Dialog on Lockerbie theories

[Rolfe]

This case reminds me in some ways of the Barry George case (the murder of Jill Dando, for anyone who was on Mars at the time).

• Police thrash around for a while and a number of CTs are aired (especially the "it was a Serbian spy" one)
• Some time after the crime, a suspect is arrested on purely circumstantial evidence
• Suspect is convicted despite seriously threadbare nature of said evidence. It appears that it is necessary to get someone for thie high profile murder, and this weirdo wil do.
• Defence think they ony have to lodge and appeal and acquittal will be a formality.
• Conviction upheld on appeal.
• Defence do some actual work.
• Conviction overturned on second appeal. George really was just a weirdo who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Crime remains unsolved to this day.

I was interested in the case from the beginning, and could never see that there was sufficient evidence to convict George. My opinion was that, on the balance of probabilities, he didn't do it. I said so, quite often. I occasionally treated acquaintances to my opinion on the evidence, and why I thought it was insufficient to convict. In the end, of course, the court agreed with me.

But rewind to the time before the second appeal. Suppose I came on the forum wanting to discuss the Barry George case, putting forward the view that I didn't think he was guilty.

Fair enough, many people wouldn't be interested. But would they bother to come into the thread and explain at length why they weren't interested? Would the thread be dominated by posters insisting that as the courts had convicted him, that was good enough for them? Saying that while they knew nothing about the evidence, clearly I must be delusional if I disagreed with a court verdict?

I don't think so.

So what's so different about this case?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I was really serious when i wrote that...

I hate to say it, but similar theories are in fact proposed.

There is one school of thought which claims it was a very deliberate and agreed LIHOP on the part of the USA (not Britain) to allow Iran to take out one US airliner in revenge for the shooting down of Iran Air 655 less than six months previously. The logic of this is that Iran would normally have been obliged to attack a number of US aircraft to avenge the airbus, but this was negotiated down to one, and the US agreed to allow this to happen.

I think the theory is horse-feathers, but it has some high-profile adherents, including an MP who chaired a parliamentary committee enquiring into the incident.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Another comment. This thread is similar to a poll I started some months ago, asking people how familiar they were with the evidence and whether they believed Megrahi was guilty. In the end a fair number of people declared they were familiar with the evidence and believed him to be guilty.

Unfortuately I allowed the poll to be anonymous, so I don't know who these people were. I appealed for them to come to the thread and explain their reasoning. Only one did.

Longtabber PE. He said he had inside knowledge that they framed the right guy. About 10 days later he was outed as a fantasist wannabee by Joey Donuts.

In all the documentaries I have watched about this, the only person outwith the investigating authorities who is prepared to declare they believe Megrahi to be guilty is....

David Shayler.

This is not a good track record, people.

The spokesman for the US families of Pan Am 103 is a paid shill who has no personal connection with the case, and has never given any reason at all for his strident insistence that Megrahi is guilty.

Nowhere at all in all the reams of discussion of this case, is anyone credible prepared to explain rationally why they believe Megrahi actually did it, or how he did it. I even managed to get Richard Marquise to answer that question on a blog, and all he could manage was "the court found him guilty and that's enough". So much for the "overwhelming evidence" he was boasting about.

Won't even one solitary soul of all the people who believe Megrahi to be guilty (and want to boycott Scotland and so on) please explain their reasoning and the basis for this belief? How do you think he got the bomb on the plane, despite all the evidence that no unaccompanied bag was carried on KM180?

And yes, I think Caustic Logic is right. This is a political question.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

And yes, I think Caustic Logic is right. This is a political question.

Rolfe.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but the mods apparently disagree.

 

[theprestige]

In what way would you say it is a "political question"?

I mean, I can understand a theory that the court scapegoated the most likely-looking chump it could get its hands on. And I can understand how scapegoating has a "political" aspect, especially in an "international terrorism" case. But are you alleging that this case is somehow especially political? Or do you simply mean "political" in the sense that "the court convicted somebody, because somebody had to be convicted"?

 

[theprestige]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, but the mods apparently disagree.

I think it's the "just asking questions" aspect of your discussion that continues to relegate your threads to the Conspiracy Theories subforum.

One of the defining characteristics of boards like JREF, BAUT, and ApolloHoax is the principle that simply raising questions about a mainstream idea is never sufficient to elevate an alternative idea to the same status as the mainstream idea.

It is important to not only raise questions, but also produce answers.

Just because nobody cares to address your concerns about Lockerbie the way they've addressed concerns about 9/11 doesn't mean your concerns are valid.

If you merely wish to speculate about the possible political aspects of the Megrahi case, then--on this forum, at least--Conspiracy Theories is where your threads will remain. Show concrete evidence that the Megrahi case had a political aspect, then I'm sure the mods will be more than happy to permit discussion of that proven political aspect in the Politics subforum.

 

[Caustic Logic]

I think it's the "just asking questions" aspect of your discussion that continues to relegate your threads to the Conspiracy Theories subforum.

Well, actually I was asking FOR questions, and asking questions about people's beliefs and disbeliefs. "why do you people think this way" kind of thing. Maybe it was more for social issues, not politics, since most politicians agree on the issue it's not partisan enough, etc.

One of the defining characteristics of boards like JREF, BAUT, and ApolloHoax is the principle that simply raising questions about a mainstream idea is never sufficient to elevate an alternative idea to the same status as the mainstream idea.

Oh, this thread wasn't meant to elevate anything. It was to assess the elevation difference in peoples' various minds. Why is this higher than that to you?

It is important to not only raise questions, but also produce answers.

Yeah, I was hoping some people would provide the answers with their questions, and i have got quite a few. But if I were asking questions about the case here, I could also provide a best-guess answer as well, in case you missed it the many other times it's been explained here. The bomb was actually a Khreesat-made altimeter unit loaded at Heathrow airport, on Iran's orders and pad for by them ($10 million acknowledged paid out), in retaliation for the shoot-down of IA655. That was not a tit-for-tat the West was inclined to continue or even acknowledge, especially with Iraq becoming a new enemy and the what whole shift, but it was the first and obvious lead investigators followed.

This answer explains everything except the few clues that pointed all-too-clearly at Libya, have their own fatal credibility problems, and paint a picture that's almost surreal compared to the original. So it does come back to a conspiracy theory - a false case like this does not come together by accident. And it's political, of course - that would be the whole point. The PTB know public perception matters, so they give the judges and the news media only so much information in controlled dribbles, and somehow most outfits just don't bother straying from their embedded places. And so popular truths are made - Iran just never did get their revenge, that's good, Libya just did something real similar for their own weird reasons, and they've been partly punished. Everyone's okay with this because it comes from on high. That's politics. Big picture geopolitics.

Just because nobody cares to address your concerns about Lockerbie the way they've addressed concerns about 9/11 doesn't mean your concerns are valid.

Of course not, but it's a good clue when everyone wants to shout their opinion and run from the facts in this case, or avoid doing that by staying silent. How many started to look and got a bad feeling they couldn't win the argument their way and so just shrugged it off? At least a few I'm sure.

If you merely wish to speculate about the possible political aspects of the Megrahi case, then--on this forum, at least--Conspiracy Theories is where your threads will remain. Show concrete evidence that the Megrahi case had a political aspect, then I'm sure the mods will be more than happy to permit discussion of that proven political aspect in the Politics subforum.

I just don't get what you're saying here, and your objecton sounds ridiculous. Geopolitics? Who's to blame for one of the most heinous acts of terrorism ever? What do you mean by "the Megrahi case" and what would be a "political aspect?" I think we have some semantics issues.

 

[Caustic Logic]

This case reminds me in some ways of the Barry George case (the murder of Jill Dando, for anyone who was on Mars at the time).

I must have been on Mars a really long time, sorry. Even Jill Dando isn't ringing a bell, but that is an excellent comparison case to have handy. The Lockerbie case of course can't just lay there unsolved like that, unfortunately. And the truth is in many ways more painful and certainly less convenient. It probably just won't be allowed. I don't know, they just keeping shouting how they know, and know they got it right.

Oh, and on politics, it's funny, I just wroote about the total lack of politics at the 21st anniversary memorial, under Mr. Duggan's apolitical leadership. Oh, but I'm implying a 'conspiracy theory" to manipulate the issue!
http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/12/keeping-politics-out-of-arlington.html

 

[Architect]

In all the documentaries I have watched about this, the only person outwith the investigating authorities who is prepared to declare they believe Megrahi to be guilty is....

David Shayler.

This is not a good track record, people.

In all fairness, Clive Fairweather - a man more than happy to have been a maverick towards the end of his career and, as it happens, a friend - has said that he thinks Megrahi did it.

 

[Ambrosia]

In what way would you say it is a "political question"?

I mean, I can understand a theory that the court scapegoated the most likely-looking chump it could get its hands on. And I can understand how scapegoating has a "political" aspect, especially in an "international terrorism" case. But are you alleging that this case is somehow especially political?

Are you familiar at all with any of the details surrounding the Lockerbie terrorist attacks beyond the most rudimentary outlines?

In the months following the attack the intelligence gathered by law enforcement seemed to point squarely at the PFLP-GC and Jibril. Which puts Iran squarely in the frame.

A politician of the time has lunch and leaks some of this detail to the media - and is promptly fired. Thatcher and Reagan have a meeting and decide to "soft peddle" the whole investigation and from that point on the PFLP-GC slides off the radar and not long after that Libya is blamed, which just happens to be *staggeringly* politically convenient what with Desert Storm brewing up a, er, storm.

A conviction is eventually secured against Megrahi and Libya made to pay compensation. Only the main plank of the crown case against Megrahi happens to be the testimony of a CIA informant Giaka who the CIA know is "telling stories" to put it kindly. The defense in court get a hold of cables between Giaka and his CIA handlers and his entire testimony is thrown out of court which clears Megrahis co-accused entirely.

There remains to date no evidence that Megrahi had any part of the destruction of 103. (Or it seems any evidence of his innocence either) The biggest piece of physical evidence connecting Libya to the whole thing looks very likely to have been fabricated and planted by the investigators.

To my mind this is one of the single greatest miscarriages of justice there has ever been. It looks as though the primary motivation for blaming some random scapegoat from an entirely different country was political and came down from the Prime Minister of England and the President of the US at a time where war vs Iraq was being orchestrated and the political situation in the middle East was "delicate". The US had not long ago shot down an Iran Airbus stuffed full of innocent pilgrims (before the ship in question ran away from the scene leaving others to pick up the pieces) the hostage crisis in Beirut was in full swing and the US needed Iran, if not as an ally, then at least as a neutral if it were to successfully go after Saddam.

Lockerbie is a very political animal.



But hey we're all just JAQing off.
All conspiracy theories must be complete bunk.
If we only opened our eyes and looked objectively at the overwhelming evidence we'd not only realise how guilty Meghrahi was, we'd also see the need to move out of our parents basement, get a real job and contribute something worthwhile to society, instead of spinning idle speculation and fantasy on some internet message board to make ourselves seem more important.

 

[GlennB]

And if we were discussing the failings of the Jill Dando/Barry George murder case (or almost any other major crime) we would be in the realms of "miscarriage of justice", and the discussion could rightly be held in the "Social issues" forum.

But because it runs much deeper than that it's classed as "Conspiracy Theory" ??

Regrettably anything thus classified is automatically tainted, seemingly justifying the CTist brush-off of "so take your case to the cops, kid". Which itself is a joke from the outset because a lot of bright people here happily research and discuss the deepest detail of 9/11 with the CTists. All-in-all I believe that Lockerbie is a subject that makes a lot of people uncomfortable even to approach, let alone study. They actively want people to drop the subject or - at worst - tuck it away out of sight.

So CL also gets my support for trying to raise the issue elsewhere.

 

[commandlinegamer]

I think it's inevitable you will have crossover between boards, and I think there are more important things to worry about.

Anyway, surely the question for anyone who believes in Megrahi's guilt is 'Ok, we've got one of them, now who else was involved?'.

[OT: for me Jill Dando is a JFK moment; I can remember exactly where I was when I heard she had been shot: the bar of the Argyll Hotel in Oban.]

 

[Rolfe]

In all fairness, Clive Fairweather - a man more than happy to have been a maverick towards the end of his career and, as it happens, a friend - has said that he thinks Megrahi did it.

But has he said why he thinks that? This is the question Caustic Logic has asked, and one that has not been answered by anyone. I can't see how you can maintain Megrahi did it without postulating a huge conspiracy on the part of a bought-out Maltese airport and airline security operation.

How the blazes did he get the suitcase on the plane? What's Clive Fairweather saying about that?

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Rolfe, Glenn B, Ambrosia, pipelineaudio, AndyAndy, Architect, thanks for "following" me into this little fray. Shemp, Brainster, Alt+FA, Skeptic, theprestige, Trisketthekid, Arcade 22, thanks for taking the time to type anything in response. I've got a lot of what I was hoping for, and will compile the basic thoughts and questions I encountered.

That's seven minds from across the line picked a little, and of those I think five haven't spoken up on the issue yet as it sat in the CT forum. So that nicely answers post #27. In general, as usual, knowledge of the facts correlates highly with questions of the case, while ignorance and trust line up perfectly on the other side.

If anyone else has anything to add, feel free to really drop any zingers.

I mean, I can understand a theory that the court scapegoated the most likely-looking chump it could get its hands on. And I can understand how scapegoating has a "political" aspect, especially in an "international terrorism" case. But are you alleging that this case is somehow especially political? Or do you simply mean "political" in the sense that "the court convicted somebody, because somebody had to be convicted"?

Sorry, for my part anyway, I don't know if it's proportionally more political than other cases, but at least by magnitude the amount of politics is enormous compared to most other issues.

In all fairness, Clive Fairweather - a man more than happy to have been a maverick towards the end of his career and, as it happens, a friend - has said that he thinks Megrahi did it.

I'd be curious if you could get him to explain what he thinks is the best evidence and share that here. If that ever seems convenient?

Ambrosia: I quite concur with your post #50. Thanks for that. The sentence isn't quite right.

There remains to date no evidence that Megrahi had any part of the destruction of 103. (Or it seems any evidence of his innocence either)

Perhaps you meant proof? There's evidence in both directions, some of it 3-D and some cartoon.

I'll be back later with the distilled responses

 

[Rolfe]

All-in-all I believe that Lockerbie is a subject that makes a lot of people uncomfortable even to approach, let alone study. They actively want people to drop the subject or - at worst - tuck it away out of sight.

That's exactly the point the OP was making. Why is this the case? Why is nobody who is convinced of Megrahi's guilt prepared to present an argument?

Why do the majority of posters with little familiarity with the details of the case prefer to stick their fingers in their ears and hum real loud when the subject is raised, rather than make even the most cursory effort to find out what the controversy is all about?

We can discuss any apparent miscarriage of justice we like - Barry George, Sally Clark, OJ Simpson, anyone - except Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Bring that one up and it's banished to the depths of "Conspiracy Theories" where the posters in Politics or Social Issues can get right back to ignoring it.

This is a very peculiar phenonenon, and I wish the mods hadn't played into the scoffers hands by moving the thread. Note that they've all stopped replying, because they've succeeded in getting it out of sight and out of mind.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

(Or it seems any evidence of his innocence either)

That was an excellent post, Ambrosia, but can I pick you up on just this one point? I think there may be more evidence of Megrahi's innocence in this respect than there is of mine, for example.

Several commentators have reported that they came at the affair simply because they could see that the prosecution hadn't proved their case and were intrigued to find out what was going on. After becoming familiar with the evidence, they formed the view that Megrahi was actually innocent, as opposed to there simply not being sufficient evidence against him.

I come back to the Luqa baggage records. They seem to be as watertight as anything of that nature can reasonably be. They've stood up to examination by everyone from Pan Am's own accident investigators to the lawyers acting for London Weekend TV. A couple of dozen baggage handlers and operatives were repeatedly interviewed. People's private phone lines were tapped in an effort to prove they were lying and the baggage records had been fabricated.

If this was all fabricated at the behest of Gadaffi, to cover up for Megrahi's action, it was a huge undertaking. Everybody from the chief of security to the guys who heave the cases was in on it. And yet no flaw was found in the documentation, nobody slipped up under questioning, and nobody cracked and admitted the plot even in the face of 270 horrific deaths.

Unless you subscribe to that particular CT, the suitcase didn't go on at Luqa. And Megrahi was at Luqa that morning. Ergo, Megrahi didn't put the bomb on the plane.

Can you prove you weren't at any airport with a flight connecting through to PA103 on the morning of 21st December 1988?

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

Perhaps you meant proof? There's evidence in both directions, some of it 3-D and some cartoon.

That ought to read "no credible evidence" but even so...

Lets see there is Gauci's identification. During interviews with police Gauci *explicitly* rules out Megrahi as their man *more than once* the police lineup was very seriously flawed as were their interview techniques and Gauci might well have had 3 million reasons to "tweak" his testimony in the back of his mind. No conviction, no payday for Gauci.

There is witness evidence that points to Megrahi being in Malta on the day in question at the airport. Yeah and... so were hundreds of other people going about their business. You have to prove that the bomb was loaded that day in Malta for that to even start being relevant, and the prosecution struck out there as well. There is evidence that the bag might have been loaded at Malta, only there is the niggling fact that Malta airlines sued Granada TV over that fact and won their case.

There's evidence Megrahi and Bollier were acquainted prior to the attack, how relevant that is depends on the provenance of MST-13. If we were to concede that MST-13 was in fact part of the IED, Megrahi is a Libyan intelligence officer and Bollier is an international arms dealer, with the scruples of half a stoat, willing it appears to sell anything and everything to anyone who pays. It does not follow that even if Megrahi is buying arms from Bollier that any of that is connected to 103.

There's evidence of Megrahi being a Libyan intelligence operative

There's evidence someone that kind of looked like Megrahi, but older, bought some clothes, at a clothes shop in Malta, that were later found to be aboard 103 in the material suitcase and thus highly likely to have been packed in said case along with the IED.

*IF* the bag was loaded at Malta (which has yet to be proved) then Megrahi was in kind of the right place at kind of the right time to do that.

Anything we hear from Giaka is make believe fairy sprinkles.

IIRC Meghrahi does not offer an alibi or explain what he was doing in Malta that particular day.

What have I missed that can count as evidence?

 

[Ambrosia]

Can you prove you weren't at any airport with a flight connecting through to PA103 on the morning of 21st December 1988?

As it happens yes I can, I was 13 at the time, and didn't own a passport

Yay crossposts.

I am of the opinion that there is no evidence of Megrahis guilt or innocence that stands up to any scrutiny. I do firmly believe Megrahi is innocent, I am not sure it can be proved though.

I believe the weight of evidence points at Heathrow as point of ingestion for the bomb not Luqa. Which rules out Megrahi as the bomb loader, but without being able to prove that MST-13 was planted/fabricated I don't think we can prove Megrahi had nothing to do with it. He's still tied to Bollier, albeit tenuously.

Oh and for the record I am dissappointed this thread was moved from the Politics forum, I don't see the harm of a single thread in that forum on this topic provided that the discussion in it stays on topic to the political aspects of the case and the bulk of discussion happens over here. I don't blame the mods for moving it though.

 

[Buncrana]

Ahem, excuse the latecomer..

Despite being a relative novice on this forum, I am somewhat surprised that any discussion at length with regards to Megrahi's trial, conviction and any such Lockerbie related matters on this forum should be consigned to a CT sub-forum. Whether you regard the indictment and conviction as justified or not, terrorism, international law, and real politik are at the very core of the initial attack on PanAm 103 and the subsequent trial.

From the front room, to factory floor to the halls of justice and government cabinet rooms, under the banner and brand War on Terror, we are faced with the real possibility that the man convicted of the worst terrorist attrocity on UK mainland, including the deaths of 179 Americans and people from 20 other countries, was actually innocent all along.

In 2007, after 4 years of investigating, an independent scottish judicial committee overwhelmingly decided there had been a possible "miscarriage of justice". The caveat obviously being possible, however, given the clearly highly sensitive nature of their investigations, only a limited release of their conclusions were made public. This itself is unprecedented. There are no 'if's' or 'buts' about the conclusion of the appeal.

Perhaps Libya signed the card of 103. However, examining the evidence, if you grant benefit of the doubt to that evidence, it still does not point to the guilt of Megrahi. You'd think people would like to know exactly why this seems to be the conclusion of any objective reader of the publicly known facts and the evidence that was presented at the court case.

Megrahi release was an international political and judicial issue, while the fact this was made on 'compassion grounds' raised many social and moral issues for society itself to contend with. The Lockerbie disaster may be a complex issue. However the evidence, as presented at Zeist, is not, and is so littered with flaws and irregular investigation methods, it simply cannot be plausibly accepted as 'beyond reasonable doubt'.

Perhaps apathy can arise in the Megrahi conviction and 103 bombing from the fact that at first view, it may seem Megrahi was innocent, but it was only Iran anyway... Who cares why?...Libya, Iran. That aint no conspiracy, that's just, ahem, politics. However, studying the issues at length, it appears to reveal the possibilty of much deeper motives. And these important issues are not really being discussed. Except of course by the deniers and cranks. To the ct sub-forum with you..

 

[Ambrosia]

If you merely wish to speculate about the possible political aspects of the Megrahi case, then--on this forum, at least--Conspiracy Theories is where your threads will remain. Show concrete evidence that the Megrahi case had a political aspect,

I didn't realise you spoke for the mod team at JREF theprestige.

The political aspects of the Lockerbie case are large and well documented.

I'd suggest you read through the pertinent threads in the CT forum on this topic including the original thread started in fact by Rolfe some few years ago in which Rolfe links much good source material from Paul Foot, Robert Black, and Hans Kochler.

As an aside how often in major criminal trials does a UN observer make a comment such as:

"As far as the material aspects of due process and fairness of the trial are concerned, the presence of at least two representatives of a foreign government in the courtroom during the entire period of the trial was highly problematic. The two state prosecutors from the US Department of Justice were seated next to the prosecution team. They were not listed in any of the official information documents about the Court's officers produced by the Scottish Court Service, yet they were seen talking to the prosecutors while the Court was in session, checking notes and passing on documents. For an independent observer watching this from the visitors' gallery, this created the impression of "supervisors" handling vital matters of the prosecution strategy and deciding, in certain cases, which documents (evidence) were to be released in open court or what parts of information contained in a certain document were to be withheld"

or comments like:

"judgement was inconsistent" "considerable political influence put on judges" "trial was not fair" "Negotiated outcome"

He was even more scathing about the appeal hearing and you can read his thoughts on the whole of the Zeist trial and appeal here.

How much concrete evidence of a political aspect to the Lockerbie attacks would one need to produce?