Fresh appeal applied for in the Lockerbie case

[Ambrosia]

Could you explain your working hypothesis that might be balance of probabilities?

Apologies for the late reply, I've been busy emigrating to Germany. Also the HD that has all of my old Lockerbie research on it is in a box "somewhere over there" and I can't find it atm, so am writing all this off the top of my head, if I make any glaring errors here, please point them out and I will correct/update them when I can.

So, PT/35b What is it? When was it found? Where was it found? How does it connect to the bombing of PA103? Who does it implicate?

What is it?
It is a fragment of printed circuit board (PCB) about the size of a fingernail that bears unique circuit traces from which it can be identified. If genuine, it comes from a timing circuit (MST-13) that was manufactured by MeBo. A *huge* number of investigators and researchers, both at the time and subsequently have searched for matching PCBs that this fragment can be placed in and to date there is only one match. An MST-13.

When/Where was it found?
It was found by Dr Thomas Hayes, head of the Forensics Explosives Lab at RARDE on 12 May 1989, while he was examining evidence as part of the initial investigations. It was folded into a bomb damaged shirt fragment that as known to have been in close proximity to the bomb that brought down the flight. The shirt fragment it was found in is evidence item# PI/995. The shirt fragment itself was picked up by searchers amongst lots of other debris from the crash site.

How does it connect to the bombing of PA103?
Short answer, We don't know.
Longer answer, despite being found in a bomb damaged shirt fragment, which puts it definitively inside the bomb suitcase, we can't say for sure whether or not this PCB fragment comes from the bomb itself, or was just an item in the case. If you take the view that it did form part of the bomb, which is the most likely explanation if it's provenance is genuine, then it links an MST-13 timer to the bombing and by extension MeBo.

Who does it implicate?
MeBo and whoever they sold their timers to. MeBo claim during evidence at trial to have sold 20 such timers to Libya in 1985. Also at trial it was testified by a former Stasi member that MeBo also supplied timers to the Stasi (East German secret police) circa 1985.
Megrahi was the guy tasked with obtaining items currently blocked by sanctions for Libya, and he was a known associate of Edwin Bollier, the man who ran MeBo.

Above is basically the reasoning used by the "official story" to tie Megrahi to the bombing via Libya and their procurement of MST-13 timers. Which on first glance looks fairly solid. However, it all falls apart when you start looking much closer.

Lets start with Dr Thomas Hayes. He was head of the explosives forensics lab at RARDE, the govt lab tasked with investigating anything explosives related. To say Hayes has a checkered history is something of an understatement. He previously worked on other high profile cases like that of the Maguire 7. The Maguire 7 were essentially convicted on the back of Hayes "expert forensic evidence" and it proved very wrong. The cases were quashed and after spending 15 years in prison for something they didn't do they were released. The appeal court noting that RARDE scientists had "lied and deliberately suppressed evidence" There were several other such cases, but suffice it to say that Dr Hayes was a man promoted far above his skill level, he was slapdash, disorganised, poorly qualified, and despite all of that his word in court as an "expert" witness held a lot of sway.

He claims to have found Pt/35b May 12th 1989. Only his contemporaneous notes were kept in a loose leaf(!) file and the page he used to note PT/35bs discovery was inserted at a later date into this file and subsequent pages of that file were renumbered. A situation Hayes himself at trial called an "unfathomable mystery" His colleague Dr Feraday, who was later promoted to Hayes job after he quit in late 1989 and who shares many of Hayes shortcomings (Both Hayes and Feraday were prominent scientists at RARDE involved in preparing evidence for the Maguire 7 trial, which got such scathing comments from the appeals court) was also unable to explain Hayes notes and the page numbering anomaly at trial when he was asked to do so.

We know for sure that PT/35b was known about on May 22nd. Photo 117 of the RARDE report shows PT/35b and the photo register dates that picture to May 22nd.

So we know that Hayes was at best a terrible forensic scientist, and at worst a willing stooge who has previous form of fabricating evidence, lying in court and suppressing other evidence.
So the entire provenance of this fragment is called into question.

The evidence bag containing PI/995, the bomb damaged clothing fragments was not examined until May 12 1989. So it sat in a storeroom for ~4 months between being picked up near Lockerbie and finally being examined. Ample time for someone to have tampered with it. We don't know how good security was around wherever it was stored, we can't say whether there would have been opportunity to tamper with evidence, but there would have been time to do it, and there was certainly motive to do so.

How was Pt/35b identified?
Enter Tom Thurman. June 14th 1990 in an interim report signed by both Hayes and Feraday they note that despite a great deal of effort to identify fragments of bomb circuitry to date nothing had been identified. (There is a great timeline here that show in detail a lot of the work that was done up till then to try to identify PT/35b)

It took American intelligence agencies to identify PT/35b as a fragment of an MST-13. Tom Thurman of the FBI takes the credit for it, though it was actually CIA analyst John Orkin that made the identification. Thurman claims to have been given a complete timer circuit (K1) on June 15th. Though in fact the CIA had possession of K1 since 1987.

On June 22nd Scots investigators visited the FBI in Washington where Tom Thurman showed them photos of the K1 timer sample and it's here that PT/35b is finally identified.

On the face of it a lot of painstaking police work to identify a unique PCB fragment, with co-operation between US and Scots investigators ultimately bears fruit.

PCB Testing
Large amounts of testing was conducted on PT/35b. Bits of it were cut off and analysed for metals present. It was looked at very carefully under microscopes and some of the reports conflict. You can read a long summary of scientific testing conducted in 1992 here and 1999/2000 here.

In short it was tested extensively and on balance it appears to be what it is claimed to be. A fragment of an MST-13 timer, made by MeBo, that has been damaged consistent to being in close proximity to an explosion.
MeBo was a tiny company and it's PCBs were essentially handmade. As such they contain irregularities you wouldn't get from mass produced machine made PCBs.

Timing is everything
In my head it all really comes down to one main point. MST-13 timers are clock timers. You either set a time for it to go off, or start a countdown and when the designated time is reached, or the countdown elapses, the timer activates. Why would you not set a clock timer to activate mid-flight?
If the bomb detonated midflight the plane would come down over the Atlantic and most of the debris (and any incriminating evidence it contained) would likely be lost forever at the bottom of the ocean.
It was close to Christmas, flight schedules are notorious for being late to take off at the best of times.
We know that the bomb case was planted at Heathrow the night before the flight departed.

The main alternate bomb theory is that the bomb was made by Khreesat and used an altimeter timer. As soon as an altimeter timer detects the preset atmospheric pressure it activates. It won't guarantee a mid flight detonation but it will make sure the plane is at cruising altitude.

The timing around the discovery of and identification of the MST-13 timer is also suspect. Initial investigations led police towards the PFLP-GC and Khreesat and an Iranian revenge plot. This was politically inconvenient on a number of levels for the US and the UK as noted by Paul Foot. He describes in his "Flight From Justice" a WaPo article circa 1990 by Jack Anderson describing conversations between UK PM Margaret Thatcher and US President G HW Bush and a decision made between them to downplay Iranian involvement in March 1989. Why this decision was taken is anyones guess. But the timing is curious.

March 1989 is weeks before PT/35b is discovered in evidence bag PI/995.
American intelligence have a timer they know to be uniquely manufactured by a small electronics company, in their possession in 1987, that would exclusively tie a bomb to Libya (and away from Iran) once it had been identified.

In Summary

Why do I believe PT/35b was planted?

For the timer to be genuinely part of the device that brought down PA103 the following must all be true.

i) The bombers chose a really dumb time to activate their bomb
ii) The bombers used a unique timer. A clock timer is a very simple device and there are thousands of options, but they used this one particular timer that can only have come from one source.
iii) Despite Hayes previous form he conducted honest and truthful analysis on the Lockerbie evidence and his misnumbered notes was an honest mistake.
iv) The way that the timing of the fragments discovery lines up with politcal considerations is just a coincidence.

I can believe that one or two of these is true, all four of them though starts to strain credibility.

I believe that a political decision was taken at the highest levels of govt in March 1989 to steer investigations away from Iran and towards a n other bad actor. I think that PT/35b is indeed an explosion damaged fragment of a genuine MST-13 board, but I think it was planted in late March 1989 into evidence bag PI/995. Perhaps it's identity was discovered through honest police work by determined investigators, perhaps people in the US were nudged towards its identification.

I think that a bomber would set a clock timer to detonate mid-atlantic and not relatively shortly after take off.

I think that Hayes in particular having previous form for lying under oath and misrepresenting forensic evidence gave the powers that be a window that they used. (I don't think Hayes is a bad person, I think he believed he was doing the best he could to put bad people in prison, though I do think he is utterly incompetent)

I think that on balance the evidence shows manipulation, it shows convenient timing and the weight of evidence in all probability supports PT/35b not to be a genuine part of the timing circuitry used in the bomb that brought down PA103.

That's the crux of my hypothesis. I might be wrong. I'd welcome other evidence to show where I might be wrong.

 

[LittleSwan]

PI/995 was received by RARDE on 8 February 1989.

What do you think of AG/145 and everything else pointing to the Toshiba radio?
I believe PT/35b was planted by Rick Hahn at Dextar and AG/145 by Thomas Thurman at Longtown mid January 1989.

There was no MST13 timer and there was no Toshiba RT-SF16 radio.
Unfortunately I cannot prove it.

 

[Ambrosia]

What do you think of AG/145 and everything else pointing to the Toshiba radio?

AG/145 is the evidence tag given to circuit board fragments that were later identified as the Toshiba radio the bomb was encased in. They were found folded up in a part of the luggage container by the AAIB.

I don't have a problem with the Toshiba radio id at all. If anything it's more evidence pointing towards a bomb of Khreesat manufacture.

Whoever made up the case that contained the bomb went to some lengths to make it appear like a tourists case if someone opened it and looked inside.
They bought new clothes from Gauci's shop and the bomb itself would have been hidden inside something. In Dec '88 airport security had been warned to take extra care regarding checking consumer electronics because of what the BKA had found in it's Autumn Leaves raid on Oct 26th 1988.

While the case was just put directly into a luggage container and so bypassed airport security entirely, whoever packed the case might have expected it to go through security at some point.

Hayes stated at trial that in PI/995 the shirt fragments that contained PT/35b they were more concerned initially with the torn radio manual pages also embedded in the shirt that later led toward identifying the Toshiba radio.

There were bomb tests conducted in the US at Indian Head where they packed cases inside luggage containers, and on occasion small fragments of PCB survived. While I think that the size of PT/35b means it's way less likely that that fragment survived the explosion on PA103 given how big it is, the Toshiba PCB fragments are way smaller.
Also explosions are extremely chaotic complex events, so it remains possible that PT/35b did in fact survive the explosion, so I haven't listed that in my hypothesis for that reason. It's a bit too speculative in my book.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

on laboratory notebooks in general

He claims to have found Pt/35b May 12th 1989. Only his contemporaneous notes were kept in a loose leaf(!) file and the page he used to note PT/35bs discovery was inserted at a later date into this file and subsequent pages of that file were renumbered. A situation Hayes himself at trial called an "unfathomable mystery" His colleague Dr Feraday, who was later promoted to Hayes job after he quit in late 1989 and who shares many of Hayes shortcomings (Both Hayes and Feraday were prominent scientists at RARDE involved in preparing evidence for the Maguire 7 trial, which got such scathing comments from the appeals court) was also unable to explain Hayes notes and the page numbering anomaly at trial when he was asked to do so.

I wanted to make a brief comment on this from the point of view of how laboratory notebooks are generally kept. One usually starts with a bound notebook, and each page should have a page number and a date. Only pen, not pencil should be used. In some instances a supervisor initials it. The obvious problems with loose leaf notebooks are that one can remove unwanted pages, or change their order.

Rolfe and I have conversed about this before, but I don't recall the details. It may be that the keeping of loose-leaf notebooks was in some way related to another one of the bombing miscarriages that happened in the 1970s, that of the Birmingham Six. It eventually became known that someone ripped out pages of one of the laboratory notebooks in the laboratory in which Dr. Skuse worked (this is discussed in more detail in another thread), which is a different laboratory.

If I were on a jury and found out that notes were either destroyed or not kept properly, I would lean strongly toward giving such evidence little or no weight. To do otherwise gives no incentive to the lab to do things correctly. However one problem with this point of view is that such occurrences do not always surface at the trial, and appeals courts are IMO often too reluctant to take action.

 

[Rolfe]

Just checking in to the thread, because I only just saw the new posts. I need to read and digest these.

 

[LittleSwan]

From the trial transcript

Q And if other officers from, say, search teams arrived and had to enter the premises, was
any record made of their presence?
A Everyone who entered Dextar was recorded, logged in and logged out.
Q I see.
A Including staff.
Q And if visitors who were not police officers had to attend for some purpose, what
arrangements were made?
A They would be logged in, but they would be directly supervised by a police member of
staff. They would never be left alone in Dextar.

Do we have access to this log-in, log-out information?

 

[Rolfe]

The appeal decision is due at midday tomorrow. Right now I think we're doomed.

 

[Rolfe]

I knew it. They've rejected the appeal.

When I started this over eleven years ago I believed that if the truth could be proved, if the case could be made clearly, the legal system would correct matters. I have learned since then that we have a corrupt legal system, absolutely willing to bow to outside pressure and I think in this case largely from America.

It's not just this case, it's Shirley McKie, Luke Mitchell, what's going on at the moment with Alex Salmond, and other less prominent things like Craig Murray and Mark Hirst and the defamation case against Kezia Dugdale. It's depressing.

 

[Nessie]

I knew it. They've rejected the appeal.

When I started this over eleven years ago I believed that if the truth could be proved, if the case could be made clearly, the legal system would correct matters. I have learned since then that we have a corrupt legal system, absolutely willing to bow to outside pressure and I think in this case largely from America.

It's not just this case, it's Shirley McKie, Luke Mitchell, what's going on at the moment with Alex Salmond, and other less prominent things like Craig Murray and Mark Hirst and the defamation case against Kezia Dugdale. It's depressing.

I was also saddened to hear about the failure of the appeal. It is not quite over yet, but I have no faith in our CJ system to admit to error and accept responsibility.

I would add the Lord Advocate, James Wolffe QC and his admitted malicious prosecution of the former administrators of Rangers FC, David Whitehouse and Paul Clark to your list.

 

[Rolfe]

Oh yes, I'd forgotten that one. There are bound to be more.

The Luke Mitchell one stands out in that it doesn't seem to be political in any way. Even Shirley's case was political because it turned on the question of whether or not the pronouncements of fingerprint analysts could be taken as gospel truth. The correct answer to that was no, but that wasn't politically acceptable.

I suppose the Luke Mitchell one is political in a way because it became about protecting the original investigation from being exposed as utterly incompetent. Which is bad enough.

They're not getting it all their own way on the Salmond thing. The jury threw out the ludicrous and trumped-up case, and the sheriff also threw out the ridiculous case against Mark Hirst as "no case to answer". It's the fact that these cases were ever pursued and brought to court that's the scandal, that and the fact that the establishment and media are still treating Salmond as if he'd been found guilty and protecting his lying accusers as if they were victims.

Craig Murray expects to be convicted and jailed though, as they have to get some sort of scalp and he's the chosen on in that respect.

It was watching all this unfold over the past year or two that convinced me there wasn't a hope in hell of the Lockerbie appeal succeeding. I swear they could find long-lost CCTV footage from Heathrow Terminal 3 showing an intruder placing that suitase in the container while Bedford was on his tea break, and they'd still find some way to dismiss that as inadmissible.

 

[Ambrosia]

sad news

albeit somewhat unsurprising.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

I knew it. They've rejected the appeal.

When I started this over eleven years ago I believed that if the truth could be proved, if the case could be made clearly, the legal system would correct matters. I have learned since then that we have a corrupt legal system, absolutely willing to bow to outside pressure and I think in this case largely from America.

It's not just this case, it's Shirley McKie, Luke Mitchell, what's going on at the moment with Alex Salmond, and other less prominent things like Craig Murray and Mark Hirst and the defamation case against Kezia Dugdale. It's depressing.

It's disappointing, and hard for everyone who worked hard on the appeal, but the Lockerbie case is pretty much the poster child for a case which isn't going to be allowed to reveal flaws in the Scottish criminal justice system.

I know I've said it before but no-one is going to bring down the justice system over a dead sand ****** who used to work for a very unpleasant government, especially not when the chances of there being a similar case in future is essentially zero.

 

[Nessie]

... Even Shirley's case was political because it turned on the question of whether or not the pronouncements of fingerprint analysts could be taken as gospel truth. The correct answer to that was no, but that wasn't politically acceptable.

...

The recent Independent Review into police complaints handling and investigations shows how what happened with Shirley McKie was also political, as in a decision was made to get her, no matter what the evidence was.

That Review lays bare how often those police officers tasked with investigating complaints about other officers are often driven by their own impressions and the relative popularity or not of the cop being complained about and who is making the complaint.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/p...misconduct-issues-relation-policing/pages/18/

McKie was unpopular, I never met her, but I met a few who had worked with her over the years and no one liked her. So, when a cause to complain surfaced, everyone piled in and the investigation was one designed to get her. I worked with a cop who was not popular and when he did something that generated a complaint, such was the demand to drive him out of the job, an Assistant Chief Constable announced to a room full of probationers that he was being sacked. That was before his hearing!

Police Scotland have been caught out trying to cover up assaults and other crimes by police officers, by recording them as excessive force or quality of service complaints;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-46114502

Those will be the cops who are popular with supervisors, or who have done something serious that PSD want to cover up and reduce the number of cops who are just criminals.

Policing and the rest of the CJ system is not primarily driven by evidence. Politics play far too great a role, from drives to meet targets, to officers looking for promotion, to cover-ups, to sheer incompetence and laziness.

 

[Rolfe]

That seems to me to cover the Luke Mitchell case as well, and that's probably the worst one of the lot because there's an innocent man in Shotts (I think) prison right now who has been in jail since he was 16 and he's now 31. He never even got to finish his education after getting his O grades, and by all accounts he was a smart kid who loved outdoor pursuits and even had his own horse.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

A big disappointment

I am very disappointed as well, particularly given that so much hard work has been put into understanding this case and explaining it to those who are interested. I have to wonder whether or not there is a fundamental inability to admit error that is somehow baked into to the Scottish system (I regret that I cannot find the correct way to say this); if you cannot figure out that Luke Mitchell was wrongly convicted, you are unlikely ever to figure out that anyone was. At least the British* eventually released the Birmingham Six case in the end, although the case was risible from the start.
EDT
*I should have said English.

 

[Rolfe]

I am very disappointed as well, particularly given that so much hard work has been put into understanding this case and explaining it to those who are interested. I have to wonder whether or not there is a fundamental inability to admit error that is somehow baked into to the Scottish system (I regret that I cannot find the correct way to say this); if you cannot figure out that Luke Mitchell was wrongly convicted, you are unlikely ever to figure out that anyone was. At least the British English eventually released the Birmingham Six case in the end, although the case was risible from the start.

Yes, I fear very much that you are right. The Scottish system seems very short of notorious proven miscarriage of justice cases (as in, successful appeal and the appellant freed and vindicated) such as you find in England and most other jurisdictions. I don't think this is because they seldom or never get it wrong.

What is going on at the moment is particularly shocking, and I am speaking about the preposterous prosecution of a former First Minister for such heinous alleged crimes as pinging someone's ringlet, putting an arm round someone who was crying, and giving someone a nudge in the back to hurry her up an outside staircase in the rain when she was blocking the way.

They lost on that one thanks to the jury, but they're behaving as if they won the case and are hell-bent on getting at least one of Salmond's supporters jailed. Journalists who quite clearly identified one or more of the "alphabet women" but who are on the establisment side and writing critically about Salmond have been given a free pass, but others who said far less about the case have been prosecuted because they were writing on Salmond's side.

The responses to freedom of information requests trying to find out what the hell has been going on have been obfuscatory in the extreme. Something is rotten in the state and I think it's more than just not being able to admit error. It was this realisation that made me realise there was no prospect of a successful appeal.

In fact the Kezia Dugdale defamation findings, although relatively trivial and a civil matter, were perhaps the clearest illustration for me that if you're a person within the establishment then you will not lose, if you're a thorn in the side of the establishment you will, no matter how good your case. (Juries perhaps being the wild card, although that didn't help Luke Mitchell.)

It seems odd that a former First Minister is in the latter category, but then remember who this is, and that his opponent is the current First Minister who is clearly working for the establishment even though the establishment likes to monster her from time to time.

 

[Samson]

Yes, I fear very much that you are right. The Scottish system seems very short of notorious proven miscarriage of justice cases (as in, successful appeal and the appellant freed and vindicated) such as you find in England and most other jurisdictions. I don't think this is because they seldom or never get it wrong.

What is going on at the moment is particularly shocking, and I am speaking about the preposterous prosecution of a former First Minister for such heinous alleged crimes as pinging someone's ringlet, putting an arm round someone who was crying, and giving someone a nudge in the back to hurry her up an outside staircase in the rain when she was blocking the way.

They lost on that one thanks to the jury, but they're behaving as if they won the case and are hell-bent on getting at least one of Salmond's supporters jailed. Journalists who quite clearly identified one or more of the "alphabet women" but who are on the establisment side and writing critically about Salmond have been given a free pass, but others who said far less about the case have been prosecuted because they were writing on Salmond's side.

The responses to freedom of information requests trying to find out what the hell has been going on have been obfuscatory in the extreme. Something is rotten in the state and I think it's more than just not being able to admit error. It was this realisation that made me realise there was no prospect of a successful appeal.

In fact the Kezia Dugdale defamation findings, although relatively trivial and a civil matter, were perhaps the clearest illustration for me that if you're a person within the establishment then you will not lose, if you're a thorn in the side of the establishment you will, no matter how good your case. (Juries perhaps being the wild card, although that didn't help Luke Mitchell.)

It seems odd that a former First Minister is in the latter category, but then remember who this is, and that his opponent is the current First Minister who is clearly working for the establishment even though the establishment likes to monster her from time to time.

Your post is a really scenic route, much to discuss in the New Zealand context, and I can see how Lockerbie matters.
Historians require accuracy, many years we have to work on the goal.

 

[Elaedith]

Would like to know more about the reasons (rationalisations?) for this, but the link to the written judgement on scotcourts.gov.uk appears to be broken atm.

 

[Matthew Best]

Here it is:

https://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/docs/...d66181a8898069d2b500ff0000d74aa7.pdf?sfvrsn=0

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I knew it. They've rejected the appeal.

When I started this over eleven years ago I believed that if the truth could be proved, if the case could be made clearly, the legal system would correct matters.

What truth was proved, and where was the case made clearly?

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

You didn’t read Rolfe’s book, did you?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Heathrow

What truth was proved, and where was the case made clearly?

There is a good book on the case called Adequately Explained by Stupidity, that discusses the luggage handling aspect of the case and bears on the question of whether the bomb was introduced on the Frankfort flight or was introduced at Heathrow Airport. It has been some time since I have read it.

 

[Ambrosia]

What truth was proved, and where was the case made clearly?

That the bomb was loaded at Heathrow and was not interlined via a fight from Malta.

We can prove this from available evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

It's all laid out over several meandering threads from several years back in the CT section (this sub-forum exists in part because discussion about the Lockerbie miscarriage of justice doesn't really belong in the CT sub-forum) although it's mixed up with a lot of other Lockerbie stuff and is hard to follow.

It's laid out much more clearly in the book Adequately Explained By Stupidity which includes lots more detail that isn't in the threads here.

Notably the SCCRC did NOT include the new evidence re the Heathrow bomb introduction in this appeal. From the recent appeal judgement:

The restricted nature of the grounds of appealmeans that many facts, which were found by the trial court and were contested at the trial,
in the original appeal and/or in the abandoned appeal, are not now challenged. The court must accept these facts as proved.
[8] They include that:

[...]

(8) on the morning of 21 December, the suitcase left Luqa airport in Malta
as unaccompanied baggage on Air Malta flight KM 180 to Frankfurt;

(my highlighting)

So there is new evidence, that proves that point (8) of the "facts accepted as proved" by this appeal judge, is anything but.
The SCCRC in their infinite wisdom however chose not to pursue this avenue for this appeal.

Which leaves us with 2 possible scenarios.

i) The "Heathrow Evidence" is badly flawed and does not prove the bomb was loaded at Heathrow (read the book and decide for yourself)

ii) The SCCRC are not interested in overturning Megrahis conviction in the slightest.

 

[LondonJohn]

That the bomb was loaded at Heathrow and was not interlined via a fight from Malta.

We can prove this from available evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

It's all laid out over several meandering threads from several years back in the CT section (this sub-forum exists in part because discussion about the Lockerbie miscarriage of justice doesn't really belong in the CT sub-forum) although it's mixed up with a lot of other Lockerbie stuff and is hard to follow.

It's laid out much more clearly in the book Adequately Explained By Stupidity which includes lots more detail that isn't in the threads here.

Notably the SCCRC did NOT include the new evidence re the Heathrow bomb introduction in this appeal. From the recent appeal judgement:



(my highlighting)

So there is new evidence, that proves that point (8) of the "facts accepted as proved" by this appeal judge, is anything but.
The SCCRC in their infinite wisdom however chose not to pursue this avenue for this appeal.

Which leaves us with 2 possible scenarios.

i) The "Heathrow Evidence" is badly flawed and does not prove the bomb was loaded at Heathrow (read the book and decide for yourself)

ii) The SCCRC are not interested in overturning Megrahis conviction in the slightest.

Unfortunately though, the root of the problem here is this:

Courts of appeal (throughout the "westernised" world, at least) almost always take the view that if certain "new" evidence either could or should have been introduced (and argued) in the original trial, it cannot be introduced as part of any appeal.

So in this particular case, the argument pointing to the bomb case having been introduced at LHR - strong as it appears to be - is entirely predicated on evidence that was, in principle, available to al-Megrahi's defence team at the time of the original trial.

Had, say, a LHR baggage handler come forward after the original trial to swear in an affidavit that he definitely loaded that brown Samsonite, or had new CCTV come to light since the trial showing clearly the bomb case being loaded on at Heathrow, then the CoA in this case would almost certainly have allowed the matter of the bomb case ingestion to form part of the grounds of appeal.


There are sound reasons in jurisprudence why courts of appeal should work in this way. In short, it's to guard against the defence (or the prosecution) seeking to "re-try" the case. Unfortunately what this amounts to in practice here is this: if certain evidence was (or could have been) available to al-Megrahi's defence team in sufficient time before the original trial, and yet that evidence was not introduced by his defence team in that original trial, then that's the fault of al-Megrahi and his defence counsel (unless it could be shown that al-Megrahi's defence counsel in that original trial was sufficiently substandard as to constitute grounds for appeal in its own right...).

It sucks, all the more so when one wonders how the original trial might have gone if all of this suitcase-ingestion evidence had indeed been introduced and properly argued at that point. But that's the way it is.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

That the bomb was loaded at Heathrow and was not interlined via a fight from Malta.

We can prove this from available evidence beyond a reasonable doubt...

So there is new evidence, that proves that point (8) of the "facts accepted as proved" by this appeal judge, is anything but.

The SCCRC in their infinite wisdom however chose not to pursue this avenue for this appeal.

Which leaves us with 2 possible scenarios.

i) The "Heathrow Evidence" is badly flawed and does not prove the bomb was loaded at Heathrow...

ii) The SCCRC are not interested in overturning Megrahis conviction in the slightest.

Does this mean your allegation that the timer fragment was planted is irrelevant, or should we be pushing to expose it? Al-Megrahi is dead, there is nothing we can do for him now. But if there really was 'a political decision taken at the highest levels of govt' to fake a case against him then we cannot let it stand. The ramifications go far beyond this case.

If what you say is true then people 'at the highest levels of govt' must been complicit and are continuing to cover it up. But how can we prove that? More importantly, what can we do to stop this sort of thing from happening again?

 

[Rolfe]

People, including retired senior lawyers and police officers, have been doing their damndest to expose this for over ten years. I personally have worked extremely hard within the team they pulled together, towards this aim. Unfortunately the power of the state is not to be trifled with.

 

[Planigale]

There are people posting here who are extremely conversant with the facts which I am not. So I apologise if what I ask seems stupid.

If there was a cover up it must have been from Downing Street, Thatcher. Given that the Scottish judicial system was independent of England, and the current Scottish government and hierarchy are likely to have little love for Thatcher surely there would be a political imperative within Scotland not to co-operate with a cover-up?

Even more so given the rabid anti-Iranian sentiments of the recent US executive, why are the US not enthusiastically seeking to blame Iran? Even Israel, which normally has excellent intelligence and is equally opposed to Iran does not seem to be pointing the finger.

There seems to be no case made for why the US and UK sought to exonerate Iran. What was of such value that the UK, US and israel have covered up Iran's involvement in a major terrorist act. A cover up that if it was leaked would have been devastating to the governments. That this was sufficiently important that they obtained covertly a timer that could be associated with Libya, managed to blow it up not quite enough to make it unidentifiable but nearly so, then plant it, relying on it being discovered and then identified. The whole thing would have needed many peoples involvement and the chances of a leak would be high. It was also very dependant on no evidence being recoverable that clearly pointed in another direction. I suspect there would have been easier ways to point the finger at Libya than the very convoluted method of the timer fragment.

Iran may have been the instigator, perhaps utilising Libyan resources, or doing it in such a way that Libya would be blamed.

I can believe in gross incompetence and stupidity far more easily than the complex multi-national conspiracy proposed.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Consider the Birmingham Six

I can believe in gross incompetence and stupidity far more easily than the complex multi-national conspiracy proposed.

With respect to the Birmingham Six case, Chris Mullin wrote, "A long procession of police officers ranging in rank from detective constable to chief superintendent gave evidence that no one had laid a finger on the suspects. In his summing up the judge outlined, in tones of incredulity, the scale of the conspiracy the police would have to have engaged in if the defendants were telling the truth. We now know that a conspiracy on this scale is essentially what did occur."

Yes, the two cases are very different, and no, I am not one that is extremely well steeped in the Lockerbie case. But let me suggest as a starting point, that there is a difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. It took the better part of twenty years for the Birmingham Six to be released, when it should have been obvious from the start that the case was rubbish.

 

[Planigale]

With respect to the Birmingham Six case, Chris Mullin wrote, "A long procession of police officers ranging in rank from detective constable to chief superintendent gave evidence that no one had laid a finger on the suspects. In his summing up the judge outlined, in tones of incredulity, the scale of the conspiracy the police would have to have engaged in if the defendants were telling the truth. We now know that a conspiracy on this scale is essentially what did occur."

Yes, the two cases are very different, and no, I am not one that is extremely well steeped in the Lockerbie case. But let me suggest as a starting point, that there is a difference between a conspiracy and a conspiracy theory. It took the better part of twenty years for the Birmingham Six to be released, when it should have been obvious from the start that the case was rubbish.

I think there is a difference between police covering up for what was criminal but was not that uncommon at the time, within themselves. Something that was probably unplanned and once people turned a blind eye initially they were committed to continue doing so. As compared with a complex pre-planned multi-national conspiracy involving many people from many different agencies. just obtaining the timer, and carefully blowing it up is a tremendous process in itself.

The motive in the former case is easy to see, the police under pressure to get a conviction, the emotion being even greater than the emotion against the 'terrorists' who invaded the capitol where some people were arguing that they should have been shot down in the streets, even though they did not plant bombs killing many people.

In the latter case I have heard no explanation for the motivation for covering up Iran's involvement.

Another example might be the Hillsborough disaster. after the fact there was a conspiracy of silence in the police. But the allegations that Margaret Thatcher ordered the cover up to punish the people of Liverpool although widely circulated and supported turned out to be untrue.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

trotting around the track one more time

I am not sure why you are focused on Iran. Rolfe, for example, has said that she does not know who is responsible and has been very clear not to point a finger and say definitively that this or that country is responsible.

If the bomb did not come from Frankfort but instead was put on at Heathrow (and I am convinced on this point), then the case that was put forth is very wrong. I also find the identification of Mr. Megrahi to be weak. I skimmed the appeal document, and I saw that they are trotting out the same arguments that I have heard before, that the lack of certainty on the part of the witness makes his identification more believable. As we say in North Carolina, what tommyrot.
EDT
If there were a conspiracy in this situation, it might have come about from a chance alignment of interests of the parties. I don't have a good example at the moment.

 

[Planigale]

I am not sure why you are focused on Iran. Rolfe, for example, has said that she does not know who is responsible and has been very clear not to point a finger and say definitively that this or that country is responsible.

If the bomb did not come from Frankfort but instead was put on at Heathrow (and I am convinced on this point), then the case that was put forth is very wrong. I also find the identification of Mr. Megrahi to be weak. I skimmed the appeal document, and I saw that they are trotting out the same arguments that I have heard before, that the lack of certainty on the part of the witness makes his identification more believable. As we say in North Carolina, what tommyrot.
EDT
If there were a conspiracy in this situation, it might have come about from a chance alignment of interests of the parties. I don't have a good example at the moment.

Poor communication on my part. I was responding to comments by Ambrosia

Why do I believe PT/35b was planted?

Rolfe (less definitively)

Ken Dornstein (whom I have met, and who is so keen on his own theory as to be impervious to any other evidence) seems to have been fed the "evidence" relating to Masoud and facilitated in his investigative trip into Libya to "uncover" and "reveal" this, as a documentary-maker and relative of a victim.

I have learned since then that we have a corrupt legal system, absolutely willing to bow to outside pressure and I think in this case largely from America.

Little Swan

I believe PT/35b was planted by Rick Hahn at Dextar and AG/145 by Thomas Thurman at Longtown mid January 1989.

As roger Ramjets says

If what you say is true then people 'at the highest levels of govt' must been complicit and are continuing to cover it up. But how can we prove that? More importantly, what can we do to stop this sort of thing from happening again?

The sole object of the conspiracy suggested in the above comments seems to be to shift guilt from Iran to Libya.

As said I have no problems with the concept of a miscarriage of justice, and that Megrahi was innocent. i recognise that judicial authorities are reluctant to accept that the system can make errors. There seems to be good evidence of incompetence from has been said by the forensic scientist examining the bomb.

What I have trouble with is the idea that there was an international conspiracy to cause this rather than the usual human frailty.

I suspect I have responded to something that is not core to the issue here and had best leave it alone.

 

[Rolfe]

These are reasonable points but I don't have the answers. I'm inclined to observe that that way madness lies.

I think there was a chance alignment of interests by the parties, and a lethal combination of investigator incompetence and political signals coming from above as to what lines of investigation were acceptable and which weren't. That's back at the beginning. Then once the various parties have become entrenched in their errors and resistant to backtracking, the retrospective confirmation bias and backside-covering just goes on and on.

I do not know whether evidence was planted, or whether misdirection was intentional at the start. Close one eye and you get a yes, close the other and you get a no. There are a number of pretty compelling points that suggest evidence fabrication but I can't construct a plausible narrative of how and when and why that might have been done. Every time I try the train of thought runs into the sand.

All I know is that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow, and although a fragment that appeared to have come from a countdown timer was found in the wreckage everything about this disaster points to an altimeter timer being what actually detonated the bomb.

I think tray 8848 is a bigger mystery than the PCB fragment and if we knew how that came to be there we could probably see where the solution to the mystery lies.

So no, I don't have the answers, I just know that the ones the Crown Office are so dead set on are wrong, and now that they have seen the evidence relating to Heathrow and chosen to reject it and bury it and hang their hats on an extremely dodgy confession that has all the hallmarks of coercion (and they have refused to state that they are satisfied it wasn't obtained by torture), they are utterly corrupt.

 

[Ambrosia]

If there was a cover up it must have been from Downing Street, Thatcher. Given that the Scottish judicial system was independent of England, and the current Scottish government and hierarchy are likely to have little love for Thatcher surely there would be a political imperative within Scotland not to co-operate with a cover-up?

Even more so given the rabid anti-Iranian sentiments of the recent US executive, why are the US not enthusiastically seeking to blame Iran?

I suspect that if one was able to answer those questions then you'd crack the case.

I'd guess that the orders came from the US, that Thatcher was infatuated with maintaining the "special relationship" at all costs and the whole thing was justified along the lines of maintaining "national security" or somesuch.

I don't know. To this day I don't understand how the investigation took a sudden turn away from Iranians and the PFLP-GC who were at the start of the investigation the prime suspects towards Libya.
Normally you'd expect there to be some piece of very damming evidence implicating Libya or exonerating Iran, but there isn't any such piece of evidence. Certainly none that 30+ years later is now in the public domain.

There seems to be no case made for why the US and UK sought to exonerate Iran.

At the time of the Vincennes disaster Iran was screaming for bloody revenge over the killing of it's citizens and vowed to down *many* aircraft in response. If Lockerbie was an Iranian plot, then they attacked one aircraft in revenge, if it was not Iranian then there was no revenge at all.

What was of such value that the UK, US and israel have covered up Iran's involvement in a major terrorist act.

What do Israel have to do with anything?

That this was sufficiently important that they obtained covertly a timer that could be associated with Libya, managed to blow it up not quite enough to make it unidentifiable but nearly so, then plant it, relying on it being discovered and then identified.

According to my theory on PT/35b they already had the timer in their possession and already knew that it's identification would point to Libya and Libya only. They didn't have to blow it up they just had to break a piece of circuit off and place it in an evidence bag, and they identified it themselves after the Scots police drew a blank on it for over a year.

I agree with you that some kind of plot that was hatched from the highest levels of govt across two countries makes little sense. If that is what happened then how it hasn't leaked by now is another baffling thing in a long list of baffling things about the whole case, but, the actual physical evidence part, that's trivially easy to organise.

I suspect there would have been easier ways to point the finger at Libya than the very convoluted method of the timer fragment.

I can believe in gross incompetence and stupidity far more easily than the complex multi-national conspiracy proposed.

metoo.

I am not saying PT/35b was planted, I am saying that after researching the thing for months I think that it's the most likely explanation for it's existence.

Yes, even though that would mean a co-ordinated effort to blame Libya rather than Iran stretched across two countries governments for motives I can't explain. I know that makes me sound like a wingnut conspiracy loon, but hey.

It's possible I am very wrong. I'd quite like it if I was very wrong.

Though ultimately this is all academic as the truth of what actually happened won't come out until long after we're all dead, if at all.

 

[Rolfe]

I think that the persitent leaks that there was an agreement between the US and Iran that the US would tolerate a single aircraft being hit in revenge for IR655, so long as it was limited to one, should not be entirely dismissed. "Holy moral dilemma, Batman," as a friend said when I explained that one to her. Tam Dalyell called it a Faustian pact.

That could explain why the US wanted the investigation to turn away from Iran, and might even have been motivated to plant some evidence implicating the standard fall-guy for anything and everything, Libya.

If that were the case, the question arises as to how much the US authorities knew about the specifics in advance. Did they know which plane it was going to be, and if they did, how far in advance? Is there anything to be read into Buck Revell's son having his leave dates changed so that he had to change to an earlier flight? (If the son of the head of the FBI had been a victim, that might have been a bit awkward.) Is it possible certain people (Bernt Carlsson, Charles McKee and his party) could have been deliberately manipulated on to the flight to get them out of the way? If so, who by?

I can see how tray 8849 might have been engineered to point to Malta, but the question is who did that, and how does that feed into the entire set of computer baggage records being wiped without a backup being taken, and the subsequent surfacing of that extraordinarily convenient printout?

The potential planting of PT/35b is more complicated than it seems at first sight, as that scrap of shirt collar did fall out of the sky. Were the bits of radio in it also planted? If all this was done it was planned before the plane went down. It has often been said that the plane should have gone down in the Irish Sea if it hadn't been routed further north that evening to avoid bad weather. How would that lot have been planted if the plane had gone down in the sea? Drop them on Blackpool beach?

But on the other hand I have no concrete proof that the Daventry departure route wasn't standard for PA103, and if it was one could reasonably predict the plane would come down somewhere in northern England or southern Scotland, on land.

That's as far as I go. I don't know who made PT/35b, or where or when or for what purpose. That would also be worth knowing.

 

[Ambrosia]

One thing I neglected to post earlier re: PT/35b was about the "number of people that need to be in on it"

*If* (and it remains a huge if) the circuit board fragment PT/35b was indeed planted into evidence who would have had to know about it, and how many people would need to remain quiet after the fact??

I make it less than ten people.

• US intel chief(s) - perhaps Reagan, perhaps he was kept out of the loop, but a decision is made at the highest levels of US intelligence to direct the investigation away from Iran for whatever reason
• operative(s) who prepared said fragment.
• operative(s) who planted it into an evidence bag.
  

that's it.

None of the Scottish investigators need to know anything about it. Even Thurman who IDed the thing eventually could have been in the dark about it's provenance.

It just takes a handful of US intelligence people and access to the storage area where unexamined evidence is.

There's no evidence to support that it was in fact planted, but it doesn't fall foul of the snowballing numbers of people that would have had to know about it and be complicit in covering it up later either.


There are a very great many weird and wonderful quirks about Lockerbie, and almost none of them make any kind of sense.

Much has been claimed, some of it utterly bogus, and the official investigation is a *********** of ineptitude.

 

[boooeee]

Apologies for resurrecting this zombie thread.

But the Syed/Serial thread got me wondering if this case ever got the "prestige podcast" treatment.

I tend to be pretty skeptical on wrongful conviction cases, but this is one I find most compelling, even though I'm still not 100% convinced of Megrahi's innocence, or that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow.

And furthermore, I have only seen this case discussed in this way in this forum. I'm surprised it is not a more popular "wrongful conviction" case.

There are so many strange things about this case that would make for an interesting listen:

- It's one of the most high profile crimes of the last 50 years
- The rather convoluted way in which Megrahi is connected to the crime
- The lock to the luggage shed at Heathrow being "cut like butter" which might as well have a big neon sign pointing at it, flashing "CLUE CLUE CLUE"
- The strangeness of Mebo electronics and the likelihood that if Megrahi is innocent, the circuit board would have had to have been planted after the fact
- The airport employee that just happened to keep a printout of the luggage transfer that ended up connecting Malta to the bags on the Lockerbie flight
- The slippery testimony of the Malta shopkeeper and who actually purchased those clothes
- Megrahi carrying on an affair in Malta

And so on and so on.

 

[Rolfe]

That's a pretty good roundup of the most juicy points. Some of it I think is just coincidence. Libyan men who travelled a lot often had a bit on the side in Malta.

I do not know where that circuit board fits in. It's a huge anomaly no matter what narrative you try to construct. I have broken my brain on it frequently, and come to the conclusion that we may not be able to figure it out without getting more information that is not at present available.

To me the printout is the central piece of evidence in the case, not the circuit board. Without that, no case could have been made for the bomb originating in Malta. I have a possible scenario to explain this, but it's complicated and a conspiracy theory (but conspiracies do happen), and reading it over in cold blood I tend to think, don't be fanciful. Except there is no non-fanciful way to explain this unless you postulate a string of coincidences that make The Wreck of the Titan look like a mere passing resemblance.

I'd be interested to know in what way I have failed to convince you that it's not certain that the bomb originated at Heathrow. So far as I can make out, the way Police Scotland got rid of my arguments was that their paymasters said, never mind all that, we have this guy who was tortured into saying he helped Megrahi put the bomb on at Malta, so Heathrow must be wrong.

By the way, I just sent the last big box of copies of my book that I was storing back to the publisher, as I had an email saying they were running out again. It's gone on selling slowly but steadily, and I think I only have about 65 copies left in my possession of an original print run of 1,000. When these go, I don't know whether to authorise a reprint or not. It will have been ten years by then.

 

[boooeee]

I guess it comes down to having to accept some coincidences, no matter what side you fall on. If Megrahi is innocent, then you have two options:

1. The Malta clothes, the timing of his day trip, and the circuit board fragment are disastrous bad luck for Megrahi if he's completely uninvolved and the bomb was introduced at Heathrow. Three independent data points all pointing his direction.

or

2. The only coincidences are the Malta clothes and the timing of his trip - which I could be prepared to accept as just bad luck. Surely, someone shifty was passing through Malta no matter what day you pick. But then you have to believe that the US (and possibly UK) government conspired to fabricate and plant evidence to point the figure at Megrahi, and away from the actual people responsible for the mass murder of their citizens.

It would be one of the biggest scandals/coverups of all time. Which is why I do think it would make for a good long-form podcast in the right hands.

I do have your book on my Amazon wish-list, looks like I should snag a copy while I can.

 

[LondonJohn]

Apologies for resurrecting this zombie thread.

But the Syed/Serial thread got me wondering if this case ever got the "prestige podcast" treatment.

I tend to be pretty skeptical on wrongful conviction cases, but this is one I find most compelling, even though I'm still not 100% convinced of Megrahi's innocence, or that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow.

And furthermore, I have only seen this case discussed in this way in this forum. I'm surprised it is not a more popular "wrongful conviction" case.

There are so many strange things about this case that would make for an interesting listen:

- It's one of the most high profile crimes of the last 50 years
- The rather convoluted way in which Megrahi is connected to the crime
- The lock to the luggage shed at Heathrow being "cut like butter" which might as well have a big neon sign pointing at it, flashing "CLUE CLUE CLUE"
- The strangeness of Mebo electronics and the likelihood that if Megrahi is innocent, the circuit board would have had to have been planted after the fact
- The airport employee that just happened to keep a printout of the luggage transfer that ended up connecting Malta to the bags on the Lockerbie flight
- The slippery testimony of the Malta shopkeeper and who actually purchased those clothes
- Megrahi carrying on an affair in Malta

And so on and so on.

FWIW, my own thinking on this is that it's entirely possible for both the Libyans and PFLP-GC to have been involved in planning and executing the bombing. There's some (weakish) evidence that these sorts of coalitions were in existence at the time. And when there was a common enemy - the USA, and the decadent non-Muslim west in general - there's no reason to think that there wasn't some pooling of resources and expertise.

I think it's feasible that al-Megrahi (and maybe also Fhimah) went to Malta, an obvious geographic and geopolitical meeting point, to a coalition meeting at which PFLP-GC members (and perhaps other Islamist terrorist groups such as Hezbollah) were also present. And at that meeting, the plan was devised, and responsibilities were divvied out: notably that the Libyans would supply the timer and the luggage/clothing, PFLP-GC would supply the cassette recorder and build & place the bomb.

Now, the question of whether there was ever sufficient evidence to convict al-Megrahi is a different matter - and I don't believe that there ever was sufficient evidence (or at least, that insufficient evidence was made public and presented to the court: it's also feasible that the western intelligence services might have had more evidence that they were unwilling to divulge in open court...). And while it may certainly have suited western political interests to pursue Libya for the crime while overlooking Palestinian and Iranian involvement, that's not to say (IMO) that they discounted both groups being involved.


**prepares to be shot down in flames in 5....4....3....**

 

[Rolfe]

I guess it comes down to having to accept some coincidences, no matter what side you fall on. If Megrahi is innocent, then you have two options:

1. The Malta clothes, the timing of his day trip, and the circuit board fragment are disastrous bad luck for Megrahi if he's completely uninvolved and the bomb was introduced at Heathrow. Three independent data points all pointing his direction.

or

2. The only coincidences are the Malta clothes and the timing of his trip - which I could be prepared to accept as just bad luck. Surely, someone shifty was passing through Malta no matter what day you pick. But then you have to believe that the US (and possibly UK) government conspired to fabricate and plant evidence to point the figure at Megrahi, and away from the actual people responsible for the mass murder of their citizens.

It would be one of the biggest scandals/coverups of all time. Which is why I do think it would make for a good long-form podcast in the right hands.

I do have your book on my Amazon wish-list, looks like I should snag a copy while I can.

That's one of the difficulties. At what point do you say, look this is beyond coincidence. It's a very fine line to tread.

I am completely certain that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow. The evidence is overwhelming. The rectangular piece of fabric lining from the hinge end of Bernt Carlsson's suitcase is probably the most smoking gun there is. When I was first sent the picture of that, as part of a job lot from John Ashton, I just sat gaping at it for about ten minutes. I had already worked out what must have happened, but to see absolutely incontrovertible physical evidence proving it was a bit of a shock. (Needless to say, nobody in the investigaton even noticed this.)

Once you appreciate that, it forms an anchor point in the case round which more coherent theories can be built. What the hell was tray 8849? It wasn't the bomb. As coincidences go, it's like trying to swallow a camel in one gulp. It's a peculiar piece of evidence in several ways. The investigators should have had access to the full computer data file for the day which would have allowed a complete reconciliation of all the baggage going through the airport and the mystery could have been solved easily, but the computer was wiped with no backup available. If the printout hadn't surfaced there would have been nothing. Dead end, no connection to Malta. But then the printout surfaced, taken as a souvenir before the data wipe, with just enough information to point to Malta but not enough to be sure of anything.

It's Schrodinger's evidence. On one hand you have to use so much inference and speculation to interpret that tray as having come from Malta that it should be thrown out on that basis alone. It's guesswork. There were 25 items of interlined luggage recorded on the printout. Eight of them can be definitely reconciled to legitimate luggage. Another fifteen yield to the guessing game, but one has to acknowledge that there are varying degrees of guesswork there. If I were to present that analysis in a court of law, any decent barrister could rip at least half of these fifteen guesses to shreds. Then there were two where you end up with nothing. Nada. Zilch. One was 8849, apparently from Malta, and the other was 5620, apparently from Warsaw. There was no legitimate luggage from Warsaw on that plane either, but the police never followed up the Warsaw link at all. They just headed to Malta.

On the other hand I can dream up a scenario for the 5620 that is reasonable in the context of how the airport baggage transfers worked. There's no evidence at all for this scenario, but it's plausible. I cannot dream up a similar, plausible scenario to explain 8849. My analysis of the baggage transfers is far more detailed than anything done by the investigators, and 8849 is the one I'm left with. It's the biggest anomaly in the middle of a pile of muddle and guesswork, and the only one not susceptible to a theoretical explanation.

But it wasn't the bomb. The bomb went on at Heathrow. So what on earth was 8849?

The Malta clothes are also a huge coincidence. If you want clothes to pack round a bomb, the last thing you should be doing is purchasing brand new, easily traceable clothes from a small shop where you are the only customer and you have a half-hour conversation with the shopkeeper while you do it. Use old clothes from the back of your wardrobe. Go to a second-hand shop. Rob a washing line. Go to a big department store on a busy day, don't talk to the cashier and pay cash. For God's sake! And if you have been stupid enough to do the small shop thing, then the last thing you want to do is also be the person that smuggles the bomb on the plane.

And that's before we even start on the circuit board fragment, PT/35b. Because that one really breaks my brain. Or the tales that suggest Megrahi and Bollier and possibly Masoud were manipulated in order to have them passing through Luqa airport on the morning of 21st December. Bollier is such a prolific liar that it's possible the whole thing is a series of taradiddles, but still...

The problem is there isn't a middle way. It's all either the most preposterous heap of coincidences that ever came together, or there was a really detailed conspiracy going on to point the investigators to Malta. The bomb didn't go on at Malta. We know that. The Malta baggage records prove it didn't, and we can see the bloody thing sitting there in the transatlantic baggage container an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed. But the Malta evidence is really, really peculiar.

I can't swallow the coincidences, but I can't devise a plausible conspiracy that accounts for the evidence either. In order to explain everything, the proposed conspiracy gets as improbable as the coincidence theory. Something really weird going on.

I think you'll be OK to get a copy of the book for a while yet. I just sent about 50 copies to the publisher for onward distribution, and I have about another 50 or 60 in the house they can have when these are gone.

ETA: I have lost count of the number of documentary-makers who have contacted me about making a documentary about this. Most of them never come to anything. I did co-operate with one for Aljazeera, but the focus of the script was changed during production and my segment was a hurried few minutes at the end that didn't link in to the rest of it. (Which was mostly, we thought we had Khreesat lined up to confess but he got cold feet.)

I would love someone to make a good job of it, but I've pretty much given up hope. I still have a couple of emails in my files from people I've agreed to co-operate with, but I haven't heard from them for ages. I had some hopes of Jan Stocklassa, I met him in 2021 and he seemed very good, but I've not heard from him since.