Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Hillsborough. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Hillsborough. Sort by date Show all posts

Wednesday 24 September 2014

Protection of the system and its wrongdoers taking precedence

What follows is an item posted on this blog on this date two years ago:

Hillsborough-Pan Am 103 links laid before Justice Committee

[This is the headline over an article published today on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm.  It reads as follows:]

The Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament has been told by the Justice for Megrahi campaign group that the Pan Am 103 debacle bears parallel’s with “England’s shame”, the Hillsborough cover up.

In its submission to the committee ahead of tomorrow’s hearing of a petition calling for an inquiry into the affair, the Justice for Megrahi group say the efforts of the government to protect “wrongdoers” was prioritised ahead of the protection of innocent people.

The JFM campaigners also say that a further criminal appeal may be raised in the event the committee does not convene an inquiry.

“The outcome of the Hillsborough enquiry has undoubtedly shone a light on the inner workings of a justice system that purported to keep its citizens safe and secure,” the submission says.

“Now we can see that protection of the system and the wrongdoers within it took precedence over protection of the individual citizen. Indeed efforts were made to transfer blame to innocent third parties.

“If Hillsborough was England’s shame then Lockerbie is Scotland’s, and much of the indifference and arrogance identified within the former can be identified in the latter. We applaud the open- minded approach of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and hope to see a similar scrutiny of the Lockerbie investigation, without fear or favour.”

Writing exclusively in The Firm last week, Dr Jim Swire also said the Hillsborough cover up was part of a consistent pattern of the Government in instances where it was at fault after the fact, such as the Chinook crash in 1994, the Shirley McKie affair and the Bloody Sunday events.

The issue will be discussed at a Firm Event addressed by Professor Robert Black QC, taking place in Glasgow tomorrow.

The JFM campaigners say that the possibility exists for a further appeal to be initiated by the executors or immediate family of Abdel Baset Al Megrahi, under the provisions of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, section 303A, which permit’s the transfer of the rights of appeal of a deceased person.

The committee adds that if the al-Megrahi family opt not to pursue it, “the door may be open for bereaved families” to do so.

“Whilst for some the death of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on 20 May this year may have changed the tenor of the debate surrounding the 1988 Pan Am 103 tragedy, it has not deflected the determination of campaigners seeking justice for the 270 victims of the disaster and an independent inquiry into the conviction of Mr al-Megrahi for the atrocity,” the group adds.

“Events of 2012 have only strengthened the argument for an inquiry.”

The campaigners have also sent a letter to Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, lodging serious formal allegations relating to the conduct of the Lockerbie investigation and the Kamp van Zeist trial.

“Out of respect to Mr MacAskill, JFM does not propose to go public with the text of the letter or to divulge detail concerning the precise nature of the allegations for a period of thirty days from 13 September, in order to allow Secretary MacAskill sufficient latitude to respond,” the group said.

“The manner in which the allegations are dealt with could have a direct bearing on [the petition].”   

[This story has now been picked up on The Scotsman website.  It can be read here.]

RB 2014: Mr MacAskill, of course, refused to appoint an independent person to investigate JFM’s allegations and insisted that they be lodged with the very police force whose conduct featured amongst the complaints of criminality embodied in these allegations. The allegations are now under investigation by Police Scotland whose report will, when completed, be submitted to the Crown Office. Crown Office personnel also feature prominently in the allegations of criminal conduct levelled by JFM.

Monday 24 September 2012

Hillsborough-Pan Am 103 links laid before Justice Committee

[This is the headline over an article published today on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm.  It reads as follows:]

The Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament has been told by the Justice for Megrahi campaign group that the Pan Am 103 debacle bears parallel’s with “England’s shame”, the Hillsborough cover up.

In its submission to the committee ahead of tomorrow’s hearing of a petition calling for an inquiry into the affair, the Justice for Megrahi group say the efforts of the government to protect “wrongdoers” was prioritised ahead of the protection of innocent people.

The JFM campaigners also say that a further criminal appeal may be raised in the event the committee does not convene an inquiry.

“The outcome of the Hillsborough enquiry has undoubtedly shone a light on the inner workings of a justice system that purported to keep its citizens safe and secure,” the submission says.

“Now we can see that protection of the system and the wrongdoers within it took precedence over protection of the individual citizen. Indeed efforts were made to transfer blame to innocent third parties.

“If Hillsborough was England’s shame then Lockerbie is Scotland’s, and much of the indifference and arrogance identified within the former can be identified in the latter. We applaud the open- minded approach of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and hope to see a similar scrutiny of the Lockerbie investigation, without fear or favour.”

Writing exclusively in The Firm last week, Dr Jim Swire also said the Hillsborough cover up was part of a consistent pattern of the Government in instances where it was at fault after the fact, such as the Chinook crash in 1994, the Shirley McKie affair and the Bloody Sunday events.

The issue will be discussed at a Firm Event addressed by Professor Robert Black QC, taking place in Glasgow tomorrow.

The JFM campaigners say that the possibility exists for a further appeal to be initiated by the executors or immediate family of Abdel Baset Al Megrahi, under the provisions of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995, section 303A, which permit’s the transfer of the rights of appeal of a deceased person.

The committee adds that if the al-Megrahi family opt not to pursue it, “the door may be open for bereaved families” to do so.

“Whilst for some the death of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on 20 May this year may have changed the tenor of the debate surrounding the 1988 Pan Am 103 tragedy, it has not deflected the determination of campaigners seeking justice for the 270 victims of the disaster and an independent inquiry into the conviction of Mr al-Megrahi for the atrocity,” the group adds.

“Events of 2012 have only strengthened the argument for an inquiry.”

The campaigners have also sent a letter to Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, lodging serious formal allegations relating to the conduct of the Lockerbie investigation and the Kamp van Zeist trial.

“Out of respect to Mr MacAskill, JFM does not propose to go public with the text of the letter or to divulge detail concerning the precise nature of the allegations for a period of thirty days from 13 September, in order to allow Secretary MacAskill sufficient latitude to respond,” the group said.

“The manner in which the allegations are dealt with could have a direct bearing on [the petition].”  


[This story has now been picked up on the Scotsman website. It can be read here.]

Monday 2 May 2016

Hillsborough and Lockerbie

[What follows is the text of a letter dated 28 April 2016 sent to the editor of The Guardian by Peter Biddulph, but not (as yet) published:]

Twenty seven years is indeed a damning indictment. (Owen Jones: Think Hillsborough couldn't happen today? Think again). And not only in the case of Hillsborough.

It is now almost thirty years since the Lockerbie bombing of December 21st 1988, in which 270 people were murdered by a terrorist bomb. Two Libyans were accused and tried at a specially located court at Kamp Zeist in Holland. One - Baset al-Megrahi - was convicted, the other acquitted with no case to answer.

Only eight years after the trial and two appeals did it emerge that the top police investigator had concealed his diary of his investigations from the defence team and the trial court. When examined by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) and members of the defence team, it was found to contain a chronological record of discussions with the US department of Justice and the sole identification witness concerning massive rewards, in the words of the US Department of Justice, of "unlimited monies" and "only if he gives evidence". The witness received $2m, and his brother $1m. This discovery was one of six areas of concern which led the SCCRC to conclude that "there may have been a miscarriage of justice".

Similarly, only after eight years was the forensic notebook of the prosecution's leading forensic scientist available for scrutiny by the defence team. This contained proof of either gross negligence or perjury when he told the trial judges that a fragment of timer circuit board found at the crash site was materially and structurally identical with timer boards delivered in 1985 to the Libyan government. In fact, his hand-written annotations revealed that the metallurgy of the fragment and the control samples were quite different. The fragment was protectively coated with 100% tin, whereas the sample was coated with an alloy of 70/30% tin/lead.

These issues, and several others with serious implications concerning both police and Crown officers, have been repeatedly brought to the attention of the Scottish government, the Scottish Crown Office, and the police. At all stages, those who have helped to expose them to public scrutiny have been pilloried as "conspiracy theorists".

Campaigners for justice in the Lockerbie case now await the results of Operation Sandwood, a police investigation into allegations of criminality by the Scottish Crown and certain Scottish police officers and government scientists. There is concern that campaigners for the truth have been forced to await an investigation of the police, by the police.  Whatever Sandwood contains, however, those areas of alleged criminality will still stand, and the fight for truth will continue.

Hillsborough has given truth and justice to the people of Liverpool. Let us hope that in time the same will be said for the bereaved of Lockerbie.

[RB: Further posts on this blog drawing analogies between Hillsborough and Lockerbie can be read here.]

Thursday 13 September 2012

Are Lockerbie relatives less deserving than Hillsborough's?

The following was posted yesterday on Facebook by journalist Marcello Mega: “Credit where it's due. For whatever reason, the Government has allowed the exposure of the failures, cowardice, lies and cover-ups around the Hillsborough tragedy. Delighted for the loved ones of the 96 who have campaigned tirelessly for truth and justice. But I know another group of relatives who have campaigned just as hard, and for a few months longer, for the same things. Are the Lockerbie relatives somehow less deserving?”

A comment today on the Facebook page Friends of Justice for Megrahi reads: “Hillsborough: full-scale establishment cover-up in the late 1980s... Hmm.”

On Twitter the Aurora News Agency (@auroranewsfeed) posted: “#Hillsborough, #BloodySunday, #Lockerbie, #MullofKintyre ... official state cover-ups to protect the elite and top careers, that hide the truth”. 


And here are just a few sentences from today’s editorial in The Guardian: “Brand a view of events a conspiracy, and you lump it in with moon landing denials and wilder accounts of the Roswell UFO incident. But conspiracies can happen in real life too; on Wednesday we learned about one that took place within the South Yorkshire police in 1989. (...) The wider lesson, however, is surely – and once again – that where blocking out daylight is a possibility, there will be dark motives for seeing that it is done.

Wednesday 17 September 2014

The fiction of Crown Office integrity in Lockerbie prosecution

[On this date two years ago, I reproduced on this blog an article written by Dr Jim Swire for Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm. It reads as follows:]

Lockerbie and Hillsborough: the deliberate diversion of blame

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Jim Swire published today on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm.  It reads as follows:]

Dr Jim Swire writes exclusively for The Firm, following the revelations in the Hillsborough papers, and sees the thread linking the common behaviour of the legal and political institutions that bind the Pan Am 103 affair with the tragic deaths at Hillsborough.

In the world confrontation between the terrorists and the developed communities of the West, the complex structures that regulate our societies have intelligence, high technology, well orchestrated military might and the precepts and respect of our peoples for the rule of law as their main resources.

From the nature of terrorism and the front line responses of Western intelligence springs a great temptation: to use the innately secretive culture of intelligence to react to terrorism in ways which their defended populations might denounce, were they only privy to them. 'Extraordinary rendition' is a good example of this. Yet reliance upon secrecy from their own populations can only ever be a temporary protection for those who overstep the line and use that privileged secrecy in ways that defy the rule of law, which they ostensibly support.

To cross that line and use our State resources in ways that are illegal is in the end to hand a moral victory to the terrorists. To divert blame away from the actual perpetrators is to protect them and to increase the chances of them striking again. The American response to terrorism has been profoundly different from the British. America has turned to intelligence/military responses in 'the war on terror'. Britain has striven to use intelligence/criminal law. Except where our leaders have got carried away by enthusiasm for the 'special relationship' with the US and dragged us, the people protesting, into military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But State pressure upon our law to produce politically desired convictions has produced terrible distortions of that law such as detention without trial and the warped trials of alleged terrorists such as the Maguire and other IRA related cases.

It is my belief that in the case of Lockerbie the law of Scotland has been subsumed into the priorities of American foreign policy.

Douglas Hurd, a man deserving of great respect for his personal intelligence and integrity has said to Tam Dalyell and Robin Cook, referring to Lockerbie: "I do ask you two to believe that as Foreign secretary I cannot tell the Scottish Crown Office (which was in charge of the Lockerbie case) what to do, nor does the Foreign Office have detailed access to evidence which they say they have. You must understand that law officers really are a law unto themselves."

Yet I have come to believe over the past 25 years that not only did the US manipulate the Scottish criminal legal process, but that the Scottish Crown Office has ever since, fought a battle to maintain the fiction that it acted with integrity throughout the legal prosecution process.

In so doing they are in effect protecting the perpetrators of the dreadful terrorist massacre of the innocents that was Lockerbie in 1988, and damaging positive responses to better protect the future (such as making it a criminal offence for an airport not to report and take immediate appropriate action over break-ins perhaps?). I believe that in the long run it will be less damaging to the reputation of the West, and certainly for my favourite country, Scotland, to address these issues, and to take corrective action ourselves for the future, rather than allow our failures to be eventually exposed at the bar of history.

In a democratic society the more citizens who assess such matters for themselves, the greater is likely to be the integrity of the decisions which their politicians must eventually take to resolve the issues.

[A much longer and more detailed piece by Dr Swire can be read in the same blogpost from 2012.

Aspects of the conduct of the Crown Office in the Lockerbie prosecution form the basis of some of Justice for Megrahi's allegations of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial that are currently under investigation by Police Scotland.]

Friday 21 September 2012

Please do not let us down

This is the last sentence of a document submitted by the committee of Justice for Meghrahi to the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee in advance of its meeting on Tuesday, 25 September 2012 at 10.00am in Holyrood’s Committee Room 4, when it will consider how to proceed with JFM’s petition (PE1370) calling for an independent inquiry into the prosecution and conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi. The committee clerk has suggested that the options open to the Justice Committee are as follows:

(a)  keep the petition open;
(b)  take a view on whether there should be an independent inquiry as proposed by the petitioners;
(c) take any other action the Committee considers to be appropriate (e.g. seek views or take evidence from any appropriate person/body); or
(d) close the petition.

JFM’s submission to the Committee ends with the following two paragraphs:

“The outcome of the Hillsborough enquiry has undoubtedly shone a light on the inner workings of a justice system that purported to keep its citizens safe and secure. Now we can see that protection of the system and the wrongdoers within it took  precedence over protection of the individual citizen. Indeed efforts were made to transfer blame to innocent third parties. If Hillsborough was England’s shame then  Lockerbie is Scotland’s, and much of the indifference and arrogance identified within the former can be identified in the latter. We applaud the openminded approach of  the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and hope to see a similar scrutiny of the Lockerbie investigation, without fear or favour.

“The Justice Committee and through them the Scottish Government presents the best and perhaps only chance that the families who lost loved ones will ever have of uncovering the real truth behind Lockerbie. Please do not let us down.” 


This story is picked up in Saturday's edition of The Herald in a report headlined Lockerbie campaigners call for inquiry.

Sunday 24 September 2017

Criminality allegations submitted to Justice Secretary

[What follows is excerpted from a report published on the website of The Scotsman on this date in 2012:]

Lockerbie campaigners have lodged “fresh allegations” with justice secretary Kenny MacAskill about the conduct of the Scottish authorities at the trial 11 years ago.

Demands for a fresh inquiry into the bombing of the Pan Am jet in 1988 will come before MSPs on Holyrood’s justice committee today. The Justice for Megrahi (JfM) campaign has compared the “cover-up” surrounding the trial to the recent Hillsborough revelations. But the claims were branded “false and deliberately misleading” by Scotland’s Crown Office yesterday.

In a submission to the committee, the JfM group states: “The outcome of the Hillsborough inquiry has undoubtedly shone a light on the inner workings of a justice system that purported to keep its citizens safe and secure.

“Now we can see that protection of the system and the wrongdoers within it took precedence over protection of the individual citizen. If Hillsborough was England’s shame, then Lockerbie is Scotland’s, and much of the indifference and arrogance identified within the former can be identified in the latter.”

The campaign submitted a letter to Mr MacAskill which lodges “serious formal allegations” relating to the conduct of the investigation and the Kamp van Zeist trial.

[RB: JfM’s letter to Kenny MacAskill, with names of individuals removed, reads as follows:]

The Committee of Justice for Megrahi hereby formally lodge with you complaints alleging criminal wrongdoing in the investigation and prosecution of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah for the murder of 270 people in the downing of Pan Am 103 on 21 December 1988.

These complaints are directed against the persons and bodies named below whom, for the reasons given, we believe may be guilty of the criminal offences specified.

1.  On 22 August 2000 the Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, communicated to the judges of the Scottish Court in the Netherlands information about the contents of CIA cables relating to the Crown witness Abdul Majid Giaka that was known to members of the prosecution team [A B and C D] who had scrutinised the cables, to be false. The Lord Advocate did so after consulting these members of the prosecution team. It is submitted that this constituted an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

2.  Members of the Lockerbie prosecution team, including but not limited to [C D], devised and presented or allowed to be presented to the trial court a scenario regarding the placement of items in luggage container AVE4041 which was known to be false, in order to obfuscate and conceal compelling evidence that the bomb suitcase was introduced by a terrorist infiltration at Heathrow airport. It is submitted that this constituted an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

3.  Dumfries and Galloway Police, and those individuals employed by that force responsible for the recording, prioritising and submission to the Crown Office of evidence gathered in the investigation into the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, and the Crown Office, and those individuals in that organisation responsible for the analysis of said evidence and identifying what material required to be passed on to those acting for Megrahi and Fhimah, concealed the witness statement relating to the break-in to Heathrow airside giving access to the luggage loading shed used by Pan Am 103 in the early hours of 21st December 1988 which was provided by Heathrow Security Officer Raymond Manly to the Metropolitan Police shortly after Mr Manly’s discovery of the break-in. It is submitted that the concealment of this witness statement, which was or ought to have been known to Dumfries and Galloway Police and the Crown Office to be of the highest possible significance to the defence, constituted an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

4.  [In the course of his testimony at Camp Zeist, witness E F] told the Court that the materials and tracking analysis of fragment PT/35b, the sliver of printed circuit board said to have originated from a circuit board contained in one of the 20 MST-13 digital timer instruments supplied by MEBO AG to Libya (the boards for all these timers having been custom-made for MEBO by Thuring AG), were “similar in all respects” to the control samples of MST-13 circuit boards. [E F] consistently used this form of words to describe analyses of items which were identical or of common origin. This statement was false. While the tracking pattern was indeed identical, [E F] was aware that the coating on the circuitry of the control boards was the standard alloy of 70% tin and 30% lead, while the coating on the circuitry of fragment PT/35b (most unusually) lacked the 30% lead content. It is submitted that his statement to the Court was a deliberate falsehood designed to conceal a significant and material difference between the evidential fragment and the control items, and thus constituted both perjury and an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

5.  The Lockerbie investigation, and in particular [police officer G H], knew by 1990 that the coating on the circuitry of fragment PT/35b was composed of pure tin, and that this composition was highly unusual, being described as “by far the most interesting feature” of the fragment by all the experts who were consulted, “without exception”. By early 1992 [G H]  and those in the Crown Office to whom he reported also knew that the metallurgy testing on the control MST-13 circuit boards showed the circuitry on these boards to be coated with the standard 70% tin / 30% lead alloy. [G H] and those in the Crown Office to whom he reported
either failed to inquire with the manufacturer Thuring AG whether they had supplied any MST-13 timer boards with the unusual lead-free coating, or did make such inquiries and failed to disclose the results of these inquiries to the defence. It was discovered by the defence team in 2008 that Thuring AG did not manufacture printed circuit boards with a lead-free coating, and indeed lacked the manufacturing capacity to do so. If [G H] and/or those in the Crown Office to whom he reported failed to make the relevant inquiries with Thuring AG, it is submitted that this omission was grossly negligent. If [G H] and/or those in the Crown Office to whom he reported made such inquiries and failed to disclose the results to the defence, it is submitted that this failure constitutes an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

6.  From our assessment of the ‘SCCRC Statement of Reasons’, relating to its referral of Mr Megrahi’s case to the Court of Criminal Appeal in 2007, and the ‘Grounds of Appeal 1 and 2' documents prepared by his legal team in furtherance of that appeal, it is clear that a number of questions have been raised in relation to the process which led to the identification of Mr Megrahi by witness Mr Anthony Gauci. These include doubts about the legitimacy of the process by which Mr Gauci’s identification evidence was obtained, assessed and delivered, and what prompted significant failures by the Crown to disclose related material information. From these documents it appears that [police officer I J] and other police officers who were involved in this identification process might well have been aware that a number of the aspects of the process they were following were flawed and did not accord with guidelines extant at the time or with any general principles of fairness to the accused. It is submitted that the omissions and failings referred to in the relevant reports indicate that [I J] and others have important questions to answer in connection with the identification process, and we believe, taken as a whole, that their conduct constitutes an attempt to pervert the course of justice and a breach of section 44 (2) of the Police (Scotland) Act 1967 (violation of duty by a constable).

The above numbered complaints simply constitute the basic allegations. Documents containing detailed supporting material have been prepared and will be made available to the investigating authorities as and when requested by them.

You above all will realise the seriousness of these allegations which strike at the very heart of the Lockerbie investigation past and present. Effectively, we are complaining about the actions of Crown Office officials, the prosecution and investigating authorities including the police, and certain other agencies and individuals. Given the controversy surrounding this whole affair we request that you give serious thought to the independence of any investigating authority you appoint. As a group we believe that you should appoint someone outwith Scotland who has no previous direct or indirect association with Lockerbie or its ramifications.

You will be aware of the disquiet we feel about the delay and obfuscation which have surrounded this whole affair since 1988. Nevertheless we understand you will require reasonable time to inquire into these allegations and decide how you wish to proceed. We therefore propose to keep these matters private and confidential for a period of thirty days from the date of this letter to allow you to carry out the necessary enquiries, decide how you wish the matter to be investigated, and respond to us. We thereafter reserve the right to make the above matters public as and when we feel appropriate and reasonable. Furthermore, on the grounds that PE1370 is due for consideration on 25th September, we also reserve the right to inform the Justice Committee of the fact that we have lodged this document with yourself, making reference (in general terms only) to the fact that it contains serious allegations relating to the Lockerbie/Zeist case.

In passing we would also note the recent publicity given to the perceived lack of independence in Scotland between the Lord Advocate and the Scottish Government by Mr Andrew Tickell. (http://lallandspeatworrier.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/the-unpolitical-snps-pied-lord-advocate.html)
We also share this concern and would hope, for reasons that must be obvious from the foregoing, that your response to this letter will be free from Crown Office influence of any kind.

We thank you for your time and attention in this matter and look forward to an acknowledgment of receipt by return.

[RB: Three additional allegations were added by JfM at a later date. These nine allegations remain under investigation in Police Scotland’s Operation Sandwood.]

Wednesday 26 September 2012

Lockerbie, Hillsborough and the truth

[This is the headline over an editorial in today’s edition of the Maltese newspaper The Times.  It reads as follows:]

A recent report probing the 1989 Hillsborough disaster revealed the lengths to which the police were prepared to go to divert blame from the failure to control the stadium crush that claimed 96 lives.

The damning conclusions rightly elicited anger from the victims’ families but it also brought closure and a sense of justice, albeit 23 years late.

That tragedy happened a few months after a Pan Am aircraft was blown up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people, 11 on the ground.

The only man accused of the 1988 Lockerbie attack died last May. But the mystery over whether Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi was really responsible for the bomb explosion failed to be buried when he died.

The American authorities, especially, may have had good reason to pin the blame on a Libyan man. Muammar Gaddafi was perceived as an enthusiastic sponsor of terrorism in the 1980s.

As the Libyan leader was hunted down last year we were told more “facts” would emerge that he had directly ordered the downing of Pan Am. So many months on, we’re still waiting.

Only when Al-Megrahi was on his last breath did the more embarrassing facts start to emerge – but by then the western media did not find the story salacious enough.

What we know is that three Scottish judges, who heard the case at The Hague in 2001, accepted the prosecution’s case that the evidence pointed to the Libyan since he had purchased clothes in Malta – that were wrapped around the bomb – which he then placed on an Air Malta aircraft bound for Frankfurt, from where a feeder flight took it to the departing Pan Am jumbo jet at Heathrow.

But there are several other less convoluted facts that the prosecution conveniently failed to address.

Let’s just mention a few salient points which show that the available evidence was selectively massaged in such a way as to make the verdict against Al-Megrahi possible.

After Al-Megrahi was imprisoned, it emerged that the Scottish police were aware that there had been a break-in at Heathrow airport 16 hours before PA103 was blown up. Why wasn’t this crucial point raised in the original trial?

A Maltese man – Tony Gauci – told international investigators that Al-Megrahi bought the clothes (which were wrapped around the bomb) from his shop in Sliema. But why do the authorities till this day ignore a fact which emerged later that Mr Gauci had been coached and promised compensation from the CIA to point to the Libyan man as the guilty party?

Why did the Crown Office fail to listen to warnings of their own forensic expert that a fragment of circuit board (allegedly originating from the wreckage) simply did not match the Libyan bomb timer board allegedly used? The list of questions is endless.

The Times revealed last week that the Maltese courts have been asked to gather fresh evidence connected to Lockerbie – and this is welcome news. The Maltese Government has claimed Luqa airport had no connection with the atrocity. If that is really the case then the real Lockerbie bomber has never been identified.

As Jim Swire, a man whose daughter was killed at Lockerbie, aptly put it in an opinion piece written last week: “to divert blame away from the actual perpetrators is to protect them and to increase the chances of them striking again.”

Like Hillsborough, it is not too late for the Lockerbie victims’ families to get to know the truth.


[A report in the same newspaper on yesterday’s proceedings before the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee can be read here. The secretary of Justice for Megrahi, Robert Forrester, is extensively quoted.]

Monday 17 September 2012

Lockerbie and Hillsborough: the deliberate diversion of blame

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Jim Swire published today on the website of Scottish lawyers’ magazine The Firm.  It reads as follows:]

Dr Jim Swire writes exclusively for The Firm, following the revelations in the Hillsborough papers, and sees the thread linking the common behaviour of the legal and political institutions that bind the Pan Am 103 affair with the tragic deaths at Hillsborough.

In the world confrontation between the terrorists and the developed communities of the West, the complex structures that regulate our societies have intelligence, high technology, well orchestrated military might and the precepts and respect of our peoples for the rule of law as their main resources.

From the nature of terrorism and the front line responses of Western intelligence springs a great temptation: to use the innately secretive culture of intelligence to react to terrorism in ways which their defended populations might denounce, were they only privy to them. 'Extraordinary rendition' is a good example of this. Yet reliance upon secrecy from their own populations can only ever be a temporary protection for those who overstep the line and use that privileged secrecy in ways that defy the rule of law, which they ostensibly support.

To cross that line and use our State resources in ways that are illegal is in the end to hand a moral victory to the terrorists. To divert blame away from the actual perpetrators is to protect them and to increase the chances of them striking again. The American response to terrorism has been profoundly different from the British. America has turned to intelligence/military responses in 'the war on terror'. Britain has striven to use intelligence/criminal law. Except where our leaders have got carried away by enthusiasm for the 'special relationship' with the US and dragged us, the people protesting, into military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But State pressure upon our law to produce politically desired convictions has produced terrible distortions of that law such as detention without trial and the warped trials of alleged terrorists such as the Maguire and other IRA related cases.

It is my belief that in the case of Lockerbie the law of Scotland has been subsumed into the priorities of American foreign policy.

Douglas Hurd, a man deserving of great respect for his personal intelligence and integrity has said to Tam Dalyell and Robin Cook, referring to Lockerbie: "I do ask you two to believe that as Foreign secretary I cannot tell the Scottish Crown Office (which was in charge of the Lockerbie case) what to do, nor does the Foreign Office have detailed access to evidence which they say they have. You must understand that law officers really are a law unto themselves."

Yet I have come to believe over the past 25 years that not only did the US manipulate the Scottish criminal legal process, but that the Scottish Crown Office has ever since, fought a battle to maintain the fiction that it acted with integrity throughout the legal prosecution process.

In so doing they are in effect protecting the perpetrators of the dreadful terrorist massacre of the innocents that was Lockerbie in 1988, and damaging positive responses to better protect the future (such as making it a criminal offence for an airport not to report and take immediate appropriate action over break-ins perhaps?). I believe that in the long run it will be less damaging to the reputation of the West, and certainly for my favourite country, Scotland, to address these issues, and to take corrective action ourselves for the future, rather than allow our failures to be eventually exposed at the bar of history.

In a democratic society the more citizens who assess such matters for themselves, the greater is likely to be the integrity of the decisions which their politicians must eventually take to resolve the issues.

[An email sent to me by Dr Swire, in addition to the text reproduced above, contains the following:]

25 years ago my elder daughter, Flora walked the aisles of Heathrow airport, traversed the security check points, left the departure lounge on an exciting trip to board Pan Am 103 in order to spend Christmas with her American boyfriend.

38 minutes later this beautiful, brilliant and innocent 23 year old, along with 269 others was slain by a bomb loaded at Heathrow and exploding aboard her plane high above the heads of the unsuspecting people of Lockerbie as they innocently prepared their homes for Christmas.

I have always been determined that the truth should come out about who did this dreadful thing, our search has been always and resolutely for truth and justice.

Those who oppose that protect the real perpetrators.

We relatives also have a right to know why she and all those who died with her were not protected.

Why was it that as she and all the others walked those long Heathrow corridors neither they nor anyone outside the airport knew that there had been a break-in there 16 hours before PA103 was blown up and that despite raised worries about impending terror attacks, no appropriate steps had been taken there to identify the intruder, nor his motive? Maybe the lurking terrorist even heard their happy voices.

Why was it that during the ensuing trial of Baset al-Megrahi evidence was led, but rejected, of the availability of Syrian-made IEDs to mid East terrorists which were obligated always to explode between 35 and 45 minutes after take off, and for the use of which money appeared to have been paid by Iran, the State having the most pressing need for revenge against the US?

Why was it that although we now know the investigating Scottish police were fully aware of the Heathrow break-in, it remained hidden from view and from the Zeist court until after the verdict?

Why was the unlikely story of Megrahi having used a long running and fully adjustable timer in Malta to arrange for his bomb to traverse Frankfurt and a change of planes at Heathrow only to have it explode a mere 38 minutes into the flight rather than over the far reaches of the Atlantic Ocean, accepted by the court?

Why on earth would he take such a risk of delays to the take-off time?

The court did hear how an available type of air pressure sensitive IED made by a Syrian terror group, if put aboard a target aircraft at the airport of take-off would always explode between 35 and 45 minutes following take off. Why did the court decide that this cock and bull story about Malta and Megrahi should take precedence over the so simple concept that one of the Syrian IEDs might in fact have been put aboard at Heathrow?

Why did the Crown Office and their investigators withhold the information from the court about the Heathrow break-in until after the verdict?

Why was it that the court was not made fully aware of the known excitement between the Maltese Gauci brothers who claimed to identify Megrahi, over the prospects of multi million dollar rewards if they would only identify him?

Why was the court not made fully aware of the police methodology used to 'encourage' those brothers to identify Megrahi, contrary to the accepted police identification processes?

Why was it that the Crown Office failed to listen even to the warnings of their own forensic expert Feraday that a fragment of circuit board (allegedly originating from the wreckage) simply did not match the Libyan bomb timer board allegedly used?

Why was it that this fragment was found within the only police evidence bag which showed signs of having had its label tampered with, in such a way as to draw attention to debris such as the fragment, rather than simply cloth within the bag's contents?

Who changed that label?

What was his motive?

What else might have been done to the contents of the bag?

Since it is now known, courtesy of a book Megrahi: You are my Jury that the famous fragment could not have come from a Libyan timer circuit board as believed in the court, where might it have originated?

The sole justification for the acceptance of the fragment as genuine evidence was that it was found inside the police evidence bag (with its corrupted label) and the ensuing (now known to be erroneous) belief that the fragment had been part of a Libyan timer. Now that we know that the scientific evidence shows irrefutably that it could not have come from a batch of Libyan timers sold to Libya by the Swiss firm MEBO, where could it have come from?

The fragment contains evidence of the use of a most unusual plating process, provably not available to the Swiss firm which made the Libyan timers. There was not a scrap of evidence of any other possible origin for this fragment, such as other electronic equipment among the wreckage. So where did it originate and how did it get into that evidence bag?

Why was it that the police notebooks of some of the officers involved in the searches of the crash site were destroyed?

Who ordered that?

What was their motive for doing so?

Now that we know that PT35b, the fragment, did not come from a Libyan timer in the bomb, we find that we know of no other origin in the wreckage for it. If it really was recovered from the crash site, a full search of all police notebooks relevant to the search at the wreckage field, and to the transactions occurring over the sorting of wreckage taken into hangers etc would be mandatory if the fragment's point of origin is to be established. Yet key police notebooks appear to have been destroyed.

How can today's Lord Advocate expect us to believe that everything is being done to reach the truth through an active ongoing criminal investigation, when his Department, the Crown Office appears to have allowed the destruction of substantial tranches of what might have been key evidence, in addition to appearing to have allowed illegal changes to have been made to at least one police evidence bag label?

Frankly, on the basis of common sense it looks as though the role of 'fall-guy', prepared by the police at Hillsborough for the fans in the crowd was replaced in this case by the Libyan Megrahi. It seems the available evidence has been selectively massaged in such a way as to make the verdict against him possible.

Who could have wanted such an outcome?

Where in the world was the extraordinary plating process used on the 'famous fragment' available before Lockerbie?

In whose interest would it be to divert blame to a Libyan individual?

We have fought for nearly 25 years for our right to see the truth about how our lovely families came to be murdered.

Personally I would still wish to avoid attacking those who made mistakes, but I would also want to see the truth about Lockerbie used to enhance the protection that we have against future terror attacks partly through the protection we afford in future to our legal systems against insidious and improper infiltration.

There is a warning in Christian faith against seeking revenge against our enemies, and until now I have tried politely to request a full and objective inquiry into all these and many other aspects of this dreadful business, believing that the judicial process should supplant the human lust for revenge.

If the judicial process has indeed failed, then it needs to be improved. If the outcome of the trial was achieved by deliberate manipulation of the evidence with destruction of parts hostile to the desired outcome, then criminal charges will be mandatory.Those individuals through whom it failed should certainly be identified and the nature of and motives for their failures analysed, the better to prevent recurrence, but the overall aim should be to ensure that such manipulation of our justice system can never occur again, rather than the hounding of individuals.

For years now, ever since I heard the description of the Syrian bombs with their obligated 35-45 minute flight times revealed in the Zeist court, I have been convinced that justice got it wrong over Lockerbie and that other interests than justice and truth were allowed to intrude. Much has come to light since to reinforce that view, to the point where serious study of the evidence is incompatible with an objective belief in the propriety of the court's findings

There is also a special case for compassion for the majority of the US relatives. They have suffered every bit as much as we have, yet they believe they have 'closure' in the blaming of Megrahi.

Together with one other UK relative I was present throughout the trial of Megrahi. There was a capacious lounge set aside for the relatives who came to watch the trial. The US Department of Justice offered each American family an 'all expenses paid' fortnight. As those families trooped through the relatives' lounge they (and we) were treated to evening reviews by  a mixed group of Scottish prosecution lawyers and US lawyers invited to sit on the prosecution bench in court. The content was choreographed to convey, right from the start the message 'these are the bastards who murdered your families, we got them they are going to go down for a very very long time'. The defence side was not represented.

This was grooming writ large and official, and our Scottish prosecution lawyers were an integral part of it.

It now transpires that a similar campaign of propaganda has continued ever since, culminating in disgraceful attempts by US Secretary Clinton with the full backing of some US relatives, to extradite Megrahi from his family and from Libya in his last few dying days, to face a new sentencing in the US.

Whilst we cannot blame US relatives for believing what their country and our justice system were telling them, this looks to me like the very thirst for revenge that Christ warned us against.  It has long been a worry to me that insistence on trying to unravel the real facts about Lockerbie was making bereavement more difficult for those who thought they found closure over the Megrahi case.

Three events this year have triggered my belief that there is evil stalking the corridors of power over this case.

1. In February the current Lord Advocate explained to us that he was puzzled as to why the Heathrow evidence had not been available to Megrahi's defence during his trial. Here the evil might simply be complacency and sloth. Surely twelve years is long enough for the Crown Office to find the answer to that one.
Consequent to this meeting I asked for help and received a reply from the current Chief Constable of the D & G police. I then wrote to the Crown Office about  the D & G letter writing that:- 'It (the letter) shows that despite prompt investigations  at Heathrow by the Met. and the passing of their findings to the Lockerbie incident control centre certainly by February 1989, a decision must have been taken not to follow the implications of this information, and to assume that the bomb had come to Heathrow from Frankfurt via Pan Am 103A.'

I have now received a reply to that letter in which the head of Serious and Organised Crime Division of the Crown Office,on behalf of the Lord Advocate, writes:

'In relation to the insecurity at Heathrow, you suggest that "a decision must have been taken not to follow the implications of this information and to assume that the bomb had come from Frankfurt to Heathrow via Pan Am 103 A." No such decision was taken and no such assumption was made.'

Really? I feel no match for the skill of the Crown Office in using words in this way. Why then did this information not get passed to Megrahi's defence team till after the verdict?

2. In May John Ashton's book Megrahi: you are my Jury was launched in Edinburgh by the doughty publishing company Birlinn. The book tells of sound scientific evidence that the 'famous timer fragment' simply could not have originated from one of the Libyan timers as alleged in court.

That very May morning, before they had had time to review the book, Downing Street issued a statement alleging that 'The book is an insult to the Lockerbie relatives'. Since I had written to [Prime Minister David] Cameron long before to ask him to review the Lockerbie case and received no help whatsoever for such a suggestion, he was presumably intending to speak for the US relatives.

In fact the book adds very significantly to what is now known about the truth, that is no insult. What is the full fear that Westminster seems to harbour over the exposure of truth in this case?

It is not the job of a British Prime Minister to speak for US relatives and ignore his own citizens. Surely it was his predecessors' job to protect our families on board an aircraft at Heathrow. It is not alleged even by the Crown Office that the bomb was loaded aboard PA103 itself anywhere other than at London Heathrow.

No help for British relatives there then...

3. The Hillsborough disaster has revealed the lengths to which the police there were prepared to go to divert blame from the failure to provide for the safety of citizens by their own and other organs of state.

In the case of the D & G police and Crown Office over Lockerbie diversion of blame was to the Libyan Megrahi. I don't know why the Scottish Crown Office allowed themselves to divert the blame from Iran/Syria and the criminal negligence of the security at Heathrow airport. Perhaps it was all down to human error, but consider these two paragraphs below from Tam Dalyell's foreword to a previous book from John Ashton [and Ian Ferguson] titled Cover-up of Convenience written in 2001 and published by Mainstream also of Edinburgh.

   a) Tam was told by an off duty Scottish police officer that....'American agents were swarming around the (crash) area openly removing items of debris.....the police were doing nothing to stop them'.

   b) “Douglas (Hurd) swooped down on Robin (Cook) and myself (Tam). He said 'I  do ask you two to believe that as Foreign secretary I cannot tell the Scottish Crown Office (which was in charge of the Lockerbie case) what to do, nor does the Foreign Office have detailed access to evidence which they say they have. You must understand that law officers really are a law unto themselves.’”

So it is indeed from 'the Scottish Crown Office' and their agents the D & G police that answers must come. They may be a 'law unto themselves' yet they must abide by the parameters of the justice system which they are supposed to serve.

In previous years the Chinook and McKie (fingerprint) cases north of the border have shown similar police failings. With the blatant diversion of blame over Chinook, diverting it away from the Ministry of Defence to the pilots, and in the McKie case, away from the Scottish fingerprint service onto his innocent daughter Shirley McKie.

I doubt that those seeking to protect their own reputations understand the anguish that such deceit adds to the burden of families. The need for the truth does not fade for the families, and deceit achieves nothing in the long run, except to add to their suffering and to undermine public confidence in the blindfold against becoming partial which justice should always wear.

Never ever should the families be denied the truth.

There are lessons to be taken from Hillsborough, the magnificent persistence and determination of the families and the fallibility of inadequate inquiries which actually increased the anguish of those families.

I dread seeing other families traumatised in the future by failure to learn the lessons of Lockerbie.

At Lockerbie the majority of the deaths were Americans and what happened? The US groomed the relatives to 'help' them to believe they were seeing justice at Zeist.

John Mosey and I were there throughout we saw it all but were too naive and too polite to tell them to go away and let us make up our own minds.

The result? Those relatives mostly still believe that the Megrahi story was true, despite all that has come out since.

I think both John and I have felt restrained by the US relatives whose pain and loss is just as great as ours, and we have tried not to cause additional distress to them by directly challenging their 'closure'. We have even watched silently as Hillary Clinton and others, in the last days of Megrahi's life, and egged on by those very relatives, made efforts to extract him from Libya to be 'retried'. That was difficult.

Thus many of the US relatives unwittingly have been forged into a useful tool in the hands of those who want the wickedness of the trial to remain in position.

The 'police wickedness' over Lockerbie is very real and very Scottish. Not for nothing did I use Tam Dalyell's foreword to John Ashton's previous book at the [Edinburgh International] Book Festival meeting. His words describe how the D & G police were allowing Americans to run freely all over the crash site doing what they liked and making no effort to prevent them from doing so. From day one that became the pattern, and thus the dictates of US foreign policy have been enabled to become the overriding guide for how the prosecution was designed to work out.

During Megrahi's second appeal the Advocate General was sent scuttling to Westminster to ask permission for a revealing document to be released to the defence. The result was the imposition of a Public Interest Immunity (PII) Certificate by the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband blocking the document's release. In a radio four programme in August 2009, David Miliband was a guest on BBC Radio 4's Great Lives. He had stated that he believed there are circumstances in which terrorism is "justifiable, and yes, there are circumstances in which it is effective" – though he added that "it is never effective on its own".

The ability of terrorism to inflict damage on its target State and that State's citizens is hugely amplified if that State allows the normal parameters of its legal system to be blunted in order to transfer the attribution of blame to an innocent third party. The impartial rule of law is arguably the strongest weapon we have against the anarchy of terrorism. To restrict the freedom of our law in favour of such anarchy by the deliberate transfer of blame away from the real perpetrators is indeed to make terrorism more effective.

In the case of Lockerbie the terrible damage that terrorism inflicted on its targets at the time has been amplified by the actions of its target states themselves in distorting their own justice systems.