the Yanks. But let's face it, there have been quite enough Yank shenanigans surrounding this that they're really in no position to cast nasturtiums. And the Yanks are unlikely to come and suicide-bomb our airports. Weighing it up, I'd say that long-term improvement in relationships with Arab nations is worth a bit of short-term wolf-crying from across the Atlantic.

And the third reason is probably exactly as you say. While us non-lawyers would like to divert the Clyde, Tweed, Tay and Spey through the Augean Stables that is some of the Scottish criminal justice system, Kenny is after all a lawyer, and part of the club. We seem to have got rid of Boyd, who was pernicious, but the will to shine a light on all this (why did those judges bring in such an obviously weird verdict? why was the Crown trying to withhold evidence from the defence? what the hell was going on with Shirley McKie?) is lacking.

It's not that the present Scottish Government had anything at all to do with Camp Zeist. They personally don't have anything to blush about. However, I think there's a bit of not wanting the country as a whole to be exposed as having put on a classic "show trial", and a bit of the legal profession looking after its own no matter which political party they happen to belong to.

What I don't think is that any pressure was put from Westminster to let the guy go, so that Westminster would be able to say it had kept its side of the trade deal bargains. I don't think Westminster would be stupid enough to try it. The Scottish government had every reason to let the guy go as it was (see above), and maybe the one thing that would have given them pause was Westminster actively petitioning for it. Knowing that Westminster wouldn't actually be furious about it was a bonus, but any pressure might well have provoked an equal and opposite resistance.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 04:34 AM

Here's another interesting video, Lockerbie and the CIA.

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-327765978162851498&hl=en#docid=-4640563516094155366

I don't know quite how old this is, or what its provenance is. The anchor has an English accent but I don't recogniise him. It's a lot less restrained than the BBC production.

It has three 15-minute segments.

The first presents the "standard" CT, the one that's widely credited, that the Palestinians did it at the behest of Iran. It includes the point about Iran having offered a large reward to anyone who would down a US airliner, and an equivalent sum of money being paid by Iran to the PFLP-GC bank account just days after Lockerbie. I don't know the provenance of that claim.

It goes with the ice-cube timer theory, because that was what was in the casette-player bombs the Palestinians were caught with, and because of the timing of the explosion. It thus has to bring in the Heathrow theory, because an ice-cube timer would be definition have had to be introduced at Healthrow.

It then explains quite well the actual CT aspect of this, suggesting that rather than the investigators simply changing tack because they simply couldn't get evidence against the PFLP-GC that would stand up in court, there was a political decision to stop pursuing Iran and go after Libya instead. This is related to Operation Desert Storm, and the need to get Iran on-side, and also to the desire to have western hostages released, which is said to have occurred with rather neat timing after the indictments were filed against the Libyans. They didn't really go into the other side of this, which is the alleged desire to impose sanctions on Libya, consign Gadaffi to the Outer Darkness, and (among other things) stop him supplying weapons to the IRA.

The second 15 minutes takes a long hard look at the rabbit hole, and sets off down it. This is all about drugs (and maybe lots of money) found at Tundergarth, and the CIA operatives who were on the plane. In this version, there is a CIA operation on the go along the same lines as "arms for hostages", but this is drugs for hostages. There's quite a lot of evidence presented to support the assertion that one of the passengers (Khalid Jafaar) was a drug courier, and that he was being run by the CIA.

It goes further than that, though. One of the other US passengers, Major Charles McKee, was said to be travelling back to the USA from Africa at very short notice, and it's alleged that he had information on this operation and that he was going to stop it. Thus, the assertion is that one of Jafaar's drug-courier suitcases was switched for a bomb suitcase, in order to stop McKee. As the drug-running operation was well established and sanctioned, it was possible to get a bomb suitcase into the system without it being scanned, because those involved assumed it was full of heroin.

The third 15 minutes is even wilder. This is the David Shayler theory the twoofer site was promoting. I sort of lost the will to live at that point, but I think he's saying that the Libyans really did it, however this is all part of some fiendishly complicated CIA plot anyway.

It's actually a good programme, entertaining and well presented. It does a neat trick of starting off plausible, then topping each hypothesis with something wilder.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 05:29 AM

I'm still a bit confused about several points.

I'm getting conflicting accounts of when the Mebo timer fragment was recovered. The Maltese Double Cross version, that it survived two winters out in the forest before being found, is repeated in Lockerbie and the CIA. Other accounts, including Bollier's, suggest it was only a matter of a few weeks. This should be easy to verify, but it's an odd discrepancy considering that the timer fragment is such an important and contentious piece of evidence.

The situation at Frankfurt regarding what was loaded on to PA103A is confusing. The Conspiracy Files, which seems well-sourced, interviewed a Frankfurt check-in girl who hasn't been mentioned by any of the other sources I've looked at, but who appears to have been crucial.

She said that the lists of baggage loaded on to a plane were usually destroyed quite quickly. I'm surprised by what she said, because I'd have expected the lists to have been kept at least long enough to ensure that nobody was going to come looking for a lost bag. After the crash, she said she was about to destroy all the lists for that day, because nobody had asked her to keep anything, but then she looked at the list for PA103A and decided to keep it in memory of the people who had died at Lockerbie. So she put it in her locker. Then later, when the enquiry was on the go, it occurred to her it might be important. She went to her supervisor and said, what about the baggage list? He said, but that no longer exists. She told him she'd kept it.

That all sounds a bit lax to me. Why assume she'd destroyed such an important piece of evidence? Anyway, she produced the list, and according the the BBC, there is was, a clear record of an unaccompanied bag from Malta (presumably Luqa, not Valetta, though she didn't say) going on to PA103A.

This is quite peculiar, because nobody else mentions it, and Private Eye goes into a lot of detail about the uncertainties of what happened at Frankfurt at this stage. However, even discounting that, if you find evidence of a mysterious bag with Maltese-origin tags in the system at Frankfurt, but no evidence of such a bag at either end of the Luqa flight, where do you suspect the bag was smuggled in? Luqa? Frankfurt?

Then there's the "missing body". If Dr. Fielding really did label 59 bodies, but then only 58 of them subsequently entered the system, it's a bit odd that he doesn't mention this when he's interviewed on-camera in The Maltese Double Cross. On the other hand, I see no record of a denial from him, in response to the "missing body" stories. (The idea that there was someone on that plane who didn't appear in any passenger manifest seems extremely pecuilar though.)

I suspect some sources are simply copying others, and since The Maltese Double Cross is so early (1994), it's possible any errors in the film have become embedded in the mythology.

Rolfe.

Caustic Logic

4th September 2009, 06:14 AM

I was just checking up on the timing of the revelation that there was a break-in at Heathrow shortly before PA103 left. Here's one newspaper report of the revelation.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lockerbie-heathrow-breakin-revealed-668981.html

Just look at the date.

Rolfe.

Holy crud! At the least you've discovered why 9/11 was staged that day - a distraction! Well it is a little hearsay, or hard to verify, but sounds solid so far.
In sworn affidavits, he said he had found a padlock had been cut from a door that led to Pan Am's baggage about 18 hours before Flight 103 took off, The Mirror said.

"I believe it would have been possible for an unauthorized person to obtain tags for a particular Pan Am flight then, having broken the ... lock, to have introduced a tagged bag into the baggage buildup area," Manly was quoted as saying.

For those trailing so far behind they're hardly on the wagon at all, what would it mean for the case if this bomb was placed in London instead of Malta? In simple general terms, pour favor

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 07:24 AM

I can see why I found it difficult to follow all this. It has more layers than an onion!

It reminds me of Murder on the Orient Express. First we find that person A has motive, means and opportunity. Then we find that person B also has motive, means and opportunity. Then person C, and so on until about 10 people are all plausible suspects. Of course Christie ties it all up by revealing that all 10 were involved in a conspiracy to kill the victim.

However, coincidences do happen, and there's no doubt coincidences did happen in connection with this incident. There's no need to try to wrap it all up into some overarching mega-conspiracy, nor to go with a theory that follows the wilder allegations but ignores the plausible ones.

The whole issue of warnings seems to be genuine coincidence. Yes, the plane was only about two thirds full, and yes, some VIPs seem to have cancelled their flights, including Pik Botha. Several people bought their tickets at the last minute, including Flora Swire, who at one point seems to have been under the impression that all New York flights were full that day. However, there's no suggestion the flight was ever fully booked, or that it was unusually empty for the time of year.

The Helsinki warning spoke of an Arab terrorist who intended to use his unwitting Finnish girl-friend to carry a bomb on board a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to New York, but didn't name the flight. That warning was distributed internally to US VIPs, suggesting they make up their own minds about it. It probably did cause some VIPs to change their travel plans. However, it was shown to be a hoax, perpetrated by a jealous Arab lumberjack working in Finland who was trying to get a fellow-worker deported because he fancied the girl-friend.

What about the happenings on the ground at Lockerbie? The suitcase full of "heroin"? The CIA badge? The red tarpaulin and the helicopter? The appearance of officious plain-clothes Americans tampering with the evidence, apparently flown up from London about as fast as it's possible to get there? The persistent allegations that Jafaar was a drugs mule, and "drugs for hostages" negotiations? And all the rest?

Is this all complete horse-feathers, people making stuff up? Given the number of stories, and the amount of detail, I don't think it can all be summarily dismissed. However, even if it's all true, that Oliver North was running a "drugs for hostages" deal, and that Jafaar was a drugs mule, and even that all this was being done with the connivance of the CIA, is that necessarily related to the bombing?

I'd have said not. The whole suggestion that the bomb was substituted for a suitcase full of drugs (meaning that Jafaar had at least two suitcases, because drugs were found on the ground) seems to have no evidence to support it. One version suggests that the terrorists, whoever they were, knew about the drug-running and managed to penetrate the operation and substitute the bomb suitcase, while the other suggests that it was an inside job aimed mainly at getting rid of Charles McKee (because he'd found out about it and was going to blow the whistle), with no regard for who else would be killed in the process. But none of those proposing this explanation has produced a shred of evidence to back up the hearsay.

So, maybe Jafaar was a drugs mule. Maybe the CIA operatives on the plane were engaged in something the CIA really, really didn't want exposed, hence their swift appearance on the scene and possible evidence-tampering. Maybe the two were even connected, maybe even in a "drugs for hostages" plot. But that doesn't necessarily have any bearing on the explosion.

It would be much easier to explain the persistent cover-up of all this (if it's true) if it was coincidental to the bombing. The Conspiracy Files dismisses this CT by pointing out the sheer number of people who would have had to have known about it, and the improbability of nobody blowing the whistle. However, if it wasn't connected to the bombing, it's more plausible to imagine that those involved decided simply to keep their heads down - especially if it wasn't quite such a big deal as most of the CTers make it out to have been.

What about the PFLP-GC? They had a cell based in Frankfurt, and not long before the crash the German police raided them and found radio-casette bombs extremely similar to the Lockerbie device all wired up. With ice-cube timers, which, if introduced into a plane at Heathrow, would cause an explosion at exactly the time PA103 exploded. That seems to be fact, as is the information that the police released them all, again before the crash. There also seems to be evidence that five such devices were manufactured, but only four were recovered.

Iran had vowed revenge for the shooting down of the Airbus by the Vincennes in the Persian Gulf, a few months before Lockerbie. It offered a $2 million reward to anyone who would blow up a US airliner. Shortly after Lockerbie, $2 million was deposited by Iran in a bank account controlled by the PFLP-GC. Is that last fact confirmed? Don't know.

The prime Palestinian suspect was in Malta on 23rd November 1988, the most probable date for the purchase of the clothes at Mary's Shop. Tony Gauci's first pick from the initial inquiry was exactly that guy, and he seemed more confident about that than his later tentative identification of Megrahi.

And this is all just one more huge coincidence, and the Palestinians were actually planning to blow up an Israeli jet, except their plans were thwarted by the police raid? O.... K....

There are two separate sets of suspicious circumstances whereby the bomb suitcase might have been introduced onto the plane. At Frankfurt, an unaccompanied item of luggage (not described) with tags saying it had got there on an Air Malta flight, may have been loaded onto PA103A. And Malta was where the clothes in the bag were purchased. But at the same time a mysterious brown Samsonite suitcase materialised at Heathrow, before PA103A touched down, in the exact luggage container where the bomb, which was in a brown Samsonite suitcase, was known to have exploded. And a break-in with a sawn-through padlock was logged at Heathrow the evening before the crash, giving access to the Pan Am loading area.

The bomb suitcase presumably can't have been loaded at both places. One of these must be a coincidence.

And Megrahi was at Luqa airport on the morning of 21st December, travelling on a false passport. Either that was no coincidence, and he did in fact manage to get the bag on to the Frankfurt flight with the appropriate tags, despite there being no evidence that such a bag was ever unloaded from that flight at Frankfurt (or that he ever had contact with explosives or made a bomb) - or most of the rest of the above, including all the stuff about the Palestinian group and the Heathrow break-in, is complete coincidence.

My head's slightly spinning. No wonder there's as many theories as there are people speculating. You'd never get away with this in a novel.

Where does Occam's razor point, anyway? To the IRA, maybe?

Rolfe.

GlennB

4th September 2009, 07:30 AM

For those trailing so far behind they're hardly on the wagon at all, what would it mean for the case if this bomb was placed in London instead of Malta? In simple general terms, pour favor

The prosecution case against Megrahi would evaporate, as it was founded on the notion that he (and his alleged co-conspirator Lamin Fhimah) placed the bomb on the Air Malta flight as unaccompanied luggage that was ultimately destined for Pan Am 103.

(Among other things, of course)

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 07:36 AM

For those trailing so far behind they're hardly on the wagon at all, what would it mean for the case if this bomb was placed in London instead of Malta? In simple general terms, pour favor.

It would rule out Megrahi, for a start. He was on Malta that day.

Beyond that, I suppose it means that there's simply no clue who might have done it without looking at which possible suspects might or might not have been in London at the time. I think it's been implied that the Palestinian group were all looked at very closely to see if any of them could have planted a bomb, and no evidence was found. I suspect that probably covers trips to London as well as Luqa and Frankfurt airport. So it could be that's a dead end.

It's quite tricky in another respect as well. Assuming the bomb was made on the continent, how was it transported to Heathrow? Remember, this was before the Channel Tunnel. You'd really have to take it by car, on a ferry. How easy would that be to do, and leave no trace? Why not get it on board closer to home?

It's not a neat and tidy answer by any manner of means.

Rolfe.

Marduk

4th September 2009, 07:39 AM

what if there wasn't a bomb or a bomber and the government just used a tragic accident to further its own ends, it woudn't be the first time a plane has blown up due to a fault. Wouldn't that scenario explain all the bs evidence which apparently never leads anywhere

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 07:42 AM

GlennB

4th September 2009, 07:42 AM

Where does Occam's razor point, anyway?

So far, only to the fact that the perpetrators have not been identified in any official proceeding.

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 09:03 AM

Old BBC article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1998/12/98/lockerbie/235632.stm) on the pressure sensors. My point about the timer was that it didn't matter whether it went off in 4 hours or 6 hours - it didn't have to be very accurate.

The plane was delayed in Heathrow, that's what caused it to explode over Lockerbie instead of the Atlantic.

Just recapping this post from a few weeks ago, which I'd forgotten. This seems to be the source of the assertions that a pressure sensor was involved, and the way it triggered the timer. Note that it's dated 1998, before the trial.

Inside the case a larger-than-normal battery was wired to a barometric sensor (the bellows unit from an aneroid barometer), a small device concealed under the cassette-play motor. This in turn was set to start a timer, which in turn was wired to a detonator.

In the space where there should have been a loudspeaker, there was shallow cone of silver foil, filled with about 350 grammes of Semtex plastic explosive. [....]

Modern airliners are pressurised. The outside air is much too thin to breathe, so the air-pressure inside the fuselage is higher than outside.
But it isn't sea-level pressure. To reduce wear-and-tear on the fuselage, the pressure is normally equivalent to an altitude of about eight thousand feet. The pressure is less than it would be at sea-level, but more than it would be outside. (On the journey to London most planes cruise at 20,000 to 25,000 feet.)

The moment the pressure dropped to 8,000 feet, the barometric sensor completed a circuit which started the timer. We don't know for sure how long a delay had been set, but it was probably about 4 hours.

From Frankfurt, this would allow an hour for arrival in London including 10 minutes' holding in the stack; 45 minutes for being taken off the feeder-liner and re-loaded on to the Boeing 747; 15 minutes' start-up, push-back and taxiing before takeoff; and 2 hours flying time - long enough to get the plane far out over the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

If the plan had worked, Pan Am 103 would simply have vanished into the ocean, and probably we would never have known for sure what had happened. But in the event, flight 103 took off over an hour behind schedule. It had been airborne less than an hour when it blew up over Lockerbie.

I think it's a lot of speculation, based partly on descriptions of pressure-timer bombs from other incidents (and possibly the ones the German police recovered in Operation Autumn Leaves) and making the assumption that the bomb was smuggled on board at Frankfurt.

The author seems unaware of the fact that the pressure-timers used by the Frankfurt PFLP-GC cell (the ice-cube timers) had a fixed time-lapse of only about 40 minutes and couldn't have been set to four hours, and that the plane was only 25 minutes late, not "over an hour".

It's a pity something this misleading managed to get on the respected BBC web site. Nevertheless, it does allow us to see where some of the misdirection has originated.

Rolfe.

ricbritain

4th September 2009, 10:36 AM

Perhaps you can tell us what the Libyans believe. Do they think their man did it?

I'm guessing you haven't spent much time in the Arabic world:)

The Libyans believe that he is entirely innocent, as is Libya in regard to this or any other subject that is in anyway negative. They would sooner believe that the blame lies with the Jews than even contemplate it could have been a Libyan. However, they also believe that Israel was behind 911 and that all explosions in Iraq are implemented by Mossad. Indeed all the woes of the Islamic world are the result of the USA and Israel:confused:.

When I discussed the early release of Megrahi and his heroes welcome they reminded me of the early release and similar welcome given to the Bulgarian nurses releases last year. This is very much a different situation, but that's not easy to explain to Libyans:boggled:.

Did Megrahi actually have representation at his trial? If so then surely they would have had access to the same info as members of this forum and would have used to to make their case.

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 10:53 AM

Did Megrahi actually have representation at his trial? If so then surely they would have had access to the same info as members of this forum and would have used to to make their case.

Of course he did. And the case has been widely reported.

This is a very complex matter, and one of the main features of the trial was the extent to which the Crown prosecution had concealed evidence from the defence that was favourable to the defendant.

Nevertheless, one of the most striking things about the whole affair was the returning of the guilty verdict on what could only be described as a partial and hard-to-explain interpretation of some extremely threadbare evidence.

In particular, the only positive evidence linking Megrahi to the bombing that was accepted by the court was Gauci's identification. That identification was never better than tentative, and there were a number of reasons for believing Gauci to be mistaken. Lacking Gauci's identification, the case could not have stood up.

The published grounds for appeal all related to Gauci's identification. The appeal was however withdrawn by Megrahi last month, because he knew he could not possibly live to see it come to court.

There's a lot of detail available on the Internet about the trial, the evidence and the judges' interpretation of it, including their summary judgement. Also the report from the official UN observer, who declared the trial to be biassed and a miscarriage of justice.

Rolfe.

Caustic Logic

4th September 2009, 02:27 PM

No.

Rolfe.

ETA: OK, I'll explain that. They retrieved pretty much all of the plane, and put it together again in a hangar. It's a fact that the crash was caused by an explosion that occurred in a particular luggage container, near the bottom of the container.

That hardly seems to be consistent with a tragic accident.

Sure it does - defective luggage compartment... bottom. Could blow up, right? :P

Thanks Glen and Rolfe for the answers. I'm barely on the wagon, nope, still running behind. So Megrahi wuld be ruled out but it almost seems that way anyway from other evidence. Hmmm... too many other questions to even ask now (couldnt absorb the answers). Good news is when I'm ready to getoobsessive, this thread will be my main starting point. I know where to go!

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 02:38 PM

Sure it does - defective luggage compartment... bottom. Could blow up, right? :P

Just sayin'.... (http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/pimg/ZUMA_Press__Inc_142340/ZUMA_Press_Inc297063/2008/12/18/COPY_NEG___Lockerbie_bomb_baggag-13442.largeslideshow.jpg)

Rolfe.

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 03:06 PM

Is there a primary source for this "security services" dismissal? Given the raid of a terrorist cell in Frankfurt several weeks before Lockerbie, in which a bomb concealed in a radio went "missing," (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=5025729#post5025729) it's a little had to tell what "dismissed ... as coincidence" means without context (not to mention, which security service?)

I just noticed this comment, which is quite important.

There were two sorts of warning. The Helsinki warning was indeed a hoax, perpetrated by a jealous lumberjack, and it was pure coincidence that he mentioned Frankfurt to New York as the route the "bomb" was going to be smuggled on to. Nevertheless, notification was circulated privately amoung US VIPs, and some of them seem to have changed their flight plans as a result.

The second was the warning put out by the German police after "Operation Autumn Leaves". I'm still a bit hazy as to why they let these Palestinians go after finding them in possession of four pressure-trigger radio-casette bombs and a fifth one probable still at large. (And a bit of coincidence I left out was that they'd been seen at Frankfurt airport browsing Pan Am timetables, and one of them had a calendar in his flat with 21st December circled....) Anyway, they did. But they also circulated a specific warning about what these bombs looked like. I think the Frankfurt baggage inspectors had seen them before 21st December, but at the British end the circulation was still waiting for colour pictures (according to Private Eye).

So yes, there were warnings, and yes, VIPs were in a position to know about them while the hoi polloi weren't. And very probably some flight plans were changed, and maybe even some people avoided PA103 because of them. However, there is no evidence of any warning specifically identifying PA103 on 21st December as the flight to be targeted.

Rolfe.

JihadJane

4th September 2009, 04:16 PM

Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23425.htm)

By John Pilger

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 05:15 PM

Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23425.htm)

By John Pilger

Thanks for that. Pilger seems to be setting a great deal of store by Paul Foot's pamphlet - which I'm re-reading at the moment (simultaneously with recording the BBC "listen again" file of Lockerbie on Trial on to casette tape before it self-destructs tomorrow afternoon). I note Pilger credits Foot with having sat through the entire proceedings at Camp Zeist - one of very few journalists to do that.

Now I'm more familiar with the whole story, Foot's version actually holds together better and appears more informative than it did at first reading. Really, the only "barnacles" are the vignettes in Appendix 1, and even these are worth recording, if nothing else.

Private Eye's strength is its political journalism, and Foot's account of the simultaneous political machinations involving Thatcher and Reagan are far more detailed than any other source. His account tends to give the lie to a number of recent glosses on the tale, such as "we had our eye on Libya almost from the start."

He's also very clear about the Mebo fragment, completely contradicting both The Maltese Double Cross and the sources that say it wasn't discovered for five or six months. It may not have been examined until May 1989, but it appears that Bollier is correct when he says it was found in January.

Where I would take issue with Pilger is in his condemnation of MacAskill for not mentioning "miscarriage of justice" in his statement. Does Pilger not understand that MacAskill, as Justice Secretary, couldn't possibly undermine the rule of law by appearing to declare a convicted man innocent?

Rolfe.

ETA: I see the comments on Pilger's article are dominated by assertions that the bombing was actually carried out by Israel.

:hb:

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 06:00 PM

I'm conscious of the number of posts I've made in this thread, but it's a useful way of getting things straight as I get my head round them.

I can see I've made a number of errors on the way past, such as the number of bags on the Malta-Frankfurt flight (it was 55, not 15), and the amount of money offered by Iran to whoever would down a US airliner ($10 million, and it was £5.9 million that was paid into a German bank account controlled by the PFLP-GC from Iran very shortly after the crash, and yes, a credible source is cited for that).

I just hope nobody is using me as a reference source!

Rolfe.

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 06:06 PM

Did Megrahi actually have representation at his trial? If so then surely they would have had access to the same info as members of this forum and would have used to to make their case.

In case it might help, here is one account of the way the trial was conducted. It's written by a senior lawyer. It begins by talking about the grounds for appeal, but deals with the original trial later on.

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2007/07/article-in-scotsman-on-23-july-2007.html

Rolfe.

Rolfe

4th September 2009, 06:35 PM

It's quite tricky in another respect as well. Assuming the bomb was made on the continent, how was it transported to Heathrow? Remember, this was before the Channel Tunnel. You'd really have to take it by car, on a ferry. How easy would that be to do, and leave no trace? Why not get it on board closer to home?

Hmmm, I note Paul Foot covers that. He cites an article in Der Spiegel, from August 1997, reporting that an Iranian named Mesbahi had made statements to the effect that the bomb was taken from Frankfurt to London by air, in pieces. The bomb was then assembled in London and loaded on to Maid of the Seas.

Of course if the Palestinians did this, the bomb would have had to be introduced at Heathrow. Their timers were set to go off 40 minutes after takeoff. If they had introduced it at Frankfurt it would have detonated over France. (I'm guessing that the whole point of the exercise was to down an aircraft headed for America.)

If that is the case, it suggests the Mebo timer was planted, as has been alleged by several sources. The top-secret document that all the fuss was about (the reason the appeal was delayed) was apparently related to the Mebo timer. The Crown was last seen refusing to release it on grounds of national security, with stuff about "damaging Britain's relations with a friendly power." I wonder if we'll ever find out what that's all about?

If this version is correct, then it highlights another coincidence. The apparent record at Frankfurt suggesting that an unaccompanied bag might have gone on to PA103A from Malta. The very place where the clothes in the suitcase were definitely bought.

If on the other hand the Mebo timer is genuine, it means that the Palestinians are much less likely to have been involved - why would they sudddenly use a different type of timer? If the Mebo timer was the trigger, the 40-minute detonation (consistent with an ice-cube timer) is the coincidence. Also, that the Palestinian cell were making radio-cassette bombs out of almost identical Toshiba machines, that very autumn. In Frankfurt. And the £5.9 million they got from the Iranians.

Occam says he doesn't want to play any more.

Rolfe.

Bobby

4th September 2009, 10:37 PM

If this version is correct, then it highlights another coincidence. The apparent record at Frankfurt suggesting that an unaccompanied bag might have gone on to PA103A from Malta. The very place where the clothes in the suitcase were definitely bought.

Is this coincidence any greater than that of there being a number of CIA operatives on PA103A? How many unaccompanied bags were in flight at that time? Wasn't it a result of Lockerbie and a few other similar attacks that lead to a change in rules with respect to unaccompanied luggage?

Rolfe

5th September 2009, 08:25 AM

Did Megrahi actually have representation at his trial? If so then surely they would have had access to the same info as members of this forum and would have used to to make their case.

Hmmmm, I still need to read a lot more. I note the UN observer was highy critical of the conduct of Megrahi's defence.

Some sources have praised the defence for shredding the credibility of Giaka and Bollier. However, Koechler takes a different view, particularly as regards the handling of the first appeal.

9.One of the most serious shortcomings of the appeal proceedings (as of the trial proceedings) was that the appellant did not have adequate defense – a circumstance that weighs heavily in an adversarial judicial system where the fairness of the trial depends mainly on the equality of arms between prosecution and defense. Because of this situation, the requirements of Art. 6 (“Right to a fair trial”) of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms were not met.

10.The lack of adequate representation of the appellant became evident in the handling of the defense case during the appeal in several respects:
(a) In spite of the often vague and entirely circumstantial evidence, the Defense, in its Note of Appeal as well as during the appeal hearings, did not make the point that there was insufficient evidence in law to convict the appellant;
(b) in the course of the appeal hearings, the Defense Counsel expressly disavowed any reliance on Par. b of Section 106 (3) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 which states that an appellant may bring under review any miscarriage of justice, which may include such miscarriage based on “the jury’s having returned a verdict which no reasonable jury, properly directed, could have returned;”
(c) the Defense did not raise any of the technical issues, particularly in regard to the timer used in the explosive device, on which new information had become available since the Verdict on 31 January 2001;
(d) the Defense further did not raise the issue of Mr. Anthony Gauci, key witness of the Prosecution, having been invited repeatedly for holiday trips to Scotland by the Scottish police. This information was available before the beginning of the appeal hearings; it calls into question the trustworthiness and reliability of the prosecution witness, on whose testimony the verdict substantially depended;
(e) the Defense did not raise the issue of why important evidence about the breaking of a lock at the luggage storage area at Heathrow airport had disappeared from the police records and why it was not made available to the trial court; instead, the Defense Counsel stated at the beginning of the appeal hearings that there was no fault on the part of the Prosecution in regard to the non-availability of this important evidence. It is hard to understand why, in an adversarial system, the Defense should come to the defense of the Prosecution on such a crucial matter which could cast doubt over the entire strategy of the prosecution;
(f) there was an obvious antagonism between the Defense Team and the “defense support team” represented in the courtroom by the Libyan defense lawyer, a situation which seriously hampered the efficiency of the defense strategy;
(g) as an apparent consequence of this antagonism and of a lack of co-ordination on the part of the defense, additional material in support of the defense case was collected only after the appeal hearings had started, i.e. at a time when it was much too late to include any additional information in the “grounds of appeal;”
(h) as a result of this, a chaotic situation ensued which also was referred to in the British media; bills of members of the defense support team were not paid, which created the impression of a defense operation in disarray. All of this was detrimental to the rights of the appellant under the European Human Rights Convention.

11.In its Note of Appeal and presentations during the hearings, the Defense failed to raise the issue of substantial evidence having been withheld during the trial and the judges’ apparent satisfaction with this situation (see Par. 7 of the undersigned’s report on the trial). [....] The Defense in the present appeal completely failed to raise this basic issue and thus gave up one of the main legal instruments at its disposal.

12.The Defense further failed to raise the issue of the fairness of the trial in regard to the basic requirements of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms – a fact which may seriously compromise the appellant’s ability to eventually claim his rights at the Privy Council and/or at the European Court of Human Rights. Indeed, because of its actions during the trial the Defense itself may be seen as part of the problem, complicit in the lack of fairness of the proceedings – this may explain why this basic issue was not raised in the course of the appeal proceedings.
Bizarre.

Rolfe.

Rolfe

5th September 2009, 09:58 AM

Is this coincidence any greater than that of there being a number of CIA operatives on PA103A? How many unaccompanied bags were in flight at that time? Wasn't it a result of Lockerbie and a few other similar attacks that lead to a change in rules with respect to unaccompanied luggage?

Coincidences? The affair is full of them. While it would be nice to devise a neat Agatha Christie-style explanation that ties everything in, I suspect it's impossible.

I don't know what to think about the CIA operatives. Maybe it was pure coincidence. Maybe CIA operatives travel transatlantic a lot in connection with their jobs, so there was a fair chance of hitting on a plane with some of them on it. Maybe the bombers knew about the CIA operatives' movements, and deliberately chose the plane for that reason. And maybe one of the wilder CTs, which asserts that the bombing was an inside job designed to murder Charles McKee, because he was returning to the USA to blow the whistle on a "drugs for hostages" operation being run by Oliver North, is actually true!

How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?

Rolfe.

Kevin_Lowe

5th September 2009, 04:37 PM

Coincidences? The affair is full of them. While it would be nice to devise a neat Agatha Christie-style explanation that ties everything in, I suspect it's impossible.

I don't know what to think about the CIA operatives. Maybe it was pure coincidence. Maybe CIA operatives travel transatlantic a lot in connection with their jobs, so there was a fair chance of hitting on a plane with some of them on it. Maybe the bombers knew about the CIA operatives' movements, and deliberately chose the plane for that reason.

This is at least conceivable, but strikes me as unlikely. I think sheer coincidence is the most conservative explanation. The CIA could have been smuggling drugs on the flight or something, but I imagine just about any documents a CIA officer might be carrying would be of a nature such that the CIA wouldn't want them blowing all over the landscape, so even if the CIA was on the scene quickly that isn't necessarily proof they were up to no good.

And maybe one of the wilder CTs, which asserts that the bombing was an inside job designed to murder Charles McKee, because he was returning to the USA to blow the whistle on a "drugs for hostages" operation being run by Oliver North, is actually true!

This seems a bit like the "9/11 was an inside job" hypothesis, in that the upside of 9/11 or Lockerbie would certainly be of interest to neocons or people who wanted McKee dead, but the downside risk of actually organising it would be so enormous that any sane conspirator would choose another method.

Rolfe

5th September 2009, 04:44 PM

I'm inclined to agree. The idea that this was an inside job has no evidence to support it at all. There is some evidence that those "in the know" may have known in advance that the plane was going to explode, and some VIPs were pulled off the flight. However, it's weak. There are a couple of documentaries that make the case, but it's not wildly convincing, and almost entirely hearsay.

It's not the craziest theory though. There's a vocal contingent of blog commentators who simply assert that Arabs would not/ could not do such a thing, and it was obviously the Jews that did it to make the Arabs look bad.

:hb:

Rolfe.

GlennB

6th September 2009, 02:50 AM

This seems a bit like the "9/11 was an inside job" hypothesis, in that the upside of 9/11 or Lockerbie would certainly be of interest to neocons or people who wanted McKee dead, but the downside risk of actually organising it would be so enormous that any sane conspirator would choose another method.

Agreed. And resembling the Lady Di CT for implausibility.
Unfortunately there's enough vague and conflicting detail surrounding the Lockerbie bombing that it's prime material for CTists.

For my own part I'd go with political and economic expediency as the motivation for framing the Libyans. That is, replacing the most likely guilty (and original) suspects - Syria,Iran,PPLO - with a much more productive suspect, i.e. Libya. The shenanigans can then be organised with an adequate degreee of plausible deniability.

Rolfe

6th September 2009, 05:45 AM

For my own part I'd go with political and economic expediency as the motivation for framing the Libyans. That is, replacing the most likely guilty (and original) suspects - Syria,Iran,PPLO - with a much more productive suspect, i.e. Libya. The shenanigans can then be organised with an adequate degreee of plausible deniability.

That's my feeling too. The trouble is, there's good evidence of other shenanigans surrounding that plane - CIA operatives, drug smuggling and interference with the evidence right from day one - that you keep tripping over this and getting drawn into wilder hypothesising. It's a lot more likely that this was coincidence though, just like the "Helsinki warning".

[....] it's prime material for CTists.

That's why I was surprised to find nothing on this board discussing it when I started this thread over two years ago. I've found stuff since then, but even so, the CT enthusiasts seem keener on proclaiming "it was the Jews!" than looking at the shenanigans for which there is evidence.

There's good reason to believe the Palestinians did it, aided by Syria, and paid by Iran (in revenge for the shooting down of the Airbus by the Vincennes).
There's good reason to believe that Megrahi was deliberately framed by the CIA.
There's good reason to beileve that the CIA operatives on the plane were carrying stuff the authorities didn't want falling into the wrong hands.
There's some reason to believe drugs were being smuggled into the USA on that plane.
There's an implausible theory floating around that the bombing was an insde job, or at least known about in advance by the US authorities, which has made it into a couple of TV documentaries.
There's absolutely no evidence to connect it to Israel or Mossad or anything like that.

So, let's just run round the Internet declaring that Israel is the prime suspect and it's just obvious it was a false flag operation by Mossad designed to make Arab nations look bad.

:hb:

Rolfe.

ricbritain

7th September 2009, 10:45 AM

So effectively the Libyans were a square peg forced to fit a round hole as all other avenues would have been less suitable to the US. Were there no other nations involved in the trial process that would have needed coercing? Anticipating the sanctions afterwards was there nothing at all to be lost in the inevitable situation? Did other nations, including the US, not lose out on the oil business due to the embargo?

I am not saying that everyone is wrong as you have all obviously looked quite deeply into this case. I just want to be sure that this isn't a very convincing CT.

Rolfe

7th September 2009, 12:47 PM

My default position has always tended to be that the investigating authorities went after Libya after failing to find the sort of evidence against Syria/Iran that they would have needed to bring a case to court. Just as has happened so often in the past, when "getting a conviction" was the important thing, never mind if you've got the right person or not.

Certainly, that is probably the explanation for the astonishing decision of the judges at Camp Zeist. The political pressure to get at least one conviction out of that three-ring circus seems to have blinded them to the incongruity of their judgement. The Scottish court system was quite inordinately puffed-up with pride about the whole damn charade, and that's not a good mind-set. Also, the two defendants had been charged years previously, and the world had been assured that the evidence against them was "incontrovertible". To have found no case to answer (which frankly there wasn't) after all that - it was probably too horrible to contemplate. Possibly even for the defence team, who seem to have made some inexplicable blunders, especially at the appeal.

However, the more I look at the evidence, the more questions arise. The amount of evidence that had to be ignored to make the case against Libya was remarkable. The explanation that in 1989 it became not expedient to pursue the case against Iran and Syria, and that in 1990 it was decided to manufacture a case against Libya, is very compelling. And the only countries involved were America and Britain. With Maggie Thatcher almost having an orgasm if Ronnie Reagan spoke to her, America had it pretty much its own way. Given that they announced to the world that they had incontrovertible evidence against Libya (which of course couldn't come to court as the defendants could not be extradited), who was going to contradict them?

Rolfe.

Guybrush Threepwood

7th September 2009, 01:05 PM

Minor nitpick there, Reagan left office a month after the Lockerbie bombing. It would have to be Bush Senior tickling Maggie's fancy, which I'm sure he was eminently capable of doing.

Big Les

7th September 2009, 01:32 PM

It would have to be Bush Senior tickling Maggie's fancy, which I'm sure he was eminently capable of doing.

Fetch the mind-bleach! :eek:

Caustic Logic

7th September 2009, 01:44 PM

I'm conscious of the number of posts I've made in this thread, but it's a useful way of getting things straight as I get my head round them.

Not only number but size, my word. One imagines you'd be nearing the edges of what's available or something. I do know a bit where you're coming from, having started a few threads where I just go off on a point in major detail, usually to make a set point but also to discover along the way how good a point it really is. It's a great way to learn and study a subject, but you usually suffer a lack of outside input and criticism as people stand back and go "what's that raver's problem?" Least how it seems when it happens to me.

That's my feeling too. The trouble is, there's good evidence of other shenanigans surrounding that plane - CIA operatives, drug smuggling and interference with the evidence right from day one - that you keep tripping over this and getting drawn into wilder hypothesising. It's a lot more likely that this was coincidence though, just like the "Helsinki warning".

Coincidences do happen, I have to remind myself. But not everything that cold be is, especially in some cases. Is this one of them? I dunno. A lot of unknowns tho (how quick do CIAs get on scene usually??), etc.

Whatever the actual consiracy of the bombing, based on what I've seen here, al Megrahi was definitely framed and not guilty. On the actual perps, just because there was an original lead doesn't mean that was correct either. Does the CIA ever get fingered up-front? ;)

But on the longer-term implications of the blame-shifting, that's interesting to me. I'm hazy on what positive attraction there was in smacking lybia with the bill, but I'm sure reasons existed. From what it seems, Iran was de-emphasized to not aggravate them as attention came on Iraq. That war sort of never ended (to count the sanctions-n-bombings dead or to hear Bush/Cheney speak in 2001-3), and of course is culminating around now, perhaps almost over, with British and US troops mostly gone. and while Iran stayed a definite bad-guy state worthy of blaming for a bombing, we haven't been shooting at them for the last 20 years that Iraq's been the project.

Now at around the same time coalition forces are leaving Iraq, or trying to, al Megrahi is released, discussion resumed, Iran belatedly taking the blame,
not long after their "election" debacle... Coincidence?

Oh, and on why other CTists aren't involved much, I think that it's too boring and not CIA-blaming enough. I'ts all over which foreign non-white terrorists were responsible, although there is a frame-up and deceit, they payoff just isn't worth the work.

GlennB

7th September 2009, 01:49 PM

....
I just want to be sure that this isn't a very convincing CT.

And quite right. But, as we've discussed, the possible CT 'accusation' arises the moment you start to move away from known facts and into the realms of political motives, devious schemes and speculation. I've done this myself, truth told, which is weak.

But what appears to be true (though I'm willing to listen to evidence to the contrary) is that the case against Megrahi is worse than tissue-thin, it's plain disgraceful.

Where we should go from there I don't know, but speculation is almost inevitable. Then things are likely to get debatable, which simply clouds the basic issue.

Rolfe

7th September 2009, 01:56 PM

Minor nitpick there, Reagan left office a month after the Lockerbie bombing. It would have to be Bush Senior tickling Maggie's fancy, which I'm sure he was eminently capable of doing.

Ah, my bad. It's just so hard to get the horrible memory of her brown-nosing the movie star out of my mind....

Rolfe.

Rolfe

7th September 2009, 03:38 PM

Not only number but size, my word. One imagines you'd be nearing the edges of what's available or something. I do know a bit where you're coming from, having started a few threads where I just go off on a point in major detail, usually to make a set point but also to discover along the way how good a point it really is. It's a great way to learn and study a subject, but you usually suffer a lack of outside input and criticism as people stand back and go "what's that raver's problem?" Least how it seems when it happens to me.

I do have a slightly obsessive personality, but in fact I've tried to get my head round this one several times in the past. The sheer complication of the whole thing, plus the variety of CTs (from the plausible to the downright paranoid) have previously defeated me. And in 2001 there wasn't much on the Internet.

The thing is, it's such a hot topic here that any time I'm typing a post, it's likely that something will come on radio and TV in the background about it, right now it's whether the full SCCRC report will be made public. I'll be surprised, I have to say, because we're getting code for "the USA does not want this published" in the reports.

Coincidences do happen, I have to remind myself. But not everything that could be is, especially in some cases. Is this one of them? I dunno. A lot of unknowns tho (how quick do CIAs get on scene usually??), etc.

Not only are several local people interviewed in the various documentaries saying that there were Americans poking around in the wreckage within a few hours of the crash, one of the documentaries interviews someone from London saying that among other air traffic control problems just after the crash, they had to get an executive jet of US personnel there ASAP.

Whatever the actual consiracy of the bombing, based on what I've seen here, al Megrahi was definitely framed and not guilty. On the actual perps, just because there was an original lead doesn't mean that was correct either. Does the CIA ever get fingered up-front? ;)

Well, apart from the fact that the evidence is public and anyone can have a look for themselves and see how thin it is, there comes a point where there are too many respectable people with no obvious axe to grind making a cause of this for it to be dismissed as raving. You can declare that Jim Swire has Stockholm Syndrome if you like (and presumably Martin Cadman too), but add Hans Kochler, Robert Black and Tam Dalyell to that and it starts to look as if something's very wrong.

Look at Hans Kochler's web site about the issue (http://i-p-o.org/lockerbie_observer_mission.htm).

But on the longer-term implications of the blame-shifting, that's interesting to me. I'm hazy on what positive attraction there was in smacking lybia with the bill, but I'm sure reasons existed. From what it seems, Iran was de-emphasized to not aggravate them as attention came on Iraq. That war sort of never ended (to count the sanctions-n-bombings dead or to hear Bush/Cheney speak in 2001-3), and of course is culminating around now, perhaps almost over, with British and US troops mostly gone. and while Iran stayed a definite bad-guy state worthy of blaming for a bombing, we haven't been shooting at them for the last 20 years that Iraq's been the project.

Now at around the same time coalition forces are leaving Iraq, or trying to, al Megrahi is released, discussion resumed, Iran belatedly taking the blame,
not long after their "election" debacle... Coincidence?

Oh, probably. Unless someone managed to give Megrahi aggressive prostate cancer on purpose! This affair seems to attract coincidences like flies to jam.

Oh, and on why other CTists aren't involved much, I think that it's too boring and not CIA-blaming enough. I'ts all over which foreign non-white terrorists were responsible, although there is a frame-up and deceit, they payoff just isn't worth the work.

Oh, it can be CIA-blaming with no trouble at all.

You may note a couple of my posts saying, "I keep coming back to that timer." Well, the more you think about it, the more the timer sticks out as inconsistent. It simply makes no sense, whichever way you slice it. Having looked at the earlier commentary on the subject, I started to wonder if there was indeed any way the timer fragment had been planted, as Foot sort of hints he might half-suspect.

Now, having looked at more recent commentary, I see this is exactly where it's going. Private Eye have an update article about that. Fragment of the Imagination (http://i-p-o.org/Private_Eye-Lockerbie-Oct2007.jpg). It looks as if even Hans Kochler is entertaining that theory. The subtext is going round that this is what the ultra-top-secret document is about, the one that Megrahi's defence team wanted admitted as evidence, but Westminster vetoed under "public interest immunity", on the grounds that publishing it would be damaging to our relations with a friendly power. Suspicions are held that the document shows that the CIA planted the fragment of the timer.

And if the CIA deliberately framed Megrahi, as looks entirely possible (whether or not the timer fragment was planted), it makes the recent US posturing about his release particularly nauseating.

Actually, I'm going on holiday tomorrow and I'll probably lose meaningful internet access, but when I get back I think I'll start a thread just on the provenance of the fragment. If 9/11 CTs can have an entire subforum, this one can at least have two threads!

Oh yes, and if you want to go even further, there's a LIHOP theory which hasn't been knocked down yet as far as I can see, and may actually provide the closest thing there is to a single explanation for all the observations. And the more extreme fringe also have a MIHOP version.

Just because it was Bush Snr at the helm and not Dubya, surely isn't enough to choke these guys off!

Rolfe.

Rolfe

7th September 2009, 03:47 PM

And quite right. But, as we've discussed, the possible CT 'accusation' arises the moment you start to move away from known facts and into the realms of political motives, devious schemes and speculation. I've done this myself, truth told, which is weak.

But what appears to be true (though I'm willing to listen to evidence to the contrary) is that the case against Megrahi is worse than tissue-thin, it's plain disgraceful.

Where we should go from there I don't know, but speculation is almost inevitable. Then things are likely to get debatable, which simply clouds the basic issue.

How do you define a CT anyway? One that turns out not to be true?

As I said, I'd like to see Gravy take this one on and see what he can debunk. A lot of the bunk looks pretty solid to me.

The only person supporting the Official Version (apart from the officials, of course) is David Shayler! And his line simply seems to be, well but they should have taken Giaka seriously anyway (no you moron, it was proved he was making it up to curry favour with his CIA handlers who were pressing him to help them get a conviction), and Libyan Arab Airlines had a desk at Luqa next to Air Malta so it would have been simplicity itself to get a bag on board (no, you idiot, that's the one place where the records were bullet-proof enough to convince everyone but the judges that it couldn't have gone on there), and anyway the evidence satisfied the judges to he must have been guilty.

:hb:

I don't think he knows the first thing about it. I can't see how anyone who has read about the problems with the Gauci identification and the impossibility of the bomb having got on board at Malta and the way the CIA tried to convict both men using a proven liar who was desperate to keep himself in their favour, can possibly imagine Megrahi actually did it.

Rolfe.

Caustic Logic

7th September 2009, 06:10 PM

Oh, it can be CIA-blaming with no trouble at all.

You may note a couple of my posts saying, "I keep coming back to that timer."
[...]
Suspicions are held that the document shows that the CIA planted the fragment of the timer.
[...]
I think I'll start a thread just on the provenance of the fragment. If 9/11 CTs can have an entire subforum, this one can at least have two threads!

Absolutely. I'm poking around a little more myself and may even be of help. Thanks for the links, I have bookmarks folder for the subject now.

Oh yes, and if you want to go even further, there's a LIHOP theory which hasn't been knocked down yet as far as I can see, and may actually provide the closest thing there is to a single explanation for all the observations. And the more extreme fringe also have a MIHOP version.

Just because it was Bush Snr at the helm and not Dubya, surely isn't enough to choke these guys off!

Rolfe.

Heck no Sr. is no less suspect in his prime. Former head of CIA who was president-elect at the time of the bombing (and an exceptionally powerful hands-on VP before that)...

Rolfe

7th September 2009, 06:50 PM

Well, I have to log out now, and if I have online access at all for the next week it will be at an inordinate price on a cruise liner in the Mediterranean. I'm not going to post the OP of my thread on the timer right now, as I won't be around to discuss it.

See you next week, I expect. Feels a bit odd packing my suitcase to catch the plane, after all this!

Rolfe.

ricbritain

8th September 2009, 10:22 AM

Big Les

8th September 2009, 04:42 PM

Jesus. I'm not sure what that tells us about Megrahi's innocence or otherwise, but don't stick your neck out on our account!

ricbritain

9th September 2009, 10:34 AM

Jesus. I'm not sure what that tells us about Megrahi's innocence or otherwise, but don't stick your neck out on our account!

Ha, ha! Yes, it's irrelevant to the issue of his guilt or otherwise. I just thought I would keep you abreast of the situation here in sunny Libya.

GlennB

9th September 2009, 01:03 PM

Ha, ha! Yes, it's irrelevant to the issue of his guilt or otherwise. I just thought I would keep you abreast of the situation here in sunny Libya.

Would walking around in a Scottish soccer shirt, while keeping your mouth firmly shut, help? :D

Rolfe

9th September 2009, 03:11 PM

Well today I got a serious warning about my actions in discussing the release of Megrahi with my Libyan colleagues. This came after a couple of my ex-pat friends commented that I was pushing the boundary of debate with my religious arguments. I feel a little shocked as this came from the top man within my company. I've been told that the whole oil field is talking about what I have said. I was told that this topic is super hot here in Libya and that people are being arrested and 'detained' for talking about it. I guess it's finally time for me to zip it. I'd hate to think I lost my job over it.

Duh? I'm trying to figure out what you actually said! But as I'm on a slow and expensive satellite connection I'm not going to scroll back to find out. (I'm cruising in the Med, but I think I'm far enough out from Libya to get away with whatever I want to say. And Scotland, as yet, is not a police state.)

I set off on holiday with the Private Eye Lockerbie report as holiday reading, all nicely comb-bound, in clear covers. Got a couple of odd looks in the plane for that! Then at Palma airport I had a luggage trolley that wouldn't run straight, and left the damn report in the basket when I switched my suitcase to a better one. I wonder if anyone will read it! I
l'll just have to make a new printout when I get home.

Pity, because I was beginning to figure out where the interesting bit was - what happened between March 1989 and about September 1990. I imagine the evidence is so corrupted by now that nobody will ever figure it out short of an actual confession or two, but it would be good to understand what the possibilities are.

Rolfe.

Caustic Logic

9th September 2009, 04:17 PM

I've been told that the whole oil field is talking about what I have said.

That sounds pretty insane to jail people for discussing the current hot topic. Roughly speaking, if you can without being assassinated, what have you been saying?

ricbritain

10th September 2009, 10:08 AM

That sounds pretty insane to jail people for discussing the current hot topic. Roughly speaking, if you can without being assassinated, what have you been saying?

I'm in no danger of being assassinated:D Actually I think I will be ok and remain employed too. I'm hoping that I may have over reacted to my warning.

I simply had a fairly heated debate that started as an inquiry into my opinion regarding the release of Megrahi and escalated into a discussion on the 40 year dictatorship of Gaddafi. This is something that absolutely should not be discussed in anything other than a positive light. We also discussed the Jewish issue and the USA. Again these are topics best avoided in Libya and many other Islamic country's. In Libya there are still government informers and hard liners who will report perceived anti-government sentiment to officials. This is still a very restrictive society.

Caustic Logic

10th September 2009, 01:45 PM

I'm in no danger of being assassinated:D Actually I think I will be ok and remain employed too. I'm hoping that I may have over reacted to my warning.

I simply had a fairly heated debate that started as an inquiry into my opinion regarding the release of Megrahi and escalated into a discussion on the 40 year dictatorship of Gaddafi. This is something that absolutely should not be discussed in anything other than a positive light. We also discussed the Jewish issue and the USA. Again these are topics best avoided in Libya and many other Islamic country's. In Libya there are still government informers and hard liners who will report perceived anti-government sentiment to officials. This is still a very restrictive society.

Ah, general criticism of Qadaffi (how many spellings are there?) is certainly something that might be bad. I'm curious tho what people are being arrested for saying. I presume it's people insisting Megrahi's guilty and it's a travesty to let him live his last years in freedom. Of course no one should be troubled for just speaking teheir mind, but rather countered with facts and discussion.

PS sorry my post was a little snarky.

Rolfe

10th September 2009, 03:13 PM

Caustic Logic

10th September 2009, 05:24 PM

What I don't really understand is the number of people prepared to declare Megrahi is guilty. I just can't see how anyone, having read the totality of the evidence, could believe that.

Well, OK, I know the judges did, but there was maybe just a teensy bit of political pressure not to let that pantomime at Camp Zeist wrap up without convicting someone.

I wouldn't give anyone a parking ticket on that evidence.

Rolfe.

Well, the judges, national governments, most media outlets, a couple decades for presumed guilt to soak in, etc. might have something to do with it. It's really not mysterious at all IMO that so many will repeat the mantra. I guess Mr. Change Obama himself called the release a travesty or something. I'm no expert on any of this, but when Libya wound up on the UN Human Rights Commission (IIRC) a few years back, someone mentioned what a travesty that was. Curious, I asked why. He said it was because they had supported the Lockerbie bombing and had still not atoned for the sin. That and Ghadaffi was a dictator. That's all most people need to know, apparently. I didn't even know the most inflamatory part of that gripe is (apparently) untrue.

ETA: Glad you've got some kind of link there, Rolfe, and hopefully your lost notebook will be found by an open mind intrigued by their strange find. :)

Caustic Logic

11th September 2009, 11:40 PM

Obama's quote (one at least)
'I think it was highly objectionable,' U.S. President Barack Obama told reporters at the White House, referring to the welcome Megrahi received.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/08/21/afx6803962.html

Further:
'It is disturbing to see images suggesting that Megrahi was accorded a hero's welcome instead of being treated as a convicted murderer,' said White House spokesman Bill Burton.
I don't think any of them deny that he was convicted as a murderer.

I hadn't even read a wiki on al Megrahi yet, until just now. I always had the impression as a Libyan "agent" he'd be some kind of street-level terrorist with some shady state links. But no:
head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, and director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdelbaset_Ali_Mohmed_Al_Megrahi
Holy crap I'm in need of education here. I can see with his expertise in airline security why he'd be a good target - he knows how to work around it, duh! Surely his respected and influential situation also helped. High-status... in evil Arab Libya! So the judges believed that between briefings and meetings he went to Malta and bought baby clothes to wrap the bomb with, or what have you, and personally set the attack up. And then went back to work securing his own airplanes and helping Ghadafi plan its strategic moves, prob'ly to blow up more white people planes but luckily they was stopped!

So is that about it (give or take)?

GlennB

12th September 2009, 12:35 AM

I hadn't even read a wiki on al Megrahi yet, until just now. I always had the impression as a Libyan "agent" he'd be some kind of street-level terrorist with some shady state links. But no:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdelbaset_Ali_Mohmed_Al_Megrahi
Holy crap I'm in need of education here. I can see with his expertise in airline security why he'd be a good target - he knows how to work around it, duh! Surely his respected and influential situation also helped. High-status... in evil Arab Libya! So the judges believed that between briefings and meetings he went to Malta and bought baby clothes to wrap the bomb with, or what have you, and personally set the attack up. And then went back to work securing his own airplanes and helping Ghadafi plan its strategic moves, prob'ly to blow up more white people planes but luckily they was stopped!

So is that about it (give or take)?

That's about it, although there seems little doubt that he was actually in Malta on the second date that the Gauci brothers reckon they sold the clothes (I think Rolfe outlines the fiasco of the football matches and the missing rain elsewhere. Indeed, it was here (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5062635&postcount=141)). However, the whole Gauci testimony and the conclusions drawn from it have more holes than a collander.

Caustic Logic

12th September 2009, 01:19 AM

That's about it, although there seems little doubt that he was actually in Malta on the second date that the Gauci brothers reckon they sold the clothes (I think Rolfe outlines the fiasco of the football matches and the missing rain elsewhere. Indeed, it was here (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5062635&postcount=141)). However, the whole Gauci testimony and the conclusions drawn from it have more holes than a collander.

Especially considering the bomb may well have been placed on board in London, where al Megrahi was not at the time. Thanks, Glenn. Great post at that link, helps to set one aside and look it over. Rolfe, you know by starting that one "I think it's overstating the case to label me as "a student of the subject"" you've passively-aggressively forced me to say "you misspelled understating."

So the second date he was in Malta is the second possibility for the one day of the fateful purchase by the shape-shifting stranger.It's also the less likely of the two, as 11/23 had evidence for rain and 12/7 little reason to also buy an umbrella. He may have been/was there on the bad fit day and has a solid alibi for the better fit.

And this is their BEST evidence? Travesty indeed.

Rolfe

12th September 2009, 03:31 PM

The best evidence was actually Giaka's evidence. The little snagette there was that Giaka was a lying toad willing to say anything he thought would persuade the CIA to keep him on their payroll and their comfortable witness protection programme.

It was Giaka who first named Megrahi and Fhimah as possible perpetrators, with a load of stuff about Fhimah keeping explosives in the drawer of his office desk at Libyan Arab airlines (yeah, right....). The CIA knew he knew virtually nothing, and that he was actually a mechanic not an operative, and was basically making it up as he went along. But they didn't have anything else. So they kept asking him for information, and pressurising him for more, and he gave it to them.

Giaka was to be the star witness at the trial, with a load of rubbish about seeing Megrahi carrying a brown Samsonite suitcase at Luqa airport and more where that came from. However, the CIA cables produced in evidence had a lot of stuff blacked out. The defence applied to have the cables admitted in full. The prosecution swore there was nothing in the redacted sections that would cast any doubt on Giaka's reliability as a witness. However disclosure was ordered, and when the blacked-out parts were visible they proved that the CIA knew Giaka had invented the lot.

Read Hans Kochler's opinion on that lot - not so much that the Judges threw out Giaka's evidence at that point, which they had no option but to do (which acquitted Fhimah entirely, as they had no other evidence against him), but that the prosecution weren't subjected to censure for presenting a witness they knew to be lying.

This is what makes the current US outrage so nauseating. Oh yes, they're going to boycott Scottish goods and cancel their holidays to our country, and never mind that Scottish soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan beside US soldiers, or that the US had a bloody nuclear submarine base on our soil. But it was the CIA who basically framed Megrahi in the first place!

Rolfe.

Caustic Logic

13th September 2009, 12:51 AM

The best evidence was actually Giaka's evidence. The little snagette there was that Giaka was a lying toad willing to say anything he thought would persuade the CIA to keep him on their payroll and their comfortable witness protection programme.

By best evidence I mean best evidence that was actually admitted instead of tossed out as obvious falsehood.

the prosecution weren't subjected to censure for presenting a witness they knew to be lying.

And this is the amazing thing. If it's true, all this evidence about how bad the evidence was, how on Earth were these judges brought to their findings? They didn't all three wander there by accident. Justice isn't supposed to work like that.

This is what makes the current US outrage so nauseating. Oh yes, they're going to boycott Scottish goods and cancel their holidays to our country, and never mind that Scottish soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan beside US soldiers, or that the US had a bloody nuclear submarine base on our soil. But it was the CIA who basically framed Megrahi in the first place!

Rolfe.

I wasn't sure you were from Scotland. Never could figure out what those numbers meant. And why the hubbub? I gather people are upset that el Megrahi's set to die in more like 8 months than 3 down the road. Oooh, a liberal compassionate release, unacceptable! How pissed will they be when (if) they realize the real bomber(s) (apparently) got paid by Iran AND got to blow up Christians AND never were even pursued, let alone caught...

Looking forward to the timer thread. I do better with something narrow to wrap my brain around.

Rolfe

13th September 2009, 01:58 PM

I'm still cruising round the Mediterranean, on a slow satellite connection (which died altogether on Friday night out of Naples) at 3 quid (no pounds sign on this Yank keyboard, you'd think they could at least manage a Euro symbol considering where we are....) an hour.

The timer fragment intrigues me greatly, and I'm obviously not the only one. But I don't have any links saved on this computer, so I'll see you on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Rolfe.

GlennB

13th September 2009, 02:15 PM

GlennB

13th September 2009, 02:22 PM

Looking forward to the timer thread. I do better with something narrow to wrap my brain around.

Caustic - what I'm about to suggest is strictly speaking naughty, but if you search this thread (and the other one in Social Issues) for residue, MEBO and Thurman , you'll get an intro to the timer issues. I'm sure Rolfe will add very worthwhile stuff later.

Caustic Logic

15th September 2009, 02:47 AM

This is what makes the current US outrage so nauseating. Oh yes, they're going to boycott Scottish goods and cancel their holidays to our country, and never mind that Scottish soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan beside US soldiers, or that the US had a bloody nuclear submarine base on our soil.

Perhaps Mike Myers will reprise his old SNL character to remind us all the "if it's Scottish, it's crap." I really wanted a video link for reference, but there isn't one at all.

Two points here. One was to say that. Point 2 is to bump this thread for the many, many, forum members who haven't said anything here yet. C'mon, it's okay to admit you're a little confused. Third point - okany, three then - is to say I've been reading up on this thread and the general discussion about the case and indeed this line of thinking that Rolfe's got here is widely known of enough that it gets mentioned all the time - it's actively throwing an awkward ambiguity into the milieu, at the very least.

Some little things I've picked up. Time:
The shirt is traced to a small store in Malta called Mary's House. Its owner, a man named Tony Gauci, identifies al-Megrahi in a police lineup.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1917851,00.html
I thought his description didn't match? Why would he then pick the right guy when presented with multiples? That's a little complicating.

Same article:
Conspiracy theorists, meanwhile, claim al-Megrahi was a victim himself, arguing that U.S. authorities steered the investigation away from Syria and Iran in the run-up to the first Gulf War.
And that is exactly why this thread belongs in the CT forum and helps illustrate a belief I've long held - while conspiracy theories are prone to many strains of stupid, they aren't always wrong.

There were some other points but that's a good spot to leave it at.

Caustic Logic

15th September 2009, 02:55 AM

Caustic - what I'm about to suggest is strictly speaking naughty, but if you search this thread (and the other one in Social Issues) for residue, MEBO and Thurman , you'll get an intro to the timer issues. I'm sure Rolfe will add very worthwhile stuff later.

Yes, I can read your invisible ink. The secret advice is good, but I'm also waiting for the movie version. :tv:

Rolfe

15th September 2009, 12:31 PM

[....] I'm also waiting for the movie version. :tv:

The Maltese Double Cross (http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7160854996287567609#) (2hrs 30min, and actually quite hard to follow despite having won a film festival prize)

Lockerbie and the CIA (http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7160854996287567609#docid=-4640563516094155366) (Aspect ratio problem, but interesting and watchable)

The Conspirady Files: Lockerbie (http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7160854996287567609#docid=-327765978162851498) (This BBC production seems a bit too trusting of the Official Version in one or two places.)

Flight into Darkness Part 1 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-229293821216432833&ei=faSlSpPJKMzN-AbNmMjqBA&q#)

Flight into Darkness Part 2 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7154791995080231857&ei=M96vSpn5L9ef-Abjm6nJBQ#)

The Lockerbie Cover-up (http://www.livevideo.com/video/Vendetta/EAFEDCF7FC5C4FAB83F5C72A2D1011E4/al-jazeera-the-lockerbie-co.aspx) (shortened version of "Flight into Darkness", but with extra material at the end)

Take your pick. All professional journalism, not a Dylan Avery in sight.

Rolfe.

Ambrosia

15th September 2009, 10:07 PM

I thought his description didn't match? Why would he then pick the right guy when presented with multiples? That's a little complicating.

Its owner, a man named Tony Gauci, identifies al-Megrahi in a police lineup.

in June 07 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission publishes it's review of the case and refers it back to the High Court for appeal. It cites as one of the major reasons it believes there to have been a miscarriage of justice.

Additional evidence, not made available to the defence, which indicates
that four days prior to the identification parade at which Mr Gauci
picked out the applicant, he saw a photograph of the applicant in a
magazine article linking him to the bombing. In the Commission’s view
evidence of Mr Gauci’s exposure to this photograph in such close
proximity to the parade undermines the reliability of his identification of
the applicant at that time and at the trial itself. [ link (http://www.sccrc.org.uk/ViewFile.aspx?id=293) ] (pdf) (bolding mine)

Other reasons include more evidence regarding the Christmas lights coming to light which further reinforce the case that the clothes Megrahi was supposed to have bought on 7th December couldn't have been bought at that time, and must not have been bought by him at all.

Files for an appeal in 2001, claiming new evidence about a break-in at London's Heathrow Airport the night before the crash suggests the bomb could have been placed by anyone. His appeal is unanimously rejected

interesting to note that Time is sure to mention he was "unanimously convicted" (doesn't mention the fact that there was no jury) is sure to mention his appeal that was "unanimously rejected" and throws up the words "conspiracy theorists" when talking about other theories, anyway...

how was it possible for the appeal court to fail to overturn the conviction? The Criminal Appeal Court dismissed Megrahi's appeal on the most technical of technical legal grounds: it did not consider the justifiability of the trial court's factual findings at all (though it is clear from their interventions during the Crown submissions in the appeal that at least some of the judges were only too well aware of how shaky certain crucial findings were and how contrary to the weight of the evidence). - Robert Black, QC, FRSE, Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, "Architect" of the Lockerbie Trial - [ link (http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html) ] (bolding mine)

in a report to the UN, their appointed observer, Hans Koechler, writes:

For unexplained reasons, the Defense refused to give any information whatsoever. ... [the presence of politically alligned representatives in court for both prosecution and defense] gave the entire proceedings an aura of international politics that is not appropriate for an independent court. ... The appeal proceedings were further overshadowed by at least two meetings between Libyan, U.S. and U.K. intelligence-cum-political officials in the United Kingdom during the period of the appeal. According to reliable media reports and official U.S. statements, those meetings dealt with the issue of Libya’s acceptance of responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and with her obligation for compensation – at a time when the matter was still sub judice in an independent court. In the highly politicized context of the Lockerbie case, these meetings may have been prejudicial to the outcome of the appeal. The urgent press release issued by the appellant’s Libyan defense lawyer on 28 January 2002 was factually wrong in its reference to alleged “UN demands that Libya pays [sic] compensation for the bombing” and did nothing to dispel the suspicions. ... [lots more detail] ... On the basis of the above observations and evaluation it can be stated that the appeal proceedings were not fair (and thus not in conformity with the requirements of Art. 6 Par. 1 of the European Human Rights Convention read the whole report here (http://i-p-o.org/koechler-lockerbie-appeal_report.htm)

The id parade and the clothes are pretty much the entire basis for convicting Megrahi, and both of these pieces of evidence are hugely suspect.

They tried to use Abdul Majid Giaka as a star witness. A known CIA asset in Libya. 1st June 2000 the prosecution has full access to CIA cables detailing communications to and from Giaka and his CIA handlers, they fight hard to restrict access to these files to the defense counsel and tell the court there's nothing in them that can impinge on the credibilty of Giaka, or that is relevant to the case. 22 August they are ordered to hand over these unedited cables. The defense destroys Giaka under cross examination using the info in the cables, expose him as a liar, all of his evidence is thrown out, leaving he entire prosecution case pretty much resting on the purchase of the clothes. It's alleged that Giaka was to be paid $2million for giving evidence.

Then his first appeal is rejected after he does not get proper defense council, and the appeal proceedings themselves are undermined by political moves to force Libya to pay compensation. Libya finally offers to pay $2.7Billion some 15 days after the 1st Megrahi appeal was rejected.

It's a spectacular miscarriage of justice and a huge sweeping under the rug of the large can of worms that overturning it would open.

Caustic Logic

16th September 2009, 12:11 AM

in June 07 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission publishes it's review of the case and refers it back to the High Court for appeal. It cites as one of the major reasons it believes there to have been a miscarriage of justice.
Mr Gauci’s exposure to this photograph

And the Time article didn't even ignore the fact, I just missed it on first read. :) Someone else opinionated but well conversant and "obsessed" with the case, welcome! That isn't you, is it Rolfe? ;) Anyway, you're right about the article's tone.

interesting to note that Time is sure to mention he was "unanimously convicted" (doesn't mention the fact that there was no jury) is sure to mention his appeal that was "unanimously rejected" and throws up the words "conspiracy theorists" when talking about other theories, anyway...

It's still got the dismissal tone but it's notably thin. One gets the impression this could well snowball into a new investigation, etc. and change the history books, or still wind up getting all back under the rug. I think the deciding factor will be politics again - like how bad does anyone want to reclaim this case to instantly pin back on Iran/Syria to get some leverage there.

in a report to the UN, their appointed observer, Hans Koechler, writes:
For unexplained reasons, the Defense refused to give any information whatsoever. ...
The Defense not being able or willing to capitalize on the deficiencies of the evidence is indeed a puzzle. Eventually I'd like to get some insight into what happened there.

Caustic Logic

16th September 2009, 12:14 AM

Yes, I can read your invisible ink. The secret advice is good, but I'm also waiting for the movie version. :tv:

Oh and for the record that program (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=153971) is up now. Thanks for the video links too, I'll check some of those out sometime soon.

Ambrosia

16th September 2009, 08:21 AM

Rolfe:

Are you aware of a book by Goddard and Coleman described here (http://www.sandersresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1128#ftnt03) called "Trail of the Octopus"

according to the blog linked above:

The publication of Coleman's book "Trail of the Octopus" was halted by U.S. federal courts because of DIA claims of libel. ... While attempting to clear his book for publication, Coleman submitted an affidavit that a bag of heroin, bound for a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) drug sting, was switched for a bag of explosives on Pan Am 103. A federal judge declared it false and ordered Coleman arrested for perjury. He was released several months later and fled to Sweden where he was granted political asylum. Coleman was later subpoenaed to testify at the Lockerbie trial, but was prevented since he had been found guilty of perjury as part of the court proceedings to block the publication of his book. He was later cleared of perjury by a court of appeal. The judges issued a sealed ruling, which meant that Coleman and his lawyers couldn't read why his conviction was overturned.

Since publication was blocked in the USA, Coleman declared his book public domain ...

presumably as it was declared public domain, it's available online. [ here (http://11syyskuu.net/octopus/trail.ch.1.htm) ]

Rolfe

16th September 2009, 11:20 AM

Thanks, Ambrosia. You're well ahead of me I think. I've been aware of the doubts for years, though not conversant with the details. I was ill at the time of the Camp Zeist trial, and not living in Scotland, but I did pick up the huge disappointment that our justice system had perpetrated a kangaroo court.

I read various articles and bought one (very poor) book about it, but I didn't have any real grasp of the evidence until a few months ago. It took the USA's outrage at Megrahi's release when I was aware of some very credible sources who declared that the USA actually framed the guy, to galvanise me into starting to read up about it.

I remember hearing about Trail of the Octopus, but I'm not familiar with it. I was trying to avoid the drugs and the missing body and the LIHOP until I at least had my head round the basics. Giaka and Gauci are relatively straightforward, but the timer fragment is a different story.

I was hoping to find posters here who knew enough about it to guide me through the melange of evidence and fabrication, but it doesn't seem to be a CT the forum is familiar with. Please keep posting!

Rolfe.

Ambrosia

16th September 2009, 12:24 PM

I was hoping to find posters here who knew enough about it to guide me through the melange of evidence and fabrication, but it doesn't seem to be a CT the forum is familiar with.

Metoo. I have only been investigoogling for a couple of weeks after coming across alternative theories since all the furore in the news recently.

It's proving very hard to sort fecal from factual.

I have a little time to spare at the moment so I'm dredging through loads of material, trying to post facts with solid sources, and not speculate too much about anything, it's not easy.

Libya and Ghadaffi has motive to carry out the attacks, also have the means and opportunity to do so.

The problem is there is no evidence to link Libya with PA103, at least none that I've found yet that doesn't involve a fragment of timer.

There is evidence from Mebo that destroys the case against Libya, but the owner of Mebo himself is on record stating that Ghadaffi offered him 200million to "get Megrahi out" - which taints it.

There are reports making a much stronger case against Iran, including the former President of Iran admitting responsibility.

There are whistleblower police chiefs who admit to fabricating evidence.

There is the FBI man who's record was very sloppy, who IDed the fragment in the first place. Along with all the chain of custody issues, and oddities surrounding the fragment....

I plan on doing a little more digging and googlefu and then posting up a hypothesis that I can test against what evidence I find.

Rolfe

16th September 2009, 01:08 PM

The problem is there is no evidence to link Libya with PA103, at least none that I've found yet that doesn't involve a fragment of timer.

I'm not sure the fragment of timer does it on its own. The PFLP-GC could have had access to similar timers through the Stazi, for exampe. It was while thinking about that one that the sheer does-not-compute of the detonation time hit me. Even supposing it was Khreesat who got his mitts on an MST-13 unit, why would he set it for 7pm and not midnight?

There is evidence from Mebo that destroys the case against Libya, but the owner of Mebo himself is on record stating that Ghadaffi offered him 200million to "get Megrahi out" - which taints it.

Indeed. And Bollier is undoubtedly a slippery customer. However, the CIA was running around openly offering $4 million to anyone who would give evidence to convict Megrahi and/or Fhimah, so where does that leave any of the evidence?

Bollier is still banging the "Megrahi was framed" drum even now though, when he can hardly espect anything from Gadaffi.

There are reports making a much stronger case against Iran, including the former President of Iran admitting responsibility.

There are whistleblower police chiefs who admit to fabricating evidence.

There is the FBI man who's record was very sloppy, who IDed the fragment in the first place. Along with all the chain of custody issues, and oddities surrounding the fragment....

And there was a suitcase of drugs and a missing body and a red tarpaulin and a white helicopter and CIA operatives and a bunch of VIPs pulled off the plane at the last minute and all the rest of it.

I plan on doing a little more digging and googlefu and then posting up a hypothesis that I can test against what evidence I find.

That was sort of my objective too, but there's so much there it could take me a couple of years to assimilate it all. And if it was that easy, then why haven't the "Lockerbie experts" got there already?

I'd still like to be able to postulate some sort of Agatha Christie-style explanation that includes all the bullet points, but it's a challenge. And with so many of the theories getting to a LIHOP one way or another it's hard to know how far down the rabbit hole it's rational to go. I mean, de Braeckeleer thinks the bomb didn't go off in the luggage container but much nearer the skin of the airliner, and where does that go if you follow it? Sabitage of the actual airliner, there's where. But if we give that one a body swerve, should we therefore reject all the evidence de Baeckeleer presents?

That's why I was so surprised to see nothing else on this forum about it. There is a semi-credible LIHOP here involving the CIA, the FBI and one POTUS G. Bush. I find it hard to understand why we don't have hordes of twoofers declaring that as they did it to Pan Am 103, then obviously 9/11 would have been right in character.

Rolfe.

Ambrosia

17th September 2009, 05:05 PM

Am posting this in this thread as it's not really to do with MST-13.

Rolfe:

The German police raided that cell in September of 1988, took them into custody and seized four assembled bombs made of Toshiba radio-cassette players clearly intended to be used against aircraft.

The reason they were obviously intended to hit aircraft is that they were triggered by "ice-cube" timers attached to aneroid barometers, which would be inert indefinitely at sea level, but would explode 35 to 45 minutes after taking off in an aircraft.

Whats your source for this?

I was recently reading "Trail of the Octopus" - Colemans book wherein he describes the raid by the BKA known as operation "Autumn Leaves" and his descriptions different.

Well OK it's hard to tell the way he writes whats fact based and whats fiction, then today I was reading "Scotbom: evidence and the Lockerbie investigation" - Richard Marquise - and he comes up with the same story for this raid.

"siezed at the time of the arrests were significant amounts of weapons and explosives including TNT & Semtex. In the car driven by Dalkamouni was a (singular) Toshiba bombeat radio with a barometric timer."

"The BKA had successfully taken the well disguised radio through airport security a number of times" (!)

"Intelligence indicates 3 other devices still at the apartment in Neuss, at one time shared by Dalkamouni, Hashem, Abassi and Khreesat"

It's not until April 13 1989 that BKA raids the flat in Neuss and recovers 3 more devices, Marquise claims that "There was no initial suspicion that these were in fact explosive devices" whilst being examined in a Wiesbaden lab one of these explodes "killing a BKA technician and seriously injuring a second" "The other two devices were destroyed before they could be examined"he goes on to claim that this greatly angered the Germans and they were very co-operative after this, handing over lots of files on "Autumn Leaves" and their own investigation into Lockerbie, and nothing came out of any of it. [pp 43]

Colemans account of this event is similar:

Acting on this intelligence, a BKA surveillance team was watching when Dalkamoni greeted Khreesat on his arrival from the airport and helped carry his bags into the Neuss apartment ...
At this, the BKA moved in, arresting both men on the street, and over the next 24 hours raided apartments and houses in five other German cities, rounding up a total of 16 terrorist suspects. Two others, one of them Mobdi Goben -- another PFLP-GC bomb-builder more commonly known as 'the Professor', and the probable source of the Semtex explosive delivered to Dalkamoni by Ghadanfar -- were unfortunately out of the country.

Even more unfortunate, when the Neuss apartment was searched, three (possibly four) of Khreesat's bombs were no longer there. Nor was the brown Samsonite suitcase he had brought with him from Jordan. The BKA had to be content with the bomb it found in Dalkamoni's Ford Taunus -- 312 grams of Semtex-H moulded into the case of a black Toshiba Bombeat 453 radio-cassette recorder fitted with a barometric switch and time delay.

It had been assembled for just one purpose, to destroy an aircraft in flight. An urgent warning was accordingly issued to airline security chiefs throughout the world to be on the lookout for Khreesat's three (or four) missing bombs and possibly other explosive devices hidden in Toshiba radios.

(Months later, in April 1989, two of Khreesat's missing bombs were found in the basement of the greengrocery business run by Dalkamoni's brother-in-law in Neuss. As if this were not embarrassment enough for the BKA, one of the bombs exploded while it was being disarmed, killing a technician. The other was then deliberately destroyed 'for safety reasons', thus denying the Lockerbie investigators possibly vital forensic evidence.)

The BKA had better luck at Ghadanfar's apartment in Frankfurt. Among lesser weapons, its search party found an anti-tank grenade launcher, mortars, hand grenades, submachine guns, rifles and another five kilos of Semtex. On the strength of this and the bomb found in the Ford Taunus, Dalkamoni and Ghadanfar were held on terrorist charges. Khreesat and the others, however, were released 'for lack of evidence' and promptly disappeared. [ source (http://11syyskuu.net/octopus/trail.ch.2.htm) ]

We know that there was a warning issued to at least some airlines to be on the lookout for Toshiba radios because of the testimony at Zeiss of Kurt Maier, which Paul Foot records as:

"on 21 December 1988 he had been warned to look out for electronic devices such as Toshiba cassette recorders.
His equipment could identify recorders and any explosive packed into them. He x-rayed all the interline baggage which was loaded on Pan Am103A, but did not see anything remarkable enough to make him stop the machine and call his supervisor."