Ironically, I started posting about Lockerbie on JREF because I thought someone had probably done a debunking job on the Lockerbie CTs in the same way as the 9/11 CTs. However, I could find no reference to the incident on a forum search - although the parallels with 9/11 are really quite striking, right down to "Bush was behind it". I realised after a bit more searching that this was because 9/11 truthers never raise the subject. Then I found that the only references to Lockerbie on truther web sites seemed to be people knowlingly asserting that Megrahi was really guilty, they could see through these mainstream CTs, so they could! Maybe current events will trigger a re-evaluation of this, and we'll see twoofers starting to assert that Lockerbie was a frame-up - could be interesting to watch.
Although it was never uncommon to see Megrahi referred to as "the Lockerbie bomber" in the Scottish press, this was usually followed by letters pointing out that the evidence against him sucked asteroids, and other articles by mainstream journalists going into the issue in more detail. Without quite knowing why, I was aware that "he didn't do it". The main point I recalled from the time of the trial (which was extraordinarily under-reported) was that the original indictment had been against two defendants, and the allegation was that they had acted as a team to introduce the bomb into the baggage system. However, the prosecution had been unable to provide a shred of evidence against one of the accused (Lamin Fhimah), so they had amended the indictment to accuse Abdelbaset Megrahi alone. Except, it was universally acknowledged that it would have been impossible for one person alone to have introduced the suitcase, and no other conspirator was ever identified. Other than that, it was just vague rumours about evidence tampering and mysterious disappearing suitcases.
When I started looking into it further, I wouldn't have been particularly surprised to find it was all as substantial as the Kennedy assassination or Moon Landing conspiracy theories. I vaguely imagined being able to debunk the "he didn't do it" assertions with the panache of Gravy debunking the 9/11 controlled demolition proponents. Alternatively, my favoured line of thought was that it was a classic "we got to get someone for this high-profile crime" fit-up, like the Barry George trial and a number of others. Usually, these miscarriages of justice aren't deliberate on the part of the law enforcement agencies - the usual form is for a suspect with some connection to the incident to be identified, and then every piece of evidence that can be dredged up is somehow shoe-horned into a theory about his guilt.
Well, that's not flying too well either.
The indictment against the two Libyans was issued in 1991. The trial didn't happen until 2000. For nine years we were all told that the CIA had a star witness who would spill the beans.
Vincent Cannistraro said:
Oh I think the evidence available to the Department of Justice in their case, which they're keeping under wraps, is overwhelming, it's conclusive. I think it is mind boggling in the amount of detail that they have. They have also…. they have a live witness for one thing, who would be presented in a court of law. I think there is a tremendous amount of evidence that will allow the prosecutors to present the chronology of the operation from its very inception, and that chronology would start even before Malta, go to Malta and then….. you know….. describe and in almost excruciating detail exactly how they made the bomb, how they secreted it, how they got it on board the aircraft, and I think that's a fairly strong case.
When the case came to court, this star witness was exposed as a lying fantasist who had invented the whole thing in order to retain his $1500 per month retainer as a CIA informant,
and it was quite clear the US Department of Justice had known this all along. When this was revealed, that evidence was tossed out.
What was left was beyond tenuous. Nothing at all against Fhimah, who was acquitted. A couple of pieces of evidence remained against Megrahi, and one of these was also quite obviously suspect. Another witness gave evidence which by any normal interpretation pointed to the person who bought the clothes in the bomb suitcase not being Megrahi. However, this evidence was tortured to breaking-point to make it appear to have been Megrahi, and the witness's statement that the man
resembled Megrahi was leaped on as "beyond reasonable doubt".
Tony Gauci said:
Not exactly the man I saw in the shop. Ten years ago I saw him, but the man who look a little bit like exactly is [Megrahi].
Does that look like a positive identification to anyone? And that's his best shot. Other attempts said that a different terrorist looked more like the purchaser, or that Megrahi was at least ten years too young. Not to mention that the day he described as making the sale was a day when Megrahi was somewhere else. The shocker isn't just that the judges bought this as a reliable identification, but that the prosecution even brought such evidence in the first place.
These absurdities were the main planks of the interrupted appeal (that, plus something that has always been kept secret), made even less credible by the subsequent revelation that Tony Gauci and his brother were paid $3 million for getting Megrahi convicted.
Once that identification falls, the case falls. There's no doubt about it at all. However, the case is even shakier than that. Digging a bit further reveals pretty undeniable evidence of a massive cover-up at Frankfurt airport in the hours or days following the bombing, which managed to disappear virtually all the day's baggage movement records. Out of this black hole emerged the only other piece of evidence which provided a circumstantial connection between Megrahi and the bombing. I still don't understand what that's all about, and frankly nobody can, because the context required to make sense of the evidence simply vanished. Nevertheless, this tenuous, circumstantial and entirely coincidental evidence was also accepted as "beyond reasonable doubt".
And it goes on. There's one particular piece of evidence that has been the subject of persistent allegations of having been fabricated. The amount of detail available online about the provenance of this thing is indeed excruciating. It's not possible to debunk the accusation of fabrication, and indeed there's a helluva lot of evidence suggesting that's exactly what happened. Not only that, similar scrutiny of a second piece of related evidence reveals quite serious doubts about that too.
This goes beyond the over-zealous cop going hell-for-leather against a superficially plausible suspect. It even goes beyond the deliberate fitting-up of the only person who can be found, in a case where it's politically imperative to get a conviction, any conviction. There's very good reason to suspect a genuine conspiracy here, where inconvenient and embarrassing and damaging revelations are being covered up, and lines of enquiry that might go in an undesirable direction are choked off.
I don't know how far down the rabbit hole it's reasonable to go. However, I've found that you can't just decide Megrahi didn't do it and it was all a mistake, maybe over-zealous policing, and stop there.
It's odd. This forum is full of people just waiting on tenterhooks for an unwary 9/11 truther to venture here and make a remark that can be debunked in boiler-plate fashion. These threads are pages long within hours, when they start. 9/11 debunkers even start threads spontaneously, debunking things that have been debunked to death five years ago. We have a gargantuan thread about the Meredith Kercher murder, that's growing faster than most people can read it.
Lockerbie. A US airliner, a bomb planted by Arab terrorists, passengers perish, people on the ground obliterated, undeniable CIA manipulation of evidence, suspicions of worse, accusations that President Bush insitgated a cover-up, further allegations that enter the realms of LIHOP and even MIHOP.
And there are three people on the forum talking to each other in a handful of threads, completely ignored by the rest of the membership. Until the 20th of each month comes round, and someone else starts an outraged thread that this murdering scum is still alive.
I don't honestly get it.
Rolfe.
I may presume the people in the State Department know about the solidity of the case - i.e., the civil servants. Though I note that American governments tend to replace quite a bit of higher-ups in the departments with a change of administration, so that knowledge may have got lost in the high echelons. However, knowledge within the State Dept. doesn't imply that politicians will act according, and senators aren't coached by the State Dept.