Lockerbie: London Origin Theory

I wouldn't worry. It's only a 20-second teaser imparting precisely zero interesting information.

Rolfe.
 
Once again there has been an announcement that the film will be shown "soon".

Perhaps even before that, it has been announced that there will be a special showing in the Scottish parliament at 1 pm on Tuesday 11th March. Now I need to get the day off, or at the very least, the middle of the day. (I work about half an hour's drive from the Scottish parliament.)

I may get the opportunity to address the MSPs who will be present. This could get interesting. (Unless they cut me out of the film completely. That would be just my luck.)

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
Once again there has been an announcement that the film will be shown "soon".

Perhaps even before that, it has been announced that there will be a special showing in the Scottish parliament at 1 pm on Tuesday 11th March. Now I need to get the day off, or at the very least, the middle of the day. (I work about half an hour's drive from the Scottish parliament.)

I may get the opportunity to address the MSPs who will be present. This could get interesting. (Unless they cut me out of the film completely. That would be just my luck.)

Rolfe.
Click to expand...

Good luck.
 
None of that is news, to be honest. Everybody and his budgie has been fairly sure Iran paid Jibril to blow up that plane, for about 25 years. And the Mesbahi stuff was known about in 2000 and thought to be of little importance. I think the Mirror is putting 2 and 2 together and getting 202.

The Telegraph story has been fed by Al Jazeera though, and their investigators claim to have proof (or at least substantial confirmation) of what we all thought we knew already. Not convinced Talb actually did the deed though. On the other hand despite being in it I haven't seen the film yet.

Rolfe.
 
Saw the film this afternoon at Holyrood. A bit underwhelmed because there was really nothing in it I wasn't already aware of. It was all hearsay, though Al Jazeera undoubtedly believe it and I'm certainly not saying they're wrong. An interesting contribution to the ongoing debate, that's for sure.

My own part was presented as assertion rather than proof with explanation, which is probably inevitable given the time constraints. Nevertheless there was enough there to show that the proof exists, so all in all a decent effort.

The main news is that Jim Swire stood up after the showing and announced that a group of relatives of the victims will be applying for a third appeal, within a few weeks. That got the journalists' attention.

Watch the film on Al Jazeera English at 8 pm (an hour from now) and judge it for yourself.

Rolfe.
 
Did anyone watch it? It was interesting and the production standards were high.

Something is striking me as anomalous. The thrust of the narrative was all about Abu Talb and the PFLP-GC, and their presumed responsibility for the atrocity. In that sense, there was nothing substantively new in the film, although there was some new detail of course. But the main stuff about the downing of IR655, Iran's vow of revenge, Iran commissioning and paying the PFLP-GC, the gathering of PFLP-GC experts in Neuss, Herbstlaub, the Miska bakery, Abu Talb's visit to Malta and his collection of Maltese-manufactured clothes, and Gauci's original impression that Talb might have been the man who bought the clothes (I don't think he was) was already an established narrative. In effect, Al Jazeera more or less dusted off the original investigation from 1989 and gave it another run. They had, or claimed to have, further evidence to corroborate that of course, but it was of course all hearsay.

What there wasn't, was anything substantive about a Heathrow loading, apart from my contribution. This doesn't entirely make sense. Chris Jeans contacted me in August or September last year, precisely because, as I understood it, his investigations had traced Abu Talb to London on the afternoon of the bombing. I was led to believe this was a central point in his film, and that it was because of this he was interested in including my segment - basically I could corroborate the Heathrow loading from the forensic evidence.

I remember having a telephone conversation with Chris in which I queried whether it was at all likely that Talb could have been the man who put the suitcase in the container, as surely that person would be trying to pass as a baggage handler and trying to be inconspicuous. Talb, I believe, had a pronounced limp. (Another reason I don't think he bought the clothes - Tony didn't describe the purchaser as having any mobility issues.)

Chris said, "but he was a warrior!" which threw me a bit - he was an evil murdering swine. But my point still stands. He wasn't the man for that job. John Ashton also expressed doubts that Talb had gone to London that day - something about him being under surveillance at the time. So I was mainly waiting for the part where they explained why they believed Talb had gone to London on the 21st, and what part they believed he had played in the actual introduction.

Nothing. It didn't come up. In fact, my own part was really the only section where a substantive case was made for the Heathrow loading. Other than that it was merely mentioned almost in a throwaway sense. The "sources" that said Heathrow - which was what was said in the Telegraph piece - referred to something else.

One feature of the film was an attempt to interview Khreesat in Jordan (the man has a Facebook page, believe it or not). He initially agreed to be interviewed, but then retreated and refused all contact. After Khreesat withdrew, a voice-over said that an associate of his had confirmed his involvement in Lockerbie and also said that Heathrow was the point of introduction. Be still my heart, that is not terribly convincing evidence I have to say.

But I know that the attempt to contact Khreesat happened in December, and that was confirmed in the film. In fact it was part of the reason the film was delayed - it was almost finished but they held it back to edit that part in. So as the film is now, the evidence Al Jazeera claim to have uncovered pointing to Heathrow is purely this last-minute December hearsay statement by Khreesat's "associate".

So why did Chris Jeans contact me in September, and film a segment in October, which he was keen to do because my forensic take on the suitcases backed up his thesis that the bomb had gone on at Heathrow - if Heathrow was only mentioned to his investigation in December?

I believe the original thrust of this film was going to be not just the old news about Talb and the Miska bakery and the Maltese clothes and so on, but evidence tracing Talb and the bomb suitcase to London on the afternoon of the bombing. Good grief, that was why they involved me! But although I stayed in, that didn't.

Something slightly odd about this, I think.

Rolfe.
 
I think the "What Really Happened" investigation did a pretty good job. I think they good job of highlighting the timer fragment issue. I think they put the pieces together pretty well, and it seemed clear to me that the suitcase info you presented implicated the bomb as being placed at Heathrow. Maybe they cut back on it a bit to give more time to Baer, et al. in building the case. The placement of your interview after the multi-jump implication of implausibility of Malta being the point of origin helped boost the suitcase placement case. They then jumped into an Abu Tal Heathrow bit. Maybe an opinion from someone not familiar with the details would be good.
 
I'm in contact with the production team, obviously, but I don't think they'll be prepared to enter into a discussion of why they chose to present the material the way they did. It was all very hush-hush and quite fraught until more or less the last minute.

The film was supposed to be shown on 15th December, but this was repeatedly postponed - first to include the material relating to Khreesat's present whereabouts which they had only just obtained, and then because the Iranian government was kicking up rough about it. (The film accused Iran in pretty much exactly the same terms as a number of previous films have done, starting with The Maltese Double Cross in 1994 and most recently Todesflug Pan Am 103 which was shown a couple of weeks ago, so it's hard to see why they were so aerated about this one in particular.)

Sadly the producer, Chris Jeans, who filmed by piece with me, died on 22nd December of liver cancer. I think the film may have been re-worked by others since his death, so I'm not sure how true it was to his original vision. Nevertheless much of the narrative was still driven by personal hearsay evidence from his wife Jessica de Grazia, so it's probably still close to what he envisaged.

As I said, I understood from Chris that he had evidence placing Abu Talb in London on 21st December 1988, and that was why he was so keen to have me do a piece for the film. If he had that, it wasn't shown. The passing remark that Khreesat's associate said that Heathrow was the scene of the crime wasn't that strong.

Of course the thrust of the film was all about Mesbahi and the whole PFLP-GC thing. That was the story they wanted to tell. To a Lockerbie anorak, none of that is new, and predictably the Crown Office have simply stated that none of it is new nothing to see here move along folks. To the general public though, it was a very interesting and quite compelling narrative, and I'm not criticising them for concentrating on that.

There could have been a different thrust, though. The thrust that Heathrow was the point of insertion of the device, not Malta. That isn't a new allegation either of course, but up to now it has always just been a part of some general handwaving around, look the bomb could have started in Frankfurt itself, look at that suspicious character Khaled Jaafar, or it could have started at Heathrow, look at what Bedford said he saw, come on, you can't say the Malta introduction has been proved.

95% of the film was hearsay, presented by Jessica de Grazia and Robert Baer. They could very well be right, but simply relating a bunch of allegations you found in a report or that were made to you by various shady characters does not constitute proof. Actually, the bit I contributed was the one bit where there was solid proof, in the photos of the damaged luggage. This was brand new, and also absolutely compelling (if they'd edited in the whole of the explanation of the suitcase jigsaw).

They could have framed the film as "look, here is the forensic evidence that the bomb went on at Heathrow, it's clear as day, is it not a scandal that the original investigation completely missed that?" Then they could have pointed out that the reason for giving up on the pursuit of the PFLP-GC was at least partly that no evidence of their involvement could be found at Luqa airport. However, if we realise the scene of the crime was actually Heathrow, what do we find there?

I think that would be a much more powerful demonstration that the original investigation was completely wrong and Megrahi was innocent. However, the narrative that the change of tack from Iran to Libya was politically motivated is more dramatic, and it's where Al Jazeera were coming from in the first place, so it's not surprising that they wanted to frame the narrative that way.

In the end we're all more or less singing from the same hymn sheet, and it's more that a lot of detail is still missng than that there are serious doubts about the essential nature of the crime. We'll get there in the end but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it takes another five years.

Rolfe.
 
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LSSBB said:
Interesting discussion afterwards on AJAM "Consider This" Richard Marquise was the lone "Official Story" defender (can't believe I'm using that term).
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I've gone up against Dick Marquise before. Several times on Bob Black's blog, where he occasionally pops up asserting that the judges found Megrahi guilty so yah boo sucks. When he is challenged to state the evidence he believes proves Megrahi's guilt he just goes back to "we got a conviction and that's enough for me." When pressed on detailed points he simply disappears from the conversation.

Once, just before Christmas, we were on the same TV discussion, on Al Jazeera. Of course he was in America and I was in Edinburgh and the third interviewee was somewhere in the Middle East and the presenter was in Dohar. The format was simply that each person was asked to respond to something the presenter put to them, and then cut to the next person. Dick only got one shot I think, though I and the Arab chap got two each.

I tried to hammer home my belief that the bomb started at Heathrow, not Malta, and that this exonerated Megrahi. I think it came over quite well, though of course it could be no more than an assertion that this is what the evidence shows. Dick was shown that little clip of Megrahi on his deathbed where he was weakly protesting his innocence, and asked, can you really believe that man was guilty?

I thought that was a very poor line. Of course I could believe a thin, weak, dying man was guilty, if there was solid evidence against him! Even if he was protesting his innocence! It opened the floor for Dick to present whatever he chose as his best piece of evidence. He chose to declare that when first indicted, Megrahi had lied to a journalist about not being on Malta on 21st December 1988. Good grief, even I could have made a better case than that!

The format of the programme didn't allow any of the guests to respond directly to any of the others and so it was left at that. But there is no doubt at all that Dick Marquise is running on empty.

Rolfe.
 
I managed to catch most of the AJ programme when I got home last night and was slightly disappointed that much of it was simply a rehash of ‘information’ that’s been floating around since 103 came down on Lockerbie.

Certainly the programme (and the flurry of media reports recently) helps push the story into the public domain, and for that alone is welcomed, and undoubtedly Rolfe’s portion and interview regarding the Heathrow evidence and bombs introduction is critical in demonstrating the miscarriage of justice that occurred. Nevertheless, at times, the programme centred on too many of the old assertions, too much hearsay in the form of ‘intelligence’, ‘documents seen’, and ‘sources claimed’, many of who possess about as much credibility as Abdul Giaka.

As Rolfe says, Abu Talb was without doubt an unsavoury character and there are rafts of evidence which link him with PFLP members who were planning some sort of attack, more evidence that shows him around Malta at relevant periods of 1988 and some evidence that he was in possession of piles of clothing that was sourced from the same place as Mary’s House stock and the clothes that were (apparently) wrapped around the bomb on PA103.

But, just as with Megrahi, the Maltese shopkeeper description of the purchaser of the clothes said to be around the bomb, bears no real resemblance to Talbs actual characteristics. Taking into account the fact that he was also someone who was of significant interest to security agencies long before Lockerbie – which he would be also well aware of - and as with the other oddities around the clothes purchase, seems an irrational method to acquire items to plan to use in a bomb.

However, if the programme had, as Rolfe suggests, managed to place Abu Talb in London around the time of 21st Dec, or the programme had uncovered evidence which demonstrated his involvement at Heathrow, well that indeed may have carried major implications. However, I harbour many doubts about either the identity of the buyer of the clothes being Talb, or even that he had any direct involvement in the suitcases actual introduction at Heathrow.

I have no idea who may have been involved at the London end, but with Talb's propensity for attracting security, it seems unlikely he would have this kind of explicit involvement. There was so much more investigation which should have been pursued at Heathrow in 1989, perhaps uncovering details of suspicious individuals or someone breaching security, but which now given the 25 years that have passed, may be lost forever.

Rather than writers and producers (the Al Jazeera producers interview on Newsnight I thought was very poor) continuing their focus on potential culprits and shady characters, and instead concentrated the public's attention towards the irrefutable evidence at Heathrow, which proves beyond any doubt of Megrahi's innocence, and probe how all that evidence was missed or ignored, it would I’m sure prove far more constructive and fruitful.
 
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