PT/35(b)

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"Without the timer fragment we would have been unable to develop additional evidence against Libya" (Richard Marquise).

PT/35(b) is the evidence tag put by investigators on a tiny fragment of printed circuit board from the Swiss-made MST-13 timer that allegedly triggered an explosion which caused Pan Am Flight 103 to crash at Lockerbie in Scotland on 21 December 1988, killing all 259 passengers and crew and 11 people in the town.

Allegedly found amongst the debris of the Lockerbie bombing, the PT/35(b) fragment was crucial (to the prosecution's case at the Lockerbie bombing trial twelve years later) in linking Libya to the crime, and thus to the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in January 2001.

Found by Scottish Police

At the Lockerbie bombing trial, the prosecution stated:

“On 13 January 1989, DC Gilchrist and DC McColm were engaged together in line searches in an area near Newcastleton. A piece of charred material was found by them which was given the police number PI/995 and which subsequently became label 168.”

DC Gilchrist had initially labelled the bag ‘cloth (charred)’ but had later overwritten the word ‘cloth’ with ‘debris’.[1]

FBI-fabricated fragment

In March 2001, French investigative journalist Pierre Péan wrote an article in Le Monde Diplomatique in which he accused the FBI of fabricating bomb-timer evidence to incriminate Libya for sabotaging both Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772.[2] The article was published just after the Lockerbie bombing trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands had ended with the conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on the strength of just one piece of hard evidence: PT/35(b), a tiny fragment of the MST-13 timer manufactured by the Swiss firm MEBO.

Two years earlier, Abdullah al-Senussi and five other Libyans were tried and convicted in absentia by a Paris court for the 1989 UTA Flight 772 bombing. Péan claimed there was something wrong:

Pierre Péan says that the FBI fabricated the bomb-timer evidence against Libya
"It is striking to witness the similarity of the discoveries, by the FBI, of the scientific proof of the two aircraft that were sabotaged: the Pan Am Boeing 747 and the UTA DC-10. Among the thousands or rather tens of thousands of pieces of debris collected near the crash sites, just one printed circuit board (PCB) fragment was found in each case, which carried enough information to allow its identification: MEBO for the Boeing 747 and "TY" (from Taiwan) for the DC-10."
Péan went on to accuse Juge Jean-Louis Bruguière of ignoring the results of an analysis by Claude Colisti of the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire (DCPJ) – one of the world's foremost explosives experts – that the "TY" timer fragment had no trace of explosives residue, and could not therefore have been connected to the bomb that destroyed UTA Flight 772. Furthermore, neither a forensic inquiry by the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) nor an examination by the scientific laboratory of the Préfecture de Police (PP) could make any connection between the timer fragment and the bomb. According to Péan, Juge Bruguière had therefore taken at face value the word of an FBI political operative (Thomas Thurman), who had been discredited in 1997 by the US Inspector-General, Michael Bromwich, and told never again to appear in court as an expert witness, rather than accept the findings of French forensic experts.
Because of this prohibition – despite his key role in linking PT/35(b) to the MST-13 timer – "expert witness" Thurman was not called to give evidence at the Lockerbie trial.
Pierre Péan was interviewed on French TV channel ARTE info on 28 August 2007 following the admission by MEBO engineer Ulrich Lumpert that he had handed over a prototype MST-13 timer to Lockerbie investigators in 1989.[3]

It was revealed at the Lockerbie bombing trial that the British scientist, Dr Thomas Hayes, had also failed to test the MEBO timer fragment for explosives residue. Such reckless disregard for the integrity of forensic evidence would have had the most profound effects upon the Scottish judicial process in relation to Megrahi's second appeal against conviction.[4] However, in August 2009 Megrahi agreed to abandon his second appeal, was granted "compassionate release" by Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, and flew back to Tripoli. Thurman's fabricated evidence has never therefore been exposed in court.[5]

Imaginary fragment

PT/35(b) was the subject of an article entitled "Fragment of the imagination?" which appeared in Private Eye issue 1195, 12–25 October 2007:

Private Eye issue 1195, 12–25 October 2007

Claims that Scottish prosecutors suppressed evidence that could have pointed to the innocence of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi (pictured), jailed for life for the murder of 270 people in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, have prompted demands for an immediate international investigation.

Last week the Glasgow Herald disclosed that the prosecution team had examined a CIA document relating to a tiny fragment of a bomb timer said to have been found in the crash debris and used to implicate Megrahi. They had failed to disclose it to the defence, even though it apparently cast doubt on both the suggestion that the fragment came from the timer used to blow up the Pan Am flight, and the idea that it was, as claimed, purchased by the Libyans.

The existence of the document, uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, formed one of six grounds for concluding last July that there had been a miscarriage of justice. The commission did not disclose the sensitive document as part of its 800-page report into the affair because it seems it could not obtain authority from the US.

Given the sudden confession last month by Ulrich Lumpert, a Swiss electronics engineer, that in 1989 he stole a "non-operational" timing board from his employer and handed it to "a person officially investigating in the Lockerbie case", and the stink that has always surrounded the case becomes overwhelming. Lumpert, who gave evidence at the trial, now risks arrest for perjury should he ever leave his homeland.

But even without these damning revelations six and a half years after the trial, the evidence surrounding the fragment of bomb timer, like so much of the case against Megrahi, is deeply flawed. Those flaws were exposed at the specially convened no-jury trial that began in the Netherlands in 2000, but the three Scottish judges performed all sorts of leaps of logic to avoid them.

Shortly after the trial, the many inconsistencies were set out by the late Paul Foot in "Lockerbie - The Flight From Justice", a 32-page special report in the Eye. The fragment of circuit board said to have come from the MST-13 timer featured heavily. It was made by Lumpert's Swiss employer, MEBO, and was alleged to have detonated the bomb.

First, there were differing accounts of how the fragment, apparently embedded in the neck of a shirt, was found. By the time of the trial, the shirt was said to have been found by a policeman combing the area, DC Gilchrist, in January 1989. Forensic exhibits are supposed to be carefully preserved and labelled, but Gilchrist was unable to explain why the label on the exhibit bag had been changed from "cloth charred" to "debris". The judges decided Gilchrist's evidence about the change was "at worst evasive and at best confusing".

The court heard that the fragment was examined by Dr Thomas Hayes of the Ministry of Defence laboratories at the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) in May 1989, some four months after its discovery. But the page on which he recorded his findings appeared to have been inserted in his notebook at a later date and the pages renumbered. Dr Hayes could not explain this. Hayes was one of the RARDE scientists criticised by the May inquiry into the erroneous conviction of the Maguire family for explosives offences in 1976.

If Lumpert is now telling the truth, he did not hand over an identical circuit board to investigators until June, and after Hayes is said to have examined the fragment.

The fragment wasn't photographed until September by Allen Feraday, a RARDE scientist whose note to police saying it was the best he could in the short time available. No one could explain why a gap of four months was a "short time".

What is clear is that it wasn't until June the following year in Washington that US investigators identified the fragment as a match to the MEBO timers. The bosses of the Swiss manufacturers, Bollier and Meister, subsequently confirmed that they had supplied 20 such timers to the Libyans. Suddenly, more than a year after the explosion, the entire Scottish investigation switched its focus to Libya. Evidence already obtained, much of it from German police, that linked the Pan Am 103 bomb to a Syrian-backed terrorist cell in Frankfurt, hired by Iranians to avenge the shooting down of a civil airliner by the US, was promptly dropped.

The German police had discovered altitude-sensitive bombs, designed for aircraft, which could be packed in cassette recorders with timing devices triggered to start at a height of 3,000ft.

They were calculated to blow an aircraft up 38 minutes after take-off – exactly how long after leaving Heathrow that Pan Am 103 exploded. At the time, it was reported that a piece of circuit board recovered from a Pan Am aircraft pallet was expected to link it to the Syrian-backed cell.

The bizarre twist in the face of this mounting evidence incriminating Syria and Iran prompted Foot to conclude that it was nothing more than political expediency: the US suddenly needed Syrian and Iranian support for an attack on Saddam Hussein's occupying forces in Kuwait.

Foot outlined how Megrahi and his original co-accused Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, who was acquitted by the Scottish judges, were originally put in the frame by a "Libyan defector", Abdul Giaka, a proven liar and cheat who was handsomely rewarded for his evidence by the CIA. A series of cables sent from his CIA handlers to headquarters, which were originally withheld from the trial but later released in a redacted form, showed that the agents themselves thought he was a man of little credibility. The judges agreed his evidence was "at best grossly exaggerated and worst untrue, and largely motivated by financial considerations". But they never questioned why the prosecution should rely on such a corrupt and desperate liar in the first place.

Instead, the judges relied on the only other evidence that incriminated Megrahi: his identification, 11 years after the event, by Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who sold the 13 items of clothing that were packed around the bomb. The SCCRC found the many flaws in that identification evidence to be grounds for an appeal by Megrahi. And it has now emerged that they uncovered other sensitive documentation casting doubt on Gauci's reliability. Unconfirmed reports suggest it relates to offers of payment by the CIA.

This week, lawyers acting for Megrahi are expected to make applications to the court relating to his forthcoming appeal, including asking for all the documentation in the case to be made public.

Dr Hans Köchler, the UN observer at the original Netherlands trial, said that if (as now seems likely) the CIA was able to dictate what was disclosed and what was not, then the entire proceedings had been "perverted into a kind of intelligence operation, the purpose of which is not the search for the truth, but the obfuscation of reality". He added his weight to the families' calls for an immediate independent international investigation into the affair.[6]

Case hinged on PT/35(b)

Richard Marquise, former Head of the US Pan Am 103 Task Force, was interviewed extensively in the 2009 documentary film Lockerbie Revisited and admitted that the case against Libya hinged on the PT/35(b) PCB fragment. Marquise said that of all the evidence retrieved from the crash scene, only that one piece of timer fragment PT/35(b) was brought over to America from Britain:

"It was the only piece of evidence to make its way to the FBI laboratory in the possession of a RARDE examiner: he brought it; he did the comparison; and he's a scientist; and he took it back."

Gideon Levy asked:

"Would you have a case if you wouldn't have this evidence?"

Marquise replied:

"Would we have a case...it would be a very difficult case to prove...this helps our link. Without the timer fragment we would have been unable to develop additional evidence against Libya.
"I don't think we would ever have had an indictment."[7]

Travels of a fragment

In October 2010, Adam Larson posted on his Lockerbie Divide website:

The recent hubbub regarding overly-mobile Lockerbie evidence started with Dutch journalist Gideon Levy’s early 2009 video Tegenlicht: Lockerbie Revisited. It’s a well-made video, with good music, some informative bits, and an unusual format of having interviewees watch and respond to recordings of others. Its prime focus was the crucial evidence PT/35(b), the MEBO timer fragment “tying” the bombing back to Libya. It’s therefore a little embarrassing that Levy announces another famous fragment, of general Toshiba circuit board displayed on a fingertip – as the article in question. This confusion surfaces elsewhere in the film, but manages to not become a big deal.

The main attraction that has generated some buzz was a curious discrepancy revealed and captured regarding the whereabouts of this historic find during the course of the investigation. As evidence from Scottish soil it was, should have been, in control of the Scottish police investigation, headed by the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO), a spot first held by Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS) John Orr (Strathclyde police, now Sir John Orr), and then by Orr's deputy, DCS Stuart Henderson (Lothian and Borders police, whom we meet below). The Scots would work in tandem with – but not give their evidence to – the American FBI's task force for the "SCOTBOM" investigation.

Officially the fragment was definitely taken outside Scotland - in the proper hands - to a RARDE lab at Kent, England and, as we’ve more recently had confirmed, to a private lab in Germany, both times for forensics testing. The understanding of then-Lord Advocate Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, which should have been quite good: “As far as I’m aware it’s always been in the UK,” he told Levy’s camera in 2008. He obviously didn’t know everything.

Besides the trips to England and Germany, which neither Lord Fraser nor Gideon Levy seemed aware of, there’s an alleged journey by this little blue key across the big blue sea to the United States. In the first of two interviews with Levy, FBI SCOTBOM chief Richard Marquise casually states that this one crucial piece of evidence, and nothing else, physically was brought to the FBI’s main lab in Washington.

“I’ll just tell you, not one piece - no I shouldn’t say that – the evidence – no, I’m not choosing my words carefully, I just want to make sure I say the right thing – all the evidence that was found in Lockerbie never made its way to be examined by the FBI laboratory. PT/35, as far as I remember, was the only piece of evidence that made its way to the laboratory, in the possession of a RARDE examiner. He brought it, he did the comparison, and he’s a scientist, and he took it back.”

Well that's an interestingly worded twist to the story. FBI Special Agent James “Tom” Thurman, the man publicly credited with making the identification of the fragment as from a Libyan-supplied MST-13 timer, on June 15 1990, also made an appearance. Levy caught up with him, wearing his years well in retirement, at a December 2008 ceremony to marking the 20th anniversary of the Lockerbie disaster. Levy came across a bit wormy, in my opinion, using the solemn ceremony mostly to make Thurman squirm and deny he was dismissed from the FBI for altering evidence. More to the point, he challenged Thurman if comparing with a photo – as he has previously stated – was really scientific. Thus provoked, he responded:

Thurman: I did the real thing ... I had the real piece of evidence.
Levy: That pointed to Libya.
Thurman: Absolutely. Absolutely. The photograph was the first thing, then the real piece of evidence was brought over. And at that point –
Levy: It was – it was on your finger, the chip was on.
Thurman: At that point - then there was a one-to-one identification made. The real piece of evidence, to the timer, the MST-13 timer, was made in the FBI laboratory. It wasn’t just a photograph. The photograph started it, and then the authorities from England brought over the real piece of evidence. That piece of evidence was examined in the FBI laboratory, along with the MST-13. That examination was verified in the forensic science laboratory, in England. So, it wasn’t only my examination, it was verified by other peoples’ examination as well.

Suspicions condensing around the Thurman link here is natural; PT/35(b) was apparently taken outside normal channels to his lab, and put under the grip of a known manipulator of evidence. Problem is, the charges against him were not over physically altering physical evidence, but for his explosives unit allowing conclusions to be overstated in the prosecution’s favour, in multiple instances unrelated to this one. Agent Frederic Whitehurst told Levy how Thurman altered his reports when he deemed that his own political science training trumped Whitehurst’s chemistry smarts.

This will and certainly should cast doubt on Thurman's general investigative even-handedness and his certainties over his own lab work (“I knew we had it,” it "absolutely, absolutely" implicates Libya, etc.). In fact why Thurman was selected is beyond me – any idiot with the two photos could affirm they’re the same, and this selectee has become a real liability. All the rage at the 1991 indictment, he was discredited and never called as a witness by the time of the big trial at camp Zeist in 2000.

But presenting this side-by-side with concerns over the “tampering with” of this evidence once taken somewhere dangerous is quite leading. The fact is, I can see no sign of tampering with the evidence, nor much of a reasons to suspect it. The problem is the thing itself, not where it was taken and who touched it in these dark corners.

At that same chilly cemetery, as the people were leaving to more private venues, Levy caught up again with Mr Marquise, as it so happened accompanied by his Scottish counterpart DCS Henderson. When standing side-by-side with the prime guardian of that fragment Marquise was of a different recollection altogether from his first interview. Levy was granted an answer to one question, and that's about what he asked, for almost four minutes.

Levy: When I asked Lord Fraser about the circuit board, he said something that contradicted what you said. He said it had never been to the United States. And if it was in the United States, then he would have known.

Marquise: No, I don’t know that I told you the circuit board was in the United States.

Henderson: The circuit board was never in the United States.

Marquise: Let’s back up, we’re talking two different things. There was a circuit board of MST-13 timer in the United States, but the fragment PT/35 was never in the United States. Photographs of it were in the United States.”

Levy: It was never in the United States? (murmured agreement) Oh, I thought it was…

Marquise: No the fragment never came to the United States, but the circuit board was in the United States, because we had the MST-13 timer, which we turned over to the police in Scotland.

Levy: Ah, but but… Tom Thurman, who was here today, also said it was in the United States.

Marquise: No, he never said that.

Levy: No?

Marquise: The fragment PT/35 was not in the United States.

Levy: But it was in England, but it came…

Marquise: It never came to the United States.

Levy: It never came to the United States.

Marquise: I don’t believe so – I’m 100% sure it was not here.

Levy: Oh, it has never been here.

Henderson: Never released out of evidence control of ourselves. Couldn’t afford to let something like that…

Levy: I thought it was brought in the possession of Alan Feraday.

Marquise: Feraday’s over in RARDE. He’s in England. It’s in his possession.

Levy: Yes, yes, but I thought he came – I thought you told me that it came in his possession to the United States.

Marquise: I don’t know that…

Henderson: His possession and my possession. But it was never released for any reason (inaudible).

Levy: And who are you?

Henderson: Detective Chief Superintendent Stuart Henderson, I conducted the investigation.

Levy: Okay. My name’s Gideon Levy, and I’m from Holland - from the Dutch television. So it has never been in the United States.

Henderson: Confirmed.

Levy: At all.

Henderson: Couldn’t be, ‘cause it was such an important point of evidence it wasn’t possible to release it. It had to be contained to be produced to the Court, therefore you couldn’t afford to have it waved around for everybody to see because it could have got interfered with.

Levy: Aha.

Henderson: So it was far too valuable to be other than made available – couldn’t be.

Levy: Okay.

Henderson: Very valuable piece of evidence.

Levy: (shouting over) But you said it was in the possession of Alan Feraday and brought to the United States.

Marquise: You know, its – you’ll have to talk to Alan Feraday about what he brought to the United States. I don’t remember…

Henderson: Alan Feraday had it in his possession with me, but he did not release it to anyone.

Marquise: No, no, no, he said bring it with him. Did he bring it to the, I don’t remember.

Henderson: No, they came to us to see it.

Marquise: Yes. I saw it – I saw it in London.

Levy: Oh, you saw it in London?

Henderson: They came to where we had it, see. Because it wasn’t possible to remove any evidence out of the jurisdiction of the – Scottish control.

Levy: So you were the same – you were the FBI investigator and you were the Scotish investigator. Ultimate inestigators.

Both: affirmations.

Levy: Okay.

Henderson: That’s why I’m here, to go and see the relatives.

Marquise: We need to go.

Henderson: We’ll have to go. Pleasure to meet you, gentlemen.

Levy: Thank you very much.

Henderson: And by the way, there is no hidden holes to find because the culprit is in custody. (with a smile and wink) Take my word for it. Okay?

So I would come away from this with an impression that it may well have not been in the United States, whatever Marquise and Thurman said to same guy ten minutes earlier. But I’m weird that way, denying Henderson’s bait that I imagine was dangling there. A more normal reaction would be to get a little confused, and for many to solve that by taking their own default position. Some would just dismiss this all as faulty memory two decades on, while others will surely latch onto it as more proof of a cover-up, or at least something to make some more noise over.

My main concern with PT/35(b) is that this much-fretted over fragment may have been planted outright to begin with, or at least has been overstated as direct evidence pointing only to Libya. This hullabaloo about where the possible fraud was carted to adds little to an understanding of either level of worthwhile inquiry.

Update, 10/28: Something I saw later that fits best here: Marquise's unacknowledged about face here was short-lived. In September 2009, months later with Henderson not present, he again affirmed an American trip. This was in a response to Gareth Peirce, and sent into Robert Black's blog. I haven't been able to verify it, so do please take a grain of salt:

Once he identified the fragment, he asked Alan Feraday to come to Washington. Feraday brought the original fragment of the timer with him and they both examined it under a microscope. They independently agreed it was identical to the MEBO timer. The fragment was never out of the control of Mr Feraday and returned with him to the lab at RARDE.

Second update, Nov 24 2009: Mr Marquise responds to the confusion that indeed the fragment did come to the US, and he and Henderson were both confused by the tone of Levy's Arlington ambush. Again from Black's Lockerbie Blog:

With regard to the "travel" of PT-35-- once again-- it was the sharing of information which led to the solution of this case. If the fragment had remained behind in Scotland, never shared, it would possibly be unidentified today. No one would ever have discovered it was a piece of one of 20 timers given to Libyan intelligence. It is clear no one ever attempted to "cover" that up-- I freely admitted it in my book, Mr Henderson stated such in his precognition and I again said so to Mr Levy. My "confusion" at Arlington last December over whether it had come to the US or not, was due more to the tone of the question, the setting and the allegation I may have lied to him when he first interviewed me. Unlike Mr Megrahi, I do not tell lies when it comes to the evidence in this case. I said it right when Mr Levy first interviewed me. We had nothing to hide because we did the right thing and there has never, never, never been one scintilla of proof that PT-35 was altered or changed in any way.

In his 2006 book, Marquise relates how it was at an investigator’s conference in Virginia on June 11 1990 that the Scottish authorities finally made their puzzlement over the fragment known to all. 55 companies had been checked to no avail. At this point, four days before his identification, that Thurman “approached Henderson and asked if he could take photographs of PT-35 and attempt to identify it. Henderson, who believed the Scots had done all they could do, agreed.” [2, p 60]

This passage is crucial to move claims, and rather ambiguous. It seems to read that Thurman, in Arlington, was allowed to take a picture of evidence Henderson had there with him. It could also mean a request to retain one of the photo-prints there, or to take a picture of the single photo they brought, or fly to Scotland to photograph PT/35(b). The last option seems out, given the mechanics of identification that followed. I remain agnostic on the reading here, and on its value as one of Mr Marquise’s sometimes confused recollections. (And there is a hell of a lot of confusion and amnesia surrounding this investigation).[8]


 

Related Documents

TitleTypePublication dateAuthor(s)Description
Document:New Lockerbie Documentary is a Total FlopArticle4 January 2025Ludwig De Braeckeleer"The Lockerbie case begins and ends with PT/35(b)—a fragment of a timer allegedly linked to Libya and supposedly found among the Pan Am Flight 103 debris. If one can prove that PT/35(b) was fabricated and planted at Lockerbie, the entire case against Libya collapses. This is the essential truth, the only path forward. Full stop."
Document:PT35B - The Most Expensive Forgery in HistoryArticle18 October 2017Ludwig De BraeckeleerLudwig De Braeckeleer proves that the Lockerbie bomb timer fragment PT/35(b) is a "fragment of the imagination"
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