Fresh appeal applied for in the Lockerbie case

LondonJohn said:
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....**
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No, I'm not going to shoot you down. It's really hard to take aim at smoke and mirrors.

It's a cool story, bro, but there isn't a shred of evidence for any of it. And there wasn't any evidence the previous half a dozen times you made the suggestion either. End of.

I mean, it's a complete fantasy you made up out of whole cloth, on the basis of a depth of knowledge about the case it would be kind to call superficial. Why do you do it?
 
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Matthew Best said:
"A Libyan man accused of making the bomb which destroyed Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie 34 years ago is in United States custody, Scottish authorities have said.

The US announced charges against Abu Agila Masud two years ago, alleging that he played a key role in the bombing on 21 December, 1988."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-63933837
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It's a cool story bro, but (according to Rolfe) the Libyans had absolutely nothing to do with it.

:rolleyes:
 
Rolfe said:
No, I'm not going to shoot you down. It's really hard to take aim at smoke and mirrors.

It's a cool story, bro, but there isn't a shred of evidence for any of it. And there wasn't any evidence the previous half a dozen times you made the suggestion either. End of.

I mean, it's a complete fantasy you made up out of whole cloth, on the basis of a depth of knowledge about the case it would be kind to call superficial. Why do you do it?
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Because, "bro"(???):

1) there is credible evidence (the timer circuit board) that there was some level of Libyan involvement;

2) You are mistakenly concluding that if a group such as PFLP-GC was involved, this necessarily means that Libya was not involved - yet there's already a certain (albeit inconclusive) amount of evidence that various factions did indeed combine forces and work together during the 1970s-1990s;

3) Your condescending response to my post tells me all I need to know about your need to "gatekeep" this case;

4) Today's news is interesting.

Bro.
 
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Masoud gave some sort of confession while in custody in post-Gaddafi Libya. The Foreign Office refused to confirm that they were satisfied the confession was not extorted by means of torture. I would have thought John might have had something to say about spurious confessions extorted by mistreatment of the suspect. But the Scottish police are clinging to this to enable them to dismiss the case for the Heathrow ingestion.

I don't push the PFLP-GC solution because I don't know that that's what happened. I merely observe that taking all the circumstances together it seems the likely answer. However, the only thing I am certain about is that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow, not Malta. Find some evidence that Masoud did that, and you're fine by me.
 
Matthew Best said:
Yes, I agree - condescending responses are annoying, aren't they?
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Yes, bro. Yes they are. Especially when your posts are made on the basis of a depth of knowledge about the case it would be kind to call superficial.

Cool observation though, bro.
 
Rolfe said:
Masoud gave some sort of confession while in custody in post-Gaddafi Libya. The Foreign Office refused to confirm that they were satisfied the confession was not extorted by means of torture. I would have thought John might have had something to say about spurious confessions extorted by mistreatment of the suspect. But the Scottish police are clinging to this to enable them to dismiss the case for the Heathrow ingestion.

I don't push the PFLP-GC solution because I don't know that that's what happened. I merely observe that taking all the circumstances together it seems the likely answer. However, the only thing I am certain about is that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow, not Malta. Find some evidence that Masoud did that, and you're fine by me.
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I believe there's a credible level of evidence that Libya was involved in the plot to some extent.

I don't however believe that there is/was anywhere near enough evidence to find any Libyan guilty BARD of participation/involvement.

I believe Libya probably was involved to some extent.

I believe there's also some credible evidence that PFLP-GC was involved to some extent (most notably the strong similarity in bomb design and MO)

I don't however believe that there is/was anywhere near enough evidence to find any PFLP-GC member guilty BARD of participation/involvement.

I believe PFLP-GC probably was involved to some extent.

I believe there's other circumstantial evidence that the likes of PFLP-GC and Libya (and other anti-US terrorist groups/sponsors such as Iran and Hezbollah) collaborated to some extent at around that time.

I believe it's eminently possible that the Lockerbie plot was a form of collaborative effort involving (at least) Libya and PFLP-GC, and that much of the plotting took place in Malta (which would be a logical meeting ground in terms of location and ease of transit).

Is there anything approaching proof of the above? No.

Is there anything credibly supporting the above? Yes.

Is the known (reliable, credible) evidence consistent with the above? Yes.

Is the above theory a reasonable hypothesis about what might actually have happened in this case? In my opinion, yes (YMMV, of course).

Would it stand up in a court of law? Right now, absolutely not.

Would the US authorities really be interested in arresting/detaining and potentially deporting a Libyan citizen for charging and trial, so many years after the event, if they (and/or the Scottish police, and/or the relevant prosecutorial authority) didn't a) have probable cause, in the form of decent evidence suggesting guilt, and b) believe therefore that they had evidence of Libya's involvement in the bombing? In my opinion, no (again, YMMV).
 
Quite the credo there. I've heard of bricks without straw, but that's a real achievement. I mean, some of it is on the level of "I believe the moon is made of green cheese." This is like debating with smoke and mirrors.

There is no credible evidence of Libyan involvement once you realise that all the timers of that design that were supplied to Libya had (tin/lead) alloy tinning, while the tinning on the fragment found at Blinkbonny Farm was pure tin. I don't know what that fragment was or where it came from or who made it or how it got into the chain of evidence, but in the light of the metallurgy results it can't be said to implicate Libya at all. There's nothing else other than finger-pointing, and since Libya was the go-to scapegoat for all outrages at the time, as Gaddafi had very little power of come-back, the pointing of fingers doesn't amount to much.

There's no evidence of anyone plotting anything on Malta. That was what the police thought had happened, but intensive and intrusive investigation (including some illicit telephone-tapping, which got them temporarily thrown off the island) turned up a big fat nothing.

The only known credible evidence tends to point to the PFLP-GC, and beyond them to Iran rather than Libya.

The difficulty the police had was that they were looking in the wrong place. They were convinced the bomb had been smuggled on to the plane at Malta, despite there being about as much evidence for that as for Luke Mitchell having murdered Jodi Jones, which is to say none at all. They were not looking at a Heathrow ingestion. If you have the right suspect but you're trying to prove a modus operandi that didn't actually happen, you're in a lot of trouble. That's what happened there. They ran into the sand looking for evidence of the PFLP-GC on Malta and washed out. Rather than start again at square one and investigate the now-cold trail at Heathrow, they went with the theory the US authorities had helpfully manufactured for them, and railroaded Megrahi.

They're still desperate that the Malta/Megrahi fairy tale should continue to stand up, hence Masoud.

Of course there isn't enough to make a legal case against anyone in the PFLP-GC, that was their problem all along. That's why they switched tack in 1990 and decided Libya was the suspect instead. But there's certainly evidence pointing to the PFLP-CG, which there isn't to Libya.

It's true that the Middle East was a cesspit of interlocking terrorist activity at the time (and probably still is). There's no evidence that Libya wasn't involved - just no evidence that it was. Maybe more will emerge, who knows.

But until the investigators bite the bullet and acknowledge that the scene of the crime was Heathrow airport at about 4.30 pm, and the cause of this was the absolutely appalling state of security at that airport, then nobody is going to get much further. Any theory that has the bomb introduced on Malta is simply a fantasy, because it simply wasn't. Anything else is still up for grabs.
 
Whether the bomb suitcase was introduced in Malta or London is somewhat irrelevant wrt who might have planned and executed the atrocity. One thing is for certain: the clothing that was inside the bomb suitcase was bought from a particular shop in Malta. So Malta plays a role in this, irrespective of where the suitcase started its journey.

This means that somebody - one of the plotters, almost certainly - bought those clothes in Malta. And why would they have bought clothes in Malta, of all places? If this was a PFLP-GC/Iran gig, why would they have travelled to Malta to buy clothes for the suitcase? Why would they even have needed to be in Malta in the first place? It's not like Malta is an international airline hub.

There had to have been a reason to go to Malta, and it seems to me barely credible that one of the plotters would either a) have found himself/herself in Malta for some reason unconnected to terrorism, and then decided that Malta would be a great place to buy clothes to put into the bomb suitcase; or b) travelled to Malta with the sole objective of buying clothes to put into the bomb suitcase.

If this was purely the work of a PFLP-GC cell, based somewhere in Western Europe (poss Germany), then why wouldn't all the planning and execution have taken place in their base country? Why not buy clothes from (eg) a German store? Likewise, if Libya was the sole participant, why go to Malta to buy clothes?

I suspect that the reason why the clothes were bought in Malta is that the planners were in Malta to plan the bombing. And to me, the only logical reason why the planners would find themselves in Malta would be if there were two or more disparate groups involved in the planning, and they were meeting on "neutral territory" at a rough mid-point for everyone.

It'll be interesting to see, at Mas'ud's arraignment hearing (provided it's not held in camera for any reason), some indication of the level and reliability of evidence against him. As I said, I find it hard to believe that the US Dept of Justice would have gone to these lengths merely (or even primarily) to "save face" over the clearly botched previous trial of the two Libyans - my view is that they feel they have sufficient evidence, of sufficient credibility and reliability, to gain a conviction in a fair trial. We'll see soon enough.
 
Well, if you think the route of ingestion of the bomb is irrelevant, then there's not much to say, because I think it's the most important thing there is. You can't possibly solve a crime like this until you know how and where and when it was done.

Come on, you might as well say it's irrelevant whether Meredith Kercher died just after nine or around 11.30 once the broken-down car had been removed.

I am told by lawyers who have seen the so-called evidence against Masoud that it's a pile of contradictory nonsense. The Scottish lawyers are of the opinion that even the COPFS took one look at it and decided not to touch it with a barge pole. The US DoJ seems to have different mileage on this.
 
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I should say that I do believe there is reason to suspect something a lot deeper and darker than what has emerged so far about Lockerbie. There is a reason the title of my book has a question mark in it.

The difficulty I have, as I told Jan Stocklassa last year when we met to discuss the book he is currently writing about Lockerbie, is that I'm seeing two possible scenarios and yet when I try to formulate either of them I get to an impasse that says "that's impossible". (By the way, it was pointed out to me the other day that Jan Stocklassa posted a very kind recommendation for my book on the authors' recommendations website Shepherd.com.)

One scenario is the obvious one. Terrorist group decides to target PA103, manages to get a suitcase containing a time-delay bomb into a luggage container on the plane, and beats a hasty retreat. I prefer this one, obviously, but there are difficulties. John pointed out one of them, the clothes. Not that they were bought on Malta, that's not important, but that they were brand new and easily traceable to the shop through the manufacturers' labels. (And the circumstances of the purchase were singular enough that the shopkeeper remembered the sale eleven months later.) Considering the amount of untraceable clothes in the world, in second-hand shops, in people's cupboards and wardrobes and even in big, anonymous department stores, that is an exceedingly odd thing to do.

Another, obviously, is the timer fragment. I have broken my brain on this one several times, and so has John Ashton who has actually interviewed the technician who made the damn things (who is a liar, by the way) and shared what he got with me. There is no scenario that makes a blind bit of sense. Who made it, when, for what purpose, why was it incorporated into the device (if it was), how did it get into the shirt collar, none of it. It's a bottomless rabbit-hole of anomaly. We concluded that there is something fundamental that we don't know that we need to know before we can answer any of that.

The biggest anomaly for me though is tray 8849 on the Frankfurt printout. That was not the bomb, I am 100% confident of that. At one level the entire printout analysis is hopelessly flawed. It's so unreliable that absolutely nobody should have been convicted on the basis of the reasoning that said the bomb was in that tray. (The way the judges finessed this is jaw-dropping.) On the other hand every single other one of the 25 transfer trays can be given at least a provisional, rational, evidence-based identification - from the ones we're absolutely sure about down to the one that seemed to have come from Warsaw but which was probably a misrouted piece of luggage being re-booked from the Fehlerbahn. All except 8849. I've got nothing. That tray should not be there, unless someone was playing silly buggers somewhere. And the full computer dataset for the day, which should and would have allowed all this to be put to bed without any uncertainty, was inexplicably wiped from the system without a backup being taken.

These are the main issues that provide real stumbling blocks to the simple scenario that I still really really hope is the right one.

The other scenario is the conspiracy theory. In that scenario these anomalies are plants or deliberate misdirection to lead the investigation astray. There are huge problems with this too, not least that this sort of misdirection is not something run-of-the-mill terrorists go in for. I can plausibly see how the clothes purchase might have been accomplished (that one is quite easy) and also how tray 8849 might have been fabricated. But even there, the scenario is getting implausible and over-complicated. Once you get on to the timer fragment it becomes another giant black hole of inexplicability.

If this was fiction I'd just throw up my hands and declare that the author screwed up. But it's not. It really happened. There is a non-supernatural explanation for these things, I just don't know what it is.

And note, all this is pretty much independent of who actually carried out the bombing.

All I know for sure is that the bomb entered the airline baggage system at Heathrow airport, in the interline shed, about 4.30 in the afternoon. That part of the evidence resolves beautifully with almost no loose ends and an extremely high confidence rate. It's the solved part of the jigsaw we should be able to use to get the rest sorted out. Except I can't. And John Ashton can't. And if Jan Stocklassa can, I'll buy him more than a coffee next time.

But this is what I'm interested in discussing.
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And for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not "pushing a conspiracy theory" here. I was very careful in my book not to do that, to present the whole thing as a catalogue of investigator incompetence, and to avoid making claims that go beyond the evidence (such as, "it was the PFLP-GC what done it" and so on).

I'm looking at a jigsaw puzzle with one part solved, and a heap of pieces that are definitely part of the same puzzle but which simply won't fit together to make more of the picture no matter which way round I rotate them or which order I try to put them in. I've been trying, off and on, for over ten years. I have tried to make a picture where the terrorists were independent agents with no state involvement, and that doesn't work. I have tried to make a picture where US authorities were interfering with the evidence before the fact in order to mislead the subsequent investigation (for the motivation for this, see the things the late Tam Dalyell said about it all under parliamentary privilege), and that doesn't work either.

And I am sick to the back teeth of people who don't even know who Ulrich Lumpert is, or the difference between interline and online luggage, or the significance of the OS grid references of the locations of the four parts of the shirt collar, swanning in and declaring "well I think it happened this way".
 
No, not really. The actual evidence-gathering was for the most part exemplary. That's how it was possible to figure out the suitcase part. It was all there, catalogued and photographed, ready to be properly analysed. The incompetence was the analysis.

The problem is that there is meticulously gathered, catalogued and (chemically) analysed evidence that can't be made to fit together in any sensible picture of what probably happened.
 
Rolfe said:
No, not really. The actual evidence-gathering was for the most part exemplary. That's how it was possible to figure out the suitcase part. It was all there, catalogued and photographed, ready to be properly analysed. The incompetence was the analysis.

The problem is that there is meticulously gathered, catalogued and (chemically) analysed evidence that can't be made to fit together in any sensible picture of what probably happened.
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Why does that not therefore mean there have been mistakes? Is there missing evidence, that if found, would mean the rest would make more sense?
 
Damn, I had a post half-typed then suddenly the page refreshed. I don't have time to do it again. Maybe later.
 
Oh, this is interesting.

Masud "confession" states he was Malta clothes purchaser not Megrahi

The point being that the conviction of Megrahi flowed entirely from his being identified as the man who bought the clothes. So if Masoud bought the clothes, where does that leave Megrahi's conviction? They didn't both buy the clothes!

The article also makes the point that Masoud's confession was very likely obtained under torture. I don't imagine those who wanted to offer up Masoud as a sacrifice to the USA were really concerned with making sure the terms of the confession actually reinforced Megrahi's conviction rather than undermining it. You want Megrahi's accomplice? Here you are, confession and all. He bought the clothes!

God, no wonder the COPFS didn't want to touch it.
 
Rolfe said:
(Respectful snip)

One scenario is the obvious one. Terrorist group decides to target PA103, manages to get a suitcase containing a time-delay bomb into a luggage container on the plane, and beats a hasty retreat. I prefer this one, obviously, but there are difficulties. John pointed out one of them, the clothes. Not that they were bought on Malta, that's not important, but that they were brand new and easily traceable to the shop through the manufacturers' labels. (And the circumstances of the purchase were singular enough that the shopkeeper remembered the sale eleven months later.) Considering the amount of untraceable clothes in the world, in second-hand shops, in people's cupboards and wardrobes and even in big, anonymous department stores, that is an exceedingly odd thing to do.
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I think it's easily explained as a red herring. The group that built the bomb knew the suitcase and its contents would be investigated. If the bomb was built in Germany and the group used Heathrow to get it on board the airliner, planting a clue that pointed away from both those locations would throw a real spanner into the investigation. If that's the case, it appears the gambit worked very well.
 
Yes, that's the easy explanation for that one. It was one I was comfortable resting on for some time. It wouldn't be especially remarkable on its own. However, it feeds into the less easily explicable anomalies of the timer fragment and tray 8849 as part of a pattern of anomalies that make it look as if someone was making an inordinate effort in this particular case to deflect and mislead the investigation.

If all the anomalies could be laid at the door of the terrorists themselves it might not be so difficult to handle, although terrorists are not noteworthy for engaging in elaborate ruses to point a subsequent investigation in the wrong direction. But that theory, which I have tried really really hard to formulate, is difficult to sustain.

You covered the clothes, which is fine. Let's consider tray 8849.

There is only one way I can see tray 8849 happening, and that is if someone at Frankfurt airport were to have put an item of luggage in the luggage trolley moving the transfer bags from KM180 to the coding station. That item being tagged either for Heathrow or for the USA, via PA103. This would not have been hard to do, just be in the right place in the right clothes and if someone sees you just say, hey mate, this bag fell off your trolley. The hard part is knowing how the presence of such an item in the system would potentially derail an investigation.

This is actually a possible way the bomb could have been introduced, although it's not something the investigators really considered. But we can see the bomb sitting in the transatlantic container at Heathrow before the flight from Frankfurt arrived, so it wasn't the bomb. It would have been a risky way to introduce it anyway, because what if the trolley driver raised the alarm? Also, that item would have been x-rayed by Maier, who was trained to spot radio-cassette explosive devices. He might have spotted it.

So, an innocent item of luggage that would pass an x-ray exam or a hand search or a sniffer dog. Tagged to look as if it was part of the batch of items from KM180, and so belonged in that trolley from which it might have fallen off. If that's what happened, where did it end up?

It's quite possible it could have been on Maid of the Seas and not recovered - not everything was recovered. Nevertheless, tagging the item for the US inevitably carried the risk that it might be found on the ground, with the tag still attached, and negate the entire ruse by explaining the anomalous tray as this innocent piece of stray luggage. A far better plan would be to tag it for Heathrow, so that it was offloaded there. However, what then? There was a detailed investigation into Heathrow lost luggage that day, which turned up the cases belonging to Fiona Leckie and Thomas Trautmann (transfer passengers from PA637). No sign at all of a mysterious lost bag from KM180.

What you would have to do in order to prevent that bag showing up in Heathrow lost luggage is to arrange for it to be picked up at the carousel. The only way to do that reliably is to have an agent on board the feeder flight who then goes to the carousel and collects the bag. And what do we find? The man's name escapes my memory, but there was a passenger with a connection to the PFLP-GC who flew on the feeder flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow. He was interviewed and didn't have much of an explanation for his trip. He pretty much turned around and went back - the next day I think. He could easily have been placed on that flight to collect the bag his accomplice at Frankfurt airside had snuck into the KM180 transfer luggage trolley. All with the objective of creating a trail in the Frankfurt computer system that would look as if an unauthorised item of luggage had been transferred from KM180 to PA103.

So, it's possible. It would need a very detailed understanding of the backstage baggage transfer operations at Frankfurt, how the items of luggage were recorded in the computer system and so on, as well as the right place to be to intercept that trolley.

Does anyone think that a gang of terrorists, on their own initiative, would go to those lengths? Buy some traceable clothes within a few miles of the airport where KM180 took off, just maybe. Go through all that palaver to get an anomalous baggage tray to be recorded in the Frankfurt computer system? Really? My brain fries trying to persuade itself that that actually happened.

And we haven't gone near the timer fragment yet.
 
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allegations

"In 20-minute speech, Dbeibah named Masud as the bombmaker for the Lockerbie attack that killed 270 people and said that Libya “had to wipe the mark of terrorism from the Libyan people’s forehead”. He provided no hard evidence for any of his allegations and did not elaborate on his government’s role in Masud’s handover."

I am a fan of evidence.
 
I don't know who made that bomb, though it is striking that if it wasn't one of the PFLP-GC outfit who seemed to have re-formed their act in the autumn of 1988 for the purpose of using their old 1960s technology to have a go at some more airliners, it was someone imitating their style. Which itself is a bit odd because the previous PFLP-GC attacks were in the early 1970s, and who would have guessed in 1988 that they were all together again in Dusseldorf doing the same thing.

I do know it wasn't introduced at Malta, and until someone actually takes that on board they're not going to get anywhere with this.
 
Relevant article here, from a couple of days ago.

Libyan citizen kidnapped and flown to US to face Lockerbie charges

Whatever misdeeds Mas'ud may have on his conscience, the Lockerbie attack is not one of them. The DoJ charges seek to place Mas'ud in Malta at the same time as Megrahi. But this only proves Mas’ud had nothing to do with Lockerbie because the suitcase bomb in PA103's hold was placed there in London's Heathrow Airport long before the feeder flight from Frankfurt—which would have been carrying Mas'ud, Megrahi and Fhimah's alleged Malta casehad even landed. This is detailed in the book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies by Dr. Morag Kerr of the Justice for Megrahi campaign, a work which has never been refuted.
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Has anyone seen the new TV series on NBC called, Lockerbie: A Search for Truth?

FULL DISCLOSURE: I haven't been able to watch it yet, but I've always wondered about this case, and I'm glad this series was produced? I'm just curious to read what other folks think about it?


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AmyStrange said:
Has anyone seen the new TV series on NBC called, Lockerbie: A Search for Truth?

FULL DISCLOSURE: I haven't been able to watch it yet, but I've always wondered about this case, and I'm glad this series was produced? I'm just curious to read what other folks think about it?


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I watched the first two episodes, and it’s very well made and Firth, as usual, is great. I’m certain I will enjoy it as it holds up the UK’s position to question.
 
Just once I'd like to see a documentary point out that the bomb provably did not come from Malta.
 
One of the prosecution team just had a go at Justice for Megrahi in the Scottish Law Gazette. Nothing but personal attacks and exhortations to trust the SCCRC.

www.scottishlegal.com

Ronnie Clancy KC: The Lockerbie conviction – conspiracy theories

Ronnie Clancy KC defends the Lockerbie investigation against claims its famous conviction was a miscarriage of justice. Twenty-four years have elapsed since the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi for his part in the murderous conspiracy which caused the death of 270 innocent people on 21
www.scottishlegal.com www.scottishlegal.com

www.scottishlegal.com

Ronnie Clancy KC: The Lockerbie conviction – the current situation

In the second part of his analysis of the Lockerbie case, Ronnie Clancy KC, who was Crown counsel in the appeals, looks at the issues surrounding the timer used for the bomb and the famous suitcase. Read part one here. As matters stand in the aftermath of the latest Lockerbie appeal, the most promin
www.scottishlegal.com www.scottishlegal.com

I got the job of writing the "right of reply" article, so we'll see if they publish it.

The issue of the secret information the SCCRC claims to have (from Operation Sandwood, and I believe they got it from Kenny MacAskill) raises its head again. They claim this secret information, which has never been disclosed, allows them to dismiss the analysis presented in my book. I smell shenanigans, frankly.
 
Rolfe said:
One of the prosecution team just had a go at Justice for Megrahi in the Scottish Law Gazette. Nothing but personal attacks and exhortations to trust the SCCRC.

www.scottishlegal.com

Ronnie Clancy KC: The Lockerbie conviction – conspiracy theories

Ronnie Clancy KC defends the Lockerbie investigation against claims its famous conviction was a miscarriage of justice. Twenty-four years have elapsed since the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi for his part in the murderous conspiracy which caused the death of 270 innocent people on 21
www.scottishlegal.com www.scottishlegal.com

www.scottishlegal.com

Ronnie Clancy KC: The Lockerbie conviction – the current situation

In the second part of his analysis of the Lockerbie case, Ronnie Clancy KC, who was Crown counsel in the appeals, looks at the issues surrounding the timer used for the bomb and the famous suitcase. Read part one here. As matters stand in the aftermath of the latest Lockerbie appeal, the most promin
www.scottishlegal.com www.scottishlegal.com

I got the job of writing the "right of reply" article, so we'll see if they publish it.

The issue of the secret information the SCCRC claims to have (from Operation Sandwood, and I believe they got it from Kenny MacAskill) raises its head again. They claim this secret information, which has never been disclosed, allows them to dismiss the analysis presented in my book.
I smell shenanigans, frankly.
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I'm shocked, shocked! ;)
 
"The SCCRC is entirely independent of the courts, the prosecution authorities and the police. Its function is to act as a gatekeeper enabling cases to be sent back to the Appeal Court for reconsideration if the commission determines that there may have been a miscarriage of justice." The Nealon and Malkinson cases indicate how poorly the British CCRC functions; the Luke Mitchell case indicates how poorly the SCCRC function. My opinions only, of course.
 
Talking of similarities between the Lockerbie case and Luke Mitchell (it's a lot more than Alan Turnbull), this appeared a few days ago.

www.jmgale.com

Lockerbie and the Lord of the Flies

3 July 1988Taking off over the Persian Gulf, Iran air flight 655 was stuck by two surface to air missiles. These were fired from the USS Vincennes, a US Navy Battle cruiser that had strayed into Iranian waters. All 290 people onboard were killed, including 66 children. It was a tragic mistake...
www.jmgale.com www.jmgale.com
 
I hope Ronnie Clancy is spitting carpet tacks.

www.scottishlegal.com

Dr Morag Kerr: The Lockerbie conviction – a reply to Mr Clancy

Dr Morag Kerr, secretary-depute of Justice for Megrahi, replies to Ronnie Clancy KC's recent articles on Lockerbie and argues that despite the slur of 'conspiracy theorist' used by the UK and Scottish governments, the Crown Office, the SSCRC and the Americans, Mr Megrahi still suffered a miscarriage
www.scottishlegal.com www.scottishlegal.com
 
Good essay. This is a bit of a tangent, but do you happen to know how the metal composition of the coating was found? It might have been neutron activation analysis or X-ray fluorescence, the technique Henry Moseley pioneered to such remarkable ends, or something else. IIRC Professor Timothy Valentine was also quoted in a documentary on Luke Mitchell. One wishes that more people would listen to him.
 
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