I'm trying to think, if I was a BKA minion, and I had to follow up the printout that maier handed over, what would I do?
I'd need the other documents first, because it makes no sense as it stands. Do we have any information about where that came from? Any evidence of a BKA visit to Frankfurt airport in the last week of January? Or did they already have the documents from an earlier visit? I suppose the first thing I'd want would be the coders' worksheets showing which station was coding luggage from which flight at which time.
If I had these, and knew the key to the printout (for example that S0009 was station 206), I could get at least an approximation of which flight each of these 111 items came from.
I would also have a passenger list for PA103A (which I don't believe was missing), and a record of where each passenger came from. A good number of these bags would have come from the checkin desks at Frankfurt itself, and more would belong to passengers who weren't transferring to PA103 at Heathrow. These would have to be identified and ticked off, even though the main focus would naturally be luggage being interlined to PA103A and on to PA103.
Here's Coleman's version of this, which is the most detailed I can find.
The BKA estimate that 'about' 135 bags were sent through to the baggage room below the departure gate of Flight 103A, some belonging to the 79 passengers whose journey ended in London and the rest to the 49 who were going on to New York. There were no records of luggage sent directly to the departure gate, nor of interline luggage taken directly from one aircraft to another, nor of bags belonging to first-class passengers.
Of the 49 passengers bound for New York and beyond, 28 began their journey in Frankfurt, and 21 transferred from other connecting flights.
Of the 135 bags mentioned by the BKA, 111 had been logged on the Frankfurt computer and about 24 taken directly to the aircraft from three other connecting Pan Am flights. The list compiled by Pan Am at its check-in desks, however, showed not 111 but 117 items of luggage, and the discrepancy has not been convincingly cleared up to this day.
129 passengers
79 stopping at Heathrow, presumably unimportant because their luggage wouldn't be transferred to
Maid of the Seas.
49 going on to New York
Of these 49, 28 came through the Frankfurt checkin desks.
The remaining 21 came from other connecting flights at Frankfurt.
So how would I, PC Plod, approach this? I suppose I'd start by excluding the checkin desk bags, because I couldn't prove anything untoward about any of these. (Though how I could exclude them as being the bomb bag, if I can't trust the x-ray screen, is another matter.)
I'm then left with all the connecting-flight bags, whether headed for New York or not. So, the bags of the 21 passengers coming from connecting flights and going all the way are presumably indistinguishable from the bags of the connecting-flight passengers who are getting off at Heathrow, at this stage. (Unless the BP and TO designations signify something, but I don't know about that.) That second group might be about 40 bags, possibly.
That gives me maybe 60 entries to check (or more, some passengers had more than one bag). My first move is going to be to look at the coding stations and times to see which flights these came from. I should end up with a list of flights that seem to have supplied baggage to PA103A.
I then need to look at the passenger lists to see which flights I know passengers transferred from. Presumably all this tallies, except for KM180. I then shout "I have you now, Mr. Bond!" and go tell the boss.
There's so much wrong with this I don't know where to start. First,
all these bags were x-rayed, so what are we assuming? That the x-ray examination was pointless? In that case
any of the bags could have had the bomb in it. Including the ones checked in at Frankfurt, or any of the ones that came off a connecting flight apparently attached to a passenger.
And again, I don't know that item 8849 was tagged for New York - do I? I'm just assuming that was the case.
Have I definitely attached all the other bags to passsengers, or at least to flights with people on them who were headed to PA103A? Or are there any other items there that aren't convincingly attached to a flight with a passenger? We don't know.
What about the 24 other bags, or possibly more, including bags from three other PA flights, first class bags, and bags with short connection times? Have I any idea whether any of these might appear to be unaccompanied? I have not. And let's face it, that stuff is more likely to have excaped the x-ray.
Two things strike me here.
The expert maintains that even with his expert knowledge of the system he could not draw the conclusion reached by the Lockerbie trial judges in 2001. "They would have needed much more information of the baggage movements, not this very narrow time frame," he said.
Questions are now raised about why Mr Al-Megrahi's legal team at the trial in the Netherlands decided to accept and rely upon a report on the baggage system compiled by a BKA officer and not find an expert on the system. The Scottish police also did not seek to interview those people who designed and installed the system.
It seems to me there's far too little information here to conclude a damn thing. It's just the coincidence that this orphan item seems to have come from Malta, and the babygro had "Made in Malta" on its label that seems to have impressed people. Too much, I think.
Rolfe.
Sorry I haven't been looking for me-bait or adding anything for a bit. This next week I'll work it up some more. I still say it should be Lockerbie specific instead of a Lockerbie section in an otherwise empty network. Feels weird, imbalanced. Can that be helped? 
