As I have previously stated, I can affirm that the FCO and MI6 knew that al-Megrahi was not the Lockerbie bomber.
I strongly recommend that you read this devastating article by the great lawyer Gareth Peirce, in the London Review of Books. Virtually every paragraph provides information which in itself demolishes the conviction. The totality of the information Peirce gives is a quite stunning picture of not accidental but deliberate miscarriage of justice.
Here is an excerpt:
Thurman had made the Libyan connection, and its plausibility relied on the accuracy of his statement that the fragment of circuit board proved that it would have been possible for the unaccompanied bag to fly from Malta without the seemingly inevitable mid-air explosion. And thus it was that a witness from Switzerland, Edwin Bollier, the manufacturer of the MEBO circuit board, was called on to provide evidence that such boards had been sold exclusively to Libya. Bollier was described by al-Megrahi’s barrister in his closing speech as an ‘illegitimate arms dealer with morals to match’. The evidence he was clearly intended to provide had begun to unravel even before the trial began. Sales elsewhere in the world were discovered, Thurman did not appear at the trial, and the judges commented that Bollier’s evidence was ‘inconsistent’ and ‘self-contradictory’. Other witnesses, they found, had ‘openly lied to the court’. Despite all this al-Megrahi was convicted.
Bollier had been one of the most potentially dubious of many dubious witnesses for the prosecution. But Dr Kochler, the UN’s observer throughout the trial, recorded that Bollier had been ‘brusquely interrupted’ by the presiding judge when he attempted to raise the issue of the possible manipulation of the timer fragments. Could the MEBO board, or a part of one, have been planted in such a way that it could be conveniently ‘discovered’? After the trial, new evidence that would have been at the centre of al-Megrahi’s now abandoned appeal made this suggestion more credible: a Swiss electronics engineer called Ulrich Lumpert, formerly employed by Bollier’s firm, stated in an affidavit to Kochler that in 1989 he stole a ‘non-operational’ timing board from MEBO and handed it to ‘a person officially investigating in the Lockerbie case’. Bollier himself told Kochler that he was offered $4 million if he would connect the timer to Libya.
There were throughout two aspects of the investigation over which the Scottish authorities exerted little authority: in the US, the activities of the CIA and in particular of Thomas Thurman and the forensic branch of the FBI; in England, the forensic investigations of RARDE, carried out by Hayes and Feraday. Without Hayes’s findings, the Lockerbie prosecution would have been impossible. His evidence was that on 12 May 1989 he discovered and tweezed out from a remnant of cloth an electronic fragment, part of a circuit board. The remnant of cloth, part of a shirt collar, was then traced to a Maltese shop. A number of aspects of the original circuit board find were puzzling. The remnant was originally found in January 1989 by a DC Gilchrist and a DC McColm in the outer reaches of the area over which the bomb-blast debris was spread. It was labelled ‘cloth (charred)’ by him, but then overwritten as ‘debris’ even though the fragment of circuit board had not yet been ‘found’ by Hayes. The fragment found by Hayes, and identified as a MEBO circuit board by Thurman, meant that the thesis of an Air Malta involvement could survive.
Even if one knew nothing of the devastating findings of the public inquiry in the early 1990s into the false science that convicted the Maguire Seven or of the succession of thunderous judgments in the Court of Appeal in case after case in which RARDE scientists had provided the basis for wrongful convictions, Hayes’s key evidence in this case on the key fragment should be viewed as disgraceful. There is a basic necessity for evidential preservation in any criminal case: every inspection must be logged, chronology recorded, detail noted. But at every point in relation to this vital fragment that information was either missing or had been altered, although Hayes had made meticulous notes in respect of every single one of the hundreds of other exhibits he inspected in the Lockerbie investigation.
The entire article really should be read by anybody with any interest in British or US politics.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/peir01_.html
Thanks to David Rose.
See also:
http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/
http://www.megrahimystory.net/
Thank you for this link. There are no surprises, for anyone who who has been following this wretched and tawdry saga. It does, however, bring all the pieces together into a single, splendid, piece of forensic analysis.
It is, however, particularly informative about the inglorious ‘professional’ background and past court appearances of the mendacious scoundrels who dirtied their hands in the past conviction of innocents. In this, of course, Gareth Peirce is especially well-informed. The world needs more of her, but one is enough to ensure that the truth gets out.
Fascinating and shocking stuff Craig.
As the article says, on the basis of evidence and “expert” witnesses of such poor quality, it is disturbing that three experienced Scottish judges convicted al-Megrahi, unless perhaps the defense were not doing their job properly.
Shaking my head in disbelief with this obvious miscarriage of justice–talk about a stacked deck.
Will the BBC carry this story?
MISSION-LOCKERBIE:
Writer Craig Murray, danke fur die “Blumen”, aber bitte schreiben Sie keine Artikel, wenn sie von “gehobener Materie” nichts verstehen! Lassen Sie sich bitte auf meiner Website, http://www.lockerbie.ch, orientieren! Alle meine Beweise am Gericht in Kamp van Zeist waren materielle Beweise, welche uberpruft werden konnen !
Wenn Sie glauben sich in der “Lockerbie-Affare” auszukennen, dann halten Sie mir bitte konkret einen fragwurdigen Beweis oder Sequenz meiner Aussagen am Gericht in Kamp van Zeist vor?
Es bleibt Tatsache, dass 20 MST-13 Timer mit grunen Circuit-boards, exklusive nur an Libyen, von MEBO Ltd geliefert wurden !
Zwei ahnliche Prototyp Timer mit gleicher MST-13 Bezeichnung, aber mit braunen Circuit-boards, wurden dem ostdeutschen Staatssicherheitsdienst (STASI) geliefert.
Aus einem dritten, von Ing. U: Lumpert gestohlenen, braunen Prototyp MST-13 Timer Circuit-board, wurde das angeblich in Lockerbie aufgefundene MST-13 Fragment, durch schottische Offizielle, fabriziert (manipuliert) !
Technische Hinweise beweisen, dass das braune MST-13 Timerfragment, Prod. (PT-35B) nicht von einem fuktionierenden Timer abstammt !!!
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
This kind of justice is not just confined to Megrahi or Scotland. It’s commonplace in cases where the government has allegedly been involved in illicit activities such as procuring money through VAT carousel and excise frauds to buy and sell among other things arms to vulnerable countries. Similar features are often present such as serious failure to make disclosure, the defence appearing to work more for the Crown than their clients, judges particularly appeal judges who make irrational decisions and so on. In these cases the Crown often uses prosecution witnesses who were actually involved in the crime.
So basically it appears some judges are in the pocket of the government.
What I find extremely puzzling about Gareth Pierce’s story is this. She says: “It was precisely 38 minutes after Pan Am Flight 103 took off from Heathrow on 21 December 1988 that it exploded over Lockerbie. Within hours, the countryside around Lockerbie was occupied: local people helping with the search under the supervision of Dumfries and Galloway police realised to their astonishment that the terrain was dotted with unidentified Americans not under the command of the local police… .scores of men, some wearing no insignia, some the insignia of the FBI and Pan Am (it was noted at the time that many of these men were clearly not Pan Am staff), invaded the area. Lockerbie residents reported seeing unmarked helicopters hovering overhead, carrying men with rifles whose telescopic sights were pointing directly at them.”
Presumably only those who planted the bomb, and those who knew that it had been planted, were in a position to know that it would detonate precisely 38 minutes after takeoff. It would be simple for them ?” but not for anyone else – to calculate approximately where the explosion would happen. But, says Pierce, within hours the disaster scene was inundated with Americans, some wearing FBI insignia, others unidentified. Where did they come from? How did they get to Lockerbie so quickly, if they had no inkling or premonition of a plot? One is driven to surmise that those who did plant the bomb could well have been the unwitting patsies of a ‘false flag’ operation. No wonder the USA doesn’t want the case to be re-examined.
Is the great lawyer Gareth Peirce from Birnberg Peirce & Partners – the law firm which represented some of the victims’ families in the 2004 FV Gaul Formal Inquiry?
If so, I am surprised that the great lawyer was not at all indignant about that ‘non-accidental’ miscarriage of justice.
Gadfly
Why do you think she was not indignant?
I think the wikipedia article on Gareth is quite helpful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Peirce
Craig.
Often when I visit your site I get an blank page and the messsage Done in the status line. My time zone is GMT+10 so I am out of phase with you and may be attempting to access your site when it is in the early hours of your morning.
Is your site switched off at this time or is there a problem about which you are unaware.
There’s been loads of stuff written about this at aangirfan’s blog.
And what of the two CIA operatvives on board that were taking their findings of illegal arms and drug deals back to the states, in person, because their calls home weren’t being dealt with?
(Sounds eerily similar to Craig’s experience in Tashkent.)
What of the bags containing white powder, scattered all over a farmers field?
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/
Gadfly, Peirce sets out her case in a level-headed way; bluster and emotion would merely alienate a lot of readers. If you are any doubt about her outrage, consider her conclusion:
“The term miscarriage of justice carries with it the inference of accident, but also of death. There is a pressing need to investigate in detail how it has come about that there has been a form of death in this case ?” the death of justice ?” and who should be found responsible.”
Oh Carlyle, I also get the same as you (quite often these days) and I’m in GMT, so it’s likely to be a capacity issue or something a bit more irritating, like the interference by someone with something to lose.
I’ve had problems accessing this site late in the evening recently
# Craig at September 25, 2009 9:43 PM
“Gadfly
Why do you think she was not indignant?”
Craig,
If she was indignant, then she must have been so very quietly and unobserved.
You might have missed it Craig but I put the link to this LRB article on your previous piece about Lockerbie.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
There is a excellent analysis of the Al Megrahi case by Gareth Pierce in the London Review of Books.
Her forensic work ends with –
Al-Megrahi’s trial constituted a unique legal construct, engineered to achieve a political rapprochement, but its content was so manipulated that in reality there was only ever an illusion of a trial. Dr Kochler recorded at its conclusion that it was ‘not fair’ and that it was not ‘conducted in an objective manner’, so that there were ‘many more questions and doubts at the end than the beginning’. Since then, these doubts have not disappeared: on the contrary, the questions are graver, the doubts have grown and so has the strength of the evidence on which they are based. Kochler’s observations continue to have compelling relevance; he found the respect of the court, the defence lawyers included, for the ‘shrouds of secrecy’ and ‘national security considerations’ to be ‘totally incomprehensible to any rational observer’. ‘Proper judicial procedure,’ he continued, ‘is simply impossible if political interests and intelligence services ?” from whichever side ?” succeed in interfering in the actual conduct of a court.’
The term miscarriage of justice carries with it the inference of accident, but also of death. There is a pressing need to investigate in detail how it has come about that there has been a form of death in this case ?” the death of justice ?” and who should be found responsible.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/peir01_.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3118
Posted by: mary at September 18, 2009 12:02 PM
It’s almost boring to bring this up, but…
On BBC Question Time last night, the Megrahi question came up – in the ludicrous context of Obama allegedly snubbing G Brown for a non-kitchen one-to-one meeting at the UN General Assembly because of US discontent at the release of al-Megrahi. All the five panellists (of which I recall there were H Harman, Heseltine, the absurd Lord Digby Jones and an execrable LibDem I hadn’t seen before called David Laws) – supposedly representing a balanced range of views – debated this trivia, but not one mentioned the obvious point, that everyone who follows current affairs seriously knows, that Megrahi was fitted up as part of a deal with Libya in the first place.
So you’ve got five talking heads on that panel, representing each of the three mainstream political parties, and lying twats colluding in a massive propaganda smokescreem every last one of them. Predictable, yet still strangely disappointing.
Same again on BBC Radio 4 Any Questions, with the usually better than average LibDem Chris Huhne a particular offender.
The LibDems are rapidly chucking away my possible tactical vote for them at the next election.
A journalist friend of mine told me years ago exactly how Princess Diana was taken out. I took it with a pinch of salt.
He said the initial hit was to blind the driver by remotely igniting an almost invisible smear of high explosive on the windscreen…
I said where is the evidence of this? I didn’t believe him…
And much more recently I met him again – and he said…
You can always tell when someone has been assassinated.
He said its standard procedure. In every highly suspect death of someone as important as Princess Diana – there is always the most detailed forensic evidence recorded – and a thorough body Autopsy
When its a State Job…there is the illusion of the detailed forensic evidence recorded – but they miss something out
There is no thorough body Autopsy…
Well except in the case of David Kelly and 9/11 – when they thought
Why bother? We don’t need to any more.
They are all Brain Dead
Tony
? ?????? ?????????? ????????????, ????????????? ?????, ??????? ?’??!
Craig,
Any chance you can put a piece on today abouth 9/11.
I’m sure the group NYC CAN, who are seeking an independent inquiry over 9/11 from the City of New York, could do with all the exposure they require. Does seem from their appeal letter to the Clerk, that yet again the establishment are trying to screw them….
regards
TFS
Yes, I find that this site is often unobtainable; either a blank page or “Server was reset whilst page was loading”, generally late at night (GMT). “Pings” to the server are always returned. I’ve also e-mailed to Craig’s Tiscali address about this.
Babelfish translations of above posts:
Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd. at September 25, 2009 6:59 PM
“Writer Craig Murray, thanks for ” Blumen” , but please you do not write articles, if them ” of; elevated Materie” nothing understand! Let please on my website, http://www.lockerbie.ch, orient itself! All my proofs at the court in Kamp van Zeist were material proofs, which can be examined! If you believe yourselves in ” Lockerbie Affare” to be versed, then you reproach me please concretely a doubtful proof or sequence of my statements at the court in Kamp van Zeist? It remains fact that 20 MST-13 timers with green Circuit boards, exclusive were supplied only at Libya, by MEBO Ltd.! Two similar prototype timer with same MST-13 designation, but with brown Circuit boards, were supplied with to the East German public security service (state security service). From third, of engineer U: Lumpert stolen, brown prototype MST-13 timer Circuit board, was produced allegedly in Lockerbie found the MST-13 fragment, by Scottish official ones, (manipulated)! Technical references prove that the brown MST-13 timer fragment, Prod. (PT-35B) from a fuktionierenden timer does not descend!!!”
Sunny at September 26, 2009 2:35 AM
“This publication has nonformal, informative style, the thanks to you!”
Strategist You omitted the equally execrable Frazer Nelson of the Spectator on the QT panel. The programme is a joke and should be binned along with Dimblebore.
I misspelt his name – it is Fraser Nelson. I see he doubles up as political columnist! for the Screws of the World!! so part of the Murdochracy too. Enough said.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_Nelson
Sorry to continue but I have just been looking into the ownership of the media. Talk about incest.
The Spectator is owned by Press Holdings, chief Executive Andrew Neil!! also on the BBC all the time daily at noon with guests and late evening with Portillo and Abbot. Press Holdings is the Barclay Brothers holding company for these magazines – Apollo and Spectator, and newspapers – Daily, Sunday and Weekly Telegraph.
Neil ex Murdochracy editor is a link between Murdoch and the Barclays and Nelson works for both. Dennis Potter was right in his predictions given in his last interview with Melvin Bragg. I loved the man for his humanity and for his work and writing. http://www.wikio.com/video/1462376
the segment of the interview where he talks about Murdoch. He named his pancreatic cancer Rupert and was on liquid morphine at the time of the interview just before he died.
Mary,
thanks for your research, which is illuminating, as always.
The corruption of the mass media makes “democracy” ineffective.
The corruption of the judiciary also makes a ‘democracy’ ineffective by concealing state crime. The corruption seeps into every vestige of the system where matters sensitive to the state are present.