Lockerbie

[Santa's Boyfriend]

At one point David shalyer turned up and became the poster boy of all sorts of utterly absurd 911 theories, then announced he was a transvestite Jesus.

I used to know a couple of the people involved with Shayler at that time, who were well known for being deep in their conspiracies far beyond the point most of us realised it wasn't really passing the Occam's razor test.  I remember them - the people you could regard as really quite paranoid themselves - telling me about the moment they suddenly realised with mounting horror (in the middle of an interview I think) that Shayler had actually gone insane.  I'm convinced it was all the drugs he took in Bristol that did it.  The way I heard it he was taking a heroic amount of weed, mushrooms and the like at the time, and being surrounded 24/7 by paranoid yes-men.

I suppose you could theorise that MI-5 may have been slipping LSD into his tapwater or something in order to discredit him and anything he said about the secret service, but to be honest they really didn't have to.  Shayler did a pretty good job on his own.

EDIT:  Oh yeah, and Shayler told me that Tony Blair had been an MI-5 agent during the 80s, reporting on CND and far left elements of the labour party.  He said he hadn't seen Blair's file himself but a colleague had peeked and told him.  Shayler told me that before he'd officially gone insane, but that's not exactly a guarantee.  Make of it what you will.

[biggytitbo]

I used to know a couple of the people involved with Shayler at that time, who were well known for being deep in their conspiracies far beyond the point most of us realised it wasn't really passing the Occam's razor test.  I remember them - the people you could regard as really quite paranoid themselves - telling me about the moment they suddenly realised with mounting horror (in the middle of an interview I think) that Shayler had actually gone insane.  I'm convinced it was all the drugs he took in Bristol that did it.  The way I heard it he was taking a heroic amount of weed, mushrooms and the like at the time, and being surrounded 24/7 by paranoid yes-men.

I suppose you could theorise that MI-5 may have been slipping LSD into his tapwater or something in order to discredit him and anything he said about the secret service, but to be honest they really didn't have to.  Shayler did a pretty good job on his own.

EDIT:  Oh yeah, and Shayler told me that Tony Blair had been an MI-5 agent during the 80s, reporting on CND and far left elements of the labour party.  He said he hadn't seen Blair's file himself but a colleague had peeked and told him.  Shayler told me that before he'd officially gone insane, but that's not exactly a guarantee.  Make of it what you will.

Well obviously there's 2 schools of thought regarding shayler. 1) he attached himself to loads of popular conspiracy theories, went insane and became a tarty Jesus, thus smearing a vast spectrum of opinion as completely as possible  or 2) attached himself to a load of popular conspiracy theories, pretended to go insane in order to smear a massive spectrum of people who dared question anything official.  I think it was probably the former, but his madness is a bit too convenient for me.

[katzenjammer]

Well, let's not not get diverted with 911 stuff, Lockerbie!

OK.... but can I just say, one surprising thing for me about 911 is that it never happened before or since.  I mean, it just doesn't seem that difficult to slash the throats of a couple of trolley dollys and fly the plane into the biggest buildings for miles around.  All the conspiracy theories seem a lot more difficult to set up.

Back on topic: Congratulations to the people of Lockerbie for winning best town in the 'Annandale and Eskdale in Bloom' competition 2008!

[Tiny Poster]

It was all a conspiracy to delay the broadcast of the final episode of series 1 of Dad.

[Rubismus]

Forgive me if this has been asked, but why are American senators all up in arms about his release? If there was any suggestion that the truth was different, why would they want to draw attention to it?

There's a tremendous difference between the way Megrahi's seen in the US and the way he's seen in the UK. If memory serves, a good proportion (if not most) of the Scottish relatives of the Lockerbie victims think the conviction was very dodgy, that Megrahi was fitted up and the real truth's still to come out. Amongst the American relatives of the victims, the overwhelming opinion is that Megrahi definitely was the guy responsible for the bombing and the Scottish government let a mass murderer go free for no good reason.

Some people in the US have actually put about their own conspiracy theory, namely that since Megrahi's lived a lot longer than his projected three months it means he never had terminal cancer and so his release couldn't have been on compassionate grounds. Instead they think the British and/or Scottish governments were pressured into releasing him by BP, who were negotiating for oil drilling rights in Libya at the time. This idea seemed to gain a bit of traction in the US over the summer during the prolonged public anger over BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill and a few senators pretty much alleged that there was some kind of deal between BP, Libya and the UK to set Megrahi free. I believe the American government is about to restart its own hearings on Megrahi's release and they're trying to get several witness over from Britain to testify.

[dude]

That's pretty much it Rubismus. Although if the US senators really want to know about any possible connection between Megrahi and oil deals, especially if they're rattling the door of No 10, then the one person they should make enquiries to is the one man they oddly chose to remove from their list of naughty boys to be summoned; Tony Blair. The spurious connections the senators make with the Scottish govt., and oil deals are beyond tenuous. A bit of political scoring with elections on the horizon won't do any harm either,

However, if people really want to get into the political motives behind Megrahi's release, they also have to consider the question of the appeal proceedings. The Scottish crown office and the British New Labour govt., had delayed the on-going appeal interminably.

Megrahi applied for leave to appeal in 2003. Leave was not granted until 2007, a ridiculously long delay. The SCCRC issued only four of the six grounds on which they determined there was a possibility of a miscarriage of justice. It's fairly clear that the likelihood of the appeal being successful was rather high.

At the time (2007) it was anticipated that the appeal would come to court in 2008, however this didn't happen. Part of the reason was legal wrangling over a particular document or documents the defence wanted access to, which they believed would assist their client, and which the prosecution had known of and agreed not to disclose to the court or defence since 2001. Despite a court order ruling for disclosure, the government refused, invoking a "public interest immunity" (PII) clause with stuff about it affecting Britain's relations with a foreign power.

The solution finally agreed on was something I've never heard of before. A "special advocate" was to be appointed who would be allowed contact with Megrahi and his defence team before being allowed to see the document(s), but then once he'd seen them, he would be allowed no further contact with defendant or defence lawyers, and he and he only would be allowed to put whatever points he thought relevant from these documents to the court. Absolutely bizarre!

While this arguing over this document was still going on, Megrahi was diagnosed with cancer in September 2008. The appeal finally got to court in about March 2009, however one of the judges fell ill, and the appeal was adjourned. By this time Megrahi himself was apparently quite ill, however instead of appointing a replacement judge to hurry things along, the court elected to adjourn until November 2009 to allow the sick judge to recover. The whole business with the compassionate release happened in August.

However, compassionate release wasn't the only possible vehicle for sending him back to Libya - the other was the prisoner transfer agreement negotiated by Tony Blair in the "deal in the desert" in May 2007. Again however, that was only possible if there was no outstanding appeal.

By dangling both possibilities for Megrahi (application of the PTA and compassionate release), without making it clear to him that compassionate release was the way the government was likely to go, he was "persuaded" to formally abandon his appeal just before the compassionate release was announced.

There is thus no easy way the affair can be further examined in court, no realistic possibility that the government will find itself in the embarrassing position of having nobody convicted of the Lockerbie atrocity, faced with the awkward questions of the original investigation, the 'evidence' presented, and no possibility that these contentious documents, whatever they are, will have to be made public.

The prisoner transfer possibility wasn't ever really attractive to Megrahi, because he wanted to clear his name. The SNP govt would rather have pulled it's own toenails than implement a dela struck by new labour.But when Megrahi realised he only had a short time to live, his priorities changed, and he became amenable to persuasion in order to maximise the possibility of getting home by one means or another.

We never did find out what this PII restricted document contained, but it was clearly something the government is extremely anxious should not leak out anywhere - and we all know how the past criminal and corrupt New Labour govt operated.

I think we can all be confident that the 'deal in the desert' made by Blair, was with Megrahi in mind, and initially oil deals would have been a priority too. However, as it became clear that the appeal would very likely reveal some very embarrassing details, not too mention finding a miscarriage of justice had occurred, the priorities on the matter changed.

To confound things for New Labour, almost simultaneously with all this, the Labour party lost the Scottish election to the SNP, and Blair found himself with a non-compliant SNP government in Holyrood instead of "how high?" Jack McConnell. The SNP were outraged at the disposition of Megrahi - a matter for the Scottish government alone - being horse-traded by Tony Blair. For this reason, it was never likely they would accede to a prisoner transfer, but the cancer development brought compassionate release onto the table as a more palatable solution.

How Kenny MacAskill managed to go down the compassionate release route but at the same time secure the great prize - the withdrawal of the appeal - is a piece of political finesse worthy of Machiavelli. At one stroke, he both stymied the Westminster government's plans to force through a prisoner transfer (it was politically important the SNP not be seen to be doing what Westminster wanted), and got the appeal process halted.

[biggytitbo]

One of the many weird things about this case is how utterly craven attitude of the politicIans. Whilst you can expect it from Obama and Cameron, why salmond? Why does he continue to tow the line when he must know the case is complete bollocks? He's hardly shy about coming forward is he?

[dude]

The SNP's nationalist ideology sees Scotland's seperate legal system as one of the pillars of their case for independence. The truth coming out about the Megrahi case would also reveal the independence and seperateness of that system as more of a myth than a reality.

The SCCRC conclusion, and the high likelyhood of success of Megrahi's second appeal, would have placed the SNP govt and the whole judicial system in the eye of an enormous shit-storm with the World watching. In the end the whole affair reflects extraordinarily badly on the Scottish justice system, and although the present Scottish government had precisely nothing to do with either the original indictment or the biassed trial, they, along with whoever the current UK and US might happen to be, were just as anxious to see that the appeal never really got going and after being released Megrahi would (quickly) die while they continue to champion the original conviction, and the questions raised by the SCCRC would be quietly airbrushed from history.

In his capacity as Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill will know the full details of the SCCRC findings, all 800 pages of it (while we lesser mortals have to make do with a 14-page press release). It's always been suspected that the details of the two grounds for appeal that weren't referred to at all in the press release were the really embarrassing stuff.

[dude]

An update for anyone interested on how this case is continuing to develop.

While the http://www.justiceformegrahi.com/ group have been continuing to pursue the case through the Scottish parliament, with varying degrees of success, tomorrow Megrahi releases his biography co-written with author John Ashton. Today, extracts are published on The Herald newspaper website, on Al Jazeera and tonight a programme to accompany the book is broadcast on BBC1 (Scotland) - possibly available on the iPlayer subsequent.

Megrahi: 8 Key pieces of evidence
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/megrahi-eight-key-pieces-of-evidence.2012027125

The issues of compassionate release, and the pressure placed on Megrahi to drop his appeal in order for this, while not necessary has been vehemently denied by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.

The issues regarding the PII raised in 2008 in respect of documentation known by the govt and prosecution since the mid-1990's but never disclosed to the defence.

Witness payments, inducement or rewards, which are generally aleready accepted, and the highly suspicious nature of discovery and identification of the MST bomb timer fragment.

But perhaps the most crucial piece disclosed pertains to the evidence provided by Heathrow baggage handler John Bedford. He was the only one who provided a statement to Met police in early January 1989 (approx two weeks after 103 was downed) of the unusual appearance of a 'Brown Samsonite suitcase' in the baggage container he had been loading in preperation for PA103.

7. The Bedford suitcase


CONTEXT: Ascertaining which suitcase contained the bomb was critical in the initial stages of the police investigation and subsequent forensic work.

He had been loading his 'tin' on the afternoon of the 21st Dec at Heathrow terminal 4 and had loaded about 10 suitcases of passengers who had already arrived at Heathrow on other flights for the 6pm flight on 103 to New York. After taking a tea break of about 15mins, he returned to the interline baggage shed, were upon he noted that 1 (or perhaps 2) suitcase had been added to those he had previously loaded. This was not standard procedure of the baggage staff as they were all given fairly strict remits on their jobs. Bedfords colleague, a man called Sulkash Kamboj, was the x-ray operator for this shed baggage destined for 103, and he had initially claimed he had put the bag into the container. He later disputed he had said this, but did not deny that Bedford was telling the truth, and in the end couldn't remember how this bag came to be in the container. It was never disputed this bag had been introduced into the relevant container.

Bedford went onto describe to investigators how this 'brown Samsonite' was resting directly against the floor of the container. This container was called AVE4041, and all this evidence was known in the first couple of weeks. Nevertheless, the container remained outside terminal 4 and on the arrival of the feeder flight from Frankfurt, was filled with additional connecting passengers luggage and loaded onto Pan Am 103. That flight departed Heathrow at 6.25 and disintegrated over Lockerbie at 7.03pm.

In late January 1989, it was confirmed that AVE4041 had been the baggage container that had housed the suitcase containing the bomb. Thousands of pieces of other blast damaged remnants were still being collected all across the Scottish/English border, but in March 1989, it was announced that a 'brown samsonite suitcase' was determined to be the primary suitcase and was housed in container 4041.

At this time, investigators from the Met are insisting that the bomb was likely to have arrived from Frankfurt as most of the luggage in the named baggage tin contained luggage that had arrived from the Pan Am feeder flight 103A that had arrived late at 5.15pm to connect with the transatlantic flight on the larger 747 Jumbo jet. And just as important for the investigators, a Palestinian group operating out of Neuss, on the outskirts of Frankfurt, had been disturbed just 8 weeks before Lockerbie with weapons, bomb making materials and Toshiba radios fitted with barometric triggers that were discovered to detonate between 35-45mins after leaving ground pressure. Yes indeed, it is very noteworthy that Pan Am 103 had been in-flight for 38mins.

Meanwhile authroities at Frankfurt were insisting if it were another part of the group busted in Germany, then with a barometric timer, the bomb must have been introduced at Heathrow because if it had been loaded at Frankfurt it would have exploded on the 1st leg of the feeder flight over the English channel. Other documentation relating to Frankfurt airport's baggage movements was simply withheld from investigators.

John Bedfords evidence of a brown samsonite is then simply disregarded on the most highly spurious conclusions.

Explosive experts determined that, given the relatively limited explosive power contained in the device, now known to be a Toshiba radio cassette, it would have to have been placed/loaded close to the fuselage of the aircraft in order to cause the disruption required to the skin leading to disintegration and total aircraft failure, as had occurred with 103. Further examination of the container 4041 concluded the explosion had occurred at 10-12inches above the base of the container, thus on the second layer of baggage, and given Bedfords statement that he had last seen his 'brown samsonite' on the floor of the container, this bag could be ruled out.

If the explosion took place on the second layer of baggage, then that must be one of the Frankfurt bags that arrived at the last minute from the feeder. (This also therefore implies that another brown samsonite, this one containing a bomb, was placed direct on top of the other brown samsonite. We now have two suspicious brown samsonites, and although only one was ever witnessed, the focus remains on a bag coming via 103A from Frankfurt).

Only remnants of one brown Samsonite suitcase was ever discovered among the wreckage and that was of the 'primary suitcase'. All other suitcases were identified and matched to passengers travelling. At the Fatal Accident Inquiry held in 1991, Bedfords suitcase remained on the floor of the luggage container and simply vanished without trace, never to be heard of again, and at the trial of Megrahi at Camp Zeist in 2000, this theory of luggage composition had completely changed but not the conclusion.

At Zeist, the badly bomb blasted bag of an unfortunate passenger was produced, and such was the damage sustained, that this bag was now claimed to have been below the primary suitcase, and thus on the floor of the container. This therefore implied that the original Heathrow luggage had been shuffled around on the arrival of the feeder flight, and thus what had become of Bedford's suspicious suitcase? Moved up a layer? No, in the judges opinion it could have been moved to 'some remote corner of the container' and was, again, never subsequently recovered, only the primary brown Samsonite suitcase was found. In addition, we 'know' the suitcase came from Malta, so it cannot be anything to do with Bedford's evidence as the baggage he loaded was assigned to passengers and put into AVE4041 hours before the feeder flight had even arrived carrying the bomb from Malta.  By the time Zeist had come around, the problem of the timer had been resolved as experts from Rarde had identified the timer as a simple digital countdown timer and thus barometric and air pressure issues played no part in the proposed bomb device.

However, one further critical element of evidence in relation to Bedfords suitcase was overlooked – or suppressed.

In January/Feb 1989 Met Detective Constable Derek Henderson was given the remit of matching the early arriving Heathrow passengers with the bags that had been originally loaded into AVE4041 by John Bedford. He made a startling discovery, of which he provided to the FAI in 1991. He investigated the initial 15 passengers in depth, their business, their reason for the journey and anything untoward in their background. Nothing was discovered that would raise any suspicion, but vital among his findings was the fact that none of these passengers were known to own or be in possession of a brown Samsonite suitcase. This therefore meant that the suitcase seen by Bedford was not only introduced with an unknown provenance, but more seriously it was now known to be an unaccompanied suitcase; the cardinal sin of any airline.

So, we know the bomb exploded with container 4041 and the primary suitcase was a brown Samsonite, and we have an unknown brown Samsonite suitcase introduced into that very container in suspicious circumstances, that was also now known to be an unaccompanied bag, and furthermore that 38mins after take off that plane fell to the ground.

However, astoundingly DC Henderson's evidence was never led at Camp Zeist and the court were always under the impression that Bedfords Samsonite, despite its curious introduction, was one that belonged to one of the Heathrow passengers and, unless was latterly tampered with, was a genuine piece of baggage and so could be discounted. If not because we also have another matching brown Samsonite en route from Malta and Frankfurt that just so happened to be sent on its convoluted journey avoiding 3 security systems, possible delays at Xmas and winter schedules, and then was fortuitously placed in almost the precise position, very fortunately for the bomber to cause enough damage to aircraft for it to break apart, that John Bedford had seen an identical bag sitting in the container hours before the bag from Malta arrived.

This aspect doesn't even need to contemplate the anomalies around the timer fragment, the Toshiba manual, the Frankfurt airport printout, the Maltese shopkeeper and so on. Perhaps then today, we have moved a little closer to the truth, although many institutions and individuals continue to obstruct the path.     

[Blumf]

So is the official stance now that no barometric sensor was on the bomb (or at least inactive)?

[dude]

Yes, the official version asserts that Megrahi somehow acquired a straightforward digital timer from the Swiss company 'Mebo'. This timer could be set anywhere from 1min - 9999hrs and nowhere on this device was a barometric pressure sensor incorporated.

The devices uncovered in Germany, constructed by Jordanian/CIA asset Marwen Khreesat and as previously used by the PLFP, were found to contain barometric sensors that were triggered after a period of 35-45mins.

PA103 fell from the sky 38mins after departing from Heathrow.

[biggytitbo]

The evidence that the bag was introduced anywhere but Heathrow is incredibly thin though isn't it?


Which rules Megrahi out as the culprit, on one of many counts.