Thursday 14 January 2010

Crown Agent appointed sheriff

Crown Agent Norman McFadyen, who led the Crown's discredited investigation into the Lockerbie case, has been praised by Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini as he steps down to take up appointment as Sheriff. [RB: A sheriff in Scotland is a local judge, one tier down from the High Court of Justiciary (criminal) and the Court of Session (civil).]

McFadyen, who was investigated by Lothian and Borders CID in 2009 when he was reported by MSP Christine Grahame over concerns about his handling of crucial evidence, was praised by Angiolini for his "great professionalism and integrity" in his handling of the case.

After three weeks investigation, no charges were brought against him.

Earlier this month the Crown Office also attacked the BBC over a Newsnight investigation which challenged the explosives evidence offered by the Crown at the Zeist trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.

"Norman McFadyen is an outstanding lawyer with a long and very distinguished career with Scotland's prosecution service," Angiolini said.

"He has served in a variety of senior posts before his appointment as Crown Agent and Chief Executive. These included Regional Procurator Fiscal for Lothian and Borders and Deputy Crown Agent. He also led the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing with great professionalism and integrity.

"Norman McFadyen has been an immense support to successive Law Officers over the years and he has played a key role in the modernisation of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service."

[The above report comes from the website of Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. The Crown Agent is the civil service head of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the Scottish rough equivalent of the English Crown Prosecution Service. Mr McFadyen was promoted to the top job after the Lockerbie trial.]

15 comments:

  1. In answer to the question posed today on the aangirfan blog, I said yes, governments do use 'experts' to fake evidence.

    Alan Feraday is one such 'expert' and his 'partner in crime' at the Fort Halstead forensic explosives laboratory, Dr Thomas Hayes, is another. Both Feraday and Hayes share the blame for fabricating the 'fragment of the imagination' that their US counterpart Thomas Thurman visually 'identified' as coming from a Swiss timer (MST-13). The fake timer fragment was the only hard piece of 'evidence' linking Libya and Abdelbaset Megrahi to the sabotage of Pan Am Flight 103.

    The UN observer at the Lockerbie trial, Dr Hans Köchler, has called for action to be taken against these wayward government forensic 'experts' as well as the prosecutors (Norman McFadyen, Colin Boyd) who employed them, and against the police (DCS Stuart Henderson, DC John Crawford) who must have been involved in the fakery which led to Megrahi's wrongful conviction.

    An online petition which calls for a United Nations inquiry into the Lockerbie bombing can be signed here.

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  2. How gross! He even got a bauble for Lockerbie.

    I don't mind the Scots having been misled in the first place, but this insistence on everything's OK, we did nothing wrong and Mr Megrahi's still as guilty as hell makes one wonder what is the intellectual poison Scottish Lawyers are required to swallow to stay in their careers.

    To say it once again Am Iranian snd the CIA carried out Lockerbie. There were two explsoions on that plane and the virtally unconstitutional (and certainly unprecedented court that convicetde Mr Megrahi) were deficient in the understanding of elementary logic!

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  3. I was not aware that Mr McFadyn had been cleared of Ms Graeme's (unspecified) allegations within three weeks.

    Patrick Haseldine's claims that "UN Observer" Hans Kochler has called for action to be taken against six named individulas (Messrs Feraday, Hayes, McFadyn, Boyd, Henderson and Crawford.)

    I suspect this is untrue and would be grateful to know where he made such a call.

    I'm afraid I must pass on the petition!

    ps What is "virtally unconstituional". Something is either constitutional or it isn't.

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  4. MISSION LOCKERBIE:

    Annauncement: BBC World TV, time 18:10 on Saturday 16th of January, 2010.

    See the film of BBC World: The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie
    Link: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-327765978162851498

    by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland

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  5. baz is right: Hans Köchler did not name and blame any individuals. What he actually said about the SCCRC's decision on 28 June 2007 to refer Megrahi's case back for a second appeal, and its apparent bias in favour of the judicial establishment, was: "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."

    I volunteered the names of the forensic staff concerned (Alan Feraday, Dr Thomas Hayes and Tom Thurman), the prosecutors who employed them (Norman McFadyen and Colin Boyd) and the police (DCS Stuart Henderson and DC John Crawford).

    I would welcome readers' nominations for who else deserves to be prosecuted in relation to the wrongful conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi.

    It's a pity that the BBC's Conspiracy Files, to be broadcast on 16 January 2010, is again completely ignoring the targeting of UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, the highest profile victim of the sabotage of Pan Am Flight 103.

    It would also be a great pity if the Bernt Carlsson petition were to be deprived of such influential signatories as Barry Warner!

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  6. I nominate the three trial judges to be prosecuted.

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  7. Pour mémoire: the Scottish High Court of Justiciary at Camp Zeist, Netherlands, was presided over by three senior judges and an additional judge (non-voting):

    Presiding Judge: Lord Sutherland (Ranald Ian Sutherland QC), the longest serving of Scotland's judges;

    Lord Coulsfield (John Taylor Cameron QC);

    Lord MacLean (Ranald Norman Murdo MacLean QC); and,

    Additional judge: Lord Abernethy (John Alastair Cameron QC).

    Presumably, Ruth would have the four of them prosecuted?

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  8. All four hanged, drawn and quartered.

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  9. Also Fraser can be added to the list for amoung other things smearing Dr Swire.

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  10. MISSION LOCKERBIE:

    Annauncement: BBC World TV, on Saturday 16th of January, 2010, time CET at: 09:10; 19:10; 03:10
    Sunday 17th of January, CET time at: 15:30

    See the film of BBC World: The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie
    Link: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-327765978162851498

    by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland

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  11. Edwin keeps plugging the BBC World Conspiracy Files programme on Lockerbie.

    If we tune in on Saturday or Sunday, will we be told about how UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, was lured to London by the De Beers diamond mining and marketing group, so that he would die on Pan Am Flight 103?

    Will we hear why a 23-strong South African delegation, headed by Foreign Minister, Pik Botha, were not permitted to travel by South African Airways to New York, and had to change at Heathrow to an American carrier?

    And, why the SA delegation were booked to travel on Pan Am Flight 103 with Bernt Carlsson, but none of the 23 actually did?

    I doubt that the Conspiracy Files will address any of these crucial questions.

    Which is why a United Nations inquiry into the murder of Bernt Carlsson is now so urgently required.

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  12. Thankyou Patrick for clarifying that Professor Kochler made no such call. You made it up. Curiously one of your signatories (not "Gordon Brown") was under the delusion that I did have some influence.

    I think "lists" of people to be prosecuted in respect of the "wrongful conviction of Mr Megrahi" are a pretty silly excercise. Is anyone actually bothered as to who committed mass murder? I believe the two issues are intimately related but I may be in a minority of one on that.

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  13. Privately since January 1989 and publicly since December 1989, I have been telling anyone who would listen that the apartheid regime of South Africa was responsible for targeting Bernt Carlsson on Pan Am Flight 103, thus committing the mass murder referred to by baz.

    The SA regime had the means, motive and opportunity to carry out the crime without outside assistance, though I accept Western intelligence might have played a part.

    Apparently, baz, you have your own conspiracy theory about Lockerbie.

    Would you care to share it with us?

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  14. My interest in the Lockerbie-case was highly motivated by its potential to expose rottenness in the way our society is conducted. I am true sorry to see how well it works.

    Charles wrote:
    ".... this insistence on everything's OK, we did nothing wrong and Mr Megrahi's still as guilty as hell makes one wonder what is the intellectual poison Scottish Lawyers are required to swallow to stay in their careers."

    A good question, indeed. However, there is a known impossibility in corrupting generations of young students. Angiolini and a handful of others are choosing a course for which they will be remembered with shame.

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  15. Baz,
    I believe the two issues are intimately related so that makes a minority of two on that.

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