Lockerbie: London Origin Theory

Yay, Buncrana's back! Missed you. I meant to email you but life's been hectic and I'd need to fish in an old system for your email address. Email me, will you?

Something ought to be done with the suitcase jigsaw evidence, but people who have been working on this for some time follow their own train of thought and to them it's just some peripheral embroidery. I found this with one of the Al Jazeera people the other day. Someone tweeted to me that the Telegraph hadn't mentioned Heathrow, and I pointed out that it had done that in the print version but not in the online version. I then said it quoted "sources say" the bomb was introduced at Heathrow, and commented that I didn't need "sources", I had pictures.

At that, an Al Jazeera person (who is a nice guy really) tweeted "You get plenty credit in the film Dr Kerr". That wasn't really my point. It's not about credit, it's about credibility of argument. Photos of forensic evidence showing the bomb suitcase to have been in the position where Bedford saw the mysterious brown Samsonite at Heathrow do rather trump "some guy who won't be named or appear on camera told me Iran was responsible and the bomb was introduced at Heathrow" in my opinion.

But they go with their "source" because that's the way they work. We need a programme specifically concentrating on the baggage transfer evidence.

Rolfe.
 
The Crown Office are still doing their ostrich act. They have no alternative, really.

They're right that this programme presented nothing new. Other than my suitcase jigsaw, which wasn't presented in detail. It was Groundhog Day 1989. It may have lulled them into a false sense of security though. They may believe that an application for a third appeal will be based on this stuff, which is entirely hearsay and unprovable. It won't.

The new application will be based so far as I know on three main planks.

First, asking the new SCCRC investigation to accept the 2007 report of the earlier SCCRC investigation and allow referral on the grounds enumerated in that report. That is basically the Gauci identification evidence, plus stuff about the Crown failing to disclose important material to the defence.

Second, the suitcase jigsaw evidence showing that the bomb was in a suitcase known to have been present in the container an hour before the feeder flight from Frankfurt landed. Thus Megrahi was a thousand miles away from the scene of the crime.

Third, the metallurgy results on PT/35b showing that it was not from one of the 20 timers sold to Libya by MEBO. This is a relatively peripheral matter as Megrahi was never shown to have had one of these timers in his possession anyway, but SO much has been made of this piece of evidence over the years that discrediting it is a Big Deal. Discrediting it also breaks the link to the Libyan state.

The first point involves misconduct, but not necessarily a major conspiracy. It's just the normal corrupt cop behaviour where getting the witness to identify the person of interest is far more important than figuring out whether the person of interest was actually the person the witness saw.

The second point appears to be one of monumental incompetence. My main question on that is over the declarations from RARDE and the AAIB swearing categorically that the bomb suitcase wasn't on the floor of the baggage container. What was that all about? It's not at all clear why any of them came to that conclusion on the evidence before them, never mind why about six different people were all prepared to be so sure about it. The fact is, the bomb suitcase WAS on the floor of the container, so what was all that about?

The third point is the one that really flags up possible criminal conspiracy. It that thing isn't a fake made deliberately to look like a bit of an MST-13 circuitboard, it's putting up a remarkably fine imitation of being that. But really, that's not our problem. It's enough for the appeal to show that it wasn't what the Crown said it was. The rest is for a subsequent inquiry to deal with.

That is the meat of what the SCCRC will be asked to consider. Nothing about Mesbahi or Talb or Khreesat or any of their unsavoury colleagues. It's simple, it's demonstrable, and it's 100% exculpatory.

Then the Crown Office is going to have to take its head out of the sand.

Rolfe.
 
Hey Rolfe, hope you're well,! I'll drop you an email and I see life has been pretty hectic - especially as you keep on popping up on my old gogglebox! :)

Of course you're right, someone needs to focus on that Heathrow baggage evidence, and essentially everything else flows from there. I thought the portion shown last night with you and the baggage graphics was good, encouraging, but was quickly overwhelmed with all the other stuff from Baer and de Grazia. As you say, it felt as though the Heathrow stuff became periphery.

The BBC's Newsnight Scotland piece nearly had me apoplectic however. Not only was the general report poor and the interview was weak - dare I say boring? - but flaming Reevel Alderson's report opened with him asserting that "Pan Am 103 was nearly an hour late leaving Heathrow". The remote control was nearly through the TV goddammit!

Specifically what happened at Heathrow and that baggage jigsaw. Yes, we do need that programme.
 
I've more or less given up watching Newsnight because their referendum coverage is so biassed I really can't stand it. I would have been apoplectic too if I'd been watching last night. Reevel Alderson is as thick as mince and simply doesn't do his homework. He was also the journalist who decided that the main take-home story from the leaked SCCRC report was "Lockerbie bomber visited Malta for sex" and made that the BBC headline. He also spun that salacious little non-story as if it was incriminating (well, it was just character assassination), when in fact it was exculpatory. The judges said that they were entitled to decide he had travelled to Malta on 20th/21st December to bomb Pan Am 103 because they had been given no other reason for the visit (despite various things coming out in evidence about a business meeting and a shopping trip), and if they had been given a plausible reason they would not have been entitled to come to that conclusion. If he actually went to visit his girlfriend, but didn't want to reveal this out of respect for his wife, then that is in fact damning for the prosecution.

I've come to the conclusion that most journalists are lazy and not very bright, and you just have to feed them what you can and sigh and move on when they get it all wrong. Life's too short to agonise over it.

Al Jazeera weren't perfect either. The voice-over said I had traced every single piece of luggage on the flight. I specifically told them that was rubbish and of course I had done no such thing, but they kept it in anyway. (Also, Chris asked what the tune was I played on the recorder. I said it was The Rowan Tree. He said was it Gaelic, and both George and I put him right in no uncertain terms about the difference between Gaelic and Scots. Nevertheless, in the voice-over, it was "Gaelic music".)

That's just detail though, and of little relevance. Getting the flight time wrong is inexcusable. I mean, the plane's scheduled gate departure time was 6 o'clock. The pieces hit the ground at Lockerbie at five past seven. How fast does he think it flew? Where is this file of blatant misinformation about basic Lockerbie facts that the BBC seems to keep somewhere?

Rolfe.
 
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Rolfe said:
The second point appears to be one of monumental incompetence. My main question on that is over the declarations from RARDE and the AAIB swearing categorically that the bomb suitcase wasn't on the floor of the baggage container. What was that all about? It's not at all clear why any of them came to that conclusion on the evidence before them, never mind why about six different people were all prepared to be so sure about it. The fact is, the bomb suitcase WAS on the floor of the container, so what was all that about?
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This brings up a point upon which I apparently never picked up before. In the US, when an airliner is known or suspected to have been destroyed by a criminal act, the FBI takes over the investigation, and the NTSB simply provides technical assistance as needed (such as reading flight recorders). AAIB stands for Air Accidents Investigation Branch; should they really have been trying to determine the particulars of the bomb explosion?
 
No, they should not. You have picked up on an important point. Peter Claiden the AAIB inspector admitted in court that he had no experience in investigating bomb damage, but he certainly did volunteer opinions on that subject.

An interesting passage in the FAI transcript reveals Feraday denying that there was any cross-over between the RARDE (forensic) inquiry and the AAIB (accident) inquiry. The AAIB's remit was of course to figure out why the explosion had had such a catastrophic effect on the plane, and eventually if some modification to the plane might have allowed it to survive the detonation. Feraday tried to claim that RARDE had not sent its documents to the AAIB and there was arms length between them. However the two teams were working side by side. I presume they talked to each other, and probably even ate lunch together!

So it is interesting in that context to note that it was Claiden who first put forward in a report the statement that there had been another suitcase between the bomb suitcase and the floor of the container. That report was dated April 1989. The same statement was incorporated into the full AAIB report later. Excuse me, what business was that of theirs?

I suspect that the RARDE scientists, probably mainly Feraday because it seems to have been his mantra, fed Claiden that line at an early stage and encouraged him to include it in his preliminary report. But why would he do that?

In the end we have Claiden, his colleague Christopher Protheroe, Feraday, his colleague Ian Cullis, and also Hayes and I think Christopher Peel as well, all agreed that the suitcase wasn't on the bottom layer. Michael Charles of the AAIB is another - he signed the full AAIB report. And a Miss L. Jones signed the RARDE Joint Forensic Report. That makes eight individuals who either offered that as their own professional opinion (Feraday was "adamant" about it and actually asked for the transcript of the FAI to be altered to include this - to make it a certainty rather than a probability), or acceded to the opinion by signing a report including that statement.

But the bomb suitcase was on the floor of the container. Not quite flat, certainly, but undoubtedly it was the one on the bottom of the stack. So how come so many different people were prepared to stick their necks out and say it definitely wasn't, not even worth thinking about it?

This intrigues me very much.

Rolfe.
 
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I don't know if I am late to the party or whether I have been ill-informed about this in the past, but to me the major revelation in the latest Al Jazeera documentary was the suggestion that there were these sort of "grand terrorist summits" in Malta - at which Iran, Syria, PFLP-GC and Libya all had representatives.

So, to Rolfe (and anyone else who might know): do these reported meetings have any authenticity or reliability? Because if they do, then the puzzle appears to me to fall into place considerably regarding the Libyan connection. I infer (if these meetings really did happen as reported) that Megrahi and Fimah were the Libyan representatives at these meetings. If so, they would have had knowledge of what was being planned, even if (as per the allegations) they did not actively take part in the planning or execution of the mission.

It also puts Megrahi's denials into context. I noted on the programme the portion of his deathbed interview where he emphatically denies having ever visited Mary's House (where the clothes in the bomb suitcase were bought). To me, this is true, in that Megrahi (and Fimah) were never involved in the practicalities of designing, preparing or executing the attack - and therefore of course Megrahi wouldn't have been the one buying the clothes.

Is it possible, therefore, that both Megrahi and Fimah had intimate advance knowledge of what was being planned, on account of one or both of them sitting on this "grand terrorist council" in Malta? If so, both could plausibly - and correctly - deny having had anything to do with the actual planning or execution of the bombing, but they would have known of its conception and planning, and would have implicitly sanctioned it in advance.

To me (unless I'm either being stupid/ignorant or have missed something significant), this all makes a lot of sense. I've long believed that this was a PFLP-GC attack authorised and funded by Iran via Syria. But what if the Libyans knew about it on account of their presence in the Malta meetings?

I am hoping that either Rolfe or someone else will have a strong, well-supported opinion on the veracity and reliability of these reports of the Iran-Syria-PFLPGC-Libya meetings in Malta. At the moment, I have no idea whether or not the informed, reasonable opinion is that the reports are flaky at best, or complete fabrications at worst. The Al Jazeera doc certainly treated the reports as fact, but that's a long way from corroborated, documented proof.
 
Thanks for that, CE. When I saw the preview the whole thing was squashed (and distorted) into a square in the middle of the screen, when I saw it live there was a news ticker on the bottom, and now subtitles!

People who are familiar with the whole Mesbahi story and Operation Bird are subjecting these parts to severe criticism which seems to be justified.

http://www.megrahiyouaremyjury.net/?p=1031

I gather John backed out from the production because he disagreed with the reliance on these unreliable sources. To be fair he warned me about that before I was filmed, but I judged it was worth the risk because it's very difficult to get anyone to pick up on the suitcase jigsaw and at least Al Jazeera wanted it. He actually said "I suppose you're smart enough not to let them put words into your mouth" and I heeded that. I'm happy with everything I say on camera.

What was a little disappointing for me was that my careful demonstration of the suitcase jigsaw (which I went through in complete detail four times in order to provide sufficient shots to present the whole explanation) was reduced to a bit of handwaving. It was made quite clear that I had a detailed analysis, and what I believed it proved, but the working wasn't shown. I think it was inevitable given the emphasis of the programme, but it was a bit of a lost opportunity.

I think the effect of the programme was mainly in its re-presentation of stuff that was widely discussed quite a long time ago, but which had fallen out of the public consciousness a bit. IR655, the PFLP-GC, Neuss, Autumn Leaves and the barometric timer issue were all reprised. A lot of the press excitement seemed to come from people to whom this was actually news. And of course Al Jazeera were hardly going to volunteer that it wasn't new material. So the headlines were good even though the foundation for the headlines was less bankable.

It's an eye-opener as regards the way the press treat this sort of thing. Most of the press were photographers who were behind their cameras and mainly interested in photographing Jim Swire. They were very definitely not looking at the screen. Linklater of course was watching, but he's a dishonest customer with an agenda. I don't see any sign that any journalist was actually watching the film to glean their story from that. The press reports seem all to have been based on Al Jazeera's press releases of how they wanted it to be interpreted.

As regards the Heathrow origin, there were two relevant points. One was Khreesat's "associate" who didn't appear on camera, but was reported in hearsay as stating that Iran was behind it and the bomb went on at Heathrow. Forgive me, but that's about the lowest grade of evidence you can possibly have. It was also about six words. The other was me, and I was presented as a "research scientist" who had "made a detailed study of every suitcase on the plane." (Not true, but that's what they said.) I explained that the damaged suitcases form a three-dimensional jigsaw which, when solved, reveals that the case with the bomb in it was the one Bedford saw in the interline shed an hour before the feeder flight landed. It was a reasonably lengthy segment.

Every single news outlet which has reported on the allegation that the bomb went on at Heathrow has sourced it to Khreesat's associate. Not one has mentioned forensic evidence. I can only assume that Al Jazeera didn't mention the forensic case in their press material, and the newspaper stories are taken from that.

You know, if I was watching that, the evidence-based claim which had nothing at all to do with what some extremely dodgy character allegedly said but wouldn't repeat on camera would be the thing that would jump out. But no, not a syllable.

Rolfe.
 
I fear that the 'suitcase jigsaw', and even the general Heathrow insertion theory, is far too complex to be presented in a serious news item or even a quite lengthy documentary.

Regrettably, we live in a sound-bite world :(
 
That's certainly true, but it was presented as a sound-bite, and quite well presented. I was right there with my ugly mug in front of the camera, and I said quite clearly that having analysed that evidence, it was my opinion that the bomb was introduced at Heathrow beyond any reasonable doubt. Or words to that effect. With a caption identifying me as a "research scientist".

Why don't you like that sound-bite, o denizens of the fourth estate?

Rolfe.
 
Bomb-maker Khreesat posts Lockerbie photos on Facebook

The man investigators initially believed built the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie 25 years ago maintains a Facebook page on which he recently posted pictures of the Lockerbie bombing and promised to write about the circumstances of the attack.

Marwan Khreesat, who now lives in Jordan, was arrested but bizarrely released by German police two months before the Lockerbie bombing as part of a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command cell found in possession of bombs designed to blow up airliners. [....]

In several posts relating to Lockerbie in recent weeks, Khreesat recalled his arrest two months before the December 21, 1988, bombing and posted pictures of the destroyed cockpit of the 747 after the explosion, the painstakingly reconstructed parts of the plane wreckage, and a radio-recorder like the one that held the bomb. He also asked a series of unanswered questions about the attack. “Who did the operation?” he asked in a post on the 25th anniversary of the blast. “Israel? Iran? Libya? Who carried the Toshiba explosive device [in which the bomb was hidden]? … Did the explosive device come from Malta airport like the American intelligence agencies say?… When will these riddles be solved.”

Last October, Khreesat posted that he intended to “write about Pan Am 103,” including “who was on the flight and the circumstances of the incident.”
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:eek: :jaw-dropp

Rolfe.
 
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