Difference between revisions of "Pan Am Flight 103"

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{{SynthesisHeader|The How, Why and Who of Pan Am Flight 103}}
 
{{SynthesisHeader|The How, Why and Who of Pan Am Flight 103}}
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[[File:Clipper_Maid_of_the_Seas.jpg|500px|thumb|right|Boeing 747-121 ''"Clipper Maid of the Seas"'' pictured at Frankfurt Airport in July 1986]]
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{{Event
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[[File:PA103cockpit4.png|thumb|500px|Pan Am Flight 103 wreckage - Cockpit section]]
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|wikipedia=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103
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[[File:Lockerbie-aerial.jpg|thumb|500px|Crater and property damage in Lockerbie caused by aircraft wreckage]]
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|start=21 December 1988
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On 21 December 1988 [[Pan Am Flight 103]], a Boeing 747-121 named ''"Clipper Maid of the Seas"'', was on a scheduled transatlantic flight from London Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport when there was an explosion on board. The aircraft broke up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie ({{Maplink|55.12,-3.357}}), killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members. Eleven people in Lockerbie were killed by large sections of the plane which fell in and around the town, bringing total fatalities to 270.
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|end=21 December 1988
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|ON_perpetrators=Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi
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|type=bombing
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|fatalities=270
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|survivors=0
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|constitutes=false flag attack, mid-level deep event, Air disaster
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|site=Lockerbie, Scotland
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|coordinates={{coord|55|6|55.99|N|3|21|30.69|W|display=inline}}
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|image=PA103cockpit4.png
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|image_width=340px
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|image_caption=Wreckage of ''"Clipper Maid of the Seas"'' Cockpit section near Tundergarth Church
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|description=When Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December 1988, killing all 259 passengers and crew on board, news reports cited UN Assistant Secretary-General, Bernt Carlsson, as its highest-profile victim. US and British intelligence operatives, posing as Lockerbie investigators, ignored the evident targeting of the UN diplomat and instead focused on the jumbo jet. With the result that the wrong country was blamed and an innocent person convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
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|latitude=55°06′56″N
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|longitude=003°21′31″W
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|locations=Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland
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}}
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[[File:Clipper_Maid_of_the_Seas.jpg|400px|thumb|left|Boeing 747-121 ''"Clipper Maid of the Seas"'' pictured at Frankfurt Airport in July 1986]]
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[[File:Lockerbie-aerial.jpg|left|thumb|400px|Crater and property damage in Lockerbie caused by main wreckage of [[Pan Am 103]] ]]
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[[File:Bernt_Carlsson_3.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Assistant Secretary-General and UN Commissioner for Namibia, [[Bernt Carlsson]] ]]
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[[File:Scottish_Mirror.jpg|300px|right|thumb|11 September 2001 - Front Page News]]
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[[File:CIA.svg|300px|right|thumb|"Was the [[CIA]] complicit in both the [[The How, Why and Who of Pan Am Flight 103#Naming names|Lockerbie]] and [[9-11/Israel_did_it|9/11 attacks]]?"]]
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On 21 December 1988 [[Pan Am Flight 103]], a Boeing 747-121 named ''"Clipper Maid of the Seas"'', was on a scheduled transatlantic flight from London's Heathrow Airport to New York's JFK International Airport when there was an explosion on board. The aircraft broke up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie ({{Maplink|55.12,-3.357}}), killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members. Eleven people in Lockerbie were killed by large sections of the plane which fell in and around the town, bringing total fatalities to 270.
  
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Thirteen years later, on 31 January 2001, Libyan citizen [[Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi]] was convicted of involvement in the bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment in Scotland. His co-defendant, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, was unanimously acquitted. Megrahi's appeal against his conviction in January 2001 was refused on 14 March 2002 by a panel of five Scottish judges at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1872996.stm "UN monitor decries Lockerbie judgement"]</ref>
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Thirteen years later, on 31 January 2001, a [[Pan_Am_Flight_103/The trial|juryless trial]] convicted Libyan [[Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi]] of involvement in the bombing and sentenced him to life imprisonment in Scotland and acquitted his co-defendant, [[Lamin Khalifah Fhimah]]. [[Megrahi]]'s appeal was refused on 14 March 2002 by a panel of five Scottish judges<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1872996.stm "UN monitor decries Lockerbie judgement"]</ref> but on 28 June 2007, the [[Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission]] granted [[Megrahi]] leave for a second appeal on the basis of evidence that a miscarriage of justice could have occurred.<ref>[[File:SCCRC-Lockerbie.pdf]] - SCCRC Leave to appeal decision press release - June 2007</ref>
  
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In June 2007, Megrahi was granted leave for a second appeal against his conviction, on the basis of evidence that a miscarriage of justice could have occurred. <ref>[[File:SCCRC-Lockerbie.pdf]] - SCCRC Leave to appeal decision press release - June 2007</ref> His appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal was abandoned by al-Megrahi in August 2009, just two days before the Scottish Government released him on compassionate grounds to return to Libya. The stated grounds for release were that he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and was likely to die within three months.
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After a delay of two years appeal proceedings began at Edinburgh's Court of Criminal Appeal on 28 April 2009. However, [[Megrahi]] abandoned the second appeal on 18 August 2009. Two days later the Scottish Justice Secretary [[Kenny MacAskill]] released [[Megrahi]] on compassionate grounds, as suffering from terminal prostate cancer, and he returned to Libya on 20 August 2009.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/8205528.stm "Lockerbie bomber's appeal dropped"]</ref>
  
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==Lockerbie official narrative==
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[[Megrahi]]'s guilt is not agreed upon<ref>[http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2224221/flight_103_it_was_the_uranium.html "Flight 103: it was the Uranium"]</ref> and [[Wikispooks]] editor, [[Patrick Haseldine]] has petitioned the [[UN Secretary General]], [[Ban Ki-moon]] to investigate the theory that Lockerbie was a clandestine [[assassination]] of [[Bernt Carlsson]].<ref>[https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/United_Nations_SecretaryGeneral_Ban_Kimoon_Investigate_the_deaths_of_UN_Officials_Dag_Hammarskjold_and_Bernt_Carlsson/ "Take action to investigate the deaths of UN Officials Dag Hammarskjöld and Bernt Carlsson!"]</ref>
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[[File:Colin_Boyd.jpg|300px|right|thumb|[[Colin Boyd]] former [[Lord Advocate]] ]]
 
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In August 2001, Scottish Lord Advocate [[Colin Boyd]] presented the Lockerbie official narrative at a conference of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law (ISRCL):<ref>[http://www.isrcl.org/Papers/Boyd.pdf "The Lockerbie Trial"] by Rt Hon Colin Boyd QC, Lord Advocate, Scotland</ref>
 
  
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"On the night of 21st December 1988, I was on the phone to my sister who lives in the north of England and who was telling me of her plans to come up to stay with my parents in Edinburgh for Christmas. She and her husband were going to drive up on Christmas Eve. The route would take them past a small town, which few outside Scotland had ever heard of, called Lockerbie. As we spoke my brother in law who was watching television called out to my sister that there was a news flash that a plane had crashed on the town. Over the next few days we watched in horror the human tragedy unfolded before us. Little did I realise that a decade or so later I would become responsible for the prosecution of the trial.
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On 28 May 2015, [[Patrick Haseldine]] wrote to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir [[Bernard Hogan-Howe]], demanding that [[Scotland Yard]] launch a [[Bernard Hogan-Howe#Bernt Carlsson murder inquiry|Bernt Carlsson murder inquiry]].<ref>[https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=988592237827313&id=150333521653193&notif_t=like "Scotland Yard to launch Bernt Carlsson murder inquiry"]</ref> He wrote again on 30 June 2015 highlighting a long-forgotten ''Scottish Mirror'' newspaper report of 11 September 2001, that revealed there had been a break-in at Pan Am's baggage shed at Heathrow airport on 21 December 1988. On the strength of which [[Patrick Haseldine|Haseldine]] asserted that a team of [[Civil Co-operation Bureau]] operatives, led by the CCB's London-based director [[Eeben Barlow]], broke through a security door at Terminal 3 of Heathrow airport leading to the Interline Baggage Shed from where flights would be loaded the following day. The [[CCB]] team then ingested the primary suitcase (or "bomb bag") through this security door and tagged it for loading on Pan Am Flight 103.<ref>[http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?74757-Pan-Am-103-South-Africa-Guilty-!!! "Pan Am 103: South Africa Guilty"]</ref> The ''Scottish Mirror'' report was effectively - some would say conveniently - buried when news of the [[9-11/Israel_did_it|9/11 attacks in America]] swamped the [[Corporate media|commercially-controlled media]] later that morning.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20110403061932/http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lockerbie-heathrow-breakin-revealed-668981.html "Lockerbie: Heathrow break-in revealed"]</ref>
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"This paper seeks to review some of the aspects of the investigation and prosecution of the trial and reflect on the politics of the Lockerbie case. It is not comprehensive and does not contain my final thoughts on the matter. Three things constrain me. First, there is not the time either in the presentation or in writing the paper to cover all aspects of the case. Secondly, an appeal is pending and I do not wish to say or do anything that might reflect on the appeal. Indeed it is on one view a particularly sensitive time. At the Court's request I have given an undertaking that the Crown will not disclose the grounds of appeal. That is being tested at the present time since newspaper reports in Scotland have discussed the appeal and given accounts of the nature of the appeal which are frankly false. Thirdly, the events of the last year have not had time to mature. In some ways it is too early to reach concluded views on what happened in the case, both in its preparation and presentation.  
 
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"Politics and diplomacy were necessarily interwoven with this case from the start. That was inevitable given the circumstances. Nevertheless the theme of this paper is that there is a place for both independence of the investigator and prosecutor and for a proper consideration of the political consequences of the scale of the event, of evidence uncovered and of decisions taken. There is a place too for political action in securing the interests of justice. In this case that was necessary to secure the resources for the investigation and prosecution, to secure the co-operation of foreign governments and agencies and in the end to achieve the handover of the accused for trial.
 
  
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"Inevitably too this paper is much wider than the political aspects of the investigation. While as Lord Advocate I have the power to direct the police in their investigation my responsibility is for the prosecution of crime. Accordingly I intend to deal with the wider aspects of the investigation and the decision to hold the trial in the Netherlands.
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[[Patrick Haseldine|Haseldine]]'s third letter to Sir [[Bernard Hogan-Howe]]<ref>[https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=979952485389745&id=230050093713325 "Sir Bernard gets the message!"]</ref> quoted from what former [[GCHQ]] officer [https://www.facebook.com/mike.arnold.583234 Mike Arnold] had written on 28 July 2015 on the ''Facebook'' page ''[https://www.facebook.com/groups/211198958941598 Who Killed Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher?]'':
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:"We and the Americans bombed Pan Am Flight 103 to persuade South African foreign minister [[Pik Botha]] to sign the [[Tripartite Accord]]; thus with the Americans protecting our vested interests both political and financial.
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:"The destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 with the Americans demonstrated our intent and was also a threat, and removing [[Bernt Carlsson]] was a convenient and powerful signal, i.e. nobody is untouchable.
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:"The implication of the ''[[BBC]]'' Lockerbie report on the early morning of [[9/11]] implies that [[MI6|British Intelligence]] knew what was about to happen in New York, and may indeed have played a complicit role for the [[CIA]].<ref>[https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=241029499373323&story_fbid=588699061273030 "Suppressed Lockerbie evidence ignited 9/11 attacks"]</ref>
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:"The first report appearing in the ''Scottish Mirror'' implies that they were the cut-out; similar to how [[MI6|British Intelligence]] used ''The Times'' to place a small and misleading account for what happened to me at [[GCHQ]] into the public domain.
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:"As part of the bigger picture, it is probable that [[MI6|British Intelligence]] scripted the premature ''[[BBC]]'' report that [[9-11/WTC7|WTC7]] had collapsed. [[MI6|British Intelligence]] blatantly scripted ''The Times'', ''Daily Mail'' and ''[[BBC]]'' around me."<ref>[https://www.facebook.com/groups/211198958941598/966227283438758/?comment_id=966551820072971&notif_t=like "Comment by former GCHQ officer Mike Arnold on the ''Facebook'' page 'Who Killed Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher?'"]</ref>
  
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"Pan Am 103 took off from Heathrow Airport, London at about 6.25pm on the night of 21st December 1988 bound for Kennedy Airport, New York. There were 259 passengers and crew on board. Most were Americans returning home for Christmas. The passengers included a number of family groups, returning servicemen and a group of students from Syracuse University in upstate New York. Many had joined the flight from a feeder from Frankfurt. The flight path would take them up the west of England and Scotland from where it would travel out over the Atlantic towards Greenland. 
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==Official Narrative==
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[[File:Colin_Boyd.jpg|300px|right|thumb|[[Colin Boyd]] former [[Lord Advocate]] ]]
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"The videotape from the radar displays show that the bomb exploded on board the plane at 7.03pm. The plane broke up into several large pieces. The nosepiece landed at Tundergarth some 3 miles from the centre of the town. The photograph of the nose and flight deck is now the enduring image of the disaster. The main part of the aircraft came down on the edge of the town on a street known as Sherwood Crescent. Eleven people on the ground were killed, making the total number killed at 270. Bodies and bits of bodies were scattered over a wide area in and around the town. Fire rained from the sky and witnesses spoke of having to dodge round the fires in the street and in the gardens. There was a strong westerly wind blowing that night and the debris trail spread some 70 odd miles across the south of Scotland and north of England out into the North Sea.
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{{FA|Lockerbie Official Narrative}}
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In August 2001, Scottish Lord Advocate [[Colin Boyd]] presented what might be considered the definite statement of the [[Lockerbie Official Narrative]] at a conference of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law (ISRCL):<ref>[http://www.isrcl.org/Papers/Boyd.pdf "The Lockerbie Trial"] by Rt Hon [[Colin Boyd]] QC, Lord Advocate, Scotland</ref> While admitting that "Politics and diplomacy were necessarily interwoven with this case from the start", there is no mention of [[Bernt Carlsson]], UN Commissioner for Namibia, and the evidence led at the trial is presented as the unvarnished truth. Libyan [[Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi]], head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, was determined at the trial to be a member of the Libyan Intelligence Services and of being guilty of the bombing. The narrative is predictably self-congratulatory: "In conclusion, it seems to me to be absolutely right that the investigation of crime and the prosecutorial decisions which flow from that investigation must be taken independently of political influence... Political and diplomatic action secured the trial. The investigation of the case and the prosecution of the trial were driven by the evidence."
  
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"In Scotland responsibility for the investigation of sudden deaths rests with the [[Procurator Fiscal]], the local public prosecutor, who will attend the scene and may direct the police in the conduct of their inquiries. The Procurator Fiscal holds a Commission from the [[Lord Advocate]] who is a Government Minister. At the time of the bombing he was a member of the UK Government but is now, since devolution, a member of the Scottish Executive. His duties include the provision of legal advice to Government and the prosecution of crime in Scotland. All indictments run in the name of the [[Lord Advocate]].
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==Geopolitical Background==
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===1988===
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"On 28th December 1988, just a week after the crash, air accident investigators were able to announce that they had found traces of high explosive and that there was evidence that Pan Am 103 had been brought down by an improvised explosive device. The investigation of this crime fell to Jimmy McDougall, the [[Procurator Fiscal]] in the nearby town of Dumfries and to Dumfries and Galloway police, the smallest police force in Britain. Clearly the ordinary resources available to them were quite inadequate to deal with such an investigation. The police effort was augmented by officers from all over Scotland as well as the north of England. The [[Procurator Fiscal]] was given support from [[Crown Office]] in Edinburgh and in particular from Norman McFadyen, then the head of the Fraud and Specialist Services Group and now the [[Procurator Fiscal]] covering the Edinburgh area but also with special responsibility for the Lockerbie case.
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* UK/US relations with [[Libya]] were icy over alleged [[Libya]]n sponsorship of "terrorism" and its stubborn refusal to 'see things the West's way'.{{cn}}
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* UK/US relations with [[Iran]] were slated for improvement following the cessation of the [[Iran-Iraq war]] in which both sides had been armed by the West.  
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"Indeed the scale of the investigation was such that who was going to pay for it became a political issue. Would it be paid out of the grant made to fund the Scottish Office budget or would the UK Government agree to special funding. A daily newspaper took up the campaign and shortly after the Prime Minister, [[Margaret Thatcher]], announced that all the funding for the investigation would be met out of the contingency fund, preserving the block grant to Scotland intact. Politics secured the commitment to funding which endured throughout the investigation and carried through to the trial.  
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* On 3 July 1988 [[Iran Air Flight 655]], a civilian Airbus A300 airliner en-route from Bandar Abbas, Iran to Dubai, [[UAE]] was brought down by a missile fired by the US Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, with the loss of 290 lives. The US government claimed that the airliner had been mistaken for an attacking F14 Tomcat fighter.
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* Within days of the [[Lockerbie disaster]] US government spokespeople were blaming "terrorists" possibly Palestinians. Early in 1989 a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_News CBS News] report "conclusively" placed the blame on [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Jibril Ahmed Jibril], leader of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Front_for_the_Liberation_of_Palestine_%E2%80%93_General_Command Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC)], asserting that Jibril's motivation was to discredit [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat Yasser Arafat] and cause the US to pull out of talks with the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Liberation_Organization PLO]. According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_News CBS,] this "scoop" was provided by "reliable sources within the international terrorist community." In an age when "objectivity" is touted as the cornerstone of journalistic integrity, it is suspiciously convenient for a major network to about-face and refer to a "terrorist" as "reliable." It is unclear who constitutes the "international terrorist community."<ref>[http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2706&dat=19890214&id=7wVKAAAAIBAJ&sjid=eB4NAAAAIBAJ&pg=1941,2315302 "Up in the air?"] ''The Michigan Daily'', 14 February 1989</ref>
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"At first the investigation centred on the activities in Germany of a cell of the PFLP-GC, a Syrian-backed terrorist group. Members of that cell had been arrested in Germany in October 1988 in an operation known as 'Autumn Leaves'. That cell had been involved in a conspiracy against civilian aircraft and intriguingly had used a Toshiiba radio cassette in the construction of their devices, the same make, though a different type, as had been used in the Pan Am bombing.
 
  
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"Conspiracy theorists have alleged that the investigators' move away from an interest in the PFLP-GC was prompted by political interference following a re-alignment of interests in the Middle East. Specifically, it is said that it suited Britain and the United States to exonerate Syria and others such as Iran who might be associated with her and to blame Libya, a country which we know trained members of the [[IRA]]. Accordingly evidence was 'found' which implicated Libya.
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===1995===
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* On 24 March 1995, the ''Los Angeles Times'' reported that the [[FBI]] was stepping up efforts to apprehend [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]] and [[Lamin Khalifah Fhimah]], the two Libyans indicted for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and devoting additional agents to the international hunt in anticipation of new leads. Signalling its impatience with sporadic reports that [[Libya]] would hand over the accused men if trade sanctions were to be removed, the FBI said it was offering a record US$4 million reward for information leading to their capture.<ref>[http://articles.latimes.com/1995-03-24/news/mn-46660_1_lockerbie-bombing "FBI Offers Record $4-Million Reward in Lockerbie Bombing"]</ref> 
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"This is best answered by looking at the evidence. 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 13th January 1989 in search sector 1, near Newcastleton, two police officers Thomas Gilchrist and Thomas McColm found a fragment of charred clothing. It was subsequently sent to the Forensic Explosives Laboratory at Fort Halstead in Kent for forensic examination.  
 
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"It was examined there on 12th 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.
 
  
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"In September 1989 [[Tony Gauci]], the shopkeeper, was interviewed by Scottish police officers. He convincingly identified a range of clothing which he had sold to a man sometime before Christmas 1988. Among the items he remembered selling were two pairs of Yorkie trousers, two pairs of striped pyjamas, a tweed jacket, a blue babygro, two slalom shirts collar size 16 and a half, two cardigans, one brown and one blue and an umbrella. He described the man, and subsequently identified him as Megrahl. More importantly at the time he was in no doubt that he was a Libyan.  
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===2000===
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* UK-US relations with Libya were being 'normalised' following Libya's agreement to extradite [[al-Megrahi]] and [[Fhimah]] for trial and its abandonment of its allegedly belligerent stance over previously core issues of policy on trade, oil and support for groups antagonistic to Western interests. The accommodation resulted in the lifting of UN trade sanctions against Libya which had progressively paralysed its economy over the preceding decade.
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* UK-US relations with Iran were close to all-time lows and deteriorating over the usual issues of Iranian refusal to 'see things the West's way'.
  
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"In June 1990, with the assistance ultimately of the CIA and FBI, [[Allen Feraday]] of the Explosives Laboratory was able to identify the fragment as identical to circuitry from an MST-13 timer. It was already known to the [[CIA]] from an example seized in Togo in 1986 and photographed by them in Senegal in 1988. That took investigators to the firm of [[MEBO]] in Zürich. It was discovered that these timers had been manufactured to the order of two Libyans: Ezzadin Hinshin, at the time director of the Central Security Organisation of the Libyan External Security Organisation and Said Rashid, then head of the Operations Administration of the ESO.
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==Accident Inquiries==
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{{FA|Pan Am Flight 103/Fatal Accident Inquiry}}
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The [[Air Accidents Investigation Branch]] submitted a detailed 54-page report on the accident to [[Cecil Parkinson]], [[Secretary of State for Transport]], on 6 August 1990.<ref>[http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/2-1990%20N739PA.pdf "AAIB report on the accident to Boeing 747-121, N739PA at Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire, Scotland on 21 December 1988"]</ref> Informed by this report, Sheriff Principal [[John S. Mowat]] carried out a [[Pan Am Flight 103/Fatal Accident Inquiry|Fatal Accident Inquiry]] in Dumfries, [[Scotland]]. His report ran to 47 pages and was in broad agreement with the {{on}}.
  
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"As if in confirmation of Libya's involvement during the preparation for the trial evidence was obtained from Toshiba which showed that, during October 1988, 20,000 black Toshiba RT-SF 16 radio cassettes, the type used in the Pan Am bomb, were shipped to Libya. Of the total world-wide sales of that model 76% were sold to General Electric Company of Libya whose chairman was Said Rashid.
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==The Investigation==
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===Exclusion of the Met===
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[[File:Met_Patch.jpg|300px|right|thumb|Dis''patch''ed from [[Scotland]] home to [[London]] ]]
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In Chapter Three of his 2002 book "The Lockerbie Incident: A Detective's Tale" (pages 70/71), Scottish policeman [[John Crawford]] describes how officers from the [[Metropolitan Police]] were excluded from [[Pan Am Flight 103#The Investigation|investigating the Lockerbie bombing]] in [[Scotland]] and quickly dis''patch''ed home to [[London]].{{QB|I knew that a considerable amount of political in-fighting had been going on from day one. The [[Metropolitan Police/Anti-Terrorist Branch|Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist squad]] from London had tried to make the enquiry theirs from the first day. There was considerable opposition to this both politically and from the Scottish police.
  
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"Accordingly, it’s clear that the move of interest by investigators away from the PFLP-GC and towards Libya was as a result of the evidence which was discovered and not as a result of any political interference in the investigation. I was not involved at that point but I am assured by those who were involved that no one sought to interfere or influence the investigation. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that there was political interference. The investigation was evidence-led.
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[[Scotland Yard]] as any ordinary cop knows was like living on a reputation built 100 years ago. Sure it had the facilities to conduct a huge enquiry; sure it had the personnel and was supposed to have the expertise. It certainly had the resources in manpower and finance. But ask a cop in any force up and down the country who they consider the most arrogant, the most useless and the least likely to do anything for anyone beyond their 'patch' and they will undoubtedly tell you – [[The Met]].
  
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"Much of the investigation centred in other countries. In the early stages Germany was a particular focus of attention, partly because of the feeder flight from Frankfurt but also because of the 'Autumn Leaves' investigation featuring the PFLP-GC. Later as the investigation moved away from Germany, Malta was important but also Switzerland and others. International co-operation was required to facilitate such investigations. The traditional method of obtaining international co-operation is of course through commissions rogatoire or 'Letters of Request' as we know them. Whatever the name they of course proceed under multilateral conventions or through mutual legal assistance treaties. These are excellent in facilitating co-operation in many cases but they do have their limitations. A certain amount of bureaucracy and formality is associated with them. It does involve investigation by questionnaire, never a very satisfactory way of proceeding. In the Lockerbie investigation it was clear early on that there was a need for closer co-operation, certainly between British and American investigators. And in the early part also with Germany. Dumfries and Galloway police set up a satellite office in Washington. The [[FBI]] and the BKA, the German Federal police stationed liaison offices in Lockerbie.
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It's an unfortunate reputation because I personally know of a number of fine officers in that organisation who would match the best anywhere. But the reputation of [[The Met|the Met]] precedes it and it does not enjoy the high standing it thinks it does in what it disparagingly calls the 'provincial' forces. I would like to think things have changed since then but I rather think they have not.
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"That international co-operation was again required in the time leading up to and during the trial. In the run up to the trial we sent police officers and prosecutors to many countries to interview potential witnesses. The assistance we received from these countries in most cases far exceeded what one might ordinarily expect by operating the usual mutual assistance treaties. That assistance was given as a result of a mixture of a desire to assist, the terms of the UN resolution which endorsed the third country trial and diplomatic pressure through embassies and foreign office contacts. Diplomacy was absolutely crucial in paving the way for both the investigation and the prosecution.
 
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"The investigations eventually identified a number of suspects. Ultimately the prosecuting authorities in Scotland and the United States considered that they had sufficiency of evidence against two men. On 14th November 1991 the then Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser and the acting United States Attorney General jointly announced that they had obtained warrants for the arrest of [[Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi]] and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah.
 
  
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"On 27th November 1991, the British and United States Governments issued a joint statement calling on the Libyan government to surrender the two men for trial, to disclose everything it knew about the trial and to pay compensation. On 21st January 1992, the United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 731 calling on Libya to provide a full and effective response to British, American and French requests to surrender those suspected of both the Lockerbie bombing and the [[UTA Flight 772|French UTA bombing]]. In the light of the failure of Libya to respond to resolution 731, the Security Council passed a further resolution 748 on 31st March 1992 imposing mandatory sanctions on Libya. They were strengthened by a further resolution passed on 11th November 1993.
+
No – neither the Scottish police nor the Lord Advocate [[Lord Fraser of Carmylie]] wanted them messing around in our enquiry. It was said the [[Lord Advocate]] presented an ultimatum to the then Prime Minister, the Iron Lady herself, [[Margaret Thatcher]] that either he was in charge of the enquiry as befitted his role as [[Lord Advocate]] in [[Scotland]] or he would resign. I cannot vouch for the veracity of that but as far as the [[Metropolitan Police/Anti-Terrorist Branch|Met Anti-Terrorist squad]] were concerned it was all over. They were hanging around for a few days with their flashy designer suits and the full weight of their own egos and self-importance on their shoulders, the once deserved reputation of [[Scotland Yard]] expected to sweep all before them.
−
 
−
"The Libyan response during this period was one of denial that they had been in any way involved. It also brought actions against both the United Kingdom and the United States at the International Court of Justice in the Hague alleging that we had infringed Libya's rights under the Montreal Convention by refusing to share the evidence with Libya and in securing sanctions. They further alleged that the Security Council had no authority to make the resolutions imposing sanctions.  
 
  
−
"At various stages however they did indicate that they would not oppose a trial in a third country. Their proposals were vague and unfocused but the one which did eventually become established was for a Scottish trial before Scottish judges in the Hague. Libya claimed that the men could not obtain a fair trial before a Scottish jury. We disputed that and international jurists appointed at our request by the UN found that the men could get a fair trial in Scotland.
+
After all, what could a bunch of hick 'jocks' do, we were experts only in dealing with sheep and haggis – let's face it, according to them nothing of any consequence ever happened outside London.
  
−
"My involvement with this case stems from May 1997 when, following the election of the Labour Government, I was appointed Solicitor General for Scotland, effectively the Lord Advocate's deputy. Andrew Hardie became Lord Advocate. Shortly after taking office we were given a briefing by officials about the Lockerbie investigation. It was then 6 years since the petition warrants had been granted for the arrest of the 2 Libyan suspects. While there had been hopes on occasion during this period that Libya would hand them over for trial, these had come to nothing. The British Government was anxious if at all possible to make progress to resolve the impasse. Indeed it is fair to say that it and the United States Government were under pressure to make progress. That had been evident, in the case of the UK, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Edinburgh in the autumn of 1997. [[Nelson Mandela]] in particular played a role in putting the case for a resolution of the dispute. In his view, this could best be done if we were to agree to a trial in a third country.
+
[[The Met]] were told in no uncertain manner that they weren't welcome! It was back to London for them.<ref>''[http://bookstore.trafford.com/Products/SKU-000149391/The-Lockerbie-Incident.aspx "The Lockerbie Incident: A Detective's Tale"]''</ref>}}
  
−
"Andrew Hardie was asked to consider whether he would agree to such a proposal. He and I discussed this at some length and a number of factors were clear. First, unlike Wine, evidence does not mature with age. Memories dim and the evidence becomes less reliable. The longer it took to get to trial, the more difficult it would be to prosecute it successfully. Secondly, sanctions had not so far had the desired effect. There was no reason to suppose that was about to change. Indeed the reverse was true. It was becoming more difficult to maintain sanctions and countries who had supported us in the past were increasingly questioning whether they could continue that support without some movement towards agreeing to a third country trial.
+
===Leading the investigation===
−
   
+
[[File:Vincent_Cannistraro.jpg|300px|right|thumb|[[Vince Cannistraro]] was head of the [[CIA]]'s [[Counterterrorism Center]] ]]
−
"Thirdly, we were conscious of our responsibility to the relatives. It was 10 years since the bombing. The wait for what they saw as justice was a long one. Many of the relatives, though by no means all, were strongly supportive of a third country trial. That was particularly true of the British relatives. They had made common cause with [[Professor Robert Black]], a professor of Scots Law at Edinburgh University who had travelled to Libya, met [[Gaddafi]] and had put forward proposals for a trial in a third country though using international judges. Indeed in the media's eyes he was seen as the author of the proposal.
+
The Lockerbie investigation involved the following senior figures:
−
+
* [[Vincent Cannistraro]] - [[CIA]] task force officer in the brutal [[1980s]] [[Iran-Contra]] campaign. Deployed a training manual of invasion and killing of [[Nicaragua]]n citizens and officials. Wrote "the anatomy of a lie" to cover up US government involvement in Nicaragua. In 1986 was commissioned by the [[US President]] to "Destabilise [[Libya]] and destroy the Gaddafi regime". Secretly worked to arm the [[Afghanistan]] [[Mujahideen]] and [[Osama Bin Laden]]. His chief [[Admiral Poindexter]] chaired a top-level meeting - to which Cannistraro had access - to discuss the manufacture of evidence to destabilise the government of [[Yemen]]. He was head of the CIA Lockerbie team, but did not attend the trial to give evidence.<ref>[https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=150333521653193&story_fbid=927481503938387 "Lockerbie frame-up"]</ref>
−
"As we discussed the options the attraction of resolving the issue by agreeing to a trial in another country before a panel of Scottish judges grew in our minds. The crucial factor was the assessment from the Foreign Office that in their opinion there was little or no prospect of the two accused being handed over for trial in the UK or the United States in the foreseeable future. The American State Department shared that assessment. While on one view these opinions may be seen as self-serving given the desire to make progress on the issue, we took the view first, that they were in the best position to reach that view and secondly, that we knew of nothing to contradict these assessments. Indeed all the evidence suggested that they were right.
+
* [[Stuart Henderson]] - former Detective Chief Superintendent with the Lothian and Borders Police, replaced [[John Orr]] as the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) at the Lockerbie Incident Control Centre in 1991, and led the Lockerbie bombing investigation.
 +
* [[Richard Marquise]] - [[FBI]]'s chief investigator and appointed US Task Force leader in the Pan Am Flight 103 case when the Lockerbie bombing investigation began to focus on [[Libya]].
 +
* [[Tom Thurman]] - discredited former head of the Explosives Unit at the [[FBI]]’s Crime Laboratory; accused of having [[UTA Flight 772#Tom Thurman '''F'''a'''B'''r'''I'''cated evidence|'''F'''a'''B'''r'''I'''cated evidence to incriminate Libya]].
  
−
"Before we could agree, however, we had to be satisfied on two other matters. First, were we ourselves satisfied that there was evidence which would entitle us to prosecute? Remember the warrants for the arrest had been granted some time ago. While we had no reason to doubt the original decision to seek the arrest warrant from the court it could be that evidence which was available then was no longer available for one reason or another. As Law Officers we would never be forgiven if we did not check the position ourselves and subsequently had to withdraw the prosecution. Secondly, we had to be satisfied that a trial could be mounted in a third country without prejudicing either the prosecution or the wider interests of justice. Accordingly, the Lord Advocate appointed one of his Deputes, Robert Reed QC, now a High Court Judge in Scotland, to review the evidence. It took him nearly six months but the answer was that there was the evidence to support a prosecution and we could mount a trial in a third country.
+
==The Trial==
−
+
{{FA|Pan_Am_Flight_103/The Trial}}
−
"Agreeing to the principle of a third country trial was one thing. Working out the practicalities was quite another matter. Early on it was agreed that the Netherlands was the best option. It already had the International Court of Justice and the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal. It had established itself as a seat for international justice. Moreover there were good transport links with Scotland. The Dutch Government agreed to host the Court. Eventually a treaty was concluded between the Dutch and British Governments in which the Dutch Government agreed to the establishment within Holland of a Scottish Court with jurisdiction to try the two Libyans on charges of conspiracy to murder, murder and a contravention of the Aviation Security Act 1982. This is quite unique in international jurisprudence. Courts have, of course, sat in foreign countries for the purpose of taking evidence. It's the first time though that a Court has sat wholly within the territory of another state and exercised jurisdiction within it.
+
[[File:Lockerbie_Trial_Judges.jpg|400px|right|thumb|Lockerbie Trial Judges: Lord Abernethy, Lord Coulsfield, presiding Judge Lord Sutherland and Lord MacLean]]
−
 
+
Having been indicted in November 1991 in relation to the Lockerbie bombing, the two Libyans [[Lamin Khalifah Fhimah]] and [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]] were charged with conspiracy to murder, murder and a breach of the Aviation Security Act 1982, Section 2. Their trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands began on 3 May 2000 with a bench of three Scottish Judges - Lords Coulsfield, MacLean and Sutherland (Lord Abernethy as an alternate) - sitting without a jury. Eight months later, the Crown said it intended dropping the charges of conspiracy and breach of aviation security and would be focusing on the charge of [[murder]]. On 31 January 2001, the Judges' verdict was announced: [[Lamin Khalifah Fhimah|Fhimah]] was found not guilty, [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi|Megrahi]] was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/493242.stm "Full wording of initial charges"]</ref>
−
"But the treaty had to do more than simply provide for jurisdiction of the Court. There are all the incidental matters which we perhaps take for granted but which are crucial to support any criminal justice system. We had to build a prison and the Dutch had to permit the Scottish authorities to hold the accused for trial. We had to provide for witnesses to be able to travel to the Court without fear that they might be arrested for some other outstanding matter by the Dutch. Scottish police officers had to have authority to protect the premises of the Court as well as the accused and other Court officials. We had to provide that they could carry firearms within the Court premises but ensure that everyone was clear as to the limits of their powers and jurisdiction. We had to allow for access to the Court by prosecutors and defence counsel and the inviolability of Court documents. Provision was made exempting the Court from Dutch taxes including as it happened, and to the delight of the media, taxes on alcohol. Sadly for them this provision was not used.
 
−
 
 
−
"Before the treaty had been finalised however we had sufficient agreement between the parties for Britain and the United States to jointly announce that they would agree to a trial of the two accused in the Netherlands before a Scottish Court sitting without a jury. That announcement was made on 24th August 1998. Three days later, the Security Council passed UN resolution 1192 welcoming the initiative and calling on the Dutch and British Governments to take such steps as were necessary to enable the Court to be established. That was important since it allowed Britain to pass the amending legislation by Order in Council under the United Nations Act 1946. The Dutch could similarly amend their law by secondary legislation. The Order in Council was in fact signed by the Queen, as the Order records and by a strange irony, at Heathrow. She was on her way to the Far East.
 
−
 
−
"The UN resolution also required the Libyan Government to ensure the appearance in the Netherlands of the two accused and to ensure that any evidence or witnesses in Libya were upon request of the Court, promptly made available to the Court. Again this was of crucial importance since Libya was not only required to hand over the two men but also such evidence as it may have at the Court's request. This was used to obtain certain documents from Libya and to require that police officers and prosecutors could go to Libya to see witnesses.
 
−
 
−
"[[Megrahi]] and Fhimah were handed over to the Dutch on 5th April 1999. They waived their right to contest the request for extradition and were handed on to Scottish police officers at Camp Zeist the same day. They were formally arrested and appeared in Court the following day. That was the point at which we knew for sure that we had a prosecution. Many had been sceptical up to that point. There was a feeling in some quarters that we were going through this exercise as part of a diplomatic game. If Libya failed to produce the two men we could say to the rest of the world: 'We did as you asked. We offered them a trial in a third country and they have still not produced them. Far from ditching sanctions you should renew them and pursue them with increased vigour.'
 
−
 
 
−
"Perhaps I was happily naive of the diplomatic niceties but I was confident that they would be handed over for trial. To me Libya had been cornered and she could not afford to affront friends such as South Africa and Saudi Arabia. Whether you were an optimist or pessimist fortunately all agreed after the announcement in August 1998 that we should now prepare for trial. We assembled a team of Counsel and of [[Procurator Fiscal]] staff. In Scotland the prosecution undertook an investigative process of its own independently of the police, known as precognition. Precognition involves the Fiscal or a paralegal, known as a Precognition Officer in seeing all the major witnesses and interviewing them. That is taken down in writing as a precognition. That, and not the statements taken by police officers, is used to enable Crown Counsel to decide whether to indict the accused, whether to direct the police or Fiscal to undertake further inquiries and to prepare for Court.
 
−
 
−
"In this case given the scale of the exercise we established a core team consisting of the 2 senior Counsel, Alastair Campbell QC, who led the prosecution in court and Alan Turnbull QC and Fiscal staff led by Norman McFadyen with Jim Brisbane and John Dunn. John Logue joined the team shortly after. The team was chaired by me as Solicitor General and met on a weekly basis right through from October 1998 until near the start of the trial itself in about January 2000. The purpose was to direct the precognition process and to take strategic decisions in connection with the case. Beyond the team were 2 junior counsel who were instructed to work full time from May 1999 after the hand over of the men and seven Fiscal staff prosecutors all of whom were directed to work on discreet areas of evidence.
 
−
 
 
−
"We also had to work closely with the police. Very helpfully Dumfries and Galloway police established an office in Edinburgh just a few doors along from the [[Crown Office]] where the core team was established. In May 1999 the police held an international conference of prosecutors and investigators in Dumfries to help secure the international co-operation that I referred to earlier. We held another similar exercise in Zeist in January 2000 to secure the co-operation of other countries in getting witnesses to come to Court.
 
−
 
−
"During the trial there was criticism of my decision to have Department of Justice attorneys sitting alongside the prosecution team in Court. That criticism is entirely misplaced and, to my mind, smacks of a certain jingoism. The truth is that this was an American plane on its way to the United States carrying mostly Americans. The United States had jurisdiction to try the case themselves and a clear interest in the outcome. Moreover the prosecution was as a result of the joint investigation by law enforcement agencies in both countries. They were contributing to the cost of the trial and were also taking the lead, through the Office for the Victims of Crime, in dealing with the families. The Department of Justice attorneys played a crucial role in assisting us with the evidence held by American agencies. I must confess to a certain apprehension at the beginning of the preparation of the case. I need not have worried. They offered us advice generally and at difficult times in the case gave us psychological support telling us how well we were doing and to keep at it. They became members of the team and firm friendships were established which will I believe endure long after the conclusion of the proceedings.
 
−
 
 
−
"On 31st January 2001, the Court convicted [[Megrahi]] of the murder of 270 people. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he serve at least 20 years before he is considered eligible for parole. The verdict found him guilty of 'being a member of the Libyan Intelligence Services' and 'while acting in concert with others, formed a criminal purpose to destroy a civil passenger aircraft and murder the occupants in furtherance of the purposes of the ... Libyan Intelligence Services'. Fhimah was acquitted. An appeal has been lodged with the Court in Edinburgh and leave has been given. There will be a procedural hearing at the Court in the Netherlands on 15th October 2001 and the appeal itself is likely to take place early next year.
 
−
 
 
−
"Some general statistics may assist in comprehending the scale of this trial. It commenced on 3rd May 2000. There were 84 court days and 230 witnesses gave evidence. The Crown listed 1160 witnesses, and called 227; the Defence 121, and called 3. The witnesses came from the UK, USA, Libya, Japan, Germany, Malta, Switzerland, Slovenia, Sweden, the Czech Republic, India, France and Singapore. The languages translated in court were Arabic, French, Czech, Japanese, Swedish, Maltese and German. There were 1867 documentary productions and 621 label productions or exhibits, the largest of which was an aircraft reconstruction. That was the only one not conveyed to the court. It remained at the Air Accident Investigation Branch premises at Farnborough in England.
 
−
 
 
−
"As it happens the decision to go for a trial in the Netherlands was less controversial than it might have been. It was not, however, without its critics and there were many on both sides of the Atlantic who had misgivings at the decision. For some politics had interfered with the due process of law. Two people accused of the most serious of crimes had been protected by their government to the point where we had to amend the law in order to accommodate groundless fears about their inability to receive a fair trial. Despite the apparent success of the trial this remains on the face of it a potent criticism and deserves an answer.
 
−
 
−
"For myself, I am satisfied that had we not agreed to a trial in a third country there would have been no trial. The families of the victims would still be waiting for some justice to be done. Anyone who has met the families and spent time with them will know what this trial has meant for them. They emphasise that it is not closure but for many there has come a sort of peace which had been denied them before the trial.
 
−
 
 
−
"While the interests of the families is itself I believe a good reason for agreeing to this trial there are also good reasons in principle why it was the right thing to do. We cannot shut our eyes to the political consequences not only of crimes themselves but also the results of crime. This crime was an act of terrorism committed to further the aims of an important arm of the Libyan regime.
 
−
 
 
−
"How far others outside the Libyan Intelligence Services in other parts of the Libyan Government might be involved I cannot say but the fact is that either directly or indirectly Libya, a nation state and member of the United Nations was implicated. Once that was established it become an international issue which could only be resolved through the United Nations. Two principles were I believe at stake. First, that justice should be done. Secondly, that the world should remain at peace. I strongly believe that by showing that we can bring to justice and prosecute individuals for the worst crimes even where a nation state may be implicated we have actually made the world a little safer. We have a strong belief in the rule of law. That should apply not only to individuals and to nations’ internal arrangements but also apply internationally. The Lockerbie trial was part of a growing international movement which has seen the establishment of War Crimes Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia and will soon see the creation of the International Criminal Court. With Lockerbie we established that where countries are prepared to be flexible in their criminal justice system and where there is international co-operation we can achieve justice.
 
−
 
 
−
"In conclusion, it seems to me to be absolutely right that the investigation of crime and the prosecutorial decisions which flow from that investigation must be taken independently of political influence. When we talk about political influence, however, we must be clear what it is that we are really objecting to. What we do not want is a situation where some crimes are investigated but others are not because it suits one party and not the other. Nor do we want a situation where decisions on whether to prosecute are taken for political reasons. That is corrupt and must not be allowed to happen. Nevertheless, there are also questions of public interest and of accountability.
 
−
 
 
−
"In the Lockerbie case, the public interest demanded that the crime should be investigated. Political action was necessary to secure the funding and allocation of resources. Political and diplomatic activity secured international co-operation and goodwill. Political and diplomatic action secured the trial. The investigation of the case and the prosecution of the trial were driven by the evidence.
 
−
 
 
−
"Early on we made an important decision. The prosecution would, so far as possible, be conducted in exactly the same way as any other prosecution in Scotland. We did not know any other way of doing it. So the ethics and values which were applied by the prosecution were the same as in any other trial. Despite the political nature of the appointment of the [[Lord Advocate]], the independence of the prosecutor is deeply ingrained in Scotland. That independence was observed and respected in the Lockerbie case but we were always alive to the need to use diplomatic and political efforts to secure justice. The public interest demanded no less from us.
 
−
 
−
[[Colin Boyd]] QC
 
−
28th August 2001
 
−
 
 
−
==Lockerbie: [[Nelson Mandela]] and [[Dr John Cameron]]'s report==
 
−
[[File:Dr_John_Cameron.jpg|250px|right|thumb|Dr John Cameron, physicist and former Church of Scotland minister]]
 
−
Following a request in 2003 by [[Nelson Mandela]], [[Dr John Cameron]] conducted a scientific examination of the forensic evidence which convicted [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]] and produced a highly critical report on the Lockerbie bombing trial.<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4453168801559&l=a92a2892d4 "Lockerbie: Mandela and Dr John Cameron's Report"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
The first official call for the release of [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]] was made by Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland the Rt Rev Professor Iain Torrance. At the beginning of 2003, former South African president [[Nelson Mandela]] had asked for the intervention of the Western Christian churches in what he described as "a clear miscarriage of justice". This led to the production of a highly critical report of the scientific and forensic evidence presented at the original trial by the Church of Scotland's leading scientist Dr [[John Urquhart Cameron]], who said:
 
−
:"[[Nelson Mandela]] decided to look at the evidence because he said there was a big problem with the forensic and that this was a miscarriage of justice. [[Mandela]] was a lawyer. He approached the Scottish Church and asked them to look into this, and I wrote a 4000-word report."<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oVVmt1W-6U "Extract from Al Jazeera film 'Lockerbie: The Pan Am Bomber?' (20’25’’)]</ref>
 
−
:[[Dr Cameron]] continued:
 
−
:"I first became involved in the Lockerbie case when [[Nelson Mandela]] asked the Church of Scotland to support his efforts to have [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]]'s conviction overturned.
 
−
:"As an experienced lawyer, [[Mandela]] studied the transcripts and decided there had been a miscarriage of justice, pointing especially to serious problems with the forensic evidence. I was the only research physicist among the clergy and was the obvious person to review the evidence to produce a technical report which might be understood by the Kirk.
 
−
:"Scientists always select the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest assumptions to eliminate complicated constructions and keep theories grounded in the laws of science. This is 'Occam's razor' and from the outset the theory that the bomb entered the system in Malta as unaccompanied baggage and rattled around Europe seemed quite mad. I contacted everyone I knew in aviation and they all were of the opinion it was placed on board at the notoriously insecure Heathrow and that the trigger had to be barometric.
 
−
:"The Maltese link is so tenuous, complex and full of assumptions it depends almost totally upon the integrity of the three forensic scientists involved – and that was a big problem. [[Megrahi]] is the only person convicted on their evidence whose conviction was not reversed on appeal.
 
−
:"One of the UK's foremost criminal lawyers, Michael Mansfield, has long warned against our judiciary's gross over-reliance on forensic evidence to secure convictions. He said: 'Forensic science is not immutable and the biggest mistake anyone can make is to believe its practioners are somehow beyond reproach. Some of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history have come from cases in which the forensic science was later shown to have been grossly misleading.'
 
−
:"There is, in fact, a kind of 'canteen culture' in forensic science which encourages officers to see themselves as part of the prosecuting team rather than seekers after truth. The scientific evidence points to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine whose chief bomb-maker, Marwan Khreesat, was arrested in Frankfurt in December 1988.
 
−
:"In the boot of his car was a Toshiba cassette recorder identical to the one found later at Lockerbie with Semtex moulded inside it, a simple time delay and a barometric switch."<ref>[http://www.scottishreview.net/JohnCameron237.shtml "We should beware forensic evidence to secure convictions"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
===Comment in ''The Guardian''===
 
−
A comment by "Marchmont" in ''The Guardian'' of 14 August 2009:
 
−
:I saw a report the other day circulating in the Church of Scotland. Evidently in the summer of 2003, the Moderator of the General Assembly, the Rt Rev Iain Torrance, now the Principal of the Theological Seminary at Princeton University, asked his friend the Rev [[Dr John Cameron]], a professional Physicist and the leading scientist among the Scottish clergy, to study the technical aspects of the Lockerbie trial. Torrance had heard many misgivings about a possible miscarriage of justice in particular from [[Robert Black]] QC and [[Dr Jim Swire]]. He also was disturbed that the UN observer, Dr [[Hans Köchler]], had dismissed the verdict of out of hand.
 
−
:In his report, [[Dr Cameron]] cast severe doubt on the credibility of the three key forensic scientists used by the prosecution during the trial of [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]]. In particular, he concluded that [[Alan Feraday]] should simply not be allowed to present himself as an expert in the field of electronics (a view later endorsed by the Lord Chief Justice in 2005). Virtually all defendants against whom [[Alan Feraday|Feraday]] had given evidence in other trials have had their convictions quashed because of the inadequacy of his submissions.
 
−
: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 his forensic science.
 
−
:The third scientific "expert" was the [[FBI]]'s [[Thomas Thurman]] who identified the fragment of circuit board as part of a sophisticated timer device used to detonate explosives and as manufactured by Swiss firm [[MEBO]], which supplied the component only to Libya and the East German Stasi. This claim has since been proved to be completely untrue. [[Thomas Thurman|Thurman]] also has a bad track record in the USA for doctoring scientific reports to help the prosecution and again convictions based on his evidence have subsequently been quashed. Lockerbie remains as his sole "victory".
 
−
:[[Dr Cameron]] also received privately the opinion of his friend, Scottish Advocate Lord [[Peter Fraser]] who had run the prosecution, that the principal witness, Maltese shop-owner [[Tony Gauci]], was "not the full shilling" - an understatement which [[Dr Cameron]] later described as being of truly sublime dimensions. This opinion was subsequently given by Fraser to the ''Sunday Times''. Dr Cameron reported back to the Moderator that the conviction looked like a clear miscarriage of justice.
 
−
:Torrance, a personal friend of [[Tony Blair]] wrote to the PM suggesting that [[Megrahi]] be transferred back to Libya and the legal mess cleared up. At the very least, the transfer would be seen in the Islamic world as an enlightened act of Christian charity. [[Tony Blair|Blair]]'s reply clearly showed that he was in no position to do so and that the American government wanted closure. He insisted that the verdict would have to remain in place and [[Megrahi]] remain in Barlinnie Prison.<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/14/lockerbie-bombing-megrahi-appeal-libya "Lockerbie bombing: Still searching for truth"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
===Forensic report on the Lockerbie bombing===
 
−
This is the "Forensic report on the Lockerbie bombing" by [[Dr John Cameron]]:
 
−
 
 
−
The international success of Anthony Zuiker’s US television series "Crime Scene Investigation" (CSI) led to a wildly inflated view of the reliability of forensic science. From the start the American police cautioned that the series gave members of the public an inaccurate perception of how crimes were solved. Of course, forensic scientists loved the show and delighted in their enhanced reputation though what actually happens in the real world is markedly different.
 
−
 
 
−
One of the UK’s foremost criminal lawyers, Michael Mansfield has long warned against over-reliance on forensic evidence to secure convictions. He said:
 
−
:"Forensic science is not immutable and the biggest mistake that anyone can make is to believe that its practitioners are somehow beyond reproach. Some of the worst miscarriages of justice in British legal history have come from cases in which the forensic science was later shown to have been grossly misleading. There is, in fact, a kind of 'canteen culture' in forensic science which encourages officers to see themselves as part of the prosecuting team rather than investigators seeking the truth."
 
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−
At first this did not seem to matter in the aftermath of the destruction [[Pan Am Flight 103]] over Lockerbie. It was quickly established by air accident investigators that there had been an explosion in the forward cargo hold in the baggage container AVE 4041. Fragments of a Samsonite suitcase which appeared to have contained the bomb were recovered, together with parts of a Toshiba Bombeat radio cassette recorder in which the bomb had been concealed. There were also items of clothing which looked as if they had also been in the case. At this stage the forensic evidence appeared robust and no credible doubt has been raised in the years since the event that this was the method by which the plane was destroyed.
 
−
 
 
−
The police discovered that the baggage container AVE 4041 had been loaded with interline baggage at Heathrow. The baggage had been x-rayed by Sulkash Kamboj of Alert Security; an affiliate company of Pan Am. John Bedford, a loader-driver employed by Pan Am told police that he had placed a number of cases in the container before leaving for a tea break. When he returned he found an additional two cases had been added, one of which was a distinctive brown Samsonite case. Bedford said that Kamboj had told him he had added the two cases. When questioned by the police, Kamboj denied he had added the cases or told Bedford he had done so. This matter was only resolved at the trial when under cross examination Kamboj admitted that Bedford was telling the truth.
 
−
 
 
−
All the evidence at this stage pointed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC). Five weeks before Lockerbie, a PFLP-GC cell was apprehended in Germany. Haffez Dalkamoni, right-hand man to the group’s leader Ahmad Jibril, and the bomb-maker, Marwan Khreesat were arrested while visiting electrical shops in Frankfurt. In the boot of Dalkamoni’s car was a Toshiba cassette recorder with Semtex moulded inside it, a simple time delay switch and a barometric switch. Under German police interrogation, Dalkamoni admitted he had supervised Khreesat when he built bombs into a Toshiba radio cassette player, two radio tuners and a TV monitor. He also admitted that Khreesat had built other bombs including a second Toshiba containing similar pressure switches but he claimed to have no knowledge of its whereabouts.
 
−
 
 
−
The involvement of the PFLP-GC was consistent with what was assumed at the time to be the motive for the Pan Am atrocity. In July 1988 [[Iran Air Flight 655]], a passenger jet containing some 300 Iranian pilgrims, had been shot down over the Persian Gulf by the renegade US battlecruiser Vincennes. Not only did America refuse to apologise, the captain of the ship and his gunnery officer were decorated for their actions. This crass behaviour caused outrage within Iran and throughout the Middle East. Tehran Radio condemned the attack as an act of naked aggression and announced it would be avenged "in blood-splattered skies".
 
−
 
 
−
Soon the US Air Force Command was issuing warnings to its civilian contractors:
 
−
:"We believe Iran will strike back in a tit for tat fashion with mass casualties."
 
−
Later warnings were more specific:
 
−
:"We believe Europe is the likely target for a retaliatory attack due to the large concentration of Americans and the established terrorist infrastructures in place throughout Europe."
 
−
 
 
−
Within weeks the [[CIA]] reported that Ahmad Jibril, the leader of the PFLP-GC had met government officials in Iran and offered his services. Interpol circulated warnings about the PFLP-GC bombs to all European airports. Heathrow Airport issued its own warning to security staff, stating that it was
 
−
:"imperative that when screening or searching radios, radio cassette players and other electrical equipment, staff remain extra vigilant."
 
  
−
After the arrest of the PFLP-GC cell Heathrow received more information, including photographs of the Toshiba bomb from the German authorities. In the aftermath of Lockerbie, all the Toshiba cassette bombs seized by the Germans were tested and found to run for 30 minutes after they were set. The advantage of the barometric timer employed is that it is not activated until the plane is airborne so the bomb will not go off on the ground if the flight is delayed. Some seven or eight minutes will elapse as the aircraft gains height and the air pressure drops enough to activate a barometric timer set to go off 30 minutes later, i.e. 37 or 38 minutes after the flight took off. It was precisely 38 minutes after [[Pan Am Flight 103]] took off from Heathrow on 21 December 1988 that it exploded over Lockerbie.
+
==The Appeal==
 +
The Defence team had 14 days in which to appeal against [[Megrahi]]'s conviction, and an additional six weeks to submit the full grounds of the appeal. These were considered by a Judge sitting in private who decided to grant [[Megrahi]] leave to appeal. The only basis for an appeal under Scots law is that there has been a "miscarriage of justice," which is not defined in statute and so it is for the appeal court to determine the meaning of these words in each case.<ref>''[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1764532.stm "14 days to launch appeal"]''</ref> Because three Judges and one alternate Judge had presided over the trial, five Judges were required to preside over the Court of Criminal Appeal:
  
−
The clothing thought to have been in the suitcase with the bomb contained labels which allowed the items to be traced to a shop in Malta. A member of Dalkamoni’s cell, Abu Talb, who was then awaiting trial for separate offences in Sweden, was known to have visited Malta shortly before the atrocity. When first questioned the owner of the shop, [[Tony Gauci]], described the purchaser of the clothes as a dark-skinned, 50 year old man over six feet in height – which fitted Abu Talb – and identified him from a photograph.
+
* Lord Cullen, Lord Justice-General
 +
* Lord Kirkwood
 +
* Lord Osborne
 +
* Lord Macfadyen and
 +
* Lord Nimmo Smith
  
−
The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) issued a memo on September 24th, 1989 which stated:
+
In what was described as a milestone in Scottish legal history, Lord Cullen granted the [[BBC]] permission in January 2002 to televise the appeal, and to broadcast it on the Internet in English with a simultaneous Arabic translation.
−
:"The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, Iran’s former interior minister. The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmad Jibril, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command leader, for a sum of $1m. $100,000 of this money was given to Jibril up front in Damascus by the Iranian ambassador to Syria, Muhammad Hussan Akhari for initial expenses. The remainder of the money was to be paid after successful completion of the mission."
 
  
−
A DIA briefing in December 1989 entitled "Pan Am 103, Deadly Co-operation" confirmed the American belief that Iran was the state sponsor of the bombing. It claimed that the PFLP-GC was "fast becoming an Iranian proxy" and that the destruction of [[Pan Am Flight 103]] to avenge the shooting down of the [[Iran Air 655]] airbus was the result of such Iranian and PFLP-GC co-operation. It specifically discounted Libya’s involvement in the bombing on the basis that there was "no current credible intelligence" implicating her. It stated:
+
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Taylor_(lawyer) William Taylor QC,] leading the Defence, said at the appeal's opening on 23 January 2002 that the three trial Judges sitting without a jury had failed to see the relevance of "significant" evidence and had accepted unreliable facts. He argued that the verdict was not one that a reasonable jury in an ordinary trial could have reached if it were given proper directions by the Judge. The grounds of the appeal rested on two areas of evidence where the Defence claimed the original court was mistaken: the evidence of Maltese shopkeeper, [[Tony Gauci]], which the Judges accepted as sufficient to prove that the "primary suitcase" started its journey in Malta; and, disputing the Crown's case, fresh evidence would be adduced to show that the bomb's journey actually started at Heathrow. That evidence, which was not heard at the trial, showed that at some time in the two hours before 00:35 on 21 December 1988 a padlock had been forced on a secure door giving access air side in Terminal 3 of Heathrow airport, near to the area referred to at the trial as the "baggage build-up area". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Taylor_(lawyer) Taylor] claimed that the PA 103 bomb could have been planted then.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/1778449.stm "Grounds of appeal"]</ref>
−
:"Following a brief increase in anti-US terrorist attacks after the US airstrike on Libya in 1986, [[Gaddafi]] has made an effort to distance Libya from terrorist attacks."
 
  
−
Then, in August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait thereby putting at risk the stability of the Saudi and Gulf sheikhdoms on which the West depended to preserve the status quo in the region. A sudden shift of alliances was necessary. If Iraq was to be confronted, then Iran had to be treated with kid gloves and the Syrian regime must be brought on board. At the beginning of 1991 Syrians joined Western troops in the attack on Saddam’s invading army and the increasingly isolated [[Colonel Gaddafi]] gradually became the chief suspect on the Lockerbie bombing.
+
On 14 March 2002, it took Lord Cullen less than three minutes to deliver the decision of the High Court of Judiciary. The five Judges rejected the appeal, ruling unanimously that "none of the grounds of appeal was well-founded", adding "this brings proceedings to an end". The following day, a helicopter took [[Megrahi]] from Camp Zeist to continue his life sentence in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow.
  
−
As a result of the change in overall narrative and the fact that there had been absolutely no Libyan activity in London, interest in Heathrow as the scene of the bomb planting suddenly ceased. Now the Maltese connection became crucial. Heretofore it had simply been assumed the clothes were purchased at a Maltese tourist shop in preference to the more regulated shops of Frankfurt or London. But there was a long standing connection between Malta and Libya which survived all the twists and turns of international diplomacy. In particular, it was one of the key conduits through which essential supplies could be transferred to Tripoli when [[Gaddafi]]’s behaviour had provoked yet another set of sanctions being imposed on his country.
+
==2nd Appeal==
 +
[[Megrahi]]'s second appeal was to have been heard by five Scottish judges in 2009 at the Court of Criminal Appeal. A procedural hearing at the Appeal Court in [[Edinburgh]] took place on 11 October 2007 when prosecution lawyers and [[Megrahi]]'s defence Counsel, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Scott,_Lady_Scott Maggie Scott QC,] discussed legal issues with a panel of three judges.<ref>''[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7037821.stm "Lockerbie bomber in fresh appeal"]''</ref> One of the issues concerns a number of [[CIA]] documents that were shown to the prosecution but were not disclosed to the defence. The documents are understood to relate to the [[MEBO]] [[MST-13 Timer]] that allegedly detonated the PA103 bomb.<ref>''[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7023397.stm "'Secret' Lockerbie report claim"]''</ref> Further procedural hearings were scheduled to take place between December 2007 and June 2008.<ref>''[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/7422010.stm "Lockerbie documents security plea"]''</ref>
  
−
The purchaser of the clothes in Tony Gauci’s shop in Malta now magically morphed from a non-Libyan giant in late middle age to a youthful, 5’ 7” tall Libyan in his mid-thirties. His name, it appeared was [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]], head of security for Libyan Airlines. Educated in the USA and Britain, he was also director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tripoli. A cosmopolitan figure with a wide range of international contacts it was rumoured that he was used by Libya to import essentials during periods of sanctions. The claim that he had suddenly changed into a terrorist bomber was met with derision at home and abroad. The idea that he and his colleague Khalifah Fhimah, the station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa Airport in Malta, had somehow secreted an unaccompanied suit case onto flight KM180 was thought to be absurd.
+
Pointing out an error on the [[Foreign and Commonwealth Office|FCO]]'s website and accusing the British government of "delaying tactics" in relation to [[Megrahi]]'s second Lockerbie appeal, UN Observer at the [[Pan Am Flight 103/The Trial|Lockerbie trial]], [[Hans Köchler]], wrote to Foreign Secretary [[David Miliband]] on 21 July 2008 saying:<ref>International Progress Organization, Vienna, News Release, 21 July 2008 [http://i-p-o.org/ipo-nr-21July2008-lockerbie_appeal.htm]</ref>
  
−
The Maltese police also protested that this was a most unlikely scenario. They had questioned the senior airport baggage loader who was adamant that he always double-counted his luggage: once when it was finally gathered and again as it was physically loaded onto the plane. This extremely reliable official was absolutely certain that there were no unaccompanied cases in the luggage that he counted on to the flight. In fact, not only was there no evidence that the bomb had been put on board in Malta, but Air Malta had won a libel action in 1993 establishing that it was not!
+
<blockquote>As international observer, appointed by the [[United Nations]], at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands I am also concerned about the [[Public Interest Immunity]] (PII) certificate which has been issued by you in connection with the new Appeal of the convicted Libyan national. Withholding of evidence from the Defence was one of the reasons why the [[Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission]] has referred Mr Al-Megrahi’s case back to the High Court of Justiciary. The Appeal cannot go ahead if the Government of the United Kingdom, through the PII certificate issued by you, denies the Defence the right (also guaranteed under the [[European Convention on Human Rights]]) to have access to a document which is in the possession of the Prosecution. How can there be equality of arms in such a situation? How can the independence of the judiciary be upheld if the executive power interferes into the appeal process in such a way?</blockquote>
  
−
The theory that the bomb entered the system in Malta as a piece of unaccompanied baggage and rattled around Europe before finding its way onto [[Pan Am 103]] in London was widely ridiculed. The excellent screening at Frankfurt would have surely picked it up or, if not, it could well have been lost on the twilight zone of European baggage handling. But the greatest problem lay with the barometric trigger which would have caused flight KM180 to explode 38 minutes into the first leg to Frankfurt. This was the moment when the forensic scientists stepped up to the plate.
+
The [[FCO]] corrected the error on its website and wrote to Köchler on 27 August 2008:<ref>''[http://i-p-o.org/IPO-nr-Lockerbie-FCO-01Sept08.htm "Foreign Office letter to UN observer Dr. Hans Koechler"]''</ref><blockquote>"Ultimately, it will be for the Court to decide whether the material should be disclosed, not the Foreign Secretary."</blockquote>
  
−
The two British scientists involved in the Lockerbie case were the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment’s [[Alan Feraday]] and [[Thomas Hayes]]. Charred material found some weeks after the bombing in woods near Lockerbie in mysterious circumstances had been sent for analysis to explosives laboratory at Fort Halstead in Kent. According to his later testimony [[Thomas Hayes|Hayes]] teased out the cloth of one piece of the material, later identified as the neckband of a grey Slalom-brand shirt. Within it he found fragments of white paper, fragments of black plastic, a fragment of metal and a fragment of wire mesh—all subsequently found to be parts of a Toshiba RT-SF 16 and its manual. Hayes testified that he also found embedded a half-inch fragment of circuit board.
+
In September 2008, following an application made at a closed hearing of the Appeal Court in Edinburgh, it was reported that a security-vetted Defence Counsel is to be appointed to examine the disputed document. The court's decision on the application has not been published but in a letter seen by [[BBC Scotland]], FCO minister [[Kim Howells]] says it has decided to appoint a special defender. In a [[BBC]] interview, [[Hans Köchler]] criticised the development as "intolerable" and "detrimental to the rule of law." Köchler said:<ref>''[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/7622223.stm "Appeal court plans Lockerbie move"]''</ref><blockquote>"In no country can the situation be allowed where the accused or the appellant is not free to have his own defence team, and instead someone is imposed upon him."</blockquote>
  
−
The next reference to this famous circuit board fragment occurred when [[Alan Feraday]] sent a Polaroid photograph of it to the police officer leading the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector William Williamson, asking for help in identification. In June 1990, [[Alan Feraday|Feraday]] and DCI Williamson visited [[FBI]] headquarters in Washington and together with [[Thomas Thurman]], an FBI explosives expert, finally identified the fragment as being part of a timer circuit board.
+
On 15 October 2008, five Scottish judges decided unanimously to reject a submission by the Crown Office that the scope of [[Megrahi]]'s second appeal should be limited to the specific grounds of appeal that were identified by the [[SCCRC]] in June 2007.<ref>''[http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/opinions/2008HCJAC58.html "Judgment on the scope of Megrahi's second appeal"]''</ref> On 21 October 2008 [[Megrahi]]'s lawyer, revealed that his client had been diagnosed with "advanced stage" prostate cancer. Despite the appeals of [[Jim Swire]], that keeping [[Megrahi]] behind bars while he battled the disease "would amount to exquisite torture", the High Court ruled on 14 November 2008 that [[Megrahi]] should remain in jail while his appeal continued.<ref>''[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6236538.stm "Timeline: Lockerbie bombing"]''</ref> In an article published on 29 December 2008 award-winning journalist and author, [[Hugh Miles]], described the [[Pan Am Flight 103/The Trial|Lockerbie trial]] as an historic miscarriage of justice. The article concluded: "If [[Megrahi]] didn't do it, who did?"<ref>''[http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=1010&pageid=44&pagename=Slices "Lockerbie Trial is an Historic Miscarriage of Justice"]''</ref>
  
−
[[Thomas Thurman|Thurman]]’s involvement in identifying the fragment later proved highly controversial because in spite of his claim to be an "explosives forensic expert" he had no formal scientific qualifications whatsoever. He read politics at university and had somehow drifted into the [[FBI]] Labs. Worse was to follow when in 1997 the U.S. Inspector-General Michael Bromwich, issued a report stating that in other trials [[Thomas Thurman|Thurman]] had "circumvented procedures and protocols, testified to areas of expertise that he had no qualifications and fabricated evidence." Numerous defendants had to be released and [[Thomas Thurman|Thurman]] was fortunate not to be prosecuted himself. He was fired from the [[FBI]] labs and banned from acting as an expert witness in any other court case.
+
On 31 December 2008, [[Ludwig De Braeckeleer]] ended a 174-part series entitled "Diary of a Vengeance Foretold." The article alleges that [[Iran]] ordered the bombing of Pan Am 103 in revenge for the downing of [[Iran Air Flight 655]].<ref>''[http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3&no=384534&rel_no=1 "Tehran Hands Over the Remaining Funds to Jibril PFLP-GC]''</ref>
  
−
[[Thomas Thurman|Thurman]] could not therefore give evidence at the Lockerbie trial and the Crown’s case would be further damaged when the testimony of his UK counterpart, [[Alan Feraday]], was called into question. In three separate cases — where [[Alan Feraday|Feraday]] had been the expert witness — men against whom he gave evidence have had their convictions overturned. Like [[Thomas Thurman|Thurman]], [[Alan Feraday|Feraday]] was not actually a professional scientist and in 2005, after yet another successful appeal, the Chief Lord Justice said that "under no circumstances should [[Alan Feraday|Feraday]] be allowed to present himself as an expert witness in electronics."
+
In January 2009, it was reported that, although [[Megrahi]]'s second appeal against conviction was scheduled to begin on 27 April 2009, the hearing could last as long as 12 months because of the complexity of the case and volume of material to be examined.<ref>''[http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2481827.0.Secret_talks_on_deal_to_return_Megrahi_to_Libya.php "Secret talks on deal to return Megrahi to Libya"]''</ref>
  
−
By the time of the trial the career of [[Thomas Hayes]] was also over because a British Parliamentary inquiry had found he had conspired to withhold evidence in the notorious trial of the Maguire Seven. Sir John May had said:
+
On 18 August 2009, [[Megrahi]] dropped his appeal in light of his terminal prostate cancer.<ref>''[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/8205528.stm "Lockerbie bomber's appeal dropped"]''</ref>
−
:"The whole scientific basis on which the prosecution was founded was in truth so vitiated that on this basis alone the conviction should be set aside."
 
  
−
[[Thomas Hayes|Hayes]] jumped before he was pushed and by the time of the trial was working as a chiropodist.
+
==Media cover-up==
 +
{{FA|Lockerbie Bombing/Cover-up}}
 +
Within a few weeks of the December 1988 newspaper reports, [[Bernt Carlsson]]'s name would hardly ever be mentioned again by the {{ccm}} in the Lockerbie context. He rapidly became something of a "nonperson" whose death was never properly investigated. [[Patrick Haseldine]] alleges that [[Tiny Rowland]] recruited Emeritus Professor of Scots Law [[Robert Black]] to organise the British news blackout and that "for the past 20 years, Professor [[Robert Black]] has been suppressing the truth about the Lockerbie disaster".<ref>[https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3870955126581&l=5950a6622d "Blackout over Lockerbie"]</ref>
  
−
As the argument for a Maltese connection and Libyan involvement progressed the tiny fragment of circuit board became increasingly important. [[Thomas Thurman|Thurman]] now "indentified" it as part of a batch made by the Swiss manufacturer [[MEBO]] for the Libyan military. This was not the simple design thought to have been used in the [[Pan Am 103]] bombing but a complex type of long timer. [[Edwin Bollier]] later revealed that he declined an offer of $4 million by the [[FBI]] to testify that the fragment was indeed part of the [[MEBO]] MST-13 timer. Fortunately one of his employees, Ulrich Lumpert, was prevailed upon to do so at the trial though later, in a sworn affidavit, he would admit he had lied. The other co-owner of [[MEBO]], [[Erwin Meister]], confirmed that MST–13 timers had been sold to Libya and helpfully identified [[Megrahi]] as a "former business contact".
+
==Continuing Doubts==
 +
{{FA|Pan Am Flight 103/Continuing Doubts}}
 +
As of 2015, doubts about the justice of [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi|Megrahi]]'s conviction are more widespread than ever.
  
−
All the ducks were finally in a line and the Anglo-American authorities indicted the two Libyan suspects in November 1991. [[Gaddafi]] was then ordered to extradite them for trial in either the United Kingdom or the United States. Since no bilateral extradition treaty was in force between any of the three countries, he refused to hand the men over but did offer to detain them for trial in Libya, as long as all the incriminating evidence was provided. The offer was unacceptable to the US and UK, and there was an impasse for the next three years.
+
===Cameron's Report on Forensic Evidence===
−
 
+
{{FA|Cameron's Report on Lockerbie Forensic Evidence}}
−
In November 1994, President [[Nelson Mandela]] offered South Africa as a neutral venue for the trial but this was rejected by [[John Major]]. A further three years elapsed until [[Mandela]]’s offer was repeated to Major’s successor, [[Tony Blair]], when the president visited London in July 1997 and again at the 1997 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Edinburgh in October 1997. At the latter meeting, [[Mandela]] warned that "no one nation should be complainant, prosecutor and judge" in the Lockerbie case.
+
[[File:Dr_John_Cameron.jpg|300px|right|thumb|[[Dr John Cameron]], Church of Scotland's scientist]]
−
 
+
At the beginning of 2003, former South African president [[Nelson Mandela]] asked the Western Christian churches to intervene in what he termed "a clear miscarriage of justice", referring to the conviction of [[Megrahi]] at Camp Zeist. In July that year, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Rt Rev Professor Iain Torrance, took up the challenge and appointed the Church of Scotland's leading scientist Dr [[John Urquhart Cameron]] to conduct a scientific examination of all the forensic evidence which had convicted Megrahi. As a result, Cameron produced a damning report on the conduct of the forensic experts and on the evidence presented to the trial.<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4453168801559&l=a92a2892d4 "Lockerbie: Mandela and Dr John Cameron's Report"]</ref>
−
A compromise solution was eventually engineered by the legal academic [[Professor Robert Black]] of Edinburgh University of a trial in the Netherlands governed by Scots law. Since this was in accordance with the New Labour government’s promotion of an "ethical" foreign policy, it was given political impetus by the then foreign secretary, [[Robin Cook]]. A special High Court of Justiciary was set up in a disused United States Air Force base called Camp Zeist in Utrecht.
 
−
 
 
−
In recent years no forensic-based case has caused greater concern than the Lockerbie trial and the prosecution has been widely accused of using the tactics of disinformation. The lead prosecutor was the highly controversial Lord Advocate, [[Colin Boyd|Colin (later Baron) Boyd]] who three years before had prosecuted [[Shirley McKie|DC McKie]] in another forensic disaster. The policewoman denied an accusation by Scottish Criminal Record Office (SCRO) fingerprint officers that she left her thumb print at a murder scene in January 1997. She was arrested in March 1998, charged with perjury but at her trial in May 1999 the SCRO fingerprint evidence was rejected out of hand and she was acquitted.
 
−
 
 
−
A senior Scottish police officer, James Mackay QPM, was appointed by the Crown Office to investigate the matter and he submitted his report to [[Colin Boyd|Boyd]] in October 2000. It found that the actions of the SCRO personnel amounted to "collective manipulation and collusion" and four of them were immediately suspended by the SCRO. With the Lockerbie trial in full swing [[Colin Boyd|Boyd]] was obviously reluctant to prosecute the officers involved and to great public indignation he allowed them to be reinstated. It would clearly have damaged his fragile case in the Lockerbie trial to have four of Scotland’s forensic scientists prosecuted for covering up acts of criminality. The finger-print scandal was only resolved in 2006 when the policewoman was awarded £750,000 compensation and [[Colin Boyd|Boyd]] was rightly forced to resign as [[Lord Advocate]].
 
−
 
 
−
There were profound inconsistencies in much of the evidence presented to the trial. For instance, the entry of the discovery of the timer fragment was recorded at widely different times by UK and German investigators. The German police files indicate that fragments of the bomb timer were found on the shirt in January 1990. So the shirt collar could hardly have been examined nor the items of evidence extracted on 12 May 1989 as was claimed by [[Thomas Hayes|Hayes]] at the trial. German documents also contain photographs showing a piece of the shirt with most of the breast pocket undamaged but the images presented to the trial were different.
 
−
 
 
−
It is also disconcerting that an additional page was inserted into the evidence log detailing the discovery of the Slalom shirt with particles of the bomb timer on it. The record of the discovery was inserted into a loose-leaf folder with the five subsequent pages re-numbered by hand – a procedure for which the scientist could offer no explanation at the trial. The prosecution’s evidence looked at times like a co-coordinated effort to mislead the court. Yet the Judges helpfully concluded that the compromised evidence log did not matter because "each item that was examined had the date of examination incorporated into the notes."
 
−
 
 
−
During the trial, [[MEBO]] engineer Ulrich Lumpert – whose evidence was crucial in connecting the famous fragment to the Libyan batch – caused consternation by adding that the fragment on display belonged to a timer that had never been connected to a relay i.e. had not triggered a bomb. This claim could not be countered by the prosecution because [[Thomas Hayes|Hayes]] had inexplicably not thought it necessary to test the tiny timer fragment for explosive residue. However, given their conduct of the trial it came as no surprise that the three Scottish judges were untroubled by what should have been a disaster for the prosecution.
 
−
 
 
−
The lead judge was the veteran Lord Sutherland accompanied by an inveterate tribunal chairman, Lord Coulsfield, and the sentencing and parole expert Lord MacLean. They admitted the uncertainties in the testimony and the dangers inherent in "selecting parts of the evidence which seem to fit together and ignoring parts which do not fit". They also admitted it was possible they were "reading into a mass of conflicting evidence a pattern and conclusion which was not really justified" but ploughed on regardless.
 
−
 
 
−
In the end, the judges accepted that the absence of a credible explanation of how the suitcase was placed into the system at Luqa airport was "a major difficulty for the Crown case". However they still managed to convince themselves that this was indeed what had happened. "When the evidence regarding the clothing, the purchaser and the timer is taken with the evidence that an unaccompanied bag was taken from KM180 to PA103A, the inference that that was the primary suitcase becomes, in our view, irresistible." This statement was met with derision in Scotland and rightly dismissed as "inference piled upon inference".
 
−
 
 
−
The judges further accepted that the PFLP-GC were also engaged in terrorist activities during the same period but found "no evidence from which we could infer that they were involved in this particular act of terrorism, and the evidence relating to their activities does not create a reasonable doubt in our minds about the Libyan origin of this crime."
 
−
 
 
−
If most observers found this a very odd way of looking at the evidence, the final decisions of the judges provoked utter consternation. It appeared beyond any shadow of a doubt that the two accused were either both guilty or both not guilty but the Law Lords managed to find clear blue water between them. The judges were unanimous in finding the second accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, not guilty of the murder charge. He was freed and he returned to Libya on 1 February 2001.
 
−
 
 
−
As for [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]] the judges said:
 
−
:"There is nothing in the evidence which leaves us with any reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the first accused, and accordingly we find him guilty of the remaining charge in the indictment."
 
−
 
 
−
[[Megrahi]] was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he should serve at least 20 years before being eligible for parole.
 
−
 
 
−
Huge doubts remain about the prosecution’s case and the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) in 2007 found prima facie evidence of a miscarriage of justice. It is clear from their report that the unreliability of the prosecution’s key witness [[Tony Gauci]] was one of the main reasons for the referral of [[Megrahi]]’s case back to the Appeal Court. [[Tony Gauci|Gauci]] had been interviewed 17 times by Scottish and Maltese police during which he gave a series of inconclusive statements and there was evidence that leading questions had been put to him. [[Tony Gauci|Gauci]] was clearly not the "full shilling" as [[Lord Fraser]], Scotland’s senior law officer during the investigation, had admitted. And yet he was not entirely stupid. The Americans paid him $2 million for his revised identification and he now resides in comfortable obscurity in Malta.
 
−
 
 
−
The review commission also discovered that the prosecution failed to disclose a document from a foreign power which confirmed beyond any shadow of a doubt that the bomb timer was supplied to countries other than Libya. This document, passed to the commission by the foreign power in question, contained considerable detail about the method used to conceal the bomb and linked it to the PFLP-GC, the first suspects in the investigation. Moreover, the Iranian defector Abolghasem Mesbahi, who provided intelligence for the Germans, had already told the prosecutors in 1996 that the bombing been ordered by Tehran, not Tripoli.
 
−
 
 
−
Scientists generally recommend selecting the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest assumptions. Known as Occam’s razor, we use it to cut out crazy, complicated constructions and to keep theories grounded in the laws of science. The Maltese evidence linking [[Megrahi]] to the atrocity is so fragile, so complex and so full of unsupported assumptions it depends almost totally upon the integrity of the forensic scientists. It is therefore unfortunate that it would be difficult to find three more disreputable practitioners than [[Thomas Thurman|Thurman]], [[Thomas Hayes|Hayes]] and [[Alan Feraday|Feraday]]. It should be a matter of deep concern that Megrahi is the only man convicted on the evidence of these three individuals whose conviction was not reversed on appeal.
 
−
 
 
−
There is also no credible evidence that the clothes from [[Tony Gauci]]’s shop found among the Lockerbie wreckage were really bought on the day stated in the trial. The sale seemed much more likely to have happened on a day when Abu Talb was on Malta and [[Megrahi]] definitely was not. It is also known that when the Swedish police arrested Abu Talb for a different terrorist offence they found some of the same batch of clothing in his flat in Uppsala. No explanation for that was forthcoming at the trial.
 
−
 
 
−
Finally, the behaviour of the chief prosecutor [[Colin Boyd]], both in concealing the nefarious activity of his forensic scientists and withholding essential evidence from the defence, is utterly reprehensible. Together with lack of moral fibre shown by Lord Cullen and the Court of Criminal Appeal it has left a permanent stain on the reputation of the entire Scottish legal system.<ref>[http://jucameron.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/forensic-report-on-the-lockerbie-bombing/ "Forensic report on the Lockerbie bombing"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
==Background==
 
−
===Geopolitical considerations===
 
−
 
 
−
====At the time of the attack====
 
−
 
 
−
*UK-US relations with Libya were icy over alleged Libyan sponsorship of terrorism and its stubborn refusal to 'see things the West's way'.
 
−
*UK-US relations with Iran were slated for improvement following the cessation of the Iran Iraq war in which both sides had been armed by the West.
 
−
* On 3 July 1988 [[Iran Air Flight 655]], a civilian Airbus A300 airliner en-route from Bandar Abbas, Iran to Dubai, UAE was brought down by a missile fired by the US Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, with the loss of 290 lives. The US government claimed that the Airliner had been mistaken for an attacking F14 Tomcat fighter.
 
−
 
 
−
====At the time of the trial====
 
−
 
 
−
* UK-US relations with Libya were being 'normalised' following Libya's agreement to extradite al-Megrahi for trial and its abandonment of its allegedly belligerent stance over previously core issues of policy on trade, oil and support for groups antagonistic to Western interests. The accommodation resulted in the lifting of UN trade sanctions against Libya which had progressively paralyzed its economy over the preceding decade. 
 
−
* UK-US relations with Iran were close to all-time lows and deteriorating over the usual issues of Iranian refusal to 'see things the West's way'
 
−
 
 
−
==The Investigation==
 
−
 
 
−
===The people and organisations involved===
 
−
 
 
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{{AddSection}}
 
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−
===Investigation anomalies===
 
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−
{{AddSection}}
 
−
 
 
−
==The Trial==
 
−
 
 
−
*[http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/10/lockerbie-truth-is-finally-coming-out.html Lockerbie: The Truth is finally coming out.] - Post by Michael Meacher MP on his blog (since removed) and reposted on Robert Black's blog. It alleges bribery of the chief prosecution witness with the collusion of Strathclyde police and the US Authorities.
 
−
 
 
−
 
 
−
===Trial Anomalies===
 
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−
{{AddSection}}
 
−
 
 
−
===Personalities central to the investigation and prosecution case===
 
−
#'''[[Vincent Cannistraro]]'''  - CIA task force officer in the brutal 1980s Iran-Contra campaign. Deployed a training manual of invasion and killing of Nicaraguan citizens and officials.  Wrote "the anatomy of a lie" to cover up US government involvement in Nicaragua.  In 1986 was commissioned by the US President to "Destabilize Libya and destroy the Gaddafi regime".  Secretly worked to arm the Afghanistan Mujahadeen and Osama Bin Laden. His chief Admiral Poindexter chaired a top-level meeting - to which Cannistraro had access - to discuss the manufacture of evidence to destabilize the government of Yemen. Head of the CIA Lockerbie team, but did not attend the trial to give evidence.
 
−
#'''[[Thomas Thurman]]''' - FBI Laboratory 'scientist'.
 
−
#'''[[Alan Feraday]]''' - Former head of the forensic laboratory at Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) at Fort Halstead.
 
−
#'''[[Dr Thomas Hayes]]''' - Over the 1970s and early 1980s progressed to head the RARDE forensic laboratory. His testimony was central to the Lockerbie verdict. Yet he and two colleagues conspired to with-hold evidence from the 1974 alleged IRA Maguire Seven trial which would have indicated innocence. The Maguires were freed on appeal after fifteen years in jail. This matter was exposed in the Lockerbie trial, but the judges trusted Hayes' word implicitly.
 
−
 
 
−
==Two key elements in the al-Megrahi conviction==
 
−
# '''The identification of Al-Megrahi:'''  In an extraordinary development in 2005, Maltese shopkeeper Toni Gauci was exposed as an unreliable witness by the man who in 1991 indicted Megrahi, former Scottish Lord Advocate Peter Fraser.  In Fraser's words, Gauci was "an apple short of a picnic."  And yet the judges trusted Gauci's contradictory and confused evidence, and ignored the fact that Gauci was on a promise of a multi-million dollar reward if Al-Megrahi was convicted.  It is now documented and proven that Gauci was paid at least $2 million for his evidence, and his brother Paul $1 million.
 
−
#'''The alleged bomb timer fragment:'''  Was it planted to frame Libya for the crime? The fragment's label had been altered by unknown persons. And its finding and examination by Dr Thomas Hayes proved highly suspicious. A series of scientific tests in 2009 have proved that its survival two centimetres from the centre of a high explosive fireball was impossible.<Ref>[http://www.lockerbietruth.com/ The two key elements of al-Megrahi's conviction ]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
==Evidence withheld or not available at the time of the trial==
 
−
*'''Former CIA agent, Robert Baer, CIA Middle Eastern specialist''', worked on the early stages of the investigation. He has repeatedly claimed that, in 1989, there was  "Grade A intelligence" held by America to prove that Iran requested and paid for the Lockerbie bombing. If Baer is correct, then the bomb timer fragment which pointed to Libya must have been planted.
 
−
*'''Lord Peter Fraser, Scotland's Chief Law Officer during the investigation and indictments''', claimed in 1991 that witnesses would "prove the case beyond reasonable doubt."  In 2005 he admitted to journalists that his chief witness Gauci was highly unreliable. Then in 2008, when questioned by a Times journalist, Fraser indicated suspicions that key evidence might have been planted with the knowledge of the CIA.
 
−
*'''Shukri Ghanem, Libyan Prime Minister 2003 - 2006''', has said, on at least two occasions in radio and television interviews, that Libya was not responsible and it paid the $2.7 billion compensation with great reluctance and only "to buy peace and move forward."
 
−
 
 
−
==Post-Trial developments==
 
−
 
 
−
===Statement by UN Observer at the Trial===
 
−
On 23 August 2003, Dr [[Hans Koechler]], the United Nations Observer at the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands (2000-2002), released a "Statement on the agreement between the United States, the United Kingdom and the Libyan Jamahiriya on the remaining issues relating to the fulfilment of all Security Council resolutions resulting from the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie." The Statement concluded:
 
−
:"17. The chapter of the Lockerbie investigation can only be closed when the full truth will have been established and when the question will have been satisfactorily answered why only a lone individual has been sentenced in a case that relates to a terrorist crime the commission of which required a vast and sophisticated operational network (most likely involving more than one country and/or terrorist organisation) and huge financial resources. An ambiguous declaration of "state responsibility" such as the one deposited with the UN Security Council does in no way answer the urgent and legitimate question as to personal criminal responsibility of individuals other than [[Megrahi|Mr Al-Megrahi]] (and eventually also from other countries) for the Lockerbie crime. A political deal such as the one concluded last week between the US, UK and Libya linking individual compensation with the lifting of multilateral and subsequently unilateral sanctions does not advance the cause of justice in the present case, but is part of the politics of national interest of the countries involved in the present dispute. The intelligence cooperation established between the three countries since September 11, 2001, in the area of counter-terrorism must not come at the expense of the search for truth in the Lockerbie case. The doubts and misgivings about the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands will only disappear when a full investigation of the crime by an independent commission will have been undertaken. Up to this moment the undersigned will maintain his doubts about the Lockerbie verdict and will consider the judgment concerning [[Megrahi|Mr Al-Megrahi]] – on the basis of an Indictment that was substantially modified in the course of the trial and altered by the judges as part of the Verdict – as a miscarriage of justice."<ref>[http://www.i-p-o.org/Koechler-Lockerbie-statement-Aug2003.htm "Statement by Hans Koechler, UN Observer at the Lockerbie Trial"] 23 August 2003</ref>
 
  
 
===Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission===
 
===Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission===
−
On 23 September 2003 lawyers acting for [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]] applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) for a review of the case (both sentence and conviction), arguing that there had been a miscarriage of justice. On 1 November 2006, Megrahi was reported to have dropped his demand for the new appeal to be held at Camp Zeist.<ref>[http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=184&id=1613972006 "Appeal can be held in Edinburgh"]</ref> In an interview with ''The Scotsman'' newspaper of 31 January 2006, retired Scottish Judge Lord MacLean – one of the three who convicted [[Megrahi]] in 2001 – said he believed the SCCRC would return the case for a further appeal against conviction:
+
{{FA|Pan Am Flight 103/Continuing Doubts#Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission}}
−
:"They can't be working for two years without producing something with which to go to the court."
+
On 23 September 2003 lawyers acting for Megrahi applied to the [[Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission]] (SCCRC) for a review of the case (both sentence and conviction), arguing that there had been a miscarriage of justice. On 1 November 2006, Megrahi was reported to have dropped his demand for the new appeal to be held at Camp Zeist.<ref>[http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=184&id=1613972006 "Appeal can be held in Edinburgh"]</ref> After a four-year review the SCCRC concluded that there was evidence that a miscarriage of justice might have occurred, so Megrahi was granted leave to appeal against his conviction for a second time.<ref>[http://www.sccrc.org.uk/ViewFile.aspx?id=293 "SCCRC referral of Megrahi case"]</ref>
−
MacLean added that any new appeal would indicate the flexibility of Scots law, rather than a weakness:
 
−
:"It might even be the strength of the system – it is capable of looking at itself subsequently and determining a ground for appeal."
 
−
 
 
−
In January 2007, the SCCRC announced that it would issue its decision on Megrahi's case by the end of June 2007.<ref>[http://www.sccrc.org.uk/ViewFile.aspx?id=175 "SCCRC ruling by the end of June 2007"]</ref> On 9 June 2007 rumours of a possible prisoner swap deal involving Megrahi were strenuously denied by the then Prime Minister, [[Tony Blair]].<ref>[http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=904402007 "PM says no deal over Megrahi"]</ref> Later in June, ''The Observer'' confirmed the imminence of the SCCRC ruling and reported:
 
−
:"[[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]] never wavered in his denial of causing the Lockerbie disaster: now some Scottish legal experts say they believe him."<ref>[http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2104982,00.htm "Evidence that casts doubt on who brought down Flight 103"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
On 28 June 2007, the SCCRC concluded its four-year review and, having uncovered evidence that a miscarriage of justice could have occurred, the commission granted Megrahi leave to appeal against his Lockerbie bombing conviction for a second time.<ref>[http://www.sccrc.org.uk/ViewFile.aspx?id=293 "SCCRC referral of Megrahi case"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
In a statement dated 29 June 2007 Dr [[Hans Köchler]], international observer at the Lockerbie trial, expressed his surprise at the SCCRC's narrow focus and apparent bias towards the judicial establishment:
 
−
:"In giving exoneration to the police, prosecutors and forensic staff, I think they show their lack of independence. No officials to be blamed, simply a Maltese shopkeeper."<ref>[http://i-p-o.org/koechler-lockerbie-referral-29June2007.htm "Statement by Dr Hans Köchler"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
===Megrahi's release on compassionate grounds===
 
−
 
 
−
{{AddSection}}
 
  
−
==Alternative Possibilities==
+
{{FA|Abdelbaset al-Megrahi/Compassionate release}}
 +
On 20 August 2009, Megrahi was granted [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi/Compassionate release|compassionate release]], ''after'' having agreed to abandon his appeal. <!-- So, was a deal struck?? -->
  
−
===Iranian sponsored operation===
+
===Questions remain unanswered===
 +
How did one suitcase, which contained Semtex occupy a precise bottom-row location close to the edge of the aircraft’s hull? Seven containers were filled with luggage that came from Heathrow Terminal 3. An eighth container, marked AVE4041, was for baggage from a transfer flight from Frankfurt. No screening of the eighth container took place. One of the loading area staff in Heathrow initially told police he had noticed a single hard-shell suitcase already loaded at the bottom of AVE4041. This scenario was expected to be re-examined had a Scottish appeal court been allowed to test the conviction of [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]]. If the bomb in the suitcase was loaded at Heathrow, then Megrahi and the official account of the Libyan’s movements in Malta all begin to look unconnected. The Heathrow flight was also delayed, suggesting that if the bomb was loaded in Malta and on a timer, it should have exploded before it took off in London.
  
−
{{AddSection}}
+
Does it matter that such detail remains the subject of debate? It does. Because if you accept a porous account and decide that a weak explanation is better than no explanation, then whatever lessons you claim to have learned will be worthless. If the conviction of Megrahi was merely a convenient round-up of the Libyan bad guys, then the Scottish justice system (and, by implication, its British counterpart) are damaged by pragmatic injustice.
  
−
===CIA Involvement===
+
The failures of Lockerbie should serve as warning to the [[Metrojet Flight 9268]] investigation that will come in Egypt. The objective should be the truth. Anything less and all we will do is wait for the next “game-changer”.<ref>[http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/we-failed-to-learn-from-lockerbie-and-repeat-our-mistakes-at-peril-a6729156.html "We failed to learn from Lockerbie, and repeat our mistakes at peril"]</ref>
−
 
 
−
{{AddSection}}
 
  
 +
==Alternative Possibilities==
 
===South African Apartheid Regime===
 
===South African Apartheid Regime===
 
President [[P W Botha]] ruled apartheid South Africa between 1978 and 1989 and was responsible for gross human rights violations, including all the violence that was sanctioned by the [[State Security Council]] (SSC), an executive organ of his apartheid regime. Such violence included using torture, abduction, arson and sabotage, and murdering those opposed to apartheid.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/10/98/truth_and_reconciliation/203927.stm "South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission"]</ref> An [[SSC]] subcommittee, chaired by 'superspy' Major [[Craig Williamson]], targeted anti-apartheid groups and individuals.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl3ctNqA2So "Interview with SA 'superspy' Craig Williamson"]</ref>
 
President [[P W Botha]] ruled apartheid South Africa between 1978 and 1989 and was responsible for gross human rights violations, including all the violence that was sanctioned by the [[State Security Council]] (SSC), an executive organ of his apartheid regime. Such violence included using torture, abduction, arson and sabotage, and murdering those opposed to apartheid.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/10/98/truth_and_reconciliation/203927.stm "South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission"]</ref> An [[SSC]] subcommittee, chaired by 'superspy' Major [[Craig Williamson]], targeted anti-apartheid groups and individuals.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl3ctNqA2So "Interview with SA 'superspy' Craig Williamson"]</ref>
  
−
====From Chequers to Lockerbie====
+
===From Chequers to Lockerbie===
 
The distance by road from Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country residence in Buckinghamshire, to the site in Scotland of the Pan Am Flight 103 crash on 21 December 1988 is 310 miles. It took more than 4½ years for President [[P W Botha]] to complete his murderous journey from meeting [[Margaret Thatcher]] at Chequers on 2 June 1984 to the sabotage at Lockerbie.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/78591.stm "Botha 'linked to murder decisions'"]</ref>
 
The distance by road from Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country residence in Buckinghamshire, to the site in Scotland of the Pan Am Flight 103 crash on 21 December 1988 is 310 miles. It took more than 4½ years for President [[P W Botha]] to complete his murderous journey from meeting [[Margaret Thatcher]] at Chequers on 2 June 1984 to the sabotage at Lockerbie.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/78591.stm "Botha 'linked to murder decisions'"]</ref>
  
 
The full article "From Chequers to Lockerbie" by [[Patrick Haseldine]] can be read [http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4337747316094&l=786b251874 here].
 
The full article "From Chequers to Lockerbie" by [[Patrick Haseldine]] can be read [http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4337747316094&l=786b251874 here].
  
−
==Highest profile [[Pan Am Flight 103]] victim==
+
===Ayatollah's Vengeance Exacted by Botha's Regime===
−
[[File:Bernt_Carlsson_3.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations and UN Commissioner for Namibia, [[Bernt Carlsson]] ]]
+
[[File:Iran_Air_Flight_655.jpg|300px|right|thumb|[[Iran Air Flight 655]]'s destruction depicted on an Iranian postage stamp]]
−
Newspaper reports quickly identified [[Bernt Carlsson]] as the highest profile [[Lockerbie Bombing|Pan Am Flight 103 victim]].  
+
The following is a transcript of [[Patrick Haseldine]]'s ''Facebook'' article published in March 2011:
 +
:On 3 July 1988, the US Navy deliberately shot down [[Iran Air Flight 655]] in the Persian Gulf killing all 290 civilian passengers and crew on the Airbus A300. Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini vowed that the skies would 'rain blood' in revenge. Months passed and no attempt at Iranian retaliation was made, even though there were hundreds of US passenger aircraft worldwide to target each day. A truce had been arranged for the duration of the US presidential election campaign, which ended on 8 November 1988 when Vice President [[George H W Bush|George Bush]] was elected to succeed the incumbent [[Ronald Reagan]]. Thus, nearly six months would elapse before Iran's revenge attack finally happened.
  
−
===''The New York Times''===
+
:The eventual target was a Pan American Airways Boeing 747 jumbo jet that was scheduled to depart London's Heathrow Airport on 21 December 1988. Early that morning, South African Airways Flight 234 from Johannesburg carrying an official delegation which included two government ministers landed at Heathrow. The 23-strong party was led by South African Foreign Minister [[Pik Botha]] – not to be confused with South Africa’s autocratic President [[P W Botha]] – and Defence Minister General [[Magnus Malan]]. For over a decade, apartheid South Africa had been defying UN Security Council Resolution 435 by continuing to occupy neighbouring Namibia (which President Botha insisted on calling South-West Africa) and by exploiting its valuable mineral resources in violation of UN law. On 22 December 1988 at UN headquarters in New York [[Pik Botha]] would sign an historic agreement bringing an end to the apartheid regime’s occupation of Namibia and handing over control to the United Nations. Seats had been reserved for the South African party on Pan Am Flight 101 which, following a special security check of the aircraft, took off from Heathrow at 11:00hrs GMT. Flight Pan Am 101 landed safely at JFK, New York at 13:45hrs EST.
−
''The New York Times'' of Thursday, 22 December 1988 reported:
 
  
−
:'''U.N. Officer on [[Pan Am Flight 103|Flight 103]]'''
+
:In the evening of 21 December 1988, without any security check, Pan Am Flight 103 destined for New York took off from Heathrow at 18:25hrs GMT. Thirty-eight minutes after take-off, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland killing all 259 people on board the aircraft, and eleven in the town of Lockerbie. Iran’s revenge attack thus resulted in 270 fatalities, of whom Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, [[Bernt Carlsson]], was the most prominent. It would have been [[Bernt Carlsson]]’s responsibility as [[UN Commissioner for Namibia]] to take charge of the country as soon as South Africa agreed to cede control on 22 December 1988. [[Bernt Carlsson|Carlsson]] had already issued a clear warning to the companies and countries that were flouting the UN prohibition on exploiting Namibia’s minerals (especially uranium and diamonds) that he intended to take legal action against them. Iran was one of the countries facing prosecution because, as well as owning 15% of the [[Rössing Uranium Mine]], it was receiving shipments of Namibian uranium to develop its nuclear programme. In targeting Pan Am Flight 103 therefore Iran not only avenged [[Iran Air Flight 655]] but also took out the one individual at the United Nations with the power to prosecute the companies eg [[Rio Tinto Group]] (joint owner of the [[Rössing Uranium Mine]]) and [[De Beers]] (owner of CDM diamond mines) and the countries eg Iran and South Africa that were in breach of UN law.<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1770061725559&l=78adbc28db "Lockerbie: Ayatollah's Vengeance Exacted by Botha's Regime"]</ref>
  
−
:"[[Bernt Carlsson]], who was a passenger on [[Pan Am Flight 103|the Pan Am flight that crashed over Scotland]], had served as chief administrative officer of the United Nations Council for Namibia since July 1987. He was on his way here for a ceremony on Thursday, at which accords providing for Namibia's independence are to be signed by Angola, Cuba and South Africa. The officer is, in theory, the United Nations' appointed governor for Namibia, the South African-ruled territory also known as South-West Africa. But because United Nations authority over Namibia is not recognised by South Africa, he is in practice the chief United Nations officer in charge of development programs intended to prepare Namibia for independence.
+
====Q & A Session====
−
:"[[Bernt Carlsson|Mr Carlsson]], a 51-year-old Swedish diplomat, had been in London for a meeting with non-governmental groups, United Nations officials said. He telephoned his office from the boarding gate at Heathrow Airport before the flight to New York.
 
−
:"From 1983 to 1985 [[Bernt Carlsson|Mr Carlsson]] served as a Swedish Ambassador at Large to the Middle East. He was General Secretary of the Socialist International, the world federation of socialist and social democratic parties, from 1976 to 1983. From 1983 to 1985, he was an Ambassador at Large and special emissary of Prime Minister [[Olof Palme]] to the Middle East and Africa. He also served as international secretary of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and as Under Secretary of State for Nordic Affairs in the Swedish Foreign Ministry."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4D9143EF931A15751C1A96E948260 "U.N. Officer on Flight 103"] ''The New York Times'' December 22, 1988</ref>
 
  
−
===''The Guardian''===
+
Q. Why didn't [[Pik Botha]]'s party fly South African Airways direct to New York?
−
[[File:Guardian_Obituary.jpg|300px|right|thumb|[[Bernt Carlsson]]'s Obituary in ''The Guardian'' of 23 December 1988]]
 
−
[[Bernt Carlsson]]'s Obituary appeared in ''The Guardian'' of 23 December 1988:<ref>["Bernt Carlsson's Obituary"] ''The Guardian'' December 23, 1988</ref>
 
  
−
:'''Key figure in Namibian peace process'''
+
A. Because the 1986 US [[Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act]] banned SAA flights from landing in America.
  
−
:"The death of [[Bernt Carlsson]] in the Lockerbie aircrash is a poignant tragedy within a tragedy. The UN Commissioner for Namibia was on his way to what should have been an occasion of unalloyed joy: the signing of the settlement in south-western Africa, after which his post would have come into its own.
+
Q. How did the Iranians know that UN Commissioner for Namibia, [[Bernt Carlsson]], would travel on Pan Am Flight 103 of 21 December 1988?
−
:"[[Bernt Carlsson|Mr Carlsson]] took up the assignment in July last year when it was still one of the most frustrating tasks the United Nations had to offer. The world body declared South Africa’s occupation of the former German possession of South West Africa illegal in 1966 and tried in vain to assert its authority in the territory thereafter.
 
−
:"The UN Council on Namibia proved unable to shift or shame Pretoria out of the last colony in Africa, overrun by the South Africans in 1915, mandated to them by the League of Nations after the first world war and by the UN after the second. The Council was reduced to gathering information and wandering the world like a homeless family, "raising awareness" of the Namibian issue at its conferences. The Commissioner was no more than the impotent shadow-head of a transitional government in waiting.
 
−
:"But within a year of Carlsson’s appointment the diplomatic log-jam began to shift. South Africa decided it could no longer afford the diplomatic, political, military and economic cost of its war in Angola. Namibia’s northern neighbour became a target in 1975 when it gave shelter to Swapo nationalists struggling to free Namibia. In hunting them South Africa soon became involved in an escalating conflict with their Angolan allies, supported by over 50,000 Cubans and huge quantities of Soviet munitions.
 
−
:"Angola and Cuba, encouraged by the Kremlin as it shed foreign liabilities, also showed signs of war-weariness, joining the South Africans in talks chaired by the US and closely monitored by Moscow. It was time for Carlsson, who gave significant background support to the peacemaking effort, to dust off the UN plan for Namibian independence, as laid down in Security Council resolution 435 of 1978.
 
−
:"[[Bernt Carlsson]] should therefore have been a guest of honour at yesterday’s signature ceremony in New York. Instead the dignitaries mourned the passing of one of a distinguished band of universally respected Swedish international envoys.
 
−
:"[[Bernt Carlsson]] was born in Stockholm 50 years ago and went into the foreign ministry after graduating from the city’s university. In 1970 he was detached to become international secretary of the ruling Social Democratic party and special adviser to the late prime minister, [[Olof Palme]], to whom he was very close. He went to the Socialist International in 1976 for a seven-year term as general secretary. He returned home in 1983 for two years as roving ambassador and special emissary of [[Olof Palme|Mr Palme]] to the Middle East and Africa. His last position before he went to the UN was head of Nordic affairs at the foreign ministry. He was unmarried." ([http://www.vandervat.co.uk/biography/index.html ''by Dan van der Vat''])
 
  
−
===''Los Angeles Times''===
+
A. They relied on their apartheid South African friends to ensure [[Bernt Carlsson|Carlsson]] joined that particular flight. He was induced to rearrange his Brussels/New York itinerary, and took a flight from Brussels to Heathrow (arriving by flight BA391 at 11:06hrs on 21 December 1988) for a meeting in London with [[De Beers]], the South African diamond mining and marketing conglomerate. After the meeting, [[De Beers]] chauffeured [[Bernt Carlsson|Carlsson]] back to Heathrow in good time to catch Pan Am Flight 103.
−
An Obituary to [[Bernt Carlsson]], written by his friend Michael Harrington, was published in the ''Los Angeles Times'' on 26 December 1988.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20021117165155/http://web.syr.edu/~vpaf103/v_carlsson.html
 
−
"Lost On Flight 103: A Hero To The Wretched Of The World"]</ref>
 
  
−
:'''Lost On Flight 103: A Hero To The Wretched Of The World'''
+
Q. Was it the Iranians or the South Africans that put the bomb in [[Bernt Carlsson]]’s checked-in suitcase while it was unsupervised at Heathrow?
  
−
:"It was not an accident that my friend [[Bernt Carlsson]], the UN Commissioner for Namibia, was killed in the crash of [[Pan Am Flight 103|Pan American World Airways Flight 103]].  
+
A. Masterminded by the apartheid regime's superspy Major [[Craig Williamson]], Iran's revenge attack was carried out by the Europe Branch (based in London) of South Africa’s [[Civil Cooperation Bureau]] (CCB), whose operatives substituted the ‘bomb bag’ for [[Bernt Carlsson]]’s suitcase at Heathrow Airport. No trace of his suitcase was ever found.
−
:"Of course, it was a cruel and capricious fate that struck at Carlsson and his fellow passengers. But in Bernt's case it was part of a pattern - the kind of thing that might happen to a man who had spent his life ranging the Earth in search of justice and peace. And that life itself was emblematic of a Swedish socialist movement that has made solidarity with the wretched of the world a personal ethic.
 
−
:"[[Bernt Carlsson|Carlsson]] was returning home to New York for the signing of the agreement on Namibian independence, the culmination of his most recent mission. Before that he was a roving ambassador. From 1976 to 1983 he had been the general secretary of the Socialist International when that organisation was reaching out to the Third World as never before.
 
−
:"There had been so many flights, so many trips to the dangerous places like the Middle East and the front-line states of Southern Africa - even a brush with terrorism when Issam Sartawi, a Palestinian moderate, was murdered in the lobby of the Portuguese hotel at which the International was holding its congress in 1983. It was not inevitable that Carlsson be on a plane that, some suspect, was the target of fanatics, but it was not surprising - not the least because he came from a movement that made peace-making a way of life.
 
−
:"I sometimes think that if these Swedish men and women did not exist, the world would have to invent them. So it was that the United Nations gave Carlsson's mentor, the late [[Olof Palme]], the impossible task of negotiating an end to the Iran-Iraq War. And why, as I saw firsthand at a meeting in Botswana, the Swedish prime minister was deeply mourned in black Africa. I had joked with [[Olof Palme|Palme]] after a visit to Dar-es-Salaam in 1976 that the typical Tanzanian must be blond-haired and blue-eyed because of all the Swedes I encountered in that city.
 
−
:"It was [[Bernt Carlsson|Carlsson]]'s friend and contemporary, Pierre Shori, who had played a major role in setting up the catalytic meeting in Stockholm between Yasser Arafat and five American Jews. I saw Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson in Paris on the day before that event, and he clearly regarded it as a serious governmental priority. Because the Swedish socialist commitment to peace-making sometimes requires criticism of the United States, there were those who said that its activists were "anti-American." When [[Olof Palme|Palme]] was assassinated, practically every obituary remembered that he had marched with the North Vietnamese ambassador in a famous Stockholm rally against the American war; only one mentioned that, around the same time, the Swedish leader had publicly demonstrated in solidarity with the dissident communists of Czechoslovakia and against the Soviet invasion of their country.
 
−
:"[[Bernt Carlsson]], like [[Olof Palme|Palme]] and his other comrades, opposed Washington's policies and yet he deeply admired Americans, particularly their egalitarian irreverence. I remember vividly when Carlsson and I were in Managua in 1981 on a Socialist International mission to defend the revolution against Washington's intervention. Our group was led by Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, which guaranteed that it was taken with the utmost seriousness by the Sandinistas.
 
−
:"Carlsson was utterly firm in his opposition to American destabilisation. But then, to underline his commitment to democracy, he went to the offices of the opposition newspaper, La Prensa, and took out a subscription.
 
−
:"This gentle, shy, soft-spoken man with a soul as tough as steel was the true son of a movement that has proved that the conscience of a small nation can affect the superpowers.
 
−
:"In Jewish legend, a handful of the just keep the world from being destroyed. One of them died on [[Pan Am Flight 103]], and many of them, like the blond-haired, blue-eyed people I saw in Dar-es-Salaam, seem to be Swedish."
 
  
−
==="Finger of suspicion"===
+
Q. Who supplied the bomb?
−
Former British diplomat [[Patrick Haseldine]] first suspected the involvement of the apartheid regime in the [[Lockerbie bombing]] when he heard South African foreign minister [[Pik Botha]]'s interview with the BBC Radio 4 ''Today Programme'' on January 11, 1989.
 
  
−
On that day Botha – along with other international representatives including UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar – was in Stockholm to attend the memorial service for Bernt Carlsson, UN Commissioner for Namibia. Botha told the BBC that he had been forced to make a last-minute change in his own booking on [[Pan Am Flight 103]] because of a warning by an intelligence source that he (Botha) was being targeted by [[Nelson Mandela]] and the [[African National Congress]] (ANC).
+
A. [[Marwan Khreesat]], a Jordanian double agent who infiltrated the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), told [[FBI]] special agent Edward Marshman and forensic investigator [[Thomas Thurman]] in 1989 that he had built five barometrically triggered aircraft bombs when he was in Neuss, West Germany in October 1988. German BKA police intercepted four of these devices in November 1988 following the arrest of a PFLP-GC terrorist cell in Neuss. [[Marwan Khreesat|Khreesat]] said that the fifth bomb had been taken by a senior PFLP-GC agent named Abu Elias, who escaped arrest in Germany. Abu Elias is suspected of supplying the South African [[CCB]] with the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103.
−
[[File:PatrickHaseldine3B.jpg|200px|right|thumb|[[Patrick Haseldine]]'s letter to ''The Guardian'' of December 7, 1989]]
 
−
Using this information, which had not been reported elsewhere in the media, Haseldine wrote a letter to ''The Guardian'' on December 7, 1989:<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PatrickHaseldine3B.jpg "Finger of suspicion"] ''The Guardian'' December 7, 1989</ref>
 
  
−
:'''Finger of suspicion'''
+
Q. How was the bomb transported from Germany to Heathrow?
  
−
:"Exactly one year ago, you published my letter suggesting that Mrs Thatcher might have a blind spot as far as South African terrorism is concerned.
+
A. According to [[Paul Foot]]'s article "Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice":
 +
"In August 1997, the German magazine ''Der Spiegel'' published a long article about Lockerbie that was completely ignored in the British Press. It cited 'a new witness who has been making detailed statements to the German police and prosecutors.' The man was named as [[Abolghasem Mesbahi]] and was described as 'a credible witness.' What he was saying contradicted 'the Anglo-American thesis of the sole involvement of Libya.' [[Abolghasem Mesbahi|Mesbahi]]’s story was as follows: 'The bomb had been loaded in single pieces at Frankfurt airport into an aeroplane to London. The head of IranAir at Frankfurt at that time, a secret serviceman, had smuggled them past the airport controls. They had then been assembled in London and put on the Pan Am clipper.'
  
−
:"Fourteen days after publication, [[Pan Am Flight 103]] was blown out of the sky upon Lockerbie. Of the 270 victims, the most prominent person was the Swede [[Bernt Carlsson|Mr Bernt Carlsson]] – UN Commissioner for Namibia – whose obituary appeared on page 29 of your December 23, 1988 edition.
+
"Despite ''Der Spiegel''’s evidence for the credibility of [[Abolghasem Mesbahi|Mesbahi]], and his numerous high-level contacts in Iranian intelligence, this story was quickly and effectively buried."<ref>[http://www.scribd.com/stax68/d/52409411-Lockerbie-The-Flight-From-Justice-Paul-Foot-Private-Eye-Special-Report "Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice"]</ref>
  
−
:"I cannot be the only puzzled observer of this tragedy to wonder why police attention did not immediately focus on a South African connection. The question to be put (probably to [[Margaret Thatcher|Mrs Thatcher]]) is: given the South African proclivity to using the diplomatic bag for conveying explosives and the likelihood that the bomb was loaded aboard the aircraft at Heathrow (vide David Pallister, ''The Guardian'', November 9, 1989) why has it taken so long for the finger of suspicion to point towards South Africa?
+
Q. Was the break-in at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 3 on 20 December 1988 anything to do with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103?
  
−
:"Were police inquiries into [[Lockerbie Bombing|Lockerbie]] subject to any political guidance or imperatives?"
+
A. Possibly. Security guard [[Ray Manly]], who discovered that the padlock had been cut on security door CP2 leading to the Pan Am baggage area, told the Lockerbie appeal court at Camp Zeist in 2002: "I believe it would be possible for an unauthorised person to obtain tags for a particular Pan Am flight and then, having broken the CP2 lock, to have introduced a tagged bag into the baggage build up area." Manly immediately reported the break-in to the police but was not interviewed by the [[Metropolitan Police]] until 31 January 1989. No mention of the Heathrow break-in was made at the 2000-2001 Lockerbie trial of the two Libyans [[Megrahi]] and [[Lamin Khalifah Fhimah|Fhimah]]. (The break-in became public knowledge on 11 September 2001 when the ''Scottish Mirror'''s front page headline screamed "Lockerbie: The Lost Evidence".) 
  
−
:[[Patrick Haseldine|P J Haseldine]]
+
Q. Why wasn’t the bomb timed to go off when the aircraft was over the Atlantic Ocean?
−
:(Address supplied)
 
  
−
===[[Bernt Carlsson|Carlsson]]'s "secret meeting"===
+
A. The bomb had a barometric detonator and automatically exploded 30 minutes after the aircraft reached a set altitude. Because the aircraft came down on land rather than into the ocean it was demonstrably not an accident (important when revenge is the motive for the bombing).
−
[[File:J-O_Bengtsson1.jpg|200px|thumb|right|[[Jan-Olof Bengtsson]], political editor of Kvällsposten]]
 
−
[[Jan-Olof Bengtsson]] is the political editor of Kvällsposten newspaper in Malmö, Sweden, and a renowned investigative journalist. Mr Bengtsson's most important work - although perhaps the least publicised - is his series of three articles in Sweden's iDAG newspaper on 12, 13 and 14 March 1990. Never published in the English language, the iDAG articles featured Sweden's UN Commissioner for Namibia [[Bernt Carlsson]] who was the most prominent victim of [[Pan Am Flight 103]] which was sabotaged over Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December 1988. Bengtsson alleged that Commissioner Carlsson's arm had been twisted by the diamond mining giant De Beers into making a stopover in London for a secret meeting and into joining the doomed flight, rather than taking as he had intended a Sabena flight direct from Brussels to New York:<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4689149700934&l=0b52de0fed "Bernt Carlsson in a secret meeting with 'pressuriser' from the Diamond Cartel"]</ref>
 
  
−
:"[[Bernt Carlsson]], UN Commissioner for Namibia, had less than seven hours to live when at 11.06am on 21 December 1988 he arrived in London on flight BA 391.
+
On 3 March 2011, [[Oliver Tickell]] asked three questions:
 +
:Q1. Why did South Africa want to carry out this attack on behalf of Iran?
 +
:Q2. What part did Iran play in the attack?
 +
:Q3. How was this narrative, if true, suppressed?
  
−
:"Strictly speaking he was meant to fly directly from Brussels to New York in time for the historic signing of the Namibia Independence Agreement the day after. But [[Bernt Carlsson]] could not make it. He had a meeting. An important meeting with a 'pressuriser' from the South African diamond cartel, which was so secret that evidently not even Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, UN Secretary-General, knew anything about it. Here iDAG maps out the last 24 hours in the life of Bernt Carlsson.
+
[[Patrick Haseldine]] replied:
 +
:A1. To prevent prosecution by UN Commissioner for Namibia, [[Bernt Carlsson]], for breaching UNCN Decree No 1, the apartheid regime and Iran both wanted [[Bernt Carlsson|Carlsson]] dead.
 +
:A2. Iran helped in targeting [[Bernt Carlsson]] on Pan Am Flight 103.
 +
:A3. It is not for me to speculate how it was suppressed. All I can say is that nothing of mine has been published since 22 December 1993.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PatrickHaseldine3K.jpg "Flight path"]</ref>
  
−
:"The memorial service in the Folkets Hus in Stockholm on 11 January 1989 for [[Bernt Carlsson]] gathered most of our Heads of Government, representatives of the Namibia independence movement SWAPO and Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, the UN Secretary-General.
+
==High profile victims==
 +
The highest profile victim aboard Pan Am Flight 103 was [[UN Commissioner for Namibia]], [[Bernt Carlsson]], on his way to attend a ceremony at [[United Nations]] headquarters in New York the next day when South Africa agreed to grant independence to [[Namibia]]. However, after a brief spell of attention, this angle of the bombing was not pursued by the {{ccm}}.
  
−
:"When he died in the [[Pan Am Flight 103|Pan Am bombing]], [[Bernt Carlsson]] was less than 24 hours away from the fulfilment of his dreams - the signing of the Namibia agreement in New York which would finally pave the way to a free and independent Namibia. This was supposed to be the climax of his career with the UN, a career that began in December 1986 when he was appointed Commissioner for Namibia. Bernt Carlsson had great support from SWAPO but much less so from South Africa because of that country's substantial economic interests in Namibia: an interest in gold, uranium but above all in diamonds.
+
===US Intelligence===
 +
Four US intelligence agency employees were also aboard, having flown together from [[Cyprus]] on flight CY504 which arrived at Heathrow at 14:34:
 +
* [[Matthew Gannon]], the [[CIA]] deputy station chief in [[Beirut]], [[Lebanon]]<ref>''[http://www.everythingpanam.com/index.html "EverythingPanAm.com The Virtual Pan Am Museum"]''</ref>
 +
* [[Major Chuck McKee]], US Army Major on secondment to the [[DIA]] in [[Beirut]]
 +
Two [[Diplomatic Security Service]] special agents were acting as bodyguards to Gannon and McKee:
 +
* [[Ronald LaRiviere]], a security officer from the US Embassy in Beirut
 +
* [[Daniel O'Connor]], a security officer from the US Embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus
  
−
:"Javier Pérez de Cuéllar in his speech at the memorial ceremony on a cold day in January last year [1989] described the last 24 hours in the life of Bernt Carlsson:
+
===US Military===
 +
Sixteen US military personnel died on Pan Am Flight 103:
 +
* Philip Bergstrom, Army Sergeant
 +
* Willis Coursey, US military
 +
* Joseph Curry, Army Captain
 +
* Edgar Eggleston, Air Force Sergeant
 +
* Kenneth Gibson, Army Specialist
 +
* Lloyd Ludlow, Army Sergeant
 +
* Douglas Malicote, Army Specialist
 +
* Jewel Mitchell, Army 2nd Lieutenant
 +
* Mary Smith, Army Sergeant
 +
* Michael Stinnett, Army Specialist
 +
* Lawanda Thomas, Air Force Sergeant
 +
* Bonnie Williams, US military
 +
* Eric Williams, Army Sergeant
 +
* George Williams, Army 1st Lieutenant
 +
* Dedara Woods, Air Force Sergeant
 +
* Joe Woods, Civilian Military worker<ref>[https://www.victimsofpanamflight103.org/victims "Victims of Pan Am Flight 103"]</ref>
  
−
:'[[Bernt Carlsson]] was returning to New York following an official visit to Brussels where he had spoken to a Committee within the European Parliament about the Namibia agreement,' Pérez de Cuéllar began. 'He stopped briefly in London to honour a long-standing invitation by a non-governmental organisation with interests in Namibia.'
+
{{SMWDocs}}
−
 
 
−
:"Pérez de Cuéllar was wrong. True, [[Bernt Carlsson]]'s trip to Brussels had been planned almost six months earlier. But his decision to return to New York via London was only made on 16 December 1988. The meeting in London was definitely ''not'' a long-standing invitation by Namibia sympathisers."
 
−
 
 
−
==[[Pan Am Flight 103|Lockerbie cover-up]]==
 
−
Within a few weeks of those December 1988 newspaper reports, [[Bernt Carlsson]]'s name would hardly ever be mentioned again by the mainstream media in the Lockerbie context. [[Bernt Carlsson]] had effectively become a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonperson "nonperson"] - whose death was never properly investigated - and the [[Pan Am Flight 103|Lockerbie cover-up]] was beginning:<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4474406052477&l=1e52343dc9 "Lockerbie Cover-Upper Ian Ferguson"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
===Nelson Mandela accused===
 
−
[[File:Pik_Botha_1.jpg|300px|thumb|right|[[Pik Botha]], apartheid South Africa's foreign minister]]
 
−
Three weeks after the [[Lockerbie Bombing|Lockerbie disaster]], the apartheid regime accused [[Nelson Mandela]] and the [[ANC]] of masterminding the sabotage of [[Pan Am Flight 103]]. This amazing accusation was made on 11 January 1989 by South African Foreign Minister [[Pik Botha]] who had travelled to Stockholm in Sweden with other foreign dignitaries – including UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar – to attend the memorial service of United Nations Commissioner for Namibia, [[Bernt Carlsson]], the highest profile victim of the 270 fatalities at Lockerbie.<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4689149700934&l=0b52de0fed "Lockerbie: [[Bernt Carlsson]]'s secret meeting in London"]</ref> Interviewed by Sue MacGregor on BBC Radio 4’s ''Today Programme'', Pik Botha alleged that he and a 22-strong South African delegation, who were booked to fly from London to New York on 21 December 1988, had been targeted by the ANC. However, having been alerted to these ANC plans to kill him, Pik Botha said he managed to outsmart them by taking the earlier Pan Am Flight 101 from Heathrow to JFK, New York.<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PatrickHaseldine3J.jpg "ANC as the fall-guys for [[Pan Am Flight 103|Lockerbie bombing]]"] [[Patrick Haseldine]]'s letter to ''The Guardian'', 22 April 1992</ref> Pik Botha's claim to have been booked to travel on [[Pan Am Flight 103]] was later shown to be false.<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1952368883124&l=30069eb4a1 "Why the Lockerbie flight booking subterfuge, Mr Botha?"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
===[[P W Botha|President Botha]] quits===
 
−
[[File:President_Botha_and_PM_Thatcher.jpg|360px|thumb|right|President [[P W Botha]] and [[Margaret Thatcher]] in 1984]]
 
−
On 18 January 1989, [[P W Botha|President P W Botha]] was reported to have suffered a mild stroke which prevented him from attending a meeting with Namibian political leaders on 20 January 1989.<ref>''The New York Times'' 22 January 1989 "Botha suffers mild stroke"</ref> On 2 February 1989, [[P W Botha]] resigned as leader of the National Party (NP) anticipating his nominee – finance minister Barend du Plessis – would succeed him. Instead, the NP's parliamentary caucus selected as leader education minister F W de Klerk, who moved quickly to consolidate his position within the party. In March 1989, the NP elected de Klerk as state president but Botha refused to resign, saying in a television address that the constitution entitled him to remain in office until March 1990 and that he was even considering running for another five-year term. Following a series of acrimonious meetings in Cape Town, and five days after UN Security Council Resolution 435 was implemented in Namibia on 1 April 1989, Botha and de Klerk reached a compromise: Botha would retire after the parliamentary elections in September, allowing de Klerk to take over as president. However, [[P W Botha]] resigned from the state presidency abruptly on 14 August 1989 complaining that he had not been consulted by de Klerk over his scheduled visit to see president Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia: "The [[ANC]] is enjoying the protection of president Kaunda and is planning insurgency activities against South Africa from Lusaka," Botha declared on nationwide television. He said he had asked the cabinet what reason he should give the public for abruptly leaving office. "They replied I could use my health as an excuse. To this, I replied that I am not prepared to leave on a lie. It is evident to me that after all these years of my best efforts for the National Party and for the government of this country, as well as the security of our country, I am being ignored by ministers serving in my cabinet."<ref>[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/s_africa/stories/botha0889.htm Botha Quits, Criticizes Successor]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
===[[Margaret Thatcher|Thatcher]] visits Namibia===
 
−
[[File:Rössing_Uranium_Mine.jpg|200px|thumb|right|[[Rössing Uranium Mine]] ]]
 
−
At the end of March 1989, [[Margaret Thatcher]] and the rising star in Conservative Research Department, [[David Cameron]], visited apartheid South Africa.<ref>[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/revealed-camerons-freebie-to-apartheid-south-africa-1674367.html "Cameron's freebie to apartheid South Africa"]</ref> The past and future British Prime Ministers made a point of visiting the [[Rössing Uranium Mine]] in Namibia (illegally occupied by apartheid South Africa in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 435). In 1989, the Rössing mine was jointly owned by Rio Tinto Group and the Iranian Government, and was supplying uranium to develop Iran’s nuclear programme. Mrs Thatcher was so impressed with the [[Rössing Uranium Mine#Margaret Thatcher pays a visit|Rössing Uranium Mine]] that she declared it made her "proud to be British", a sentiment echoed by David Cameron.<ref>[http://www.radiobridge.net/www/nam/rossing.html "Rössing Uranium Mine"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
====Pressure on UN's man====
 
−
[[File:PatrickHaseldine3E.jpg|200px|right|thumb|''Guardian'' letter of 5 August 1991]]
 
−
Extract from [[Patrick Haseldine]]'s letter to ''The Guardian'' of August 5, 1991:
 
−
:'''Missing diplomatic links and the [[Pan Am Flight 103|Lockerbie tragedy]]'''
 
−
:"On April 1, 1989 [[Margaret Thatcher|Mrs Thatcher]] put pressure on UN Special Representative in Namibia, [[Martti Ahtisaari]], to permit the South African Defence Force (SADF) to take action against SWAPO soldiers who were peacefully returning to Namibia to vote in the 1989 independence elections. As a result, as many as 308 SWAPO soldiers were killed - ''shot in the back'' according to former SADF major Nico Basson.
 
−
:"Whether Mrs Thatcher could have persuaded UN Commissioner for Namibia, [[Bernt Carlsson]], to agree to such treachery we shall never know since [[Bernt Carlsson|Mr Carlsson]] was assassinated four months earlier, on December 21, 1988.
 
−
:"It may not be entirely coincidental that on the same day (July 25, 1991) as South Africa's Foreign Minister, [[Pik Botha]], admitted the illicit funding of anti-SWAPO political parties in Namibia, BBC Radio Four's ''Today Programme'' carried an interview about the Scottish police investigation into the [[Pan Am Flight 103|Lockerbie disaster]], in which [[Bernt Carlsson|Mr Carlsson]] perished. According to the interview, the criminal investigation has just been concluded and we are now asked to believe that Libyan intelligence were responsible.
 
−
:"In the light of Major Basson's evidence (detailed by Phillip van Niekerk's article, ''Guardian'', July 27) and [[Pik Botha]]'s admission, I think that, even at this late stage, the Scottish police should reopen their investigation and look for a South African connection to the [[Pan Am Flight 103|Lockerbie tragedy]].<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PatrickHaseldine3E.jpg "Missing diplomatic links and the [[Pan Am Flight 103|Lockerbie tragedy]]"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
====Secret nuclear deal====
 
−
It has recently been reported that [[Margaret Thatcher]] and [[David Cameron]] concluded a secret nuclear deal with the apartheid regime during their visit to South Africa in 1989.<ref>[http://www.paltelegraph.com/columnists/peter-eyre/4576-the-us-and-uk-lost-three-nuclear-weapons-each-part-3 "How the US and UK 'lost' three nuclear weapons"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
===[[Patrick Haseldine#Lockerbie cover-up|Stateside silence]]===
 
−
[[Ronald Reagan]], the outgoing President, was still smarting after having his veto overridden in 1986 by the US Congress of the [[Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act]] which, ''inter alia'', banned South African Airways from flying to the United States. Plus, according to [[Francis Boyle|Professor Francis Boyle]]'s recent book, [[Ronald Reagan|President Reagan]] had some old scores that he wanted to settle with [[Colonel Gaddafi]].<ref>[http://www.amazon.com/Destroying-Libya-World-Order-Three-Decade/dp/0985335378 "Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade U.S. Campaign to Terminate the [[Gaddafi]] Revolution"]</ref>
 
−
[[File:Reagan_Thatcher.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Discussing [[Iran Air Flight 655]] in the White House library: [[Ronald Reagan]] and [[Margaret Thatcher]] ]]
 
−
So, on 28 December 1988, when there was as yet no evidence of any country's culpability for the Lockerbie bombing and in one of the last acts of his Presidency, [[Ronald Reagan]] extended US sanctions against Libya and threatened renewed bombing raids on Tripoli and Benghazi. Vice-President [[George H W Bush]] had won the 1988 US presidential election easily defeating Democratic Party challenger [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dukakis Michael Dukakis] (who would have branded [[P W Botha]]'s apartheid South Africa a 'terrorist state'<ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/13/us/dukakis-backers-agree-platform-will-call-south-africa-terrorist.html Dukakis Backers Agree Platform Will Call South Africa 'Terrorist']</ref>) and was sworn in as US President on 20 January 1989.
 
−
 
 
−
Drawing upon his previous experience at the United Nations and as Director of the [[CIA]], and maintaining his refusal to apologise for the US Navy's destruction of the [[Iran Air Flight 655|Iranian Airbus]] in July 1988, [[George H W Bush|President Bush Sr]] then arranged for [[Muammar Gaddafi]] to be 'fitted up' at the UN Security Council for the sabotage of [[Pan Am Flight 103]]. According to British investigative journalist [[Paul Foot]]: "In mid-March 1989, three months after Lockerbie, [[George H W Bush|George Bush]] rang [[Margaret Thatcher]] to warn her to 'cool it' on the subject."<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1972212699207&l=09e4b17aef "Lockerbie: CIA 'fitted up' Gaddafi at the UN"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
===[[Robert Black#Blackout of Mandela blueprint|British Blackout]]===
 
−
[[File:Tiny_Rowland.jpg|300px|thumb|right|[[Tiny Rowland]], UK coordinator]]
 
−
[[File:Professor_Black.JPG|300px|thumb|right|[[Robert Black|Professor Robert Black QC]] ]]
 
−
After years of sleuthing, [[Emeritus Professor of Lockerbie Studies]] [[Patrick Haseldine]] eventually identified British mining magnate, ''Observer'' newspaper owner and [[MI6]] operative [[Tiny Rowland]] as the UK coordinator of the Lockerbie cover-up.<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4058824983210&l=0031ccc6ce "[[Tiny Rowland]], Lonmin and Lockerbie"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
Haseldine alleges that [[Tiny Rowland]] recruited Emeritus Professor of Scots Law [[Robert Black]] to organise the British Blackout and to frustrate all of [[Nelson Mandela]]’s plans for Lockerbie justice.
 
−
 
 
−
In January 1992, [[Mandela]] outlined his blueprint for the Lockerbie trial:
 
−
*If no extradition treaty exists between the countries concerned, the trial must be conducted in the country where the    accused were arrested;
 
−
*The trial should be conducted in a neutral country by independent judges;
 
−
*The trial should be conducted at The Hague by an international court of justice.
 
−
Five years later, [[President Mandela]] emphasised at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Edinburgh that '''"no one nation should be complainant, prosecutor and judge"''' in the Lockerbie case.
 
−
 
 
−
By 1999, the so-called "architect of the Lockerbie trial" had managed to blackout the whole [[Mandela]] blueprint. [[Professor Black]]:
 
−
*ensured that the Lockerbie trial was not held in a neutral country. Instead, he arranged for the trial to be conducted from May 2000 to January 2001 at Camp Zeist, a former US Air Force base in the Netherlands which, for the duration of the trial, became British territory;
 
−
*decreed that Scotland’s Crown Office would be the ‘complainant’ at the trial;
 
−
*arranged for Scotland’s Lord Advocate [[Colin Boyd]] to be the ‘prosecutor’ at the trial; and,
 
−
*insisted that – instead of ‘independent judges’ at the trial – all four Judges (Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield, MacLean and Abernethy) had to be from Scotland.
 
−
 
 
−
Although one of the two accused Libyans was found not guilty of the Lockerbie bombing, Haseldine alleges it was thanks to Professor Black that the other Libyan, [[Abdelbaset al-Megrahi]], was found guilty.<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4009030178371&l=6662cb7fb9 "Blackout of Mandela Blueprint for Lockerbie Justice"]</ref>
 
−
 
 
−
'''Haseldine says:'''
 
−
{{QB|<poem>
 
−
.... so for the past 20 years, [[Robert Black|Professor Robert Black]] has been suppressing the truth about the [[Lockerbie Bombing|Lockerbie disaster]], thus delaying justice for the 270 victims of [[Pan Am Flight 103]] and their relatives. Prof Black was supported in his attempt to blackout apartheid South Africa’s targeting of [[Bernt Carlsson]] on [[Pan Am Flight 103]] by ''inter alia'' these assets of British intelligence:
 
−
 
 
−
:'''[[John Ashton]]''' (Author, producer and researcher, see: [[The Maltese Double Cross]]<ref>[http://edsblogcity.blogspot.co.uk/2009/10/blog-post.html "Commentary on ''The Maltese Double Cross''"]</ref>; the 2001 book "Cover-up of Convenience" by [[John Ashton]] and [[Ian Ferguson]]<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2001/jun/17/politics "Cover-up of Convenience"]</ref>; the 2012 book "Megrahi; You are my Jury" by [[John Ashton]]<ref>[http://www.megrahiyouaremyjury.net/ "Megrahi: You are my Jury"]</ref>; the 2012 article "Was Libya really behind it?" with [[John Ashton]]<ref>[http://www.beobachter.ch/justiz-behoerde/gesetze-recht/artikel/lockerbie_steckte-wirklich-libyen-dahinter/ "Was Libya really behind it?"]</ref>; and a new book "Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters" that was published by Birlinn on 3 October 2013<ref>[http://www.megrahiyouaremyjury.net/?p=794 "Scotland’s Shame: Why Lockerbie Still Matters"]</ref>);
 
−
 
 
−
:'''[[Ian Ferguson]]''' (Author, journalist and researcher, see: [http://web.archive.org/web/20030421014306/http://www.thelockerbietrial.com/ The Lockerbie Trial.com] website of [[Professor Black]] and [[Ian Ferguson]]; and the 2009 film [[Lockerbie Revisited]] researcher [[Ian Ferguson]]<ref>[http://www.newyorkfestivals.com/winners/tvf2011winners/pieces.php?iid=412747&pid=1 "Lockerbie Revisited"]</ref><ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4474406052477&l=1e52343dc9 "Lockerbie Cover-Upper Ian Ferguson"]</ref>);
 
−
 
 
−
:'''[https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=615355655153879&set=a.615124531843658.1073741844.100000383507471&type=1&comment_id=2034050 Robert Forrester]''' (Secretary of ''Justice for [[Megrahi]]'' campaign group<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/robert.forrester.503 "Robert Forrester ''Facebook'' page"]</ref>);
 
−
 
 
−
:'''[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/1580316/Former-MI6-spy-to-head-Scottish-Tory-Party.html Professor Andrew Fulton]''' (see: "Former MI6 spy joins Armor Group to hunt down new business"<ref>[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/former-mi6-spy-joins-armor-group-to-hunt-down-new-business-412794.html "Former MI6 spy joins Armor Group to hunt down new business"]</ref>);
 
−
 
 
−
:'''[http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/27/alan-george-libel-case Dr Alan George]''' (Middle East academic, recruited by solicitors Eversheds to reinforce the defence of [[Megrahi]]'s co-accused Lamin Khalifah Fhimah<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/27/alan-george-libel-case "Alan George libel case]</ref>);
 
−
 
 
−
:'''[[Dr Morag Kerr]]''' (Deputy Secretary of ''Justice for [[Megrahi]]'' campaign group, see <ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1607665385752&l=bb396e30f0 "Dr Morag Kerr should drop all this cloak and dagger 'Rolfe' nonsense"]</ref>, her book "Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies" will be published on 21 December 2013 <ref>[http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=2499 "Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies"]</ref>);
 
−
 
 
−
:'''[http://lockerbiedivide.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/permanent-top-post-and-start-point.html Adam Larson]''' (Associate of [[Morag Kerr|Dr Kerr]] and owner of ''The Lockerbie Divide'' website<ref>[http://lockerbiedivide.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/permanent-top-post-and-start-point.html "The Lockerbie Divide"]</ref>); and,
 
−
 
 
−
:'''[http://www.firmmagazine.com/ Steven Raeburn]''' (Editor of Scots Law journal ''The Firm''<ref>[http://www.firmmagazine.com/ "The Firm"]</ref>). </poem>
 
−
}}
 
−
'''Patrick Haseldine concludes: "It is high time that this 'Blackout over Lockerbie' was illuminated and dispelled."'''<ref>[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3870955126581&l=5950a6622d "Blackout over Lockerbie"]</ref>
 
  
 
==See also==
 
==See also==
−
===On WikiSpooks===
+
*''Highly Recommended'' - [http://www.heraldscotland.com/search-7.548?q=%22Lockerbie+bombing%22 The Herald, Scotland - Lockerbie archive] - A substantial Establishment-sceptic resource.
−
*[[The how, why and who of Pan Am Flight 103]]
+
*''Highly Recommended'' - [http://english.ohmynews.com/english/article_list.asp  - ohmynews - list of articles on the Lockerbie Bombing]
−
*'''A MUST READ''' - [[File:The Framing of al-Megrahi.doc]] - An article by Gareth Pierce from the London Review of Books - September 2009.
+
*[http://books.google.com/books?id=GBXdAAAAIAAJ&dq=inauthor:steven+inauthor:emerson&lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&num=100&as_brr=0&ei=BoVhS8aPAZXuzATT1vUm&cd=3 The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation] 1990, by [[Steve Emerson]] and Brian Duffy, Putnam, ISBN 0-399-13521-9
−
*[https://wikispooks.com/wiki/File:Koechler-lockerbie-appeal_report.pdf UN Report on the first Lockerbie case appeal] Professor Hans Koechler Vienna 26 March 2002
 
−
*[[Document:How Megrahi and Libya were framed for Lockerbie|How Megrahi and Libya were framed for Lockerbie]] - Alexander Cockburn in "The First Post" July 2010
 
−
*[[Document:Lockerbie - Bomber, Bomber, Bomber|Bomber, Bomber, Bomber]] - Steven Raeburn of "The Firm", a Scottish Lawyers Web Site
 
−
*[[Document:The Lockerbie case and the corruption of justice|The Lockerbie case and the corruption of justice]] - Dr Hans Koechler
 
−
*[[Document:Release of the Lockerbie Prisoner|Release of the Lockerbie Prisoner]] - Dr Hans Koechler
 
−
*[[Document:The Lockerbie case and the corruption of justice|The Lockerbie case and the corruption of justice]] - Dr Hans Koechler
 
−
*[[Document:Lockerbie - The Syrian Connection|The Syrian Connection]] - David Guyatt
 
−
*[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1770061725559&l=78adbc28db Lockerbie: Ayatollah's Vengeance Exacted by Botha's Regime] - [[Patrick Haseldine]]
 
−
*[http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/10/lockerbie-truth-is-finally-coming-out.html Comments from [[Patrick Haseldine]] on [[Robert Black]]'s Blog - 6 October 2009]
 
−
 
 
−
===External sites===
 
−
*'''A 'MUST CONSULT' RESOURCE''' - [http://www.heraldscotland.com/search-7.548?q=%22Lockerbie+bombing%22 The Herald, Scotland - Lockerbie archive] - A substantial Establishment-sceptic resource.
 
−
*'''A 'MUST CONSULT' RESOURCE''' - [http://english.ohmynews.com/english/article_list.asp  - ohmynews - list of articles on the Lockerbie Bombing]
 
 
*[http://scottishlaw.blogspot.com/search/label/Lockerbie%20Trial Scottish Law Reporter. Lockerbie pages]
 
*[http://scottishlaw.blogspot.com/search/label/Lockerbie%20Trial Scottish Law Reporter. Lockerbie pages]
 
*[http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2009/02/lockerbie-evidence.html Lockerbie - The evidence]
 
*[http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2009/02/lockerbie-evidence.html Lockerbie - The evidence]
Line 501: Line 255:
 
*[http://www.lockerbietruth.com/ Jim Swire's Web Site]
 
*[http://www.lockerbietruth.com/ Jim Swire's Web Site]
 
*[http://www.facebook.com/groups/118951448146734/ Facebook group: U.N. must investigate the targeting of Bernt Carlsson on Pan Am Flight 103]
 
*[http://www.facebook.com/groups/118951448146734/ Facebook group: U.N. must investigate the targeting of Bernt Carlsson on Pan Am Flight 103]
−
*[http://www.lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/ Professor Robert Black's Blog]
+
*[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1808501&l=314e4520ce&id=1059719984 'Lockerbie Conspiracy' by Thatcher and Reagan]
 +
*[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2470800&l=b833ebd5ac&id=1059719984 Lockerbie: Apartheid General Targeted UN Commissioner]
 +
*[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1814223&l=13dd4ee5d8&id=1059719984 Pan Am Flight 103: Why has it taken so Long for the finger of suspicion to point towards South Africa?]
 +
*[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1733078&l=9e3cde0e96&id=1059719984 Lockerbie Bombing: The 'Finnish' Question]
 +
*[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1477102&l=07c5547c01&id=1059719984 Bernt Carlsson in Secret Meeting with 'Pressuriser' from the Diamond Cartel]
 +
*[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3415159851984&l=b32ddec019 Major Craig Williamson: the 'real' Lockerbie bomber]
 +
*[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1517249&l=dfb02c6e47&id=1059719984 Gordon Brown says Lockerbie victim Bernt Carlsson was the target]
 +
*[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1791426&l=0a93a8bdfd&id=1059719984 Lost on Flight 103: A Hero to the Wretched of the World]
 +
*[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1826405&l=b2e1f6e5c2&id=1059719984 Bernt Carlsson: A Very Private Public Servant]
 +
*[http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1852822&l=e73f3c5198&id=1059719984 Dr Jim Swire petitioned PM to compensate Lockerbie campaigner Patrick Haseldine]
 +
*[http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/10/lockerbie-truth-is-finally-coming-out.html Comments from Patrick Haseldine on Robert Black's Blog - 6 October 2009]
 
*[http://www.heraldscotland.com/crown-fights-to-keep-48-pieces-of-lockerbie-trial-evidence-secret-1.903103 Crown Fights to keep 48 pieces of evidence secret - Glasgow Herald 19 February 2010]
 
*[http://www.heraldscotland.com/crown-fights-to-keep-48-pieces-of-lockerbie-trial-evidence-secret-1.903103 Crown Fights to keep 48 pieces of evidence secret - Glasgow Herald 19 February 2010]
 
*[http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/23/questions-remain-over-lockerbie-megrahi Questions remain over Lockerbie - Guardian letters 23 July 2010]
 
*[http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/23/questions-remain-over-lockerbie-megrahi Questions remain over Lockerbie - Guardian letters 23 July 2010]
Line 507: Line 271:
 
*[http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=84385 Lockerbie Bombing Case Faces U-Turn after Perjury Confession - Sofia News Agency 20 August 2007]
 
*[http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=84385 Lockerbie Bombing Case Faces U-Turn after Perjury Confession - Sofia News Agency 20 August 2007]
 
*[http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0408-01.htm UN Claims Lockerbie Trial Was Rigged - Common Dreams 8 April 2001 from The Glasgow Herald]
 
*[http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0408-01.htm UN Claims Lockerbie Trial Was Rigged - Common Dreams 8 April 2001 from The Glasgow Herald]
−
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103 WikiPedia - Pan Am Flight 103 page]
 
  
 
==Video==
 
==Video==
−
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGuzIHwkAf4&feature=player_embedded Lockerbie Lies] - A Youtube video featuring Professor Robert Black who was largely responsible for the setup of the Hague Trial and believes that Megrahi would be aquitted in any retrial.
+
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGuzIHwkAf4&feature=player_embedded Lockerbie Lies] - A Youtube video featuring Professor [[Robert Black]] who was largely responsible for the setup of the Camp Zeist trial and believes that [[Megrahi]] would be acquitted in any retrial.
 
*[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xl5ml9_the-lockerbie-bombing-pan-am-flight-103_news#.UX6TlqJJOAg "The Lockerbie Bombing - Pan Am Flight 103"] Al-Jazeera TV documentary featuring Professor [[Robert Black]] and [[Dr John Cameron]].
 
*[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xl5ml9_the-lockerbie-bombing-pan-am-flight-103_news#.UX6TlqJJOAg "The Lockerbie Bombing - Pan Am Flight 103"] Al-Jazeera TV documentary featuring Professor [[Robert Black]] and [[Dr John Cameron]].
  

Latest revision as of 14:19, 22 August 2022

Synthesis.png A synthesis page at The How, Why and Who of Pan Am Flight 103 summarises the material in this page and other related pages..


Event.png Pan Am Flight 103 (false flag attack,  mid-level deep event,  Air disaster) Rdf-entity.pngRdf-icon.png
PA103cockpit4.png
Wreckage of "Clipper Maid of the Seas" Cockpit section near Tundergarth Church
Date21 December 1988
LocationLockerbie,  Dumfries and Galloway,  Scotland
Coordinates55°6′55.99″N 3°21′30.69″W / 55.1155528°N 3.3585250°W / 55.1155528; -3.3585250
Fatal error: The format of the coordinate could not be determined. Parsing failed.


Blamed onAbdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi
Typebombing
Deaths270
Survivors0
Interest of'SlimVirgin', Safia Aoude, Juval Aviv, Robert Black, Ludwig De Braeckeleer, John Urquhart Cameron, William Chasey, Marina de Larracoechea, Adam Larson, Charles Norrie, Pierre Péan, George Thomson, Barry Walker
Subpage•Pan Am Flight 103/Cover-up
•Pan Am Flight 103/Fatal Accident Inquiry
•Pan Am Flight 103/The Trial
•Pan Am Flight 103/Unanswered questions
DescriptionWhen Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December 1988, killing all 259 passengers and crew on board, news reports cited UN Assistant Secretary-General, Bernt Carlsson, as its highest-profile victim. US and British intelligence operatives, posing as Lockerbie investigators, ignored the evident targeting of the UN diplomat and instead focused on the jumbo jet. With the result that the wrong country was blamed and an innocent person convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.
Boeing 747-121 "Clipper Maid of the Seas" pictured at Frankfurt Airport in July 1986
Crater and property damage in Lockerbie caused by main wreckage of Pan Am 103
Assistant Secretary-General and UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson
11 September 2001 - Front Page News
"Was the CIA complicit in both the Lockerbie and 9/11 attacks?"

On 21 December 1988 Pan Am Flight 103, a Boeing 747-121 named "Clipper Maid of the Seas", was on a scheduled transatlantic flight from London's Heathrow Airport to New York's JFK International Airport when there was an explosion on board. The aircraft broke up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie (Map), killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members. Eleven people in Lockerbie were killed by large sections of the plane which fell in and around the town, bringing total fatalities to 270.

Thirteen years later, on 31 January 2001, a juryless trial convicted Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi of involvement in the bombing and sentenced him to life imprisonment in Scotland and acquitted his co-defendant, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah. Megrahi's appeal was refused on 14 March 2002 by a panel of five Scottish judges[1] but on 28 June 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission granted Megrahi leave for a second appeal on the basis of evidence that a miscarriage of justice could have occurred.[2]

After a delay of two years appeal proceedings began at Edinburgh's Court of Criminal Appeal on 28 April 2009. However, Megrahi abandoned the second appeal on 18 August 2009. Two days later the Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill released Megrahi on compassionate grounds, as suffering from terminal prostate cancer, and he returned to Libya on 20 August 2009.[3]

Megrahi's guilt is not agreed upon[4] and Wikispooks editor, Patrick Haseldine has petitioned the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to investigate the theory that Lockerbie was a clandestine assassination of Bernt Carlsson.[5]

On 28 May 2015, Patrick Haseldine wrote to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, demanding that Scotland Yard launch a Bernt Carlsson murder inquiry.[6] He wrote again on 30 June 2015 highlighting a long-forgotten Scottish Mirror newspaper report of 11 September 2001, that revealed there had been a break-in at Pan Am's baggage shed at Heathrow airport on 21 December 1988. On the strength of which Haseldine asserted that a team of Civil Co-operation Bureau operatives, led by the CCB's London-based director Eeben Barlow, broke through a security door at Terminal 3 of Heathrow airport leading to the Interline Baggage Shed from where flights would be loaded the following day. The CCB team then ingested the primary suitcase (or "bomb bag") through this security door and tagged it for loading on Pan Am Flight 103.[7] The Scottish Mirror report was effectively - some would say conveniently - buried when news of the 9/11 attacks in America swamped the commercially-controlled media later that morning.[8]

Haseldine's third letter to Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe[9] quoted from what former GCHQ officer Mike Arnold had written on 28 July 2015 on the Facebook page Who Killed Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher?:

"We and the Americans bombed Pan Am Flight 103 to persuade South African foreign minister Pik Botha to sign the Tripartite Accord; thus with the Americans protecting our vested interests both political and financial.
"The destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 with the Americans demonstrated our intent and was also a threat, and removing Bernt Carlsson was a convenient and powerful signal, i.e. nobody is untouchable.
"The implication of the BBC Lockerbie report on the early morning of 9/11 implies that British Intelligence knew what was about to happen in New York, and may indeed have played a complicit role for the CIA.[10]
"The first report appearing in the Scottish Mirror implies that they were the cut-out; similar to how British Intelligence used The Times to place a small and misleading account for what happened to me at GCHQ into the public domain.
"As part of the bigger picture, it is probable that British Intelligence scripted the premature BBC report that WTC7 had collapsed. British Intelligence blatantly scripted The Times, Daily Mail and BBC around me."[11]

Official Narrative

Colin Boyd former Lord Advocate
Full article: Lockerbie Official Narrative

In August 2001, Scottish Lord Advocate Colin Boyd presented what might be considered the definite statement of the Lockerbie Official Narrative at a conference of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law (ISRCL):[12] While admitting that "Politics and diplomacy were necessarily interwoven with this case from the start", there is no mention of Bernt Carlsson, UN Commissioner for Namibia, and the evidence led at the trial is presented as the unvarnished truth. Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, was determined at the trial to be a member of the Libyan Intelligence Services and of being guilty of the bombing. The narrative is predictably self-congratulatory: "In conclusion, it seems to me to be absolutely right that the investigation of crime and the prosecutorial decisions which flow from that investigation must be taken independently of political influence... Political and diplomatic action secured the trial. The investigation of the case and the prosecution of the trial were driven by the evidence."

Geopolitical Background

1988

  • UK/US relations with Libya were icy over alleged Libyan sponsorship of "terrorism" and its stubborn refusal to 'see things the West's way'.[citation needed]
  • UK/US relations with Iran were slated for improvement following the cessation of the Iran-Iraq war in which both sides had been armed by the West.
  • On 3 July 1988 Iran Air Flight 655, a civilian Airbus A300 airliner en-route from Bandar Abbas, Iran to Dubai, UAE was brought down by a missile fired by the US Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, with the loss of 290 lives. The US government claimed that the airliner had been mistaken for an attacking F14 Tomcat fighter.
  • Within days of the Lockerbie disaster US government spokespeople were blaming "terrorists" possibly Palestinians. Early in 1989 a CBS News report "conclusively" placed the blame on Ahmed Jibril, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), asserting that Jibril's motivation was to discredit Yasser Arafat and cause the US to pull out of talks with the PLO. According to CBS, this "scoop" was provided by "reliable sources within the international terrorist community." In an age when "objectivity" is touted as the cornerstone of journalistic integrity, it is suspiciously convenient for a major network to about-face and refer to a "terrorist" as "reliable." It is unclear who constitutes the "international terrorist community."[13]

1995

  • On 24 March 1995, the Los Angeles Times reported that the FBI was stepping up efforts to apprehend Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, the two Libyans indicted for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and devoting additional agents to the international hunt in anticipation of new leads. Signalling its impatience with sporadic reports that Libya would hand over the accused men if trade sanctions were to be removed, the FBI said it was offering a record US$4 million reward for information leading to their capture.[14]

2000

  • UK-US relations with Libya were being 'normalised' following Libya's agreement to extradite al-Megrahi and Fhimah for trial and its abandonment of its allegedly belligerent stance over previously core issues of policy on trade, oil and support for groups antagonistic to Western interests. The accommodation resulted in the lifting of UN trade sanctions against Libya which had progressively paralysed its economy over the preceding decade.
  • UK-US relations with Iran were close to all-time lows and deteriorating over the usual issues of Iranian refusal to 'see things the West's way'.

Accident Inquiries

Full article: Pan Am Flight 103/Fatal Accident Inquiry

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch submitted a detailed 54-page report on the accident to Cecil Parkinson, Secretary of State for Transport, on 6 August 1990.[15] Informed by this report, Sheriff Principal John S. Mowat carried out a Fatal Accident Inquiry in Dumfries, Scotland. His report ran to 47 pages and was in broad agreement with the official narrative.

The Investigation

Exclusion of the Met

Dispatched from Scotland home to London

In Chapter Three of his 2002 book "The Lockerbie Incident: A Detective's Tale" (pages 70/71), Scottish policeman John Crawford describes how officers from the Metropolitan Police were excluded from investigating the Lockerbie bombing in Scotland and quickly dispatched home to London.

I knew that a considerable amount of political in-fighting had been going on from day one. The Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist squad from London had tried to make the enquiry theirs from the first day. There was considerable opposition to this both politically and from the Scottish police.

Scotland Yard as any ordinary cop knows was like living on a reputation built 100 years ago. Sure it had the facilities to conduct a huge enquiry; sure it had the personnel and was supposed to have the expertise. It certainly had the resources in manpower and finance. But ask a cop in any force up and down the country who they consider the most arrogant, the most useless and the least likely to do anything for anyone beyond their 'patch' and they will undoubtedly tell you – The Met.

It's an unfortunate reputation because I personally know of a number of fine officers in that organisation who would match the best anywhere. But the reputation of the Met precedes it and it does not enjoy the high standing it thinks it does in what it disparagingly calls the 'provincial' forces. I would like to think things have changed since then but I rather think they have not.

No – neither the Scottish police nor the Lord Advocate Lord Fraser of Carmylie wanted them messing around in our enquiry. It was said the Lord Advocate presented an ultimatum to the then Prime Minister, the Iron Lady herself, Margaret Thatcher that either he was in charge of the enquiry as befitted his role as Lord Advocate in Scotland or he would resign. I cannot vouch for the veracity of that but as far as the Met Anti-Terrorist squad were concerned it was all over. They were hanging around for a few days with their flashy designer suits and the full weight of their own egos and self-importance on their shoulders, the once deserved reputation of Scotland Yard expected to sweep all before them.

After all, what could a bunch of hick 'jocks' do, we were experts only in dealing with sheep and haggis – let's face it, according to them nothing of any consequence ever happened outside London.

The Met were told in no uncertain manner that they weren't welcome! It was back to London for them.[16]

Leading the investigation

Vince Cannistraro was head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center

The Lockerbie investigation involved the following senior figures:

  • Vincent Cannistraro - CIA task force officer in the brutal 1980s Iran-Contra campaign. Deployed a training manual of invasion and killing of Nicaraguan citizens and officials. Wrote "the anatomy of a lie" to cover up US government involvement in Nicaragua. In 1986 was commissioned by the US President to "Destabilise Libya and destroy the Gaddafi regime". Secretly worked to arm the Afghanistan Mujahideen and Osama Bin Laden. His chief Admiral Poindexter chaired a top-level meeting - to which Cannistraro had access - to discuss the manufacture of evidence to destabilise the government of Yemen. He was head of the CIA Lockerbie team, but did not attend the trial to give evidence.[17]
  • Stuart Henderson - former Detective Chief Superintendent with the Lothian and Borders Police, replaced John Orr as the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) at the Lockerbie Incident Control Centre in 1991, and led the Lockerbie bombing investigation.
  • Richard Marquise - FBI's chief investigator and appointed US Task Force leader in the Pan Am Flight 103 case when the Lockerbie bombing investigation began to focus on Libya.
  • Tom Thurman - discredited former head of the Explosives Unit at the FBI’s Crime Laboratory; accused of having FaBrIcated evidence to incriminate Libya.

The Trial

Full article: Pan_Am_Flight_103/The Trial
Lockerbie Trial Judges: Lord Abernethy, Lord Coulsfield, presiding Judge Lord Sutherland and Lord MacLean

Having been indicted in November 1991 in relation to the Lockerbie bombing, the two Libyans Lamin Khalifah Fhimah and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi were charged with conspiracy to murder, murder and a breach of the Aviation Security Act 1982, Section 2. Their trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands began on 3 May 2000 with a bench of three Scottish Judges - Lords Coulsfield, MacLean and Sutherland (Lord Abernethy as an alternate) - sitting without a jury. Eight months later, the Crown said it intended dropping the charges of conspiracy and breach of aviation security and would be focusing on the charge of murder. On 31 January 2001, the Judges' verdict was announced: Fhimah was found not guilty, Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.[18]

The Appeal

The Defence team had 14 days in which to appeal against Megrahi's conviction, and an additional six weeks to submit the full grounds of the appeal. These were considered by a Judge sitting in private who decided to grant Megrahi leave to appeal. The only basis for an appeal under Scots law is that there has been a "miscarriage of justice," which is not defined in statute and so it is for the appeal court to determine the meaning of these words in each case.[19] Because three Judges and one alternate Judge had presided over the trial, five Judges were required to preside over the Court of Criminal Appeal:

  • Lord Cullen, Lord Justice-General
  • Lord Kirkwood
  • Lord Osborne
  • Lord Macfadyen and
  • Lord Nimmo Smith

In what was described as a milestone in Scottish legal history, Lord Cullen granted the BBC permission in January 2002 to televise the appeal, and to broadcast it on the Internet in English with a simultaneous Arabic translation.

William Taylor QC, leading the Defence, said at the appeal's opening on 23 January 2002 that the three trial Judges sitting without a jury had failed to see the relevance of "significant" evidence and had accepted unreliable facts. He argued that the verdict was not one that a reasonable jury in an ordinary trial could have reached if it were given proper directions by the Judge. The grounds of the appeal rested on two areas of evidence where the Defence claimed the original court was mistaken: the evidence of Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, which the Judges accepted as sufficient to prove that the "primary suitcase" started its journey in Malta; and, disputing the Crown's case, fresh evidence would be adduced to show that the bomb's journey actually started at Heathrow. That evidence, which was not heard at the trial, showed that at some time in the two hours before 00:35 on 21 December 1988 a padlock had been forced on a secure door giving access air side in Terminal 3 of Heathrow airport, near to the area referred to at the trial as the "baggage build-up area". Taylor claimed that the PA 103 bomb could have been planted then.[20]

On 14 March 2002, it took Lord Cullen less than three minutes to deliver the decision of the High Court of Judiciary. The five Judges rejected the appeal, ruling unanimously that "none of the grounds of appeal was well-founded", adding "this brings proceedings to an end". The following day, a helicopter took Megrahi from Camp Zeist to continue his life sentence in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow.

2nd Appeal

Megrahi's second appeal was to have been heard by five Scottish judges in 2009 at the Court of Criminal Appeal. A procedural hearing at the Appeal Court in Edinburgh took place on 11 October 2007 when prosecution lawyers and Megrahi's defence Counsel, Maggie Scott QC, discussed legal issues with a panel of three judges.[21] One of the issues concerns a number of CIA documents that were shown to the prosecution but were not disclosed to the defence. The documents are understood to relate to the MEBO MST-13 Timer that allegedly detonated the PA103 bomb.[22] Further procedural hearings were scheduled to take place between December 2007 and June 2008.[23]

Pointing out an error on the FCO's website and accusing the British government of "delaying tactics" in relation to Megrahi's second Lockerbie appeal, UN Observer at the Lockerbie trial, Hans Köchler, wrote to Foreign Secretary David Miliband on 21 July 2008 saying:[24]

As international observer, appointed by the United Nations, at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands I am also concerned about the Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate which has been issued by you in connection with the new Appeal of the convicted Libyan national. Withholding of evidence from the Defence was one of the reasons why the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has referred Mr Al-Megrahi’s case back to the High Court of Justiciary. The Appeal cannot go ahead if the Government of the United Kingdom, through the PII certificate issued by you, denies the Defence the right (also guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights) to have access to a document which is in the possession of the Prosecution. How can there be equality of arms in such a situation? How can the independence of the judiciary be upheld if the executive power interferes into the appeal process in such a way?

The FCO corrected the error on its website and wrote to Köchler on 27 August 2008:[25]

"Ultimately, it will be for the Court to decide whether the material should be disclosed, not the Foreign Secretary."

In September 2008, following an application made at a closed hearing of the Appeal Court in Edinburgh, it was reported that a security-vetted Defence Counsel is to be appointed to examine the disputed document. The court's decision on the application has not been published but in a letter seen by BBC Scotland, FCO minister Kim Howells says it has decided to appoint a special defender. In a BBC interview, Hans Köchler criticised the development as "intolerable" and "detrimental to the rule of law." Köchler said:[26]

"In no country can the situation be allowed where the accused or the appellant is not free to have his own defence team, and instead someone is imposed upon him."

On 15 October 2008, five Scottish judges decided unanimously to reject a submission by the Crown Office that the scope of Megrahi's second appeal should be limited to the specific grounds of appeal that were identified by the SCCRC in June 2007.[27] On 21 October 2008 Megrahi's lawyer, revealed that his client had been diagnosed with "advanced stage" prostate cancer. Despite the appeals of Jim Swire, that keeping Megrahi behind bars while he battled the disease "would amount to exquisite torture", the High Court ruled on 14 November 2008 that Megrahi should remain in jail while his appeal continued.[28] In an article published on 29 December 2008 award-winning journalist and author, Hugh Miles, described the Lockerbie trial as an historic miscarriage of justice. The article concluded: "If Megrahi didn't do it, who did?"[29]

On 31 December 2008, Ludwig De Braeckeleer ended a 174-part series entitled "Diary of a Vengeance Foretold." The article alleges that Iran ordered the bombing of Pan Am 103 in revenge for the downing of Iran Air Flight 655.[30]

In January 2009, it was reported that, although Megrahi's second appeal against conviction was scheduled to begin on 27 April 2009, the hearing could last as long as 12 months because of the complexity of the case and volume of material to be examined.[31]

On 18 August 2009, Megrahi dropped his appeal in light of his terminal prostate cancer.[32]

Media cover-up

Full article: Lockerbie Bombing/Cover-up

Within a few weeks of the December 1988 newspaper reports, Bernt Carlsson's name would hardly ever be mentioned again by the commercially-controlled media in the Lockerbie context. He rapidly became something of a "nonperson" whose death was never properly investigated. Patrick Haseldine alleges that Tiny Rowland recruited Emeritus Professor of Scots Law Robert Black to organise the British news blackout and that "for the past 20 years, Professor Robert Black has been suppressing the truth about the Lockerbie disaster".[33]

Continuing Doubts

Full article: Pan Am Flight 103/Continuing Doubts

As of 2015, doubts about the justice of Megrahi's conviction are more widespread than ever.

Cameron's Report on Forensic Evidence

Full article: Cameron's Report on Lockerbie Forensic Evidence
Dr John Cameron, Church of Scotland's scientist

At the beginning of 2003, former South African president Nelson Mandela asked the Western Christian churches to intervene in what he termed "a clear miscarriage of justice", referring to the conviction of Megrahi at Camp Zeist. In July that year, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Rt Rev Professor Iain Torrance, took up the challenge and appointed the Church of Scotland's leading scientist Dr John Urquhart Cameron to conduct a scientific examination of all the forensic evidence which had convicted Megrahi. As a result, Cameron produced a damning report on the conduct of the forensic experts and on the evidence presented to the trial.[34]

Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission

Full article: Pan Am Flight 103/Continuing Doubts#Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission

On 23 September 2003 lawyers acting for Megrahi applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) for a review of the case (both sentence and conviction), arguing that there had been a miscarriage of justice. On 1 November 2006, Megrahi was reported to have dropped his demand for the new appeal to be held at Camp Zeist.[35] After a four-year review the SCCRC concluded that there was evidence that a miscarriage of justice might have occurred, so Megrahi was granted leave to appeal against his conviction for a second time.[36]

Full article: Abdelbaset al-Megrahi/Compassionate release

On 20 August 2009, Megrahi was granted compassionate release, after having agreed to abandon his appeal.

Questions remain unanswered

How did one suitcase, which contained Semtex occupy a precise bottom-row location close to the edge of the aircraft’s hull? Seven containers were filled with luggage that came from Heathrow Terminal 3. An eighth container, marked AVE4041, was for baggage from a transfer flight from Frankfurt. No screening of the eighth container took place. One of the loading area staff in Heathrow initially told police he had noticed a single hard-shell suitcase already loaded at the bottom of AVE4041. This scenario was expected to be re-examined had a Scottish appeal court been allowed to test the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. If the bomb in the suitcase was loaded at Heathrow, then Megrahi and the official account of the Libyan’s movements in Malta all begin to look unconnected. The Heathrow flight was also delayed, suggesting that if the bomb was loaded in Malta and on a timer, it should have exploded before it took off in London.

Does it matter that such detail remains the subject of debate? It does. Because if you accept a porous account and decide that a weak explanation is better than no explanation, then whatever lessons you claim to have learned will be worthless. If the conviction of Megrahi was merely a convenient round-up of the Libyan bad guys, then the Scottish justice system (and, by implication, its British counterpart) are damaged by pragmatic injustice.

The failures of Lockerbie should serve as warning to the Metrojet Flight 9268 investigation that will come in Egypt. The objective should be the truth. Anything less and all we will do is wait for the next “game-changer”.[37]

Alternative Possibilities

South African Apartheid Regime

President P W Botha ruled apartheid South Africa between 1978 and 1989 and was responsible for gross human rights violations, including all the violence that was sanctioned by the State Security Council (SSC), an executive organ of his apartheid regime. Such violence included using torture, abduction, arson and sabotage, and murdering those opposed to apartheid.[38] An SSC subcommittee, chaired by 'superspy' Major Craig Williamson, targeted anti-apartheid groups and individuals.[39]

From Chequers to Lockerbie

The distance by road from Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country residence in Buckinghamshire, to the site in Scotland of the Pan Am Flight 103 crash on 21 December 1988 is 310 miles. It took more than 4½ years for President P W Botha to complete his murderous journey from meeting Margaret Thatcher at Chequers on 2 June 1984 to the sabotage at Lockerbie.[40]

The full article "From Chequers to Lockerbie" by Patrick Haseldine can be read here.

Ayatollah's Vengeance Exacted by Botha's Regime

Iran Air Flight 655's destruction depicted on an Iranian postage stamp

The following is a transcript of Patrick Haseldine's Facebook article published in March 2011:

On 3 July 1988, the US Navy deliberately shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in the Persian Gulf killing all 290 civilian passengers and crew on the Airbus A300. Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini vowed that the skies would 'rain blood' in revenge. Months passed and no attempt at Iranian retaliation was made, even though there were hundreds of US passenger aircraft worldwide to target each day. A truce had been arranged for the duration of the US presidential election campaign, which ended on 8 November 1988 when Vice President George Bush was elected to succeed the incumbent Ronald Reagan. Thus, nearly six months would elapse before Iran's revenge attack finally happened.
The eventual target was a Pan American Airways Boeing 747 jumbo jet that was scheduled to depart London's Heathrow Airport on 21 December 1988. Early that morning, South African Airways Flight 234 from Johannesburg carrying an official delegation which included two government ministers landed at Heathrow. The 23-strong party was led by South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha – not to be confused with South Africa’s autocratic President P W Botha – and Defence Minister General Magnus Malan. For over a decade, apartheid South Africa had been defying UN Security Council Resolution 435 by continuing to occupy neighbouring Namibia (which President Botha insisted on calling South-West Africa) and by exploiting its valuable mineral resources in violation of UN law. On 22 December 1988 at UN headquarters in New York Pik Botha would sign an historic agreement bringing an end to the apartheid regime’s occupation of Namibia and handing over control to the United Nations. Seats had been reserved for the South African party on Pan Am Flight 101 which, following a special security check of the aircraft, took off from Heathrow at 11:00hrs GMT. Flight Pan Am 101 landed safely at JFK, New York at 13:45hrs EST.
In the evening of 21 December 1988, without any security check, Pan Am Flight 103 destined for New York took off from Heathrow at 18:25hrs GMT. Thirty-eight minutes after take-off, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland killing all 259 people on board the aircraft, and eleven in the town of Lockerbie. Iran’s revenge attack thus resulted in 270 fatalities, of whom Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, Bernt Carlsson, was the most prominent. It would have been Bernt Carlsson’s responsibility as UN Commissioner for Namibia to take charge of the country as soon as South Africa agreed to cede control on 22 December 1988. Carlsson had already issued a clear warning to the companies and countries that were flouting the UN prohibition on exploiting Namibia’s minerals (especially uranium and diamonds) that he intended to take legal action against them. Iran was one of the countries facing prosecution because, as well as owning 15% of the Rössing Uranium Mine, it was receiving shipments of Namibian uranium to develop its nuclear programme. In targeting Pan Am Flight 103 therefore Iran not only avenged Iran Air Flight 655 but also took out the one individual at the United Nations with the power to prosecute the companies eg Rio Tinto Group (joint owner of the Rössing Uranium Mine) and De Beers (owner of CDM diamond mines) and the countries eg Iran and South Africa that were in breach of UN law.[41]

Q & A Session

Q. Why didn't Pik Botha's party fly South African Airways direct to New York?

A. Because the 1986 US Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act banned SAA flights from landing in America.

Q. How did the Iranians know that UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, would travel on Pan Am Flight 103 of 21 December 1988?

A. They relied on their apartheid South African friends to ensure Carlsson joined that particular flight. He was induced to rearrange his Brussels/New York itinerary, and took a flight from Brussels to Heathrow (arriving by flight BA391 at 11:06hrs on 21 December 1988) for a meeting in London with De Beers, the South African diamond mining and marketing conglomerate. After the meeting, De Beers chauffeured Carlsson back to Heathrow in good time to catch Pan Am Flight 103.

Q. Was it the Iranians or the South Africans that put the bomb in Bernt Carlsson’s checked-in suitcase while it was unsupervised at Heathrow?

A. Masterminded by the apartheid regime's superspy Major Craig Williamson, Iran's revenge attack was carried out by the Europe Branch (based in London) of South Africa’s Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), whose operatives substituted the ‘bomb bag’ for Bernt Carlsson’s suitcase at Heathrow Airport. No trace of his suitcase was ever found.

Q. Who supplied the bomb?

A. Marwan Khreesat, a Jordanian double agent who infiltrated the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), told FBI special agent Edward Marshman and forensic investigator Thomas Thurman in 1989 that he had built five barometrically triggered aircraft bombs when he was in Neuss, West Germany in October 1988. German BKA police intercepted four of these devices in November 1988 following the arrest of a PFLP-GC terrorist cell in Neuss. Khreesat said that the fifth bomb had been taken by a senior PFLP-GC agent named Abu Elias, who escaped arrest in Germany. Abu Elias is suspected of supplying the South African CCB with the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103.

Q. How was the bomb transported from Germany to Heathrow?

A. According to Paul Foot's article "Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice": "In August 1997, the German magazine Der Spiegel published a long article about Lockerbie that was completely ignored in the British Press. It cited 'a new witness who has been making detailed statements to the German police and prosecutors.' The man was named as Abolghasem Mesbahi and was described as 'a credible witness.' What he was saying contradicted 'the Anglo-American thesis of the sole involvement of Libya.' Mesbahi’s story was as follows: 'The bomb had been loaded in single pieces at Frankfurt airport into an aeroplane to London. The head of IranAir at Frankfurt at that time, a secret serviceman, had smuggled them past the airport controls. They had then been assembled in London and put on the Pan Am clipper.'

"Despite Der Spiegel’s evidence for the credibility of Mesbahi, and his numerous high-level contacts in Iranian intelligence, this story was quickly and effectively buried."[42]

Q. Was the break-in at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 3 on 20 December 1988 anything to do with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103?

A. Possibly. Security guard Ray Manly, who discovered that the padlock had been cut on security door CP2 leading to the Pan Am baggage area, told the Lockerbie appeal court at Camp Zeist in 2002: "I believe it would be possible for an unauthorised person to obtain tags for a particular Pan Am flight and then, having broken the CP2 lock, to have introduced a tagged bag into the baggage build up area." Manly immediately reported the break-in to the police but was not interviewed by the Metropolitan Police until 31 January 1989. No mention of the Heathrow break-in was made at the 2000-2001 Lockerbie trial of the two Libyans Megrahi and Fhimah. (The break-in became public knowledge on 11 September 2001 when the Scottish Mirror's front page headline screamed "Lockerbie: The Lost Evidence".)

Q. Why wasn’t the bomb timed to go off when the aircraft was over the Atlantic Ocean?

A. The bomb had a barometric detonator and automatically exploded 30 minutes after the aircraft reached a set altitude. Because the aircraft came down on land rather than into the ocean it was demonstrably not an accident (important when revenge is the motive for the bombing).

On 3 March 2011, Oliver Tickell asked three questions:

Q1. Why did South Africa want to carry out this attack on behalf of Iran?
Q2. What part did Iran play in the attack?
Q3. How was this narrative, if true, suppressed?

Patrick Haseldine replied:

A1. To prevent prosecution by UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, for breaching UNCN Decree No 1, the apartheid regime and Iran both wanted Carlsson dead.
A2. Iran helped in targeting Bernt Carlsson on Pan Am Flight 103.
A3. It is not for me to speculate how it was suppressed. All I can say is that nothing of mine has been published since 22 December 1993.[43]

High profile victims

The highest profile victim aboard Pan Am Flight 103 was UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, on his way to attend a ceremony at United Nations headquarters in New York the next day when South Africa agreed to grant independence to Namibia. However, after a brief spell of attention, this angle of the bombing was not pursued by the commercially-controlled media.

US Intelligence

Four US intelligence agency employees were also aboard, having flown together from Cyprus on flight CY504 which arrived at Heathrow at 14:34:

Two Diplomatic Security Service special agents were acting as bodyguards to Gannon and McKee:

US Military

Sixteen US military personnel died on Pan Am Flight 103:

  • Philip Bergstrom, Army Sergeant
  • Willis Coursey, US military
  • Joseph Curry, Army Captain
  • Edgar Eggleston, Air Force Sergeant
  • Kenneth Gibson, Army Specialist
  • Lloyd Ludlow, Army Sergeant
  • Douglas Malicote, Army Specialist
  • Jewel Mitchell, Army 2nd Lieutenant
  • Mary Smith, Army Sergeant
  • Michael Stinnett, Army Specialist
  • Lawanda Thomas, Air Force Sergeant
  • Bonnie Williams, US military
  • Eric Williams, Army Sergeant
  • George Williams, Army 1st Lieutenant
  • Dedara Woods, Air Force Sergeant
  • Joe Woods, Civilian Military worker[45]


 

A Pan Am Flight 103 victim on Wikispooks

TitleDescription
Matthew GannonCIA officer killed in the Lockerbie Bombing

 

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References

  1. ↑ "UN monitor decries Lockerbie judgement"
  2. ↑ File:SCCRC-Lockerbie.pdf - SCCRC Leave to appeal decision press release - June 2007
  3. ↑ "Lockerbie bomber's appeal dropped"
  4. ↑ "Flight 103: it was the Uranium"
  5. ↑ "Take action to investigate the deaths of UN Officials Dag Hammarskjöld and Bernt Carlsson!"
  6. ↑ "Scotland Yard to launch Bernt Carlsson murder inquiry"
  7. ↑ "Pan Am 103: South Africa Guilty"
  8. ↑ "Lockerbie: Heathrow break-in revealed"
  9. ↑ "Sir Bernard gets the message!"
  10. ↑ "Suppressed Lockerbie evidence ignited 9/11 attacks"
  11. ↑ "Comment by former GCHQ officer Mike Arnold on the Facebook page 'Who Killed Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher?'"
  12. ↑ "The Lockerbie Trial" by Rt Hon Colin Boyd QC, Lord Advocate, Scotland
  13. ↑ "Up in the air?" The Michigan Daily, 14 February 1989
  14. ↑ "FBI Offers Record $4-Million Reward in Lockerbie Bombing"
  15. ↑ "AAIB report on the accident to Boeing 747-121, N739PA at Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire, Scotland on 21 December 1988"
  16. ↑ "The Lockerbie Incident: A Detective's Tale"
  17. ↑ "Lockerbie frame-up"
  18. ↑ "Full wording of initial charges"
  19. ↑ "14 days to launch appeal"
  20. ↑ "Grounds of appeal"
  21. ↑ "Lockerbie bomber in fresh appeal"
  22. ↑ "'Secret' Lockerbie report claim"
  23. ↑ "Lockerbie documents security plea"
  24. ↑ International Progress Organization, Vienna, News Release, 21 July 2008 [1]
  25. ↑ "Foreign Office letter to UN observer Dr. Hans Koechler"
  26. ↑ "Appeal court plans Lockerbie move"
  27. ↑ "Judgment on the scope of Megrahi's second appeal"
  28. ↑ "Timeline: Lockerbie bombing"
  29. ↑ "Lockerbie Trial is an Historic Miscarriage of Justice"
  30. ↑ "Tehran Hands Over the Remaining Funds to Jibril PFLP-GC
  31. ↑ "Secret talks on deal to return Megrahi to Libya"
  32. ↑ "Lockerbie bomber's appeal dropped"
  33. ↑ "Blackout over Lockerbie"
  34. ↑ "Lockerbie: Mandela and Dr John Cameron's Report"
  35. ↑ "Appeal can be held in Edinburgh"
  36. ↑ "SCCRC referral of Megrahi case"
  37. ↑ "We failed to learn from Lockerbie, and repeat our mistakes at peril"
  38. ↑ "South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission"
  39. ↑ "Interview with SA 'superspy' Craig Williamson"
  40. ↑ "Botha 'linked to murder decisions'"
  41. ↑ "Lockerbie: Ayatollah's Vengeance Exacted by Botha's Regime"
  42. ↑ "Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice"
  43. ↑ "Flight path"
  44. ↑ "EverythingPanAm.com The Virtual Pan Am Museum"
  45. ↑ "Victims of Pan Am Flight 103"
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