Friday 8 June 2012

Delay in reviewing Lockerbie verdict obstructs search for real perpetrators

[This is the headline over two letters in today’s edition of The Herald.  They read as follows:]

Unless relevant material available to the prosecution is also made available to the defence no trial can be considered fair.
Surely Westminster, David Miliband, the Advocate General and the Crown Office know that? They were certainly told it in no uncertain terms by Professor Hans Koechler, the UN special observer, to the trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi after the verdict ("How UK Government hid secret Lockerbie report", The Herald, June 1).
If the failure of the Crown to disclose the Jordanian document was the only such failure, perhaps one could park much of the blame onto the UK Government and its supporters.
But we now know that the Crown Office was responsible also for the failure to pass the evidence of the Heathrow break-in to the defence until after the trial was over, despite having been in possession of it from the first month of 1989. There is the strongest of probable links between this break-in and the Jordanian's bombs.
The bombs which the Jordanian Marwhan Kreesat was making for the Syrian PFLP-GC group in 1988 were of the air-pressure-sensitive type. They were all made to explode after 35-45 minutes flight in an aircraft, but never on the ground.
They required access for the terrorist to the actual airport of origin of the plane being targeted. It was the Crown Office (or the police) which failed to pass on information that Heathrow airport had been broken into 16 hours before the Lockerbie plane was destroyed.
Kreesat, after being arrested by German police in possession of one such bomb, was allowed to return promptly to Jordan after a phone call to Amman.
The Crown Office's claim that the absence of the Heathrow evidence made no difference to the verdict is, in my opinion, a blatant attempt at self justification.
The delay in reviewing the verdict may be an obstruction to the search for the real perpetrators.
The Megrahi family is still denied the chance to clear his name posthumously.
When I went to see the late Colonel Gaddafi for the first time in 1991, I knew I was risking my life when the safety catches clicked off on the AK-47s of his female bodyguards.
I had risked it to explain to him that I believed his men would get the fairest of trials under Scottish criminal law.
I blush to think of that now. Even tyrants deserve to be told the truth. So do the relatives.
Dr Jim Swire

I should like to compliment Lucy Adams on her dogged persistence in regard to the Megrahi case.
After 25 years in Saudi Arabia I retired from the desert kingdom in 2005, although I still travel to the Middle East in a consultancy capacity.
I remember July 3, 1988, very well when the USS Vincennes downed an Iranian civil aircraft and the calamitous outrage in the predominately Shia-dominated eastern region of Saudi Arabia following the incident, appeased six months later in the aftermath of Lockerbie. From that time until now, Libya was never mentioned as a culprit although the Palestinians most certainly were in their capacity as mercenaries for Iran.
Roderick MacSween

4 comments:

  1. MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2012. (google translation, german/english):

    The lawyers of Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd, Marcel Bosonnet & Wick, have on the 4th June 2012 at the Swiss Attorney General criminal proceedings against known and unknown officials (ex BUPO) submitted, as well as an action for damages at the Department of Finance of Sfr. 47,7 nillionen In addition, international legal assistance is requested by the Swiss authorities.
    On 30th September 1990 in the Lockerbie case, reciprocity in mutual assistance, Lord Advocate of Scotland, had granted the Switzerland.
    The lawyers ask the Scottish Justice a forensic review of the MST-13 Timerfragments of PT/35: PT/35(b); DP/31(a) in the presence of international experts.
    +++
    Die Rechtsanwälte von Edwin Bollier und MEBO Ltd, Marcel Bosonnet & Wick, haben am
    4. Juni 2012 bei der Schweizerischen Bundesanwaltschaft Strafklage gegen bekannte und unbekannte Offizielle (ex BUPO) sowie eine Schadenersatzklage beim Finanzdepartement über Sfr. 47,7 nillionen eingereicht.
    Zusätzlich wird von den Schweizer Behörden internationale Rechtshilfe verlangt. Lord Advocate von Scotland, hatte der Schweiz am 30. September 1990 im Lockerbie-Fall, Gegenrecht in der Rechtshilfe gewährt.
    Die Rechtsanwälte verlangen von der Scottish Justice eine forensische Nachprüfung der MST-13 Timerfragmente PT/35: PT/35(b); DP/31(a) in Anwesenheit von internationalen Experten.

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Telecommunication Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch

    ReplyDelete
  2. MISSION LOCKERBIE, 2012. (google translation, german/english):

    The lawyers of Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd, Marcel Bosonnet & Wick, have on the 4th June 2012 at the Swiss Attorney General criminal proceedings against known and unknown officials (ex BUPO) submitted, as well as an action for damages at the Department of Finance of Sfr. 47,7 millionen. In addition, international legal assistance is requested by the Swiss authorities. On 30th September 1990 in the Lockerbie case, reciprocity in mutual assistance, Lord Advocate of Scotland, had granted the Switzerland.
    The lawyers ask the Scottish justice a forensic review of the MST-13 Timerfragments of PT/35: PT/35(b); DP/31(a) in the presence of international experts.
    +++
    Die Rechtsanwälte von Edwin Bollier und MEBO Ltd, Marcel Bosonnet & Wick, haben am
    4. Juni 2012 bei der Schweizerischen Bundesanwaltschaft Strafklage gegen bekannte und unbekannte Offizielle (ex BUPO) sowie eine Schadenersatzklage beim Finanzdepartement über Sfr. 47,7 millionen eingereicht.
    Zusätzlich wird von den Schweizer Behörden internationale Rechtshilfe verlangt. Lord Advocate von Scotland, hatte der Schweiz am 30. September 1990 im Lockerbie-Fall, Gegenrecht in der Rechtshilfe gewährt.
    Die Rechtsanwälte verlangen von der Scottish Justice eine forensische Nachprüfung der MST-13 Timerfragmente PT/35: PT/35(b); DP/31(a) in Anwesenheit von internationalen Experten.

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Telecommunication Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rolfe, why the reluctance to do a cold case review of the AAIB report to check for accuracy and omissions?

    There is nothing odd about this, because the Police do cold case reviews all the time.

    The thing that common sense turns into a puzzle is how an anonymous bomb could inflict such catastrophic damage on a Boeing 747 in 3 seconds!

    Would a ‘bomb in a briefcase’ do the trick, or would it need to be in a trunk? And yet the official AAIB report doesn’t mention a bomb!

    See websites.

    Boeing 747 Pan Am 103 not brought down by bomb explanation.

    And the Firm: Explosives analysis concludes semtex theory ‘scientifically implausible’ in Pan Am 103 explosion.

    And even if the cold case review leads nowhere, where’s the harm, because it doesn’t stop you chasing CIA leads.

    See website the Firm: Former Scotsman editor confirms government and CIA influence over Lockerbie investigation.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dave, nobody has any objection to a cold case review of the AAIB report. Carry on. Make your case. Personally, I don't think there's anything new to be found there, but naturally if anything were found it would be most interesting.

    We know how that bomb/IED managed to destroy the palne catastrophically in a few seconds. We see ample evidence of where the device was and how it was planted. We see no evidence of anything else.

    What I am failing to get through to you is that I for one and I imagine most other people who post here are already quite familiar with the theories you are obliquely espousing, and see nothing in them that holds water. Telling us to read again stuff that we have already picked to pieces and dismissed is just boring.

    You are becoming confused with the terminology of "IED" and "bomb". An IED is a bomb in layman's terms, but it is not a bomb in the sense of being military ordnance. The AAIB report uses the more precise term "IED" because that is what it means. The idea that the AAIB investigators knew there was also an explosion of military ordnance on that plane, set about systematically and fraudulently concealing this, and then place a pointer to this deception in the choice of wording they used in the report is ludicrous.

    You're being so oblique I don't even know which of several mutually incompatible conspiracy theories you are promoting. I know complicated conspiracy theories are attractive, but most of them are simply impossible to sustain under detailed scrutiny, and the web pages you have become so enamoured of are in that category.

    ReplyDelete