Do tell.
Merged Lockerbie bomber alive after 9 months
- Thread starter Caustic Logic
- Start date
Do tell.
Rolfe
Adult human female
He already did. Let's not go there again.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217531
Rolfe.
Perhaps you missed this part of the article:
He was released on license. He is still a convicted mass murderer.
I wouldn't hold my breath on Gaddaffi not standing trial separately for Lockerbie. IF he gets out alive.
~B.
Nogbad
Master Poster
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2007
- Messages
- 2,566
Well I didn't miss it but I didn't see the relevance either - although I would be surprised if the story is desperately accurate. This woman, if she is Hanna Gadaffi is what? 23? How long has she been a doctor? The article makes it sound like she has been a king pin in the Libyan medical system for years. She can barely have qualified and is reported to have trained outside of Libya so has hardly even been in the country in her short adult life.
I think I will take this with a pinch of salt. It is either just the fuzz of war or they have confused her with another, older person.
On my original point, Megrahi was given the best medical care a wealthy regime could provide, including it is suggested the latest prostrate drugs which have not yet been cleared by the drugs safety checks agency in the UK. Now Tripoli has no water, it has power cuts and it is very difficult to come by much of anything. Given Gadaffi's troubles I doubt what remains of the regime has Megrahi's medical care at the top of its priority list. Indeed, if Megrahi does know anything incriminating I wouldn't be at all surprised if Gadaffi hasn't hastened his demise. However, assuming he is still alive, without access to drugs, clean water and even electricity I think it reasonable to suggest that Megrahi will struggle. This is why I don't understand the point you are trying to make. Indeed, I can't see any connection with the Hanna story and the point I am making. If she is in Libya I guess she will be in Sirte with her family rather than in Tripoli.
On your other point, yes he was convicted and has been released. To date he has done nothing to jeopardise the conditions of his release. It is not his fault Tripoli is a war zone. Up until now he has abided by the conditions.
Cleon
King of the Pod People
CNN found him. He's not dead, but close to it.
CNN said:
I'd be more impressed if the full quote said something like "until they have faced trial under our own laws first". Point-blank refusals to extradite anyone for anything tend to worry me.
But it still doesn't change my views on Megrahi.
ETA: The Beeb have picked it up too.
Last edited:
Rolfe
Adult human female
I imagine that's what they mean, if the law hasn't changed. The Gadaffi regime always said that they would try Megrahi and Fhimah if the evidence was presented to them. Unsurprisingly, that never happened.
That CNN story was pretty bad. Once again calling Megrahi "the Lockerbie bomber", when he was never convicted of being the bomber in the first place - he was only convicted as an accessory. Getting the length of time served wrong - it was nearly ten-and-a-half years, not eight. And assuming Megrahi knows anything at all about the bombing is probably a mistake too.
Rolfe.
little grey rabbit
Banned
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2010
- Messages
- 3,164
Look, lets tune into Reality FM here.
There is a very simple reason why Megrahi was released. It was not because an evil Libyan prisoner managed to fool the cream of the Scottish medical profession he only had three months to live. It was not due to craven politicians bowing to pressure from corrupt western oil companies.
It was very simply that the Scottish Law Society Review report had identified fundamental flaws in the case against him and it was likely he would be released. Not only would that be embarrassing politically, it also opened the possibility of having to pay compensation to Megrahi due to what was obviously a corrupt process. And even worse, there might be remote chance that the families of the victims might have to repay the 2 billion that had been extorted from Libya.
The flaws identified by the Scottish Law Society have not gone away - and so that explains why CNN having located Megrahi report he is sunk deep into a coma.
Its all very simple really.
There is a very simple reason why Megrahi was released. It was not because an evil Libyan prisoner managed to fool the cream of the Scottish medical profession he only had three months to live. It was not due to craven politicians bowing to pressure from corrupt western oil companies.
It was very simply that the Scottish Law Society Review report had identified fundamental flaws in the case against him and it was likely he would be released. Not only would that be embarrassing politically, it also opened the possibility of having to pay compensation to Megrahi due to what was obviously a corrupt process. And even worse, there might be remote chance that the families of the victims might have to repay the 2 billion that had been extorted from Libya.
The flaws identified by the Scottish Law Society have not gone away - and so that explains why CNN having located Megrahi report he is sunk deep into a coma.
Its all very simple really.
Rolfe
Adult human female
You are completely wrong.
It was the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.
And they glossed over more flaws than they highlighted.
Rolfe.
It was the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.
And they glossed over more flaws than they highlighted.
Rolfe.
This is something that's been eating away at me.
It's very curious because, essentially, the SCCRC implied that after their extensive four years of investigations they concluded that, although they found no reason for the court to have determined Megrahi was the purchaser,
- The suitcase was loaded at Malta
- The bomb travelled on KM180
- The primary suitcase circumvented 3 airport security systems
- The MST fragment's provenance is genuine
- The scrap of manual is authentic
They wholly discount the allegations made about the irregular nature of some of the clothing presented at Zeist, and the questions surrounding the provenance of the fragment of MST - and its associated page of manual.
What do the other 800 pages possibly deal with? Not all about Gauci's identification surely? That can be summed up in half a dozen pages - with photographs.
Perhaps Bedford's suitcase, its unaccompanied nature, and it's placement in the container in relation to the known explosion location? Well, apparently not, as it seems that would raise the question of the integrity of the whole premise of Malta-Frankfurt-London-New York theory.
Not to mention make the identification of the MST even more questionable.
It beggars belief that all these points were discarded and yet there is 800+ pages they felt needed explored and explained.
.
Interesting tweet from David Allen Green (Jack of Kent):
Rolfe
Adult human female
He was released for a perfectly good reason, because he was dying of cancer. This is legal and with much precedent. The fact that a three-month prognosis while he was banged up in jail a thousand miles from home in an alien culture and climate extended to two years when he was returned to his home and family (and medical treatment not available on the NHS) should surprise nobody.
It's not the release that is the scandal, the thing that happened "for no good legal reason". That dubious honour goes to the dropping of his appeal.
I wonder how Ronnie Biggs is doing?
Rolfe.
It's not the release that is the scandal, the thing that happened "for no good legal reason". That dubious honour goes to the dropping of his appeal.
I wonder how Ronnie Biggs is doing?
Rolfe.
WildCat
NWO Master Conspirator
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2003
- Messages
- 59,856
ftfy
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
The law often has the problem that someone can be guilty, but the evidence is not enough to convict them. From the conversations an Italian model had with one of Gadafi's son's, he acknowledges they were behind the bombing.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
Obvious troll is obvious. Ignore him.
Rolfe
Adult human female
This is something that's been eating away at me.
It's very curious because, essentially, the SCCRC implied that after their extensive four years of investigations they concluded that, although they found no reason for the court to have determined Megrahi was the purchaser,
- The suitcase was loaded at Malta
- The bomb travelled on KM180
- The primary suitcase circumvented 3 airport security systems
- The MST fragment's provenance is genuine
- The scrap of manual is authentic
They wholly discount the allegations made about the irregular nature of some of the clothing presented at Zeist, and the questions surrounding the provenance of the fragment of MST - and its associated page of manual.
What do the other 800 pages possibly deal with? Not all about Gauci's identification surely? That can be summed up in half a dozen pages - with photographs.
Perhaps Bedford's suitcase, its unaccompanied nature, and it's placement in the container in relation to the known explosion location? Well, apparently not, as it seems that would raise the question of the integrity of the whole premise of Malta-Frankfurt-London-New York theory.
Not to mention make the identification of the MST even more questionable.
It beggars belief that all these points were discarded and yet there is 800+ pages they felt needed explored and explained.
I think one has to remember that the SCCRC was not a de novo investigation of the bombing. It was a look at the safety of the conviction.
Any investigation of the evidence, starting from a clean sheet, would have to acknowledge that the bomb did not travel from Malta. However, we're back in the realms of "the court decided that, so we have to have quite extraordinary reasons for overturning that decision." This tends to imply actual new evidence, and simply pointing out for the umpteenth time that the interpretation of the original evidence was batsqueak insane doesn't cut it. As far as the routing of the bomb was concerned, I don't believe there was any actual new evidence.
I suspect a lot of the 800 pages involves the SCCRC telling us smugly why it rejects most of the grounds of appeal put to it by the defence. In particular how the investigation was pure, honest and above board, and all the lawyers involved were bloody geniuses who worked their socks off to the best of their ability. However, the reasoning there will be the interesting part, and I would hope for more evidence which might clarify certain matters even if the SCCRC weren't buying it.
What was going on was that they were going to grant the appeal based on the unreliability of the Gauci identification. This would have allowed those who wished to, to declare that Megrahi got off on a technicality and they weren't looking for anyone else. However, if the road block of the conviction had been removed, it would then have been possible to open up the rest of the can of worms.
I don't know whether the SCCRC panel really appreciated the significance of overturning the identification evidence. The corollary to that was that it would in fact have overturned the Malta ingestion theory as well, because tray 8849 was only held to be the bomb because the man who bought the clothes was present when KM180 was checking in. However, that would have been the implication, and a lot of mayhem could have resulted.
I think the possibility that investigators might have fabricated significant items of evidence was not something the SCCRC were going to contemplate without utterly conclusive proof, which was unlikely to have been obtainable. That's how bent cops and forensics people get away with it of course.
Rolfe.
Rolfe
Adult human female
Wildcat, you are completely wrong, and this has been argued out in acres of newsprint. The last thing the Scottish Government had in mind when they released Megrahi was pandering to the wishes of the UK government, whom they cordially hate. The UK government didn't even advance the case, for fear that the Scottish government would do the opposite, just to spite them.
Rolfe.
Rolfe.
Rolfe
Adult human female
I've heard anecdotal evidence can be unreliable, but that one surely sets a new standard. Conversations an Italian model had with one of Gadaffi's sons? Oh well, say no more!
I don't know if Gadaffi was behind it or not. Saif says not, for what that's worth (not a lot). However, that isn't the point. If Gadaffi was behind it, he did not do it by sending Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to levitate an invisible suitcase on to a plane at Malta.
Rolfe.
Can I just say thank you very much, Rolfe, for making such a convincing case for a miscarriage of justice regarding Megrahi that I find myself shouting at the TV on a daily basis now when news reports refer to "knowledge of who ordered the attack dying with him" and so on. 
Rolfe
Adult human female
Well, honestly. If Megrahi had done it, then would we really be in any serious doubt about who had ordered it? The prosecution at Zeist weren't - they called it state-sponsored terrorism. I think it became politically expedient to forget that part when it was politically expedient to be photographed hugging and kissing with Gadaffi.
This highlights the other part of the incongruity. Megrahi was never convicted as being "the Lockerbie bomber". He didn't put the bomb on the plane and he could not possibly have put the bomb on the plane. This was always acknowledged. He was convicted of being an accessory to the plot. That's the reason for the commonly-heard more accurate descriptor, "the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing".
They had no clue at all as to how the bomb was supposed to have got on the plane. Nothing was checked in with a routing on to PA103. All 55 checked-in bags were picked up by their owners at their destinations, and none of the passengers had any terrorist links or was even Arab. Because of this, the prosecution could only allege that a 56th bag had somehow been added to the baggage for the flight - despite its having been counted twice and always come to 55.
This would have had to have involved someone airside getting the bag on board. Megrahi didn't go airside that morning. He didn't even check in any baggage. All he did was check in (hand luggage only) for his Tripoli flight at the next check-in desk to KM180. How does that make him "the Lockerbie bomber"?
Well, you see, he bought the clothes. And we can't believe he bought these innocently, not knowing what they were to be used for, given that he was at the airport when the bomb was smuggled on board. And given that he bought the clothes, and was at the airport when the bomb was smuggled on board, he must have been doing something to facilitate it. Guilty, life imprisonment.
The original case was supposed to be that Fhimah was the one who went airside and got the bomb on board, but that fell apart when they couldn't even show any evidence that Fhimah had been at the airport at all that morning. Nobody can say exactly what the court determined had been done, in the end.
The crown case was of course that Fhimah had done the dirty deed, and they stuck to that in the teeth of the lack of evidence. It was the judges who decided that even though they found Fhimah not guilty, Megrahi had still done something beyond reasonable doubt. They had to get the indictments amended at the last minute to allow this, because all the stuff about the two conspiring together had to come out.
In the end, it just came down to, we have no idea how he did it, the criminal mastermind, but we have no doubt that he did it. Hence my comments about levitating an invisible suitcase on to the plane. But somehow, he couldn't even acquire a few items of clothing without being conspicuous enough to be identified, and he did that three miles from the airport.
Thank you for saying I've made a convincing case. It's where I arrived at by approaching the evidence with an open mind. I wouldn't have been especially surprised to find out that the doubts about the conviction were a bunch of conspiracy theories on a par with 9/11 twooferism. (And of course there are some wild conspiracy theories as well.) If the conviction had at least been sound on the balance of probabilities, I would have taken great glee in debunking the "Megrahi is innocent" camp.
Instead I discovered a howling scandal, and a man who was apparently simply minding his own business that morning. And a bunch of legal types blandly sitting on their castles pronouncing that black was white because they said so.
I had some of that last night. I attended a lecture by a well-known author who gave an excellent overview of exactly what was wrong with the conviction. The chairman was Menzies Campbell QC. After the talk he took a vindictively pro-guilt position, pontificating smugly about the overall balance of the evidence, and that Megrahi had been travelling on a false passport (as if that alone proved guilt), and that judges knew better than juries because they had experience with weighing up the credibility of witnesses. He was smug, supercilious and patronising. If presented with something he couldn't refute (which was quite often), he either lied, or shook his head sadly, or simply said "I don't agree".
He seemed completely sincere. He was a lawyer, and he knew best. He could see the nuances and the connections that were denied to us mere plebs. He couldn't even contemplate any other explanation than what the judges had "reasoned", and we simply hadn't read the appeal judgement.
I said earlier that what we need is to get rid of the entire Scottish legal profession, and replace it with new bodies with IQs above about 150, and neither related to nor taught by the previous lot.
Rolfe.
This highlights the other part of the incongruity. Megrahi was never convicted as being "the Lockerbie bomber". He didn't put the bomb on the plane and he could not possibly have put the bomb on the plane. This was always acknowledged. He was convicted of being an accessory to the plot. That's the reason for the commonly-heard more accurate descriptor, "the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing".
They had no clue at all as to how the bomb was supposed to have got on the plane. Nothing was checked in with a routing on to PA103. All 55 checked-in bags were picked up by their owners at their destinations, and none of the passengers had any terrorist links or was even Arab. Because of this, the prosecution could only allege that a 56th bag had somehow been added to the baggage for the flight - despite its having been counted twice and always come to 55.
This would have had to have involved someone airside getting the bag on board. Megrahi didn't go airside that morning. He didn't even check in any baggage. All he did was check in (hand luggage only) for his Tripoli flight at the next check-in desk to KM180. How does that make him "the Lockerbie bomber"?
Well, you see, he bought the clothes. And we can't believe he bought these innocently, not knowing what they were to be used for, given that he was at the airport when the bomb was smuggled on board. And given that he bought the clothes, and was at the airport when the bomb was smuggled on board, he must have been doing something to facilitate it. Guilty, life imprisonment.
The original case was supposed to be that Fhimah was the one who went airside and got the bomb on board, but that fell apart when they couldn't even show any evidence that Fhimah had been at the airport at all that morning. Nobody can say exactly what the court determined had been done, in the end.
The crown case was of course that Fhimah had done the dirty deed, and they stuck to that in the teeth of the lack of evidence. It was the judges who decided that even though they found Fhimah not guilty, Megrahi had still done something beyond reasonable doubt. They had to get the indictments amended at the last minute to allow this, because all the stuff about the two conspiring together had to come out.
In the end, it just came down to, we have no idea how he did it, the criminal mastermind, but we have no doubt that he did it. Hence my comments about levitating an invisible suitcase on to the plane. But somehow, he couldn't even acquire a few items of clothing without being conspicuous enough to be identified, and he did that three miles from the airport.
Thank you for saying I've made a convincing case. It's where I arrived at by approaching the evidence with an open mind. I wouldn't have been especially surprised to find out that the doubts about the conviction were a bunch of conspiracy theories on a par with 9/11 twooferism. (And of course there are some wild conspiracy theories as well.) If the conviction had at least been sound on the balance of probabilities, I would have taken great glee in debunking the "Megrahi is innocent" camp.
Instead I discovered a howling scandal, and a man who was apparently simply minding his own business that morning. And a bunch of legal types blandly sitting on their castles pronouncing that black was white because they said so.
I had some of that last night. I attended a lecture by a well-known author who gave an excellent overview of exactly what was wrong with the conviction. The chairman was Menzies Campbell QC. After the talk he took a vindictively pro-guilt position, pontificating smugly about the overall balance of the evidence, and that Megrahi had been travelling on a false passport (as if that alone proved guilt), and that judges knew better than juries because they had experience with weighing up the credibility of witnesses. He was smug, supercilious and patronising. If presented with something he couldn't refute (which was quite often), he either lied, or shook his head sadly, or simply said "I don't agree".
He seemed completely sincere. He was a lawyer, and he knew best. He could see the nuances and the connections that were denied to us mere plebs. He couldn't even contemplate any other explanation than what the judges had "reasoned", and we simply hadn't read the appeal judgement.
I said earlier that what we need is to get rid of the entire Scottish legal profession, and replace it with new bodies with IQs above about 150, and neither related to nor taught by the previous lot.
Rolfe.
Last edited: