Lockerbie: London Origin Theory

[CTB]

Be careful with Caustic Logic's blog. It's a fabulous resource, and it has all sorts of amazing stuff in there. But he bashed out posts when we weren't at all sure about stuff, and sometimes he speculated, and sometimes he posted stuff we know now isn't right. He's not maintaining the blog now at all, as he's move on to looking at modern-day events in Libya.

Just don't believe everything you read there. Some of it is superseded.

Rolfe.

yup, seconded.

I was just throwing it out there as a place to get a taste for the kind of thinkstorm Lockerbie can generate. Links for dead ends? yes, there's some there for sure. Links for pertinent, current and valuable info? Them too.

Lockerbie's a huge thing for any of us to wrap our noodles around, regardless of which version of events settles best in the head.

 

[Blue Mountain]

Hi Rolfe; here are my comments.

Oveall, the paper is quite thorough in its coverage of the loading of the suitcases at Heathrow. It becomes a bit muddier when trying to unscramble the paradox where it was extremely important to the FAI that the Heathrow luggage was not rearranged (in order to support its conclusion that the bomb came in from Frankfurt), while a few years later at Camp Zeist it was also extremely important that it had to have been rearranged (in order to support the case against Megrahi.)

On to the details ...

He was absent for about half an hour,and when he returned, he said, Kamboj told him that another two cases had arrived for the flight, which he had placed in the container himself after x-raying them. Bedford looked into the container and saw two suitcases lying flat on the front part of the container, handles facing away from him. Together with the row across the back, which he thought was undisturbed, they covered the entire floor area of the container. The only problem with this was that when he was asked about it, Kamboj denied all memory of the conversation, and denied having put any suitcases into the container.

On first reading I missed the first highlighted area, so by the time I reached the end of the paragraph I didn't know what "the conversation" was that Kamboj could not remember. You may want to re-word this to make it more clear that Bedford told investigators of a conversation with Kaboj, but Kaboj could not recall any such conversation.

As a general point, it might be useful to change the term "the Bedford suitcase" to "the mysterious Samsonite" or "the mysterious hardshell." Whenever I heard the term "the personal-name suitcase" I think personal-name is a passenger, not a baggage handler.

Starting on Page 6 we get into the paradox that the "Bedford suitcase", to the FAI, could not possibly have been moved, while for Camp Zeist it absolutely must have been moved.

Let’s get this straight. The only reason ever advanced to rule out the Bedford suitcase as being the bomb was that it had been on the floor of the container, and the bomb suitcase had not. This reasoning held up all through the main period of the investigation, and through the Fatal Accident Inquiry. The FAI could not possibly have come to the conclusion it did actually come to, if there had been the slightest suggestion the Bedford suitcase had been moved from its original position. Nevertheless, at Camp Zeist it was argued that the suitcase must have been moved, and a suitcase from the feeder flight put in its place. The suitcase Bedford saw remained unidentified however. It was never linked to any of the Heathrow transfer passengers, nor to any innocent item recovered on the ground at Lockerbie.

I think this might be improved by adding an extra sentence or two after the highlighted sentence to reinforce to the reader why it was so important for the mysterious Samsonite hardshell to have been moved. (I think it's because by this time it was established it was in the container prior to the arrival of the Frankfurt flight. While that information was apparently presented at the FAI a decade before, it appears to have been ignored.)

It may be useful to add a side-by-side comparison of the FAI and Camp Zeist conclusions, and (more importantly) reasons those conclusions were made in light of the point they were pursuing.

It is not clear why the investigators failed to work this out in 1989-90. During that period it was an article of faith that the Heathrow-origin luggage had not been moved, and indeed that assumption was essential to the reasoning presented to the FAI to rule these items out from potentially including the bomb. Bomb suitcase on second layer, no Heathrow luggage on second layer, therefore bomb suitcase carried on feeder flight. It’s impossible. The bomb suitcase cannot have been on the second layer if the Heathrow-origin luggage was not moved. These two things are mutually exclusive. Something has to give.

I must confess that while this paragraph appears to sum up most of the paper, I'm unable to parse it, even after reading it multiple times. The phrase "It's impossible", in its context, seems a non sequitur, because what is written in the sentences before and after it seem to me to be entirely possible.

I'll try to explain. When I read the sentence "The bomb suitcase cannot have been on the second layer if the Heathrow-origin luggage was not moved", I interpret the words "the bomb suitcase" to mean "a suitcase that may have come in from Frankfurt carrying the bomb," in which case it's perfectly acceptable that it would be in the second layer. (Well, there's the fact that the bomb was confirmed to have been in a Samsonite hardshell suitcase. Did one of those come in on the Frankfurt flight? That point is not covered at all in the paper.)

The sentence does make sense if the phrase "the bomb suitcase" means "the mysterious Samsonite hardshell that was originally seen at the bottom of the container at Heathrow prior to the arrival of the Frankfurt flight."

I think further traction can be gained by following up on Buncrana's thought in post #627 that if only one other suitcase (Miss Coyle's blue American Tourister) was as badly damaged as the bomb suitcase, that means there likely wasn't another suitcase in direct contact with the one carrying the bomb; ergo, one can conclude that the bomb suitcase was at the bottom of the container.

It might be useful to have a table near the start of the paper naming people involved in both the baggage handling and the subsequent investigation. I got tripped up by the similarities of Sidhu and Sandhu, and had to search the document on both names before I figured out who was who. The table could include who gave evidence when and to whom (police statement, FAI, Camp Zeist.)

While reading the paper I found myself wondering if all the people whose names we see in relation to their luggage were on the doomed flight. I don't know if it's important to include that information.

 

[Rolfe]

Hi Rolfe; here are my comments.

Thanks very much indeed for that Blue Mountain. As I said, it's quite a difficult concept to explain and it's always helpful to get a reader's take on it.

Oveall, the paper is quite thorough in its coverage of the loading of the suitcases at Heathrow. It becomes a bit muddier when trying to unscramble the paradox where it was extremely important to the FAI that the Heathrow luggage was not rearranged (in order to support its conclusion that the bomb came in from Frankfurt), while a few years later at Camp Zeist it was also extremely important that it had to have been rearranged (in order to support the case against Megrahi.)

That's the tricky part. I'll try to answer the queries here, becuse I think it will help me see how to reword the paper.

On first reading I missed the first highlighted area, so by the time I reached the end of the paragraph I didn't know what "the conversation" was that Kamboj could not remember. You may want to re-word this to make it more clear that Bedford told investigators of a conversation with Kaboj, but Kaboj could not recall any such conversation.

In fact, when this story is told, it's usually told as Bedford looking into the container, seeing the two extra cases, and then asking Kamboj if he knew how they got there. At which point Kamboj replies that he put them there himself after x-raying them. That's not quite what Bedford says in his statements. He says that when he returned to the shed, Kamboj volunteered the information that two more cases had arrived for 103, so he'd x-rayed them and put them in the container. THEN Bedford looked into the container and saw the cases.

So it wasn't really a conversation as such. I can re-word that a little bit. (Actually I strongly suspect Bedford made that bit up to cover his backside, although as it turned out John Orr was doing that for him anyway.)

As a general point, it might be useful to change the term "the Bedford suitcase" to "the mysterious Samsonite" or "the mysterious hardshell." Whenever I heard the term "the personal-name suitcase" I think personal-name is a passenger, not a baggage handler.

I know what you mean, but the case is generally referred to as the "Bedford suitcase" in multiple articles and discussions about the issue. Maybe the best thing is to make it clearer that's what we're calling it, the first time the term is used. ("The mysterious Samsonite" could also be uderstood to be referring to the bomb bag coming off the feeder flight, if you really weren't paying attention.)

Starting on Page 6 we get into the paradox that the "Bedford suitcase", to the FAI, could not possibly have been moved, while for Camp Zeist it absolutely must have been moved.


I think this might be improved by adding an extra sentence or two after the highlighted sentence to reinforce to the reader why it was so important for the mysterious Samsonite hardshell to have been moved. (I think it's because by this time it was established it was in the container prior to the arrival of the Frankfurt flight. While that information was apparently presented at the FAI a decade before, it appears to have been ignored.)

Yes, I can work out something like that. I can see it's perhaps a bit too abrupt.

It may be useful to add a side-by-side comparison of the FAI and Camp Zeist conclusions, and (more importantly) reasons those conclusions were made in light of the point they were pursuing.

Again, that's a good idea, I'll look at that.

I must confess that while this paragraph appears to sum up most of the paper, I'm unable to parse it, even after reading it multiple times. The phrase "It's impossible", in its context, seems a non sequitur, because what is written in the sentences before and after it seem to me to be entirely possible.

I'll try to explain. When I read the sentence "The bomb suitcase cannot have been on the second layer if the Heathrow-origin luggage was not moved", I interpret the words "the bomb suitcase" to mean "a suitcase that may have come in from Frankfurt carrying the bomb," in which case it's perfectly acceptable that it would be in the second layer. (Well, there's the fact that the bomb was confirmed to have been in a Samsonite hardshell suitcase. Did one of those come in on the Frankfurt flight? That point is not covered at all in the paper.)

The sentence does make sense if the phrase "the bomb suitcase" means "the mysterious Samsonite hardshell that was originally seen at the bottom of the container at Heathrow prior to the arrival of the Frankfurt flight."

First, the reason I haven't said anything about the Frankfurt luggage is that there is a completely separate chapter on that, with an analysis of the transfer luggage passing through Frankfurt airport. However, I took it down because I got a heap more evidence about that and it needs to be substantially rewritten. Basically, the alleged "bomb suitcase" at Frankfurt is nothing but smoke and mirrors (with a huge dash of German incompetence).

I have the same thing in different words in a (much) shorter version of the article I hope will be published on the WoS blog in the next few days. Maybe that gets it over better? What do you think?

Putting it simply, both planks of the 1989 police reasoning cannot simultaneously be true. If Sidhu didn't move the Heathrow-origin luggage, as was believed in 1989, then the Bedford suitcase, on the floor of the container, must have been the bomb, because there's nothing else for it to be. If there is absolutely no wiggle-room at all for the bomb suitcase to have been on the floor of the container, then Sidhu must have moved the Bedford case - which demolishes the argument used in 1989 to exclude that case from being in the second layer, and again leaves the possibility of its being the bomb wide open. The only brown Samsonite hardshell suitcase seen by any witness, which had appeared mysteriously in almost the exact position of the explosion, and which the police knew about less than three weeks after the disaster, was ruled out on the basis on an absolute logical impossibility.

I think further traction can be gained by following up on Buncrana's thought in post #627 that if only one other suitcase (Miss Coyle's blue American Tourister) was as badly damaged as the bomb suitcase, that means there likely wasn't another suitcase in direct contact with the one carrying the bomb; ergo, one can conclude that the bomb suitcase was at the bottom of the container.

Indeed, I can emphasise that a bit more. The point is made in the evidence at Zeist, but nobody seems to pick up on it.

Basically, none of the six legitimate Heathrow items were damaged in the way they would inevitably have been if they had been under the bomb. Also, there was no debris from any other suitcase that might potentially have been loaded at Heathrow in the mix. The single suitcase showing the right pattern of damage was one from Frankfurt. This was the only possible candidate to have been under the bomb, so to rescue their prosecution they had to say that's where it had been. They managed to fudge the fact that this left no plausible cendidate for the case that would have been on top. The very fact that there was only one item with that pattern of damage underlines the fact that the bomb was on the bottom layer.

It might be useful to have a table near the start of the paper naming people involved in both the baggage handling and the subsequent investigation. I got tripped up by the similarities of Sidhu and Sandhu, and had to search the document on both names before I figured out who was who. The table could include who gave evidence when and to whom (police statement, FAI, Camp Zeist.)

That's a good idea, but I think as a separate document including all the people involved in all the chapters as they're written.

While reading the paper I found myself wondering if all the people whose names we see in relation to their luggage were on the doomed flight. I don't know if it's important to include that information.

Yes, everybody. The only people who didn't accompany their luggage on that plane as far as I know were Susan Costa (travelled on 19th December but her suitcase was left behind and sent after her), John Hubbard (Pan Am pilot sending personal effects home through the baggage system, which was a staff perk), Adolf Weinacker (only just missed the previous flight and managed to get on an earlier flight with Lufthansa, but his luggage stayed with Pan Am), and Jaswant Basuta (stayed too long in the bar at Heathrow and missed the plane by a minute or two).

The four whose luggage was in AVE4041 are quite well known. Bernt Carlsson was the UN envoy to Namibia, Charles McKee and Matthew Gannon (and Ronald LaRiviere who didn't check in any luggage) were CIA spooks on their way back from a hostage rescue mission to Beirut, and Michael Bernstein was a Nazi-hunter, trying to bring those responsible for the Holocaust to book. There are conspiracy theories claiming the bombing was specifically targeted at each one of them.

Fuller and Marengo were top-level executives with Volkswagen US. Joseph Curry also seems to have been a spook working in Beirut or similar. I don't know if this concentration of "notables" is notable or not.

It's one of the hard things about this. You learn about these people, and who they were and where they were going and why. The Frankfurt transfer passengers don't include anyone notable, but they do include a remarkably large number of people who never intended to be on that plane in the first place but re-booked for various reasons (mostly missed flights). And they all saw the plane they were travelling in come apart right in front of their eyes and then the last thing they saw was the cold night sky over Scotland.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

A bit of background. When I first read the Opinion of the Court, I couldn't understand why everyone was speculating freely about how the luggage might have been rearranged on the tarmac. The obvious solution is to aske the guy who did it, but nobody seemed to have done that. It seemed to me to be unlikely on first principles that a baggage handler would heave any cases he didn't actually have to heave, and if he had indeed decided he had to move that case he would probably have moved it as little as possible - that is, put it right back on top of the one he'd put in its place, or just tossed it on top of the right-hand case to make room. However, the judges were talking as if he had more or less shuffled the Heathrow-origin luggage in among the Frankfurt luggage at random.

I wondered if maybe the Heathrow cases had all been taken out of the container on the tarmac for some reason, and re-loaded, but I could find no information. Finally I got the full transcripts, and discovered that the tarmac loader had not even been called as a witness, and all the declarations that any suitcase could have ended up anywhere had their origin in the evidence of a completely different baggage handler, who merely confirmed that occasionally, it was possible a baggage handler might rearrange items already in a container a little bit (he actually just spoke of them being shuffled within the base of the container). Which is kind of obvious, I would have thought, but gets us nowhere closer to finding out if the luggage was rearranged on this occasion.

Two things were fairly clear to me at this stage. One was that the evidence relied on to support the contention that the bomb suitcase had not been on the floor of the container was fairly shaky. And the second was that the collected debris of blast-damaged luggage fragments represented all the items that had been near to the bomb when it went off. That collection contained nothing compatible with the Bedford suitcase, other than the bomb suitcase itself.

Thus, in order to preserve the mere possibility of the bomb having come in on the feeder flight, it was absolutely necessary for the Crown to move that suitcase literally out of the line of fire. The fact that they seemed to be fudging the issue by not calling the man they were suggesting had actually moved it got my Spidey-sense tingling.

Then someone found the findings of the Fatal Accident Inquiry squirrelled away online somewhere, and I was absolutely astounded. In that court, it was firmly accepted that the Heathrow-origin luggage hadn't been moved. (There's even a note that the Pan Am advocate "thought it was difficult to exclude the possibility of the bags in the container being rearranged," as if he was questioning the certainty on that point.)

At that point it really came down to (in respect of the prosecution at Zeist), "why is this lying bastard lying to me?"

A crucial point I haven't really got to the bottom of is the timeline of the adoption of the second-layer theory as being absolutely incontrovertible, and how this was arrived at. It seems to have had a lot to do with the Indian Head tests in April 1989, but there's more to it than that, for example Cullis's evidence. This is quite important, because the only way the Bedford suitcase was excluded in early 1989 was because they were apparently absolutely certain the bomb suitcase had been on the second layer. The minute you accept even a 10% possibility that it was on the floor of the container you must leave the Bedford suitcase in the frame and follow it up. They didn't.

And yet, the Indian Head tests weren't till April. They knew about the Bedford suitcase in January, and they knew that the bomb bag matched his description of that suitcase in February. But they seem to have ruled out a Heathrow introduction in principle as early as mid-January. It doesn't make a lick of sense.

The second-layer theory held up for the FAI, which relied on that AND the certainty that Sidhu hadn't move the Bedford case to exclude that case from being the bomb. That was OK so long as nobody asked what the suitcase Bedford saw actually was, and they didn't, even though I think they had the information to answer that.

It seems to me it was only at Zeist that it was realised the second-layer theory wasn't incontrovertible at all, but really more of a probability. That's why they had to conceal Sidhu's evidence, so that they could pretend a rearrangement of the luggage was uncontroversial, even likely. This, however, is actually bizarre. Logically, the investigators had to be sure it was impossible for the bomb to have been on the floor of the container right back in early 1989. They behaved as if they were sure, but then when the evidence was about to come to court it was realised this was really more of a suggestion.

This makes no sense at all.

Rolfe.

 

[pete2]

I must confess that while this paragraph appears to sum up most of the paper, I'm unable to parse it, even after reading it multiple times. The phrase "It's impossible", in its context, seems a non sequitur, because what is written in the sentences before and after it seem to me to be entirely possible.

If I could add my two-penn'orth...

Either Sidhu moved the Bedford bag, or he didn't; and either the Bedford bag was the bomb bag, or it wasn't. That gives four possibilities.

1) Sidhu moved the Bedford bag, and it wasn't the bomb. (This was the Crown's contention, accepted by the Zeist court.) In this case we must assume that Sidhu, contrary to his clear recollection and despite having only 15 minutes to load all the PA103A baggage in foul weather, pulled out the Bedford bag and stood it on the tarmac. He then loaded Patricia's case in its place, and then loaded a brown Samsonite (containing the IED) which came off the rocket on top of Patricia's case. At some point before he'd completely filled AVE4041 he hefted the Bedford bag into the furthest corner. The Bedford bag somehow disappeared in the course of the explosion and was never seen again. This is clearly special pleading. Also, given this arrangement there should have been a bag loaded on top of the bomb bag showing similar damage to Patricia's and leaving traces on the side of the bomb bag with which it had been in contact. None of the other bags recovered is a candidate to be that bag.

2. Sidhu moved the Bedford bag, and it was the bomb. Sidhu, contrary to his statement, and despite the weather and time pressure, took time to pull out the Bedford bag, put Patricia's in its place and replace the Bedford bag on top. Again, a third bag must have been loaded on top of the Bedford bag, but there's no candidate to be that bag.

3. Sidhu didn't move the Bedford bag, and it wasn't the bomb. This was the position of the FAI. In this case the IED was in another brown Samsonite coming off the rocket from PA103A, which Sidhu loaded on top of the Bedford bag. Patricia's case then went on top. As Rolfe points out, the Bedford bag would then have been heavily damaged by the blast, and fragments of it and its contents would have been recovered. And we'd be able to identify it, because it wasn't any of the other bags of Heathrow origin, which are all accounted for. But there is no trace of any such additional innocent bag having existed.

4. Sidhu didn't move the Bedford bag, and it was the bomb. In this case Patricia's bag went on top, and is the only innocent bag to be loaded flat against the bomb bag. This fits with the evidence. The only problem is the ex-cathedra pronouncements of the forensic boffins that the bomb bag was in the second layer. However (a) we're dealing with so many unkowns here that the science can hardly be regarded as exact, (b) as 'Aku' said, hard, convex cases can move around in flight, which would have pushed the end of the bomb bag up into the sloping section of the container, and (c) the evidence in favour of this scenario is also forensic science and should be taken equally seriously.


We used to favour (2) above as being in agreement with the assertions made by the forensic scientists. Now that Sidhu's statement has come to light and we have Rolfe's analysis of the baggage loaded at Heathrow, the arguments for (4) have become compelling.

As I've said before, a major problem (IMO) is the over-reliance of the courts on forensic results: because they are 'science', they are indisputable. The BTF 'proved' the bomb to be Libyan, therefore the judges were that much more prepared to believe the Crown's ridiculous account. The explosion was 'definitely in the second layer of baggage', hence the overlooking of the Heathrow evidence by both sides.

 

[Rolfe]

That's a good way of putting it, Pete. I think the difficulty is explaining exactly why 3 is factually impossible. It requires imagining a suitcase which was under the bomb suitcase, supporting it in the second layer, and shielding the floor of the container from the blast, but which didn't exist. A sort of material ghost.

When I read Sidhu's statements and his sworn evidence, I find it extremely difficult to believe he's mistaken. If he didn't remember he would have said so. Which kills 1 and 2. 3 is impossible, which only leaves 4.

Unless you believe the forensics that is.

I'm astounded by how uncertain the forensics really seems to be. They thought it was probably on the second layer seems to sum it up. That's not good enough to justify excuding the Heathrow bags even if Bedford's story wasn't part of the equation. Even if that case had come off the carousel and Bedford didn't remember what it looked like, it's still the bomb if Sidhu didn't move that luggage. And they absolutely believed Sidhu didn't move that luggage. They just didn't see that 3 was impossible.

But even if 3 wasn't impossible, you still need to be damn sure that the bomb was on the second layer before you can ignore the Heathrow luggage. They weren't. They never were. But they ignored it anyway. That's what the Crown realised in 1999, and why they had to bury Sidhu's evidence and hope the defence didn't realise they really needed to dig it up.

The court realised they weren't damn sure about the second-layer thing. The judgment just says that it "accepts for the purposes of this argument" that the bomb wasn't on the floor of the container. Hardly a ringing endorsement. Just like they "accepted" that the clothes were bought on 9th December, or that Sidhu moved the luggage, or that tray 8849 really came off KM180 - no proof of any of these things, just balance of probabilities. Except every time if you "just accept" the opposite, just as likely scenario, Megrahi is an innocent man.

I want to know why the cops were so dead set on ignoring the Heathrow possibility right from the start. Just so Orr didn't lose face after having told the world on Hogmanay that the bomb had come from Frankfurt?

Rolfe.

 

[joolz]

Apologies if I'm repeating anything but I haven't read the whole thread and won't have time before I go on hol - via Heathrow - but I have read the Heathrow document in detail and, even though I believe Megrahi was innocent, I tried to study it objectively.

I have a few questions about the doc:

1 It mentions the x-ray guys 'helping' the loaders, have they said explicitly that they sometimes put luggage into containers, or is the 'help' taking it from the x-ray machines out to the container where they are then loaded by the loaders? If there are job demarcation lines then I'd expect the latter.

2 If one of the diagrams is to scale, it appears that a plane would take only two containers across the plane width. Is this correct? If it's possible to load 3 then the bomber couldn't guarantee the case would be beside the skin of the aircraft even if he loaded it himself, if the drawing is to scale then he could.

3 Page 5: "The identity of the suitcase which was directly underneath [the bomb suitcase] was never established'. How can this be? If they have enough remnants to be so certain about the Samsonite make/model surely they would have even more remnants of the non-bomb suitcases (despite the fall) and so be able to determine which was below the one they believe the bomb to have been in? From the doc it seems to me that there was only one case beside the bomb case, therefore the bomb must have been on the floor. Assuming everything in the doc is factual, how could anyone come to a different conclusion?

4 Page 12: "The defence...., and declined to call Amarjit Sidhu....". Is the defence team still of the same opinion or do they realise their error?

It beggars belief that they don't seem to have asked the final loader about this. The person loading the Frankfurt cases would have been the last person to see the bomb.

This, overall, is a damning indictment of Heathrow security. Containers unprotected, cases missing flights, cases being added to flights in error, cases turning up and being left overnight or 'helpfully' being sent early to a different airport in the destination country. Surely with this shocking security situation, and the break-in on top, one would have to be very naive to state categorically that the bomb could not have originated at Heathrow.

Every case is barcoded for tracking, IIRC this was even the case long before Lockerbie, so how can the system be so chaotic? If barcodes were used to scan cases into and out of containers with a count check before sealing the container then there would be no dispute about the number of cases or who loaded them.

As the bomb suitcase was placed with the handle away from the door, I wonder if it even had a barcoded luggage tag on it?

 

[joolz]

OT

Rolfe -Tried to PM to say I'd put my questions here but.....

Rolfe has exceeded their stored private messages quota and cannot accept further messages until they clear some space.

 

[Bunntamas]

Be careful with Caustic Logic's blog. .... he bashed out posts when we weren't at all sure about stuff, and sometimes he speculated, and sometimes he posted stuff we know now isn't right.

Just don't believe everything you read there. Some of it is superseded.

Rolfe.

HA!! Understatements of all understatements.

 

[Rolfe]

Hi Bunntamas! Lovely morning! Hope you are well.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Apologies if I'm repeating anything but I haven't read the whole thread and won't have time before I go on hol - via Heathrow - but I have read the Heathrow document in detail and, even though I believe Megrahi was innocent, I tried to study it objectively.

I have a few questions about the doc:

I'm going to have another go at tidying up the explanation. It's obviously not as clear as I'd like it to be.

1 It mentions the x-ray guys 'helping' the loaders, have they said explicitly that they sometimes put luggage into containers, or is the 'help' taking it from the x-ray machines out to the container where they are then loaded by the loaders? If there are job demarcation lines then I'd expect the latter.

I don't get a sense that there was rigid demarcation as you find in some workplaces. Mostly the tale was that the x-ray operators took the cases off the carousel, x-rayed them, then left them beside the x-ray machine for the loader to sort by flight and load into the right container. The x-ray machine was very close to the container, so really, there wasn't much point in moving them a couple more yards. If you picked up an already-screened case, it would be to put it in the container. Kamboj, who always seems to have a slightly different version from everybody else, seemed to imply that the loader took the cases off the carousel.

I think this is partly a feature of how the statements were taken. They weren't verbatim transcripts of what people said, they were what the interviewer thought they were getting at. Some of these people didn't have English as their first language. So long as the statement was more or less what they'd said, I suspect they weren't quibbling about minor points when they signed them.

The question really was, how the bloody blue blazes did these two "extra" cases get into the container? Bedford clearly didn't put them there. He thought Kamboj had put them there. Why did he think that? According to him, because Kamboj said so. Kamboj didn't remember ever saying (or doing) any such thing. The other possibility (as I see it) is that Bedford saw the cases and just assumed Kamboj must have put them there. Then later, to deflect criticism, he invented the part where Kamboj actually said he'd done it.

One has to remember how quiet the shed was that afternoon. They had all been very busy in the morning, with many departing flights, and a lot more people working there. However the rest of the staff went off duty at lunch-time, leaving only three people - Bedford, Kamboj and Parmar. They weren't exactly pushed. Carlsson's case arrived before 2 pm, so from 2 pm until after 4 pm they had FIVE suitcases to process. Be still my heart!

It was so dead, Bedford went off to have a natter with Walker, at 4.15. What were Kamboj and Parmar actually doing for the next half hour? Amazingly, nobody seems to have asked them. Nowhere in their statements (or their evidence) is there any sign that they have been asked to think specifically about the time after Bedford left the shed, and remember where they were, what they were doing, if they x-rayed any cases during that time, if they always had the container in sight, if anyone else could have approached it, or if they noticed anyone else hanging around.

There seems to have been a sort of hut or office in the shed, with a telephone, and given that this was December I'd imagine that was somewhere warm they could wait when they weren't heaving cases. But that was never brought out in evidence. Were they playing cards, or reading the paper, or something like that just to pass the time? Were they having a nap? When you read their statements, these guys were working some very long shifts, and I wouldn't be surprised if napping in quiet periods was quite common.

But, incredibly, neither of them was ever pressed on that point. In early 1989 this should have been a huge issue for the investigators, but there's no evidence the questions were even asked.

It's fairly clear that both Kamboj and Parmar might occasionally load a suitcase or two into the container. Clearly, if that never happened, Bedford wouldn't have assumed it had. However, Parmar said he'd only do it if they were really busy, and they were so quiet that afternoon he'd just have left the odd case for Bedford to deal with. Kamboj said the same thing. It was Bedford's job to load the cases, not his. Both of them agreed that they might ocasionally put something in a container, but both also said they had absolutely no recollection of having done that on 21st December.

2 If one of the diagrams is to scale, it appears that a plane would take only two containers across the plane width. Is this correct? If it's possible to load 3 then the bomber couldn't guarantee the case would be beside the skin of the aircraft even if he loaded it himself, if the drawing is to scale then he could.

There are some more drawings in the AAIB report. There were only two containers across the width of the plane, and they were shaped to fit the curve of the hull. Anything in that angled corner would have been very close to the skin of the plane, irrespective of exactly where the container was loaded.

3 Page 5: "The identity of the suitcase which was directly underneath [the bomb suitcase] was never established'. How can this be? If they have enough remnants to be so certain about the Samsonite make/model surely they would have even more remnants of the non-bomb suitcases (despite the fall) and so be able to determine which was below the one they believe the bomb to have been in? From the doc it seems to me that there was only one case beside the bomb case, therefore the bomb must have been on the floor. Assuming everything in the doc is factual, how could anyone come to a different conclusion?

That's just the point. An important point to appreciate is the nature of what happened when the bomb went off. It ripped apart a fair number of cases and bags in that corner of the container, and created a sort of confetti of blast-damaged luggage fragments. Multiple pieces of even the most severely damaged items were recovered. The idea that there could have been another case in the middle of that which contributed nothing at all to the resulting mix is a bit like imagining a puff of wind might selectively blow away only blue scraps of confetti, leaving no blue in the sweepings from the ground. The group of 25 blast-damaged cases/bags were everything that was in the radius of the explosion.

So what was under the bomb? There is no candidate. None of the six legitimate Heathrow interline items was in that position, because none of these were pulverised in the way a case in that position must have been pulverised. There was no other stray item in the mix that might have been in that position either. The only case that was pulverised in that was was Patricia's, but Patricia was on the feeder flight.

Of course, if the bomb had been on the second layer, there should have been two cases in that condition, the one above it and the one below it. Given that Sidhu didn't move the Heathrow-origin items, you'd expect there to have been one Frankfurt-origin item on top of it and one Heathrow-origin item below it - the latter being the Bedford case. There wasn't. There is nothing for the Bedford case to be except the bomb.

4 Page 12: "The defence...., and declined to call Amarjit Sidhu....". Is the defence team still of the same opinion or do they realise their error?

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a "defence team" any more, after Megrahi dropped his appeal over three years ago. They've moved on.

One thing to bear in mind is the sheer volume of stuff the defence had to assimilate. Giaka, Gauci, PT/35b, the Erac printout, all the luggage from KM180, then al the extraneous middle east politics and murky dealings that were dragged in to it. We've had more time to look at this than they had, and we've been able to ignore the irrelevant bits. Bill Taylor did figure out that the Bedford case was probably the bomb, but he never figured out how to prove it. That was 12 years ago, and I don't think he's said a word about the case since. He completely blew it at the first appeal of course, so no wonder he doesn't discuss it.

Also, I only figured this out a couple of months ago. It's not been emblazoned on the front page of the Law Gazette. It's quite hard to explain, and really I think only the people on the forum here have figured out that we've actually cracked it. Even the rest of the JFM committee just think it's another nice theory.

The only person connected with the defence that I've talked to on the matter is John Ashton, who worked as a researcher for the defence for a while. He was an incredibly uphill struggle to get through to. Every time he emailed back he'd found a different reason why I was wrong. He has finally capitulated, but again I think he just thinks it's another nice theory.

Of course, it's very difficult to consider that you might have been wrong about something for over 20 years. John was very committed to the theory that the bomb was in Khaled Jafaar's luggage. He worked with Francovich on The Maltese Double Cross (1994), and then co-authored Cover-up of Convenience in 2001 which took the same line. He even pushed that line in You are my Jury alongside the Heathrow theory, which I thought was unwise.

I think the Crown managed to convince the defence that Sidhu must have moved the suitcases despite his repeated statements that he didn't, and that Patricia's case must have been on the bottom. The defence didn't struggle too hard because they saw that as an opportunity to claim that Sidhu just put the Bedford case back on top of Patricia's case, so it was still the bomb without having to get too far into a game of Tetris with these bloody things.

They were had for suckers, and I'm not convinced even John realises this yet. The rest of them don't even know about it.

It beggars belief that they don't seem to have asked the final loader about this. The person loading the Frankfurt cases would have been the last person to see the bomb.

They did ask him of course. Several times. And they trotted him up to Dumfries and put him in the witness box and asked him again. He seems to be a pretty reliable witness to me.

It beggars belief that they didn't call him at Zeist. Except, if his evidence had been heard, the Crown would have lost the case. They realised that, but the defence didn't.

This, overall, is a damning indictment of Heathrow security. Containers unprotected, cases missing flights, cases being added to flights in error, cases turning up and being left overnight or 'helpfully' being sent early to a different airport in the destination country. Surely with this shocking security situation, and the break-in on top, one would have to be very naive to state categorically that the bomb could not have originated at Heathrow.

Heathrow security appears to have been appalling. Frankfurt's wasn't much better, but Heathrow's was abysmal. The real scandal is the break-in the night before, that was reported but not acted on. Then they buried the evidence of that.

The problem in the interline shed was Pan Am's. Pan Am took responsibility for its own security and had its own security company called Alert. They made a big selling point of their great security, and charged passengers a $5 supplement on every flight for this great security. Then they just pocketed the money.

Bedford was a Pan Am employee, and Kamboj and Parmar were Alert employees. They were x-raying the stuff, but that was all. There's no evidence anyone was guarding the containers in any meaningful sense. None of them had any more than the haziest idea how many suitcases they'd x-rayed or loaded. No attempt was made to check that each suitcase was actually accompanied by a passenger on the plane. All this made it quite hard to unravel what had happened at Heathrow, and ultimately made it easier for the investigators to conceal that Heathrow was the scene of the crime.

Pan Am were taken to the cleaners for all that, and made to pay huge damages to the relatives of the victims, and went bankrupt over it. The irony is, they were taken to the cleaners because of all that at Frankfurt. Where actually the Alert x-ray operator had counted the number of cases he x-rayed, and made a note of what they were, and noted "nothing special seen on the monitor". Poor Kurt Maier. Died a hopeless alcoholic after being saddled with the blame for missing the bomb at Frankfurt.

But nothing was to be allowed to call into question the safety of Heathrow, run by BAA, privatised by Th*tch*r in 1986. There's even something in Hansard where an MP says, well of course no terrorist would even have thought of trying to put that bomb on at Heathrow, because of its renowned tight security. Pure bluff and bluster. Saying makes it so, in the minds of these people.

Every case is barcoded for tracking, IIRC this was even the case long before Lockerbie, so how can the system be so chaotic? If barcodes were used to scan cases into and out of containers with a count check before sealing the container then there would be no dispute about the number of cases or who loaded them.

As the bomb suitcase was placed with the handle away from the door, I wonder if it even had a barcoded luggage tag on it?

You're thinking of a later time. NOW cases are all individually bar-coded, but not then. The only bar-coding in this entire saga is the coding of the trays in the automated baggage conveyor in Frankfurt. Even now, I don't see baggage handlers reading bar codes when they load or unload containers.

The only airport in this sorry tale that had decent security was Malta. They were counting suitcases, and flights didn't depart unless the luggage count tallied. The rest of them were in the Stone Age compared to how it's done now. Pan Am in particular was a horror show, because they had decided that so long as everything was x-rayed, then it didn't matter whether there was a passenger with it or not. (And even then, they only x-rayed cases transferring from other airlines. If you checked in at a Pan Am desk and had a US passport or just looked honest, your luggage would just go. Khaled Jafaar had a US passport.)

Now, I see CCTV cameras in baggage halls. I see everything being x-rayed even if you're obviously a white western tourist. I don't know how much bag-counting happens though, 'cos they still lose luggage all the time. They're always fighting the last war though. Ask the relatives of the 3,000 people who died in 2001.

If I was Bunntamas, the thing I'd be flaming mad about is that the British authorities knew there was very strong evidence the bomb went on board at Heathrow, and chose to ignore that right from the beginning. Right from January 1989 they were telling the papers the bomb was on the feeder flight, and stuff about Karen Noonan possibly having been tricked into carrying it in her luggage and all sorts of possibilities, all involving the feeder flight.

Nobody told the press what Bedford had said, or about the break-in. First they just assumed the bomb was on the second layer, then they got the forensics guys to back them up. All to avoid asking anyone what was going on at Heathrow that day. Then they found the spurious red herring trail to Malta, and that was that.

Only in 1999 did the Crown seem to realise what had happened in 1989. So they buried a pile of evidence to try to prevent anyone else realising it. And they succeeded.

Somebody thought that protecting the reputation of Heathrow airport was more important than finding the bastards who murdered 270 people. At least some of these somebodies were Scottish police, and a bunch of the rest of them were Scottish lawyers. If people want to bash Scotland for something, bash my country for what was really done wrong, not for letting a guy who had nothing to do with it spend his last couple of years at home with his family.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

As may have been realised from the end of my last post, I've made up my mind. I'm going with the conspiracy theory. Bastards.

The disappearance of the Manly statement is what swings it in the end. It's just too much to believe it was accidental. The way the story was originally told was that nobody knew about Manly's report of the break-in until he came forward in 2001. That's not how it happened at all.

Manly reported the break-in, and nothing was done. Nothing went on being done until the end of January 1989 when BAA, on its own initiative, notified the Met that there had been a break-in and maybe someone would like to know about it. The Met told Lockerbie, and they had a chin-wag about what to do, which resulted in the Met being asked to interview Manly. The Met did that, on 31st January, and also interviewed other relevant witnesses. Manly's statement was sent to Lockerbie, where it was entered into Holmes on 2nd February.

The story then is that it was considered in the light of a number of emerging lines of inquiry. If you believe that I've a bridge to sell you. It was buried. Nobody knew about it. The rank and file detectives didn't know about it, just as they didn't know that the bottom left-hand case was a brown Samsonite that had appeared in mysterious circumstances while the container was unattended.

The head of the inquiry made up its mind in December 1988 that this wasn't going to be Heathrow's problem, and the more evidence emerged showing that it bloody well was Heathrow's problem, the more he ignored it.

WHY he did that, I have no freaking clue. I cannot imagine any reason good enough to allow the murderers of 270 people to go free. Maybe if we get that public inquiry, we'll find out.

Rolfe.

 

[joolz]

I'm going to have another go at tidying up the explanation. It's obviously not as clear as I'd like it to be.

It's well written, just that a couple of extra lines may have pre-empted my questions. I also did a lot of flicking forward and back to remember who was who. Maybe an appendix with names/job titles would speed that up? Or maybe it's just that I have a short term memory problem. Or maybe it's just that I have a short term memory problem.

The x-ray machine was very close to the container, so really, there wasn't much point in moving them a couple more yards.

That answers my question and seems to show that a x-rayer would only (a) leave the case beside the machine of (b) put the case into the container.

Then later, to deflect criticism, he invented the part where Kamboj actually said he'd done it.

May not have been a deliberate invention, your mind doesn't always tell you the truth, especially if you realise you may have, unwittingly, loaded a bomb on a plane.

There were only two containers across the width of the plane, and they were shaped to fit the curve of the hull. Anything in that angled corner would have been very close to the skin of the plane, irrespective of exactly where the container was loaded.

That was my assumption, but it wasn't stated explicitly in the doc that there are only two. That info supports the theory that the bomber would know a case put at that position would cause maximum damage.

I'm not sure there is such a thing as a "defence team" any more, after Megrahi dropped his appeal over three years ago. They've moved on.

I thought there was talk of another appeal so assumed there was a team looking into it and they would interview the original defence team?

Even the rest of the JFM committee just think it's another nice theory.

Where's their evidence that the bomb case wasn't on the bottom?

They did ask him of course. Several times. And they trotted him up to Dumfries and put him in the witness box and asked him again. He seems to be a pretty reliable witness to me.

Sorry, didn't remember seeing that in the doc.

Poor Kurt Maier. Died a hopeless alcoholic after being saddled with the blame for missing the bomb at Frankfurt.

Didn't know that, how sad.

You're thinking of a later time. NOW cases are all individually bar-coded, but not then.

I thought they had been barcoded for ages, I traveled a lot with work, but my memory is obviously playing tricks.

If people want to bash Scotland for something, bash my country for what was really done wrong, not for letting a guy who had nothing to do with it spend his last couple of years at home with his family.

Seconded!

 

[Rolfe]

It's well written, just that a couple of extra lines may have pre-empted my questions. I also did a lot of flicking forward and back to remember who was who. Maybe an appendix with names/job titles would speed that up? Or maybe it's just that I have a short term memory problem. Or maybe it's just that I have a short term memory problem.

It's about getting the material in the right order, and about explaining the analysis of the recovered luggage clearly. I still think I can do better. I have a different document covering the same ground, which is absolutely not for public consumption, which may be better. I'll see if I can cannibalise the presentation.

That answers my question and seems to show that a x-rayer would only (a) leave the case beside the machine of (b) put the case into the container.

May not have been a deliberate invention, your mind doesn't always tell you the truth, especially if you realise you may have, unwittingly, loaded a bomb on a plane.

I did wonder about that, but I thought it was a bit of a flaky thing to suggest. It was nearly three weeks before the cops came to interview him. In that time, it's possible he was worrying himself sick and managed to convince himself that Kamboj had said he had put these cases there.

That was my assumption, but it wasn't stated explicitly in the doc that there are only two. That info supports the theory that the bomber would know a case put at that position would cause maximum damage.

http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/2-1990%20N739PA%20Append.pdf

Page 5 of the pdf.

The shaping of the container to the curve of the fuselage meant that the containers could only go in one way round. Anything on the left near the bottom would be close to the skin of the plane. That IED was in just about the worst place possible. It wasn't even half a suitcase width from the edge of the container - the side of the case where the IED was packed was rammed right into the bottom of the overhang.

I thought there was talk of another appeal so assumed there was a team looking into it and they would interview the original defence team?

It's difficult to envisage another appeal since the fall of the Gaddafi regime. The new government in Libya wants to move on, and they're unlikely to encourage Megrahi's wife or children to do anything.

Where's their evidence that the bomb case wasn't on the bottom?

They're not maintaining it wasn't. They just don't entirely grok that it's sewn up. Their heads are full of legal niceties and public inquiries. They always knew the verdict was a travesty and the bomb was probably in the Bedford suitcase. Maybe changing "probably" to "definitely" isn't such a big deal.

Sorry, didn't remember seeing that in the doc.

Page 7 - until I rewrite it! Three police statements, and an extract from his testimony at the Fatal Accident Inquiry. My point is that they dropped his evidence like a hot brick for the Camp Zeist trial. Because if they'd been honest and led his evidence, they would have lost the case.

Didn't know that, how sad.

I don't know that was cause and effect, but he was fine when he gave evidence in 1992 in the USA, and he was said to be a reliable and trustworthy employee. In 1992, the US court decided he had failed to spot the bomb on the x-ray. In 2000 he was terminally ill in a hospice, with cancer on top of a dreadful history of alcohol abuse and a chaotic lifestyle.

I thought they had been barcoded for ages, I traveled a lot with work, but my memory is obviously playing tricks.

I know what you mean, I thought it had been longer as well. However, I've read enough evidence from the Lockerbie files to fry my brain, and bar-coded luggage tags are never mentioned.

I'm going to get back to trying to explain all this to various people.

Rolfe.

 

[CTB]

The story then is that it was considered in the light of a number of emerging lines of inquiry. If you believe that I've a bridge to sell you. It was buried. Nobody knew about it. The rank and file detectives didn't know about it, just as they didn't know that the bottom left-hand case was a brown Samsonite that had appeared in mysterious circumstances while the container was unattended.

The head of the inquiry made up its mind in December 1988 that this wasn't going to be Heathrow's problem, and the more evidence emerged showing that it bloody well was Heathrow's problem, the more he ignored it.



Rolfe.

This made me think of the " Our governments know exactly what happened, but they're never going to tell " episode.

Mind you, how it happened is still miles away from knowing who made it happen.




ETA: adding this...

In February 1990, a group of British relatives [of Lockerbie victims] went to the American embassy in London for a meeting with the seven members of the President’s commission on aviation security and terrorism.
Martin Cadman remembers: ‘After we’d had our say, the meeting broke up and we moved towards the door. As we got there, I found myself talking to two members of the Commission – I think they were senators. One of them said “Your government and our government know exactly what happened at Lockerbie. But they are not going to tell you.'

Paul Foot (1937-2004), Private Eye, May, 2001

 

[Rolfe]

Actually, I don't think that's related. I don't set much store by what the senator said to Mr. Cadman. I think he was just another conspiracy theorist, but one on the inside. He maybe thought he knew something, but I question if he really did.

Compare that nutter Tam Dalyell, who keeps telling everyone and anyone who will listen that it was all arranged as a "Faustian pact" to allow the Iranians to bring down Pan Am 103 in return for them undertaking to stop at one. Tam Dalyell was an MP all the time he was saying that.

I don't think the Americans know anything about what was done with the Bedford suitcase. Why would they have any interest in protecting Heathrow? I think Bedford and Manly were quarantined and only a few people at the top of the Scottish inquiry had all the information.

I also think there was probably a lot of cognitive dissonance. People would just "know" the bomb had come on the feeder flight, so they were justified in playing down this embarrassing evidence at Heathrow that was nothing but a distraction, that sort of thing. I think there was at least one copper who knew exactly what he was doing at the beginning though, and I think we may be able to guess who that was.

I think after Malta, and Megrahi, they were all convinced, and if they even thought about Bedford and Manly after that, they believed they were the red herring. I doubt if anyone gave them a second thought after the FAI, when Bedford was played down and Manly wasn't called at all. The day after the FAI reported, Tony Gauci pointed to Megahi's blurry passport picture. Game on!

I think the Crown must have realised in 1999 they were in deep doo doo. But then, at that point they thought they had Giaka, so they may have justified it to themselves as being a red herring they were concealing. Maybe. I doubt it though.

Right at the start, they couldn't have known for sure that suitcase was the bomb. But it certainly looked hellish likely, and there was no way they could or should have ruled it out. Someone was playing politics.

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

Given I have followed this case for some time in increasingly minute detail, it is always welcome and refreshing to hear from others who are looking in, or have an interest in the case. Especially in regard to Rolfe’s analysis of the circumstances around Heathrow and the appearance of the brown Samsonite suitcase witnessed by John Bedford. I, all too often, through discussions with Rolfe on this forum and outside, don’t pick-up on some of the finer details that may in fact be not so obvious to other readers.

I’m not too sure when it was exactly I first read about Bedford’s evidence, it was certainly long before the trial at Zeist, and given the numerous wild and outlandish theories that abounded around the PA103 disaster, I remember thinking “WHAT?!!”

When first reading about this curious and unexplained appearance of this suitcase, that matched the bomb suitcase in every respect, there was hardly a need for a Sherlock Holmes-like abduction, or even deduction of the facts available, to be immediately struck by this suitcase, fitting all the known criteria and characteristics of the bomb bag, appearing at Heathrow in the bomb blasted container.

Moreover, it was known (by some of the investigaing team at least) that Heathrow’s security had also been breached only hours before.

It wouldn’t require great investigative nous to deduce that the bag seen by Bedford was a primary suspect. But, it would take a concerted and purposeful effort to ignore it.

This was also certainly long before I would come to know that the bag was verifiably of the unaccompanied variety, and that this bag was never moved from its introduction into AVE4041 to its final loading onto the doomed PA103.

Flowers left for Patricia Coyle, passenger on PA103

Patricia Coyle, an unfortunate 20 year old passenger on PA103, was travelling back from Vienna with her close friend Karen Noonan. Ms Coyle's blue Tourister suitcase was determined by the forensic scientists examining the debris to have been immediately below the primary suitcase. During the early part of the investigation it had been muted on various occasions, from various sources, that in fact the bomb had been concealed in Ms Coyle’s suitcase. This, unsurprisingly, caused untold distress to her family and friends. Ms Coyle had drawn attention from the investigators after she had been apparently befriended by a young Arab gentleman during her time in Europe and information leaked that perhaps she had become an unwitting mule for the bomb on PA103.

Ms Coyle’s bag had been severely disrupted by the explosion inside container 4041. It was also quite a large suitcase, and at Zeist it was presented to the court as the suitcase that had been on the base of the baggage container and immediately below the explosion that had occurred only inches away. It was Ms Coyle’s bag that had taken the position previously occupied by a mysterious brown Samsonite witnessed by John Bedford. Thus, it became that Ms Coyle’s bag had shielded the container base from the worst elements of the explosion.

Meanwhile, during the early stages of the investigation and throughout all further enquiries, the investigation are also aware that baggage loader Sidhu and another loader Sandhu confirmed the arrangement of the Heathrow interline baggage in the container without noting the actual details of the suitcases therein. But the crucial point was that the bags seen by John Bedford remained in the position as he described: suitcases along the rear of the container were on their spines, handles up, and two lying flat in-front of these on the container floor, handles to the rear, with no portion of the container base empty . The suitcase to the left side, nearest the overhang section being a brown Samsonite suitcase which no one was quite sure how it had got there.

Guardian Weekly

July 2, 1989
Questions that linger in the wake of tragedy
SECTION: Pg. 24
LENGTH: 1084 words

HIGHLIGHT: Can the hunt for the Lockerbie bomber succeed? Could the disaster have been averted? Richard Norton-Taylor reports on the worldwide search for answers

SIX months after flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie the Government is beginning to accept that it is unlikely the terrorists responsible for Britain's worst air disaster will ever appear in court. The investigation is facing the problem fundamental to all police work -- hard evidence.

Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, has offered advice. So, too, has the PLO. The FBI, the CIA, M15, and M16 are all in on the act. Most -- perhaps taking the lead from the US -- point the finger at the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine -- General Command (PFLP-GC), led by Ahmed Jibril.

But this is only speculation and the Americans are not in charge. It is a police investigation led by a joint head of Strathclyde CID, Detective Chief Superintendent John Orr, responsible to Lord Peter Fraser, the Lord Advocate, Scotland's senior law officer.

Mr Orr's team have identified the kind of bomb which blew the Pan Am jet out of the sky and the type of baggage which contained it. They are also convinced the bomb was placed in the luggage of a passenger who joined flight 103 at Frankfurt.

According to sources close to Radio Forth journalist David Johnston, who has written a book on the disaster and its aftermath, the passenger who unknowingly carried the bomb device was university student Patricia Mary Coyle. Her family, who live in Connecticut, described the claim as "absolutely false". A spokesman for the FBI in Washington was more cautious. The allegation, he said, was "premature".

The British investigation team refuses to comment on Mr Johnston's claim. It seems clear, however, that an announcement will be made soon.

So, here we have in July 1989, over a year before the FAI was held in Scotland, not only has Ms Coyle’s suitcase been identified, and due to its highly disrupted state, information – from some source – indicates intimate involvement in the explosion. So intimate, word from someone implied that this bag was not perhaps only in intimate contact with the bomb suitcase, but had possibly housed the bomb itself.

As far as I can recall, during the Fatal Accident Enquiry in late 1990 and early 1991 no mention or reference is made to Ms Coyle’s bag, its condition, its proximity to the explosion or to any suggestion that her blue Tourister case had been used as the conduit for the bomb on PA103. This is despite the bag was identified by mid-1989, and was clearly of something of great interest to the investigators. Even allowing for dismissing Ms Coyle's suitcase as the bomb-bag, given that a brown Samsonite and its remnants had also now been identified during this same period of 1989 as the primary suitcase, her suitcase still exhibited damage consistent of one which had been, in some shape, very intimate in its proximity to the bomb bag.

So, it begs the question, why would Ms Coyle’s bag, its identification and relevance to the explosion, disappear from the narrative for over 10 years? Because, by the time Camp Zeist came around Ms Coyle’s suitcase was to play a critical role in helping the prosecution and the court determine the position and arrangement of the luggage in AVE4041.

 

[Rolfe]

Buncrana, I was going to ask you if you could go back over some of the early press stories for just this sort of information. Obviously the press (including Johnston) were getting their information from somewhere, they weren't just making it up. In that respect they represent a snapshot of the main lines of inquiry at the time. The whole Patricia-and-Karen thing was pretty early as I recall.

If I remember what both Johnston and Emerson & Duffy said, it was Karen who had the Jordanian boyfriend, while Patricia had been seeing an American guy from a local air force base. Patricia's suitcase was in the middle of the explosion but it was Karen's clothes they were finding. This led to that blue suitcase being said to be Karen's in a number of publications.

I wondered at one point if Patricia had carried stuff for Karen, but it didn't seem so likely because if you ask a friend to put something in their case for you it's usually a single large item, not a bag of underwear. I think what has happened is that Karen's holdall was in the angle of the container right next to the bomb as well, and the whole lot just got well stirred. Karen didn't have a suitcase at all, she had all her luggage in three holdalls. The cops spent a while tracing the Jordanian boyfriend, and finally found him. He turned out to be completely innocent.

They also spent some time worrying about Khaled Jaafar. At least they asked questions. Did he carry on any luggage? Were these two small bags of his actually checked in? I don't know if this was because of Juval Aviv, or if they got there separately.

The one thing we hear nothing about is a brown suitcase at Heathrow. It's as if it just didn't exist. It doesn't seem to have been on anyone's radar at all. It's an SEP.

As far as I know, the only publication to mention the Bedford suitcase before the trial is Leppard's book, published in early 1991. That of course (unlike the two books I mentioned above) is after the FAI. There's no evidence of anyone even noticing Bedford's evidence before the FAI. The only person I know of who spotted the significance of it in Leppard's book is Baz Walker. Though he did say, for goodness sake it's bloody obvious, surely I'm not the only person who read that book and noticed it? That's probably where you read it too, I guess. Leppard doesn't really seem to have noticed.

It's a bit weird - I was re-reading Leppard the other night, and I get the impression that he's reporting Bedford's evidence, and not seeing how it fits in. He can't quite reconcile that with Orr having eliminated Heathrow within three weeks of the bombing. He seems just to have assumed the cops must have ruled it out somehow.

A rough timeline of what the cops were leaking to the journalists as being their current hot line of inquiry would be handy.

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

Finding the right keywords is the....er, key to picking out the appropriate articles that might be of interest. Putting in the words 'Pan Am 103' or 'Lockerbie' throws up literally thousands of articles - even when you set the parameters of dates to a limited period. Nonetheless, I'll trawl through what I can and see what emerges.

Just a quick search before, using the key words 'Bedford' and 'Heathrow', offered up this article from Oct 1990 during the FAI held in Dumfries.

The Guardian (London)

October 27, 1990

Any airport worker had access to baggage, bomb inquiry told

BYLINE: By GARETH PARRY

LENGTH: 251 words

A HEATHROW baggage loader said yesterday that he remembered seeing a brown suitcase, similar to the one which contained the Lockerbie bomb, in a container bound for Pan Am flight 103. He told the disaster inquiry at Dumfries that any airport worker could have had access to the container.

John Bedford, from Kingston upon Thames, south-west London, said he did not see any unauthorised person load container No AVE 4041. The inquiry has heard that the container held the suitcase concealing the bomb which exploded as the New York-bound airliner flew over Lockerbie, killing 270.

Andrew Hardie, QC, for the Crown, asked Mr Bedford: 'Can you recall whether any of the luggage was a bronze Samsonite case?' Mr Bedford replied: 'Yes, sir.'

Mr Bedford said the empty container had been loaded with about seven bags when he took it to a nearby built-up area. All the bags in the container had security tape around them which indicated they had been X-rayed, he said.

James Kreindler, for the American relatives, asked if any unauthorised person had access to the container before he left it at his supervisor's office. Mr Bedford replied: 'Anyone who works at the airport.'

But as far as he knew, only he and a security guard had put cases in the container.

Sheriff-Principal John Mowat, who is conducting the inquiry, decided yesterday that the Sunday Telegraph did not commit contempt of court in publishing allegations against the families' lawyers.

The hearing continues.

This article appears using the parameter 'All world publications (English)', as the earliest article, that makes any reference to Bedford and the Samsonite he saw.

Thanks for the corrections regarding Karen and Patricia and yeah, I agree, from reading the transcripts it would seem that Karens purple(?) nylon holdall may well have been simply dropped into 4041 in that overhang section where the handlers and loaders said they would with such small or lightweight bags. Partially on top of the primary suitcase, and Patricia's blue tourister just to it's immediate right, above the bomb bag.

I'll hopefully have some more articles about how the investiagtion were leaking or dropping hints to reporters about their lines of inquiry tomorrow.

 

[Rolfe]

I would think Karen's holdall would be to the left - in the overhang. It was probably as near to the bomb as Patricia's case, but being a holdall probably didn't show the characteristic pattern of damage.

The suggestion that Patricia's case might have contained the bomb is a little confusing. I thought they had believed that for a few months, and then changed their mind to blame the unidentified Samsonite. However, one of these memos is from Hayes saying the bomb suitcase appears to be a brown hardshell, and it is dated the middle of February.

Of course I could have understood if the cops were keeping their hottest lead under wraps and leaking non-essentials, although as noted it was pretty rough on Karen and Patricia's families. However, there's no sign from inside the inquiry that they were paying any attention to Bedford's evidence. Even that memo from November 1989 which does mention the suitcases doesn't mention there was anything out of the ordinary about the way they appeared. Brown Samsonite is said, mysterious appearance is not. The impression given is that Bedford himself put them there.

That Guardian article is a little odd. Of course Bedford didn't see anyone put anything on the container, he wasn't there. It is quite suggestive though, saying he saw a brown suitcase in the container before the feeder flight landed. But then it doesn't highlight that he didn't put it there and that Kamboj also said he didn't put it there,

It's really, really surprising this meme wasn't picked up by anyone but Baz at the time.

I just noticed something else. I assumed Bedford had given evidence the day before Sidhu, but that article indicated Bedford gave evidence on the 26th while Sidhu was called on the 29th. Of course, the 26th was a Friday.

Rolfe.