Barry Walker

Barry Walker (also known as baz) graduated in Modern History and International Relations and is a retired Royal Hong Kong Police Force officer.

Barry Walker's website "The Masonic Verses - Lockerbie and Related Scams" examines in forensic detail the evidence that was used to convict Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in 2001 for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

Heathrow evidence

On 14 November 2008, Barry Walker published an article entitled "Lockerbie The Heathrow Evidence" which began with a quote from page 145 of David Leppard's 1991 book "On the Trail of Terror: Inside Story of the Lockerbie Investigation":

"As the Kamboj episode showed, there had always been an outside chance that a bag had been smuggled into the container at Heathrow. That possibility aside Chief Superintendent John Orr had effectively ruled out Heathrow within three weeks of the bombing. Much to the relief of British security chiefs, the Met's Special Branch had long since stopped investigating the Heathrow theory."

The article continues: At 7pm on Friday 21st December 2008 the family and friends of some of passengers and crew of flight Pan Am 103 and perhaps of some of the eleven residents of Lockerbie who also lost their lives will gather at Heathrow Airport to mark the 20th anniversary of the Lockerbie disaster.

It was from Heathrow Airport that flight Pan Am 103 took off at 18:35hrs on Wednesday 21st December 1988 on its journey to JFK Airport, and presumably it is for that reason that Heathrow Airport has been chosen as a venue for the Service of Remembrance.

There is however another reason why Heathrow is a suitable venue to commemorate the 20th Anniversary for contrary to the version of events advanced by the authorities it was at Heathrow that the bomb that destroyed flight Pan Am 103 was introduced.

The official version is that the improvised explosive device (IED) built into a Toshiba bomb-beat radio-cassette incorporating an MST-13 timer was placed within an antique bronze coloured hard-sided Samsonite tourister suitcase also containing a quantity of clothing purchased from a shop in Malta.

This suitcase was smuggled unaccompanied aboard Air Malta flight KM180 at Luqa Airport, Malta by unknown means on the morning of the 21st December 1988 and at Frankfurt it was transferred to feeder flight Pan Am 103A and flown to Heathrow where the bag was transferred to baggage container AVE4041 which was loaded onto the 'Maid of the Seas' the aircraft used for flight Pan Am 103.

Police investigation

It was quickly established that a bomb had caused the disaster. Pieces of the bomb damaged aluminium baggage container AVE4041 were identified and recovered. Fragments of a brown hard-sided Samsonite suitcase were recovered which due to damage on the inside surface was identified as being the "primary suitcase" containing the IED. An early priority was to try to link the primary suitcase to a specific passenger or to ascertain at what point the suitcase was introduced into the system.

All passengers and crew on board flight Pan Am 103 had either started their journey at Heathrow or had transferred from other flights. Passengers who transferred to Pan Am 103 at Heathrow from flights from Vienna, Brussels and Cyprus were known as "Interline" passengers. The 41 passengers that had transferred from the Pan Am feeder flight Pan Am 103A from Frankfurt were known as "Online" passengers some of whom had "Interlined" from other flights to Frankfurt.

Police enquiries at Heathrow indicated that the luggage container AVE4041 had been loaded at Heathrow firstly with a number of Interline bags then filled with bags from the Frankfurt flight. It contained no luggage from passengers who had started their journey at Heathrow. By deducing the position of the "primary suitcase" within luggage container AVE4041 the Police believed they could deduce how the suitcase had arrived at Heathrow. From the start there was an assumption that the suitcase had been transferred from another flight.

The container had a rectangular base and three walls of the container were at right angles to the base. The fourth wall sloped outwards to fit the curvature of the plane’s fuselage to a point just under half the container's height where there was an aperture the length and height of the container for placing luggage. According to the Air Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) report, the centre of the explosive event was 10 inches from the floor of the container 12 inches from its left hand wall and 15 inches from the front (sloping) wall of the container. The explosion occurred just 25 inches from the aircraft skin. (This conclusion was questioned at the trial by the evidence of another expert witness.) According to the official version of events the position of the primary suitcase so close to the aircraft’s skin was fortuitous.

The most important witness in the Lockerbie case was a Heathrow baggage handler David Bedford, a loader/driver employed by Pan Am. Yet from the start his evidence was discounted or ignored, deemed to be of no relevance at all. On the afternoon of the 21st December 1988, Bedford was working at the Interline Baggage Shed a structure where Interline bags that arrived from other flights were brought and fed into the shed on a conveyor belt that extruded from the building. Here the bags were x-rayed and placed into luggage containers. Bedford had set aside luggage container AVE4041 for flight Pan Am 103.

Bedford placed four or five suitcases, upright on their spines to the back of the luggage container then left the area to speak with his supervisor. When he returned he found that somebody had placed two further suitcases flat in front of this row of suitcases. The one on the left was a brown or maroon hard-sided Samsonite.

Bedford spoke to Sulaksh Kamboj, an employee of Alert Security, who was responsible for x-raying Interline luggage. According to Bedford, Kamboj told him that he had placed the two suitcases in the container. When Sulaksh Kamboj was interviewed by the Police, he denied having placed the two suitcases in the container and denied having told Bedford that he had.

The Larnaca Interline passengers included four US Government officials: three, CIA officer Matthew Gannon, Army Major Charles "Tiny" McKee and Ron LaRiviere a Security Official had travelled from the Lebanon, and the fourth Daniel O’Connor was a State Department official posted to the US Embassy in Nicosia.

The luggage of these four men was recovered. There was evidence that one of McKee’s suitcases had been tampered with. None had a bronze or maroon hardsided Samsonite (McKee’s had two grey suitcases one a Samsonite, Gannon’s Samsonite was blue and soft-sided.) Curiously O’Connor’s two bags were never loaded onto Pan Am 103 but after the bombing was found in a baggage room at Heathrow.

The container was put aside and later Bedford drove the container to a site known as K-16 where luggage from flight Pan Am 103A could fill up the container. Bedford finished work at 5pm, thirty minutes before flight Pan Am 103A touched down. Luggage had been loaded loose and was unloaded onto a "rocket" and approximately 39 further bags were placed in container AVE4041.

Yet the fact of the mysterious appearance of these two suitcases, one a brown or maroon Samsonite, in the very luggage container in which the explosion occurred in or near the position where the explosion occurred, was dismissed by the Police for within three weeks they had "eliminated" Heathrow as the point at which the bomb was introduced. How they had convinced themselves of this remains a mystery partly illuminated by comments made much later by the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) Chief Superintendent John Orr.

On 28 March 1989, Orr addressed the co-ordinating committee of the Lockerbie investigators at Lockerbie Incident Control Centre (LICC). In reviewing the evidence to date, Orr stated that in respect of the loading of AVE 4041:

"Evidence from witnesses is to the effect (my italics) that the first seven pieces of luggage in the container belonged to Interline passengers and the remainder was Frankfurt luggage.

"To date, 14 pieces of explosive-damaged baggage have been recovered and enquiries to date suggest that on the balance of probabilities (LICC italics) the explosive device is likely to be amongst the Frankfurt baggage items. Of all the currently identified explosion-damaged luggage, all but one item originated from Frankfurt."

SIO John Orr had conflated the two further suitcases with the 4-5 bags placed by Bedford. While these bags could not have come from Frankfurt, there was no evidence that the two further bags were "Interline" bags save they had been introduced at the Interline baggage shed. Evidence from witnesses was not "to the effect" they were Interline bags.

Indian Head forensic tests

Three weeks after John Orr had expressed his conclusion that the two mystery suitcases were Interline bags, a series of five forensic tests were conducted at the Indian Head Naval facility in Maryland which confirmed his conclusions and the decision to "eliminate" Heathrow.

Using IEDs built for the purpose the tests, supervised by Tom Thurman of the FBI and Alan Feraday of RARDE, were to deduce the amount of explosive used in the IED and the position of primary suitcase within container AVE4041. In the closest approximation suitcase containing the IED was placed flat on top of another hard-sided suitcase (also placed flat) at the front left of the luggage container. The centre of the explosion was just 10½ inches from the floor and was right at the front of the container only 20 inches from the fuselage.

Due to the absence of "pitting", the absence of material blasted into the floor of the real container AVE4041 and in the test, it was deduced that the primary suitcase was not on the bottom layer of luggage. As the bags loaded by Bedford and the two "extra" bags were in contact with the floor it was deduced that the "primary suitcase" must have arrived on the feeder flight Pan Am 103A.

Autumn Leaves

The Police were initially convinced that the Lockerbie case was related to the activities of a cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) who had been based in the city of Neuss close to Frankfurt. The cell was arrested on Wednesday 26 October 1988. Four IEDs were eventually recovered, one of which was concealed within a Toshiba radio cassette player. It is possible that a fifth device was not recovered.

These IED’s incorporated barometric triggers and were designed to explode at altitude. The Scottish Police were stunned to learn that the cell’s bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat had been released soon after his arrest by the examining Magistrate. Khreesat was their prime suspect and the conclusion that the bomb had arrived unaccompanied from Frankfurt may have been influenced by this. What the Scots did not know at the time was that Khreesat was a CIA "asset".

The first eight months of the investigation was taken up by an increasingly acrimonious dispute between the investigators and the German authorities which was resolved only in August 1989 with the production of evidence, that the Germans had supposedly had for months indicating that a "rogue suitcase" had been transferred from a flight from Malta to the feeder flight Pan Am 103A at Frankfurt.

Essentially this was a forensic argument, the Germans arguing that if the IED that destroyed Pan Am 103 was built by Khreesat then it must have been introduced at Heathrow. The Scots spent a great deal attempting to refute the argument but stubbornly dismissed the possibility that a "Khreesat" bomb had been introduced at Heathrow.

In a 1996 House of Commons adjournment debate, Prime Minister John Major stated that the Lockerbie investigation was "open" and invited those with relevant information to "come forward".

The claim was astonishing as, four years earlier, his Government had demanded in advance of a trial that Libya accept full responsibility for the bombing, and had taken the lead in imposing sanctions.

The author tested this claim by writing to the Prime Minister pointing out the Police may have made a colossal blunder in "eliminating" Heathrow. He received a reply from an official of the Transport Security Branch of the Department of Transport drawing his attention to the conclusions of the Fatal Accident Inquiry, firstly that the primary suitcase had arrived unaccompanied on flight Pan Am 103A from Frankfurt and, secondly, that the suitcase arrived at Frankfurt on an airline other than Pan Am. The letter also stated that "contrary to what you say, the Police investigation remains open".

By supposedly reconstructing the contents of AVE4041, the Police purported to not only be able to distinguish between the position within the container of bags Interlined and Onlined at Heathrow, but between bags that had begun their journey at Frankfurt and those Interlined there (i.e. those that had arrived at Frankfurt on feeder flights).

According to Leppard:

"The LICC had concluded, after a detailed reconstruction of the contents of the luggage pallet, that the bomb bag must have come from an Interlined flight because it was amongst the bags on the second and third level which had been Interlined into Frankfurt." (The Indian Head forensic tests had indicated the centre of explosive event was 10.5 inches from the floor of the container!)

He continued:

"This was the basis for a statement at the fatal accident inquiry by Lord Frasier’s deputy, Andrew Hardie QC, that the bomb bag had arrived at Heathrow on the feeder flight from Frankfurt. Hardie explained this did not mean that the bag had originated from Frankfurt."

The conclusions of the Fatal Accident Inquiry set the stage for the announcement of the Indictment of the two Libyans nine months later. While it is assumed the object of the Indictment was to bring about a trial, there is considerable evidence the real objective was the imposition of United Nations sanctions on Libya.

Evidence at Camp Zeist

Both David Bedford and Sulaksh Kamboj gave evidence at Camp Zeist concerning what had transpired 12 years before. The discrepancy between their accounts was still not resolved, although their Lordships favoured Bedford’s account. However this discrepancy was found to be of no importance for their Lordships accepted the official version of events that the primary suitcase had been introduced in Malta and transferred to Pan Am 103A at Frankfurt. As the two suitcases had appeared in AVE4041 prior to Pan Am 103A's arrival at Heathrow, Bedford's evidence was of no relevance as the Police had concluded thirteen years earlier.

As their Lordships had supposedly discounted the evidence of the defector Majid Giaka, they confessed they did not know how the bomb was introduced at Malta. However having found the case against the defendant Megrahi convincing in other respects, and as Megrahi had flown to Malta on 20 December 1988 using a false identity, and had left Malta on the morning of 21 December 1988, they concluded that this visit must have been related to smuggling the primary suitcase aboard flight KM180 rather than some other nefarious purpose.

In their summing-up, the defence made a telling point concerning Bedford’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 Pan Am 103A were added and the "Bedford Samsonite" was moved far away from the point of the explosion "to some far corner of the container." 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 Inquiry.

Conclusion

John Orr’s supposition that the two bags seen by Bedford were "Interline" bags, the forensic tests that purported to eliminate these bags and the speculation that these bags had been re-arranged were essentially irrelevant. Indeed the attempt to identify the origin of the primary suitcase from identifying the bags around it was deeply flawed, as it assumed the primary suitcase was introduced into the system at the same point.

There was only one way to properly identify and eliminate the brown/maroon Samsonite seen by Bedford, and that was to recover it, examine its contents and link it to a particular passenger. If Chief Superintendent John Orr believed the Samsonite seen by Bedford was an Interline bag then it should have been recovered and linked to a specific Interline passenger.

The logic is irrefutable. If the Samsonite suitcase seen in container AVE4041 was not otherwise recovered then it must have been the primary suitcase. As it was seen long before the arrival of flight Pan Am 103A, then the official scenario (on which Megrahi was convicted) must be untrue.