Lockerbie: London Origin Theory

[Rolfe]

Nobody is forcing you to read it, you know. I'm sure there are other threads that might be more suited to your capacities.

You mistake the who for the how. Obviously, it wasn't Megrahi who put the bomb on the plane, because Megrahi wasn't there. Megrahi is almost irrelevant to this thread, which is about the evidence relating to the bomb suitcase at Heathrow.

Now, if we can get back to the actual subject of the thread, we can continue to discuss that evidence.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

The damage shown by Carlsson’s and McKee’s suitcases appear entirely consistent, positioned as described by Bedford and Sidhu, with a blast impact sustained on their lower suitcase leading edges. And just too low to be compatible with an explosion occurring on a second layer suitcase.

Having thought about it more deeply since LittleSwan commented, I don't think it's height so much as lack of shielding. If the bomb suitcase had been on the second layer, there was a suitcase on the bottom layer that would have shielded the bottom nine inches or so of these suitcases from the full force of the blast.

The absolutely smashed condition of the bottom of PD/889, far worse than the damage to the middle section, and the severe charring into a hole seen on the bit of Carlsson lining panel that was on the bottom, are not consistent with the presence of another suitcase on the bottom layer.

As LittleSwan said, the actual height difference wouldn't have been that much between the two scenarios.

Then we have the array of fragments and the damage sustained by Frankfurt baggage some of which included, with varying degrees, intimate or direct contact with Ms Coyles blue Tourister suitcase. I believe it appears that one suitcase, Mr Thomas’s suitcase from Frankfurt, while exhibiting extensive blast damage, also contained significant portions of Ms Coyle’s suitcase embedded within it. Other suitcases of both variety contained fragments of what was considered to originate from Ms Coyle’s suitcase, but an entire frame from the blue tourister had been blasted into a Frankfurt suitcase.

It seems absolutely clear that the Schauble case was on the other side of the Coyle case from the bomb. Therefore, since the bomb could not have been on the third layer, the Coyle case was on top of the bomb suitcase and the Schauble case on top of that. It was a Mrs. Thomas. Lawanda. She was only 21, quite recently married to a US serviceman stationed in Germany, and she had her baby boy with her. The baby was less than two months old. I think he may have been the youngest victim, as Ibolya Gabor was the oldest.

I think her suitcase was on top of the Bernstein suit carrier, immediately to the right of the Coyle case. The Coursey case was on top of that. When the bomb exploded, the handle section of the Coyle case seems to have sort of whiplashed round and become entangled with large pieces of the Thomas and Coursey cases. These three pieces, JDG/2, were sent to RARDE as a single item inside a couple of bin bags, but there is no photograph of them at that stage, and there is no drawing of how the three pieces related to each other. Hayes just separated them and treated them as three different things. So I'm speculating, to some extent.

The problem being that if Ms Coyle’s suitcase is still postulated, as was held by the prosecution at Zeist, as being the suitcase that took the position of the original Bedford suitcase, and thus on the floor of the container, it must have been blown to bits from immediately above it. It seems wholly counter-intuitive that significant portion of it would be embedded in a suitcase that was actually above it – and also above the bomb suitcase. The initial energy from the explosion would naturally dissipate in all directions, and thus a bag below this rush of energy seems unlikely to result in portions rushing upwards. However, experiencing explosive forces from below, then it becomes entirely plausible that portions of this suitcase would be found, perhaps substantial sections, in other Frankfurt luggage that was loaded directly on top and around it.

Precisely. The evidence presented in the actual trial shows conclusively that the Coyle case was not under the bomb suitcase. The problem is that nobody asked the forensics people to analyse the luggage positioning in a holistic manner, and they didn't volunteer such an analysis. Hayes was asked if PI/911 was consistent with Coyle being on the base of the container, and he sort of acceded, and that was all. Nobody looked to see if there was any other evidence that would allow the position of the Coyle case to be more definitely ascertained.

More fundamentally, the problem is that the idea that the Coyle case was on the bottom didn't even arise until 1999. Before that, the forensics guys simply assumed that the case on the bottom didn't matter, because they didn't think it was the bomb, so they didn't have to figure out what it was.

I don't think anyone told the RARDE guys that there was anything suspicious about that suitcase. I suspect they weren't privy to Bedford's evidence, saying which order he stacked the Heathrow interline cases. Nobody gave them the information they would have needed to analyse their findings in that way, and nobody on the police side tried.

So when it got to trial, they had no analysis, and the lawyers were left to cherry-pick what they thought might support the point they were trying to make. Not good.

The Crown’s tangled web of deceit is threatening to strangle them.

They should know how it feels, it's not the first time. I've just finished reading the book that recounts the horrible saga of the Shirley McKie fingerprint affair.

The position of the Coyle case alone should explode the conviction completely. So should the metallurgy results from PT/35b of course. At the moment they are trying to ignore it all and hope it will go away.

We have Shirley McKie's dad on our side. Be afraid. Be very afraid....

BTW Rolfe, I did try and download Hayes/Feraday’s test results zip.file from your Lockerbie file page, but the file wouldn't open for me – on various devices.

We must do dinner. Soon. Bring a memory stick.

I think this Libya thing is a PR exercise, to put out the message that there is no doubt about Libya's involvement, and hence Megrahi's guilt, and hence the Malta introduction. If they found evidence in Libya pointing to complicity in a Heathrow introduction, I wonder if they'd just bury it?

It's the 21st. So I'm open to the "cock-up" theory. If you didn't know about Bedford's description of that suitcase as a brown Samsonite hardshell, and that its appearance was mysterious, and that none of the Heathrow interline passengers had a brown Samsonite hardshell, and that all the known Heathrow interline luggage was recovered and none of it had been under the bomb suitcase, there might be no reason to think too much about the suitcase supposedly under the bomb.

Very few people seem to have known that stuff. Probably not including Hayes or Feraday.

If you know that the explosion was slightly into the overhang section, and you know about the 3-inch step, then never mind the height of the explosion (which they seem to have been unsure about), maybe you dismiss the bottom suitcase - not because it's too low down, but because it's too far to the right. Feraday seemed genuinely taken aback at the trial when Keen showed him the "left-side-up" arrangement.

It's the senior members of the police investigation, who buried the important details of Bedford's evidence and completely buried Manly's evidence, who have the hard questions to answer. And that was all done in the first six weeks after the disaster.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Sorry about the pixillated quality, but here's a link to a scale comparison of the seven orphan fragments and the recovered fragments of the bomb suitcase. The image is useless for examining texture or anything like that, but it allows the size to be appreciated. It actually looks like more of the small stuff with a couple of pieces just slightly larger.

www.vetpath.co.uk/lockerbie/7fragments.pdf

It's also noticeable that the production numbers of all but one of the orphan fragments are either consecutive with or only two different from numbers of fragments of the bomb suitcase. Spookily, PI/1536 and PI/1537 are orphan, while PI/1538 is bomb. PI/1548 is bomb, PI/1550 is orphan, PI/1552 is bomb.

I don't know exactly what this means about the relations between the fragments, but I'd put a modest bet that it's significant. Just as a comparison, the numbers of the fragments of the Coyle case bear no relation to these numbers, nor do the numbers of the pieces of PD/889.

I'll stick my neck out and say, well spotted LittleSwan. Bomb suitcase.

Rolfe.

 

[LSSBB]

Sorry about the pixillated quality, but here's a link to a scale comparison of the seven orphan fragments and the recovered fragments of the bomb suitcase. The image is useless for examining texture or anything like that, but it allows the size to be appreciated. It actually looks like more of the small stuff with a couple of pieces just slightly larger.

www.vetpath.co.uk/lockerbie/7fragments.pdf

It's also noticeable that the production numbers of all but one of the orphan fragments are either consecutive with or only two different from numbers of fragments of the bomb suitcase. Spookily, PI/1536 and PI/1537 are orphan, while PI/1538 is bomb. PI/1548 is bomb, PI/1550 is orphan, PI/1552 is bomb.

I don't know exactly what this means about the relations between the fragments, but I'd put a modest bet that it's significant. Just as a comparison, the numbers of the fragments of the Coyle case bear no relation to these numbers, nor do the numbers of the pieces of PD/889.

I'll stick my neck out and say, well spotted LittleSwan. Bomb suitcase.

Rolfe.

Did they ever check that lock assembly for fingerprints, or does the blast make that impossible?

 

[Bunntamas]

No wonder this discussion has been relegated to the conspiracy theories forums.

 

[Buncrana]

Thanks for all that Rolfe.

So, all the while the evidence is being collected and statements are being taken, there seems a concerted effort to not only 'ignore' some extremely salient bits of evidence, but is confounded by false analysis and a lack of shared information between different areas of the investigation.

It's as though no one ever expected, or hoped, this would all be tested in an actual trial.

Although, this does appear to illustrate, again, just how bad the first appeal was. Not just on the grunds it was contested, but on the lack, given what had occurred at Zeist, of fuller and more extensive analysis on the evidence that was now known.

 

[Rolfe]

Did they ever check that lock assembly for fingerprints, or does the blast make that impossible?

They checked, but they didn't find anything. The bit they were keen on was the handle of the blast-damaged umbrella that had been in the suitcase with the bomb, but they didn't find anything.

Of course, fingerprints and the Scottish criminal justice system were having a really, really bad time at the time of the Lockerbie trial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_McKie

Later, at the time of the SCCRC inquiry, all that stuff was also tested for DNA. The only DNA they found belonged to one of the forensic scientists.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

So, all the while the evidence is being collected and statements are being taken, there seems a concerted effort to not only 'ignore' some extremely salient bits of evidence, but is confounded by false analysis and a lack of shared information between different areas of the investigation.

Hayes told the SCCRC that he had half a dozen animal rights activism terrorism cases on the go at the same time as Lockerbie. How much actual thinking time did any of them spend on this evidence? Hayes is just sitting there picking up one chunk of suitcase after another and describing it and drawing it, and then moving on to the next one. The most he does in the way of analysis is to figure out which bits belong to which suitcase.

It would have been perfectly possible to figure out that the Coyle case had been between the bomb suitcase and the Schauble suitcase, with the evidence in front of him, but there's no evidence he ever did that. That observation pretty much kills off the possibility that the bomb suitcase was upright in the overhang section, but Feraday was still saying he favoured that position in May/June 1989.

The more detailed analysis we've done in this thread relies on having access to Bedford's statement and the transfer luggage records. Only with that information is it possible to tell the identity and positions of the cases Bedford loaded. I don't think Hayes and Feraday were given that information. There's certainly no evidence of them having attempted such an analysis.

If you don't have that analysis, then you have no reason to suspect that the suitcase on the bottom layer wasn't just one of the ordinary interline cases. If nobody tells you that the suitcase on the bottom layer appeared mysteriously while the container was unattended, and was described as a brown Samsonite hardshell, maybe you just ignore it.

It's hard to know how deliberate any of this was. The fault seems to lie with the senior Lockerbie detectives. They had Bedford's statements, but I cannot find any evidence among the police memos or the forensic reports that suggests the salient information was known by anyone else in the investigation. The only people who did know were the German police, who were none to bright themselves, but who were given the statements, had them translated and a précis drawn up, and then wrote to Lockerbie to ask, what was that case Bedford described? The first reaction was, "what the hell is he talking about?" Then when the question was (only partly) explained by Harry Bell, the response was "God knows, one of these I suppose," attaching a list of all 14 Heathrow interline items, including the ones that were never put in the container.

Could this have been some bizarre oversight? Hard to comprehend it as such, but when you add the burial without trace of the Manly statement at the beginning of February it all looks horribly deliberate.

It's as though no one ever expected, or hoped, this would all be tested in an actual trial.

I don't know. It could just be their normal standard of work. Rake through and describe all that stuff, then pass the details to the cops. The cops in this case were a bunch of yokels more used to tracing stolen bicycles.

Although, this does appear to illustrate, again, just how bad the first appeal was. Not just on the grounds it was contested, but on the lack, given what had occurred at Zeist, of fuller and more extensive analysis on the evidence that was now known.

It's not just the first appeal (with its discovery of Manly). It's the entire investigation leading up to the SCCRC application. It's the serried ranks of commentators writing about the case. It's Megrahi himself. Nobody has looked at this aspect.

Paul Foot set it out quite clearly in his 2001 pamphlet. There was a case described as a brown Samsonite reported as sitting in almost exactly the position of the bomb suitcase, an hour before the feeder flight from Frankfurt landed. This case was never linked to a passenger, or to any of the items recovered on the ground. The investigators knew about that case in early January 1989. No evidence was presented to show how that case was eliminated from the investigation in 1989. Instead it was sort of hand-waved away on no particularly persuasive grounds.

What was that all about? Right from when I read that, I wanted to know how the cops had dealt with that evidence in 1989, what the full analysis of the Heathrow luggage looked like, and what the tarmac loader himself said about what he did with the Heathrow interline luggage. All that information was in the hands of the defence investigators. But nobody was asking these questions.

The questions seem obvious to me, but I have to acknowledge that nobody was asking them.

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

Hayes told the SCCRC that he had half a dozen animal rights activism terrorism cases on the go at the same time as Lockerbie. How much actual thinking time did any of them spend on this evidence? Hayes is just sitting there picking up one chunk of suitcase after another and describing it and drawing it, and then moving on to the next one. The most he does in the way of analysis is to figure out which bits belong to which suitcase.

It would have been perfectly possible to figure out that the Coyle case had been between the bomb suitcase and the Schauble suitcase, with the evidence in front of him, but there's no evidence he ever did that. That observation pretty much kills off the possibility that the bomb suitcase was upright in the overhang section, but Feraday was still saying he favoured that position in May/June 1989.

The more detailed analysis we've done in this thread relies on having access to Bedford's statement and the transfer luggage records. Only with that information is it possible to tell the identity and positions of the cases Bedford loaded. I don't think Hayes and Feraday were given that information. There's certainly no evidence of them having attempted such an analysis.

If you don't have that analysis, then you have no reason to suspect that the suitcase on the bottom layer wasn't just one of the ordinary interline cases. If nobody tells you that the suitcase on the bottom layer appeared mysteriously while the container was unattended, and was described as a brown Samsonite hardshell, maybe you just ignore it.

It's hard to know how deliberate any of this was. The fault seems to lie with the senior Lockerbie detectives. They had Bedford's statements, but I cannot find any evidence among the police memos or the forensic reports that suggests the salient information was known by anyone else in the investigation. The only people who did know were the German police, who were none to bright themselves, but who were given the statements, had them translated and a précis drawn up, and then wrote to Lockerbie to ask, what was that case Bedford described? The first reaction was, "what the hell is he talking about?" Then when the question was (only partly) explained by Harry Bell, the response was "God knows, one of these I suppose," attaching a list of all 14 Heathrow interline items, including the ones that were never put in the container.

Could this have been some bizarre oversight? Hard to comprehend it as such, but when you add the burial without trace of the Manly statement at the beginning of February it all looks horribly deliberate.

Well, this aspect brings me round to our beliefs about the investigation’s motives from the very outset. It would seem quite reasonable to presuppose that the idea of any investigation is to recover and determine the evidence, establish facts, and seek to bring to account those responsible. This certainly holds for the atrocity of PA103. However, by the very appointment of the particular individuals (esp. forensic) assigned in these efforts to the investigation, and their known predisposition for cocking-up, or alternatively, skewing evidence and presenting fabricated conclusions, that might imply our presuppositions are misplaced.

Meanwhile, as we have already mentioned, in parallel to the forensic investigation, we have the police investigation that appears to be determined to either ignore, or suppress, salient and vital aspects of information regarding Heathrow airport, the passengers, baggage, and loader statements. From very quickly it was determined that AVE4041 was the container in question, and therefore the investigation was in a position to immediately narrow-down the inquiry – as far as Heathrow was concerned.

By Jan 7th even the Germans had been able to almost pinpoint the position of the bomb in the container. Meanwhile, despite being aware in January that not only was there evidence of the unusual appearance of a suitcase in that container in this position, the method of its introduction is also disputed by two of the three loaders who were dealing directly with this loading. At no stage is any attempt made to resolve this troublesome discrepancy. Even when the description of the bomb suitcase is announced – not a word is heard, no follow-up, no indication whatsoever that Bedford’s description in January of an unusual suitcase causes any stirring in the investigation. Other than some speculative estimations of bomb height, the investigation had no reason at this stage to be concentrating on Malta (not until Aug/Sep '89) and certainly not completely ignoring Heathrow.

By mid-Feb and early March, the only reason for suspecting Frankfurt was the Autumn Leaves operation and that PA103A had arrived at Heathrow from there. Allowing for the possibility that baggage could be rearranged (or shifted by other means) although they had statements from that loader who said there wasn't any repositioning, in AVE4041, then the fact that it was considered to be on the ‘second-layer’ provides no rational reason to completely and wholly ignore the evidence that was known at Heathrow.

So, while we have the forensic investigation be led by two (three if you include Thurman) extremely dubious so-called ‘scientists’, it appears the Keystone cops have been assigned to follow-up statements and do the actual investigative work at the Heathrow and Scottish end. Or not follow-up as it seems.

An undoubted motley crew of improper and incompetent individuals seems to have been assembled in response to one of the worst aviation disasters ever and the worst terror atrocity over UK soil? I find this just too hard to comprehend without resorting to more sinister theories of the true motive of this investigation by, at latest, mid-Feb or early March. And as I said earlier, the very appointment of these specific individuals to prominent roles in the investigation strikes me as something that implies perhaps more ominous motives were involved from the very beginning.

 

[LittleSwan]

The Joint Report is a little weird.

There are answers (i.e. conclusions), but there are no questions. There are results (mainly descriptions of fragments and debris), but there is no interpretation of these results. I know FEL did some (chemical) analysis on several fragments, but where are the results of these?

The report is basically a list of (illustrated) discriptions followed by answers to unknown questions.

The most he does in the way of analysis is to figure out which bits belong to which suitcase.

Yes, but surprisingly he didn't do this for the seven grey fragments. Why? What or who stopped him from doing this?

 

[Rolfe]

A little weird? That's the understatement of the thread.

I think the "seven grey fragments" thing smells like complete incompetence. They knew the primary suitcase was bronze and these bits were grey. They were only looking to grey suitcases for a match. If it had been a deliberate attempt to acquire another unidentified suitcase to fudge the bomb positioning, it would have been used for that purpose. It wasn't. The fact that these things are just left sitting there, something apparently cheek by jowl with the bomb but we have no clue what and where's the rest of it, is one more point on the "complete barrel of idiots" score card.

Now I have spotted the close-up images of the bomb suitcase texture, there's no doubt about it that these seven fragments are more of the same. The fact that Hayes (and Feraday) simply didn't notice is mindboggling, but true.

There is no sign at all that anyone even thought of trying to figure out how these suitcases were positioned in relation to the bomb suitcase and each other. I mean, what were they using for brains? (Thinking about it, Hayes who had the PhD left in September, and that left the analysis in the hands of people who didn't even have first degrees - HND level intellects.)

Feraday had figured out these two positions he said the bomb had to be in - one or other of these, no question. He first came up with that in June 1989, but then he simply repeats it verbatim in the Joint Forensic Report in 1991 and again in his affidavit to the US hearings in 1992. No attempt to analyse the matter further.

However, these positions were based only on the geometry of the container and the Samsonite. He didn't take into account the other evidence he had. That other evidence (the condition of the Coyle suitcase and the location of the lock mechanism) conclusively demonstrates that his favoured "position 1" is completely impossible. Nevertheless he seems to have gone on favouring position 1 at least into 1992 without ever realising this.

I believe he favoured position 1 because it's the only position in which you could get the actual Semtex into the hot spot of the explosion, with the case packed as it is in the mock-up. When they discuss the mock-up there's no sign at all that they even considered the "down one side" packing, although that is the way a case placed in Feraday's "position 2" would inevitably have had to be packed. Strike out position 1, as it should have been struck out while they were still brainstorming this, and the packing must have been asymmetrical.

Who packs an item like that to one side of a case? It was heavy. It's intuitive to spread the weight evenly by packing a heavy item across the centre axis, as in the mock-up. If you're going to wave goodbye to that case at Malta and leave its subsequent placement to some innocent baggage handler randomly tossing things around, why do anything different? The asymmetrical packing is inescapably implied as soon as position 1 is eliminated, but they didn't even notice. And it means something. It means that case was packed by someone who anticipated having control of which way round it was placed into the container.

And then there's the question of the height of the explosion. In the draft Feraday wrote in June 1989 it was 20 cm!!! Then in the body of the text of the Joint Report, which is in many ways simply lifted from that draft, the height is said to be 25 to 28 cm. This range is repeated in the labelling on two separate diagrams. Then it gets to the conclusions, and suddenly with no warning or explanation the measurement is "28 to 30 cm". (Guess which bit was read out in court?)

There is no detailed explanation of how this figure (any of them) was derived. It's just an assertion, which changes in the most surreal way from one draft to another and from one page to another. And yet it's the most important measurement of the lot.

I think this is a group of people seriously out of their depth. I diagnose complete lack of the intellectual capacity necessary to look at all that evidence together and strip-mine it for all the information and inferences it can be forced to yield.

The identification of the bomb suitcase is taken to an absurd degree of detail. Yes we believe you! You've made your point, it was a Samsonite Silhouette 4000 hardshell 26-inch in antique copper. Now get on and work out something more relevant to catching the guys who put it there! Except they didn't. It's like a student group beavering away proudly at the bit they can do, and failing miserably to grasp the bigger picture.

I find this extremely peculiar, because if it was pure incompetence it played straight back to the police "incompetence" in ignoring Bedford's evidence. They had two shots at getting this right. One by paying attention to Bedford and realising that he was describing the bomb right there, and the second by the forensics being done right and telling the cops they ought to be looking at the suitcase on the bottom layer. Both opportunities were fouled up.

Rolfe.

 

[LittleSwan]

The disappearance of PI/1549.

PI/1549 is a fragment of rigid grey plastic. It is not one of the seven grey fragments. It also doesn't originate from the IED suitcase or the grey McKee suitcase.

Q Could I draw your attention to reference to item PI/1549, piece of suitcase, which I think can be seen on the screen.
A I have it, sir.
Q And by referring quickly back to page R23, just on the paper copy, can you see that we are still within the section of “Lightly Explosion Damaged Luggage”?
A Yes, sir.
Q Could you read what you’ve reported provisionally at PI/1549.
A Yes. In the draft report I have reported that “This is an irregularly shaped curved fragment of rigid grey plastics. The fragment had a thickness of 2.3 to 2.8 millimetres, with overall dimensions of approximately 110 millimetres by 110 millimetres, and a construction similar to that of the hardshell plastics of PD/889 above. The fragment bore slight indications of explosion damage with suspected transient heat effects on the fractured edges accompanied by a discoloration.”
Q You made reference in that paragraph [2749] to an item to which you’ve already been referred, namely PD/889.
A I did, sir, yes.
Q I wonder if you could now look at your final report, Production 181, at page 36, and if we could scroll to the foot of the page and look at section 4.2.12. Do we see there a reference to PD/889?
A We do, sir.
Q Could you then look over the page, at page 37, and can you see that there is reference on page 37 to PK/2074, PK/2238, and PK/2241?
A Yes, I see that, sir.
Q But no reference to PI/1549?
A Apparently not, sir.
Q Could I ask you to look at the index of Production 181, which is found at page 183 of the text, 183. And can we see, if we look to the centre of the page, a reference to PI/1548, followed by a reference to PI/1550, but no reference to PI/1549?
A That appears to be correct, sir.
Q Might we reasonably infer, then, that PI/1549 does not appear in your final report?
A That seems a reasonable conclusion to reach, sir, yes. [2750]
Q And perhaps to try to determine why, could I ask you to go back to Production 1497, your
examination notes at page E81. And perhaps if we could scroll down to the bottom of the
page, the section PI/1549, could you please read out what you’ve written there.
A “Plastics bag and contents with identification label marked ‘piece of suitcase.’ Contents: One irregularly shaped disrupted fragment of rigid grey plastics. Outer surface dark grey, simulated leather, thin plastics with thicker grey plastics backing. Heat effects on broken edges, little blackening. Explosives involvement suspected.”
I have then written: “Believed part of suitcase PD/889,” and then have crossed it out.
Reference to page 22. Then I’ve written “No. Origin uncertain. Simulated leather finish is a smaller and more regular pattern than PD/889.”
Q Thank you, Dr. Hayes.
I have no further questions.

The ball was on the penalty spot, but the defence didn't score the goal

 

[pete2]

Little Swan, I've been trying to keep up with this thread, though I don't really have enough time to study the evidence, or anything like your expertise. I've managed to follow the argument regarding the probable arrangement of the cases, and the attribution of the seven unidentified fragments to the bomb bag. But the significance of 'the disappearance of PI/1549' escapes me. Please could you explain.
Thanks, Pete

 

[Rolfe]

I'm trying to work it out, but have not as yet succeeded. Why isn't it another "grey fragment" from the primary suitcase?

Rolfe.

 

[LittleSwan]

Little Swan, I've been trying to keep up with this thread, though I don't really have enough time to study the evidence, or anything like your expertise. I've managed to follow the argument regarding the probable arrangement of the cases, and the attribution of the seven unidentified fragments to the bomb bag. But the significance of 'the disappearance of PI/1549' escapes me. Please could you explain.
Thanks, Pete

Sorry for not making myself clear.

My line of thinking about "Heathrow origin" is that if the IED suitcase was on the second layer, there has to be a second secondary suitcase that was resting below the IED suitcase. The only candidate for such a second secondary suitcase is a grey hardshell suitcase (The grey hardshell A in the joint report, i.e the source of the seven grey fragments).

In order to "prove" that the IED suitcase was on the first layer we have to explain the origin of every single fragment found. This is impossible, because we don't have acces to these fragments. So, we will never know what the origin is of the seven grey fragments. However, it is reasonable to think that it is the IED suitcase (with the brown laminate spalled off).

PI/1549 is just another anomalous fragment. First, the discription of it is different from the other fragments: "Outer surface dark grey, simulated leather, thin plastics with thicker grey plastics backing". This discription is suggesting that the fragment is made of grey laminated plastic. If this is true, the fragment is not from the IED suitcase. Second, in the joint report this fragment is swept under the carpet for unknown reasons.

 

[Rolfe]

I still don't totally follow this. We can't totally prove the origin of every fragment found. Nobody can. But how is it a ball on the penalty spot for the defence if an unidentifiable fragment is described?

It's up to the prosecution to present a suitcase which is not the bomb suitcase as having been in the lowest position in the left-hand stack. They might have presented the seven grey fragments, or they might have presented that single scrap PI/1549, but they didn't.

The best I can do with your theory so far is that the prosecution had a potential candidate for the case under the bomb, in the shape of a single four-inch square piece of suitcase, but they lost it. How is that an open goal for the defence?

Rolfe.

 

[LittleSwan]

Why didn't they ask the following questions?

Q. Dr. Hayes, you didn't discribe PI/1549 as one of the fragments from the grey hardshell A. Does this mean that PI/1549 is from another suitcase?
A. Uhh... probably yes sir.
Q. If PI/1549 is not from the grey hardshell (A) and not from PD/889, which other suitcase do you have in mind.
A. Uhhh....... I don't know sir
Q. Is it possible dr. Hayes that PI/1549 is from the IED suitcase?
A. Well, the IED suitcase is brown and PI/1549 is grey. At kindergarten I've learned that brown and grey are different colors.
Q. Yes, dr. Hayes, but would it be possible that the brown color disappeared from the fragment as a result of the explosion.
A. Yes... why not.
Q. ....

 

[Rolfe]

Where would that have got them?

Rolfe.

 

[LittleSwan]

Eventually, the elimination of the Grey hardshell A as a potential candidate for the second secondary suitcase.

 

[Rolfe]

Yes, if anyone had advanced it as that in the first place. It simply wasn't a line that either the defence or the prosecution took on board. The sad fact is that neither the forensics officers, nor the police, nor the prosecution, nor the defence, seem to have analysed this evidence in the detail that we are analysing it.

The prosecution presented unanalysed data. Then the prosecution and the defence muddled around cherry-picking bits they thought might be interesting or (in the case of the defence) bits they thought might demonstrate to the judges that the prosecution was all a bit of a muddle.

Nobody even picked out "grey hardshell A" as being anything of interest. As far as the general thrust of the argument was concerned, the bomb was on the second layer, the Coyle case was under it, and we're not really bothered what was on top of that. That was as far as anyone went.

If the defence had really grasped this nettle, they could have demolished Hayes, Feraday, Claiden and Cullis. They could have brought their own experts to the stand to analyse the evidence properly and show that Coyle had been above the bomb suitcase and the damage to the container floor did not preclude a case in position 3, for example.

Keen did in fact manage to demolish the professor (Peel, was it?) and show the Mach stem calculations to be wrong. However, half-hearted cross-examination isn't the way to sort out something like this. You need your own experts to put forward a robuse alternative explanation for the evidence, and they didn't go that route.

Rolfe.