Document talk:The Framing of al-Megrahi

Barry Walker (aka 'baz') wrote the following critique of Gareth Peirce's essay:

This article was worth reading if only for paragraph 12 beginning "it is not difficult to obtain a conviction of the innocent - etc". That was brilliant.

Ms Peirce also dealt well with the matter of RARDE and Messrs Hayes and Feraday with whom she has had professional dealings. Indeed I made identical points concerning the doubt as to which of two actually discovered the MST-13 fragment in my article on the UTA772 bombing here. She also dealt at length with Tom Thurman who unfortunately (as the article notes) was not a witness at the trial.

However the rest of the article was littered with gross errors of fact and dubious assertions too numerous to detail. She also tried to construct a case against Abu Talb on the most tenuous evidence, a case far far more dubious than that on which Mr Megrahi was convicted. The article notes Gauci's claim to have seen the purchaser of the clothing in a bar months later. How can this have been Abu Talb? Would Ms Peirce have preferred somebody else to have been framed?

I was disappointed that the article gave little thought as to why a fraudulent version of events was created save for a repetition of the illogical claim that the Libyan solution was improvised to meet the supposed needs of the Gulf War coalition.

I was also horrified that a Solicitor of her standing made some sweeping allegations, irrelevant to her argument, which were unsupported by a shred of evidence. These claims appear to have come from proponents of the "drug conspiracy" theory.

Firstly, Ms Peirce wrote "a second suitcase, opened by a Scottish farmer, contained packets of white powder which a local police officer told him was undoubtedly heroin." This enduring myth, central to the Francovich/Ashton/Ferguson version of the "drug conspiracy theory" is based on zero evidence. Farmer Jim Wilson never claimed to have recovered such a suitcase and therefore the claim about the "local police officer" is a complete invention.

Even if a suitcase of drugs was recovered at Tundergarth (and there is no evidence one was) how does that relate to the bombing? Who is going to smuggle a suitcase of perfectly good smack onto a plane they plan to blow-up?

Secondly, Ms Peirce wrote "Charles McKee (a CIA operative flying back to the US to report on his concern that the couriering of drugs was being officially condoned as a way to entrap users and dealers in the US)."

Who said McKee (an army Major) was a "CIA operative"? Who said he was returning to the US to blow the whistle on the drug-smuggling operation? Was this Juval Aviv and how did he know?

I have never read the Interfor report but I understand it was based on what Aviv claimed to have been told by anonymous intelligence officials as if that was credible evidence. Aviv's claims do not constitute evidence.

As far as I am aware this scenario has been "investigated" and as far as I am aware the only "evidence" has been produced by fabricators such as Oswald LeWinter. LeWinter and Aviv duped John Ashton and Ian Ferguson (and Paul Foot) and apparently Tam Dalyell who wrote the forward to their book. Coleman is LeWinter's collaborator. Francovich knew perfectly well LeWinter was a fabricator as he had previously exposed him as such!

I am prepared to accept the CIA were involved in such operations. (It is in the public domain they carried out similar operations in Venezuela.) However my point is if this were true (and there is no evidence that it is) how does this relate to the bombing? As I pointed out in 2001 the bomb was introduced at Heathrow not Frankfurt.

p.s. I note that retired Superintendent Iain McKie is a signatory to the letter to the President of the General Assembly. What is the relationship between the Shirley McKie case and Lockerbie? None whatsoever save an unsubstantiated claim by Aviv of what he claimed to have been told by unidentified FBI agents.

See Gareth Peirce#Critique by Barry Walker.--Patrick Haseldine (talk) 17:35, 5 July 2014 (IST)