The Lockerbie Case

Only truth, not revenge, allows us to heal and forgive

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 08:17:00 +0000

[This is part of the headline over an article by Dr Jim Swire published in today's edition of Scotland on Sunday. A longer version of the article reads as follows:]

Looking at the situation in the Middle East, we may never have a better opportunity to decry the use of brute force, public deception and material power as a route to bettering our future than we have at this moment.

On 3rd July 1988 the USS Vincennes a cutting edge American missile cruiser equipped with a state of the art Aegis weapons control system, and commanded by (the late) Captain Will C Rogers III was in the Persian Gulf. American warships then were busy protecting international oil tanker traffic in the straits of Hormuz from Iranian attacks. History repeats itself.

Back in 1988 the Vincennes’ helicopter had reported coming under fire from Iranian speedboats, and though unscathed was ordered back to the Vincennes. The ship herself turned into Iranian waters in order to fire back at the Iranian speedboats, known as ‘Boghammers’, with which she then immediately engaged. At this time the ship’s radar picked up the trace of an aircraft climbing out of Bandar Abbas Airport (Iran). This was Iran Air Flight 655 an airliner with 290 people aboard. The airport supported both civil and military aircraft. Those interested to learn more might attempt to get access to a copy of STORM CENTER the USS Vincennes and Iran Air Flight 655 published by the (US) Naval Institute Press ISBN 1 755750 727 9, a personal account of tragedy and terrorism by Will and Sharon Rogers. It is a riveting account from the cutting edge by the Vincennes’ captain and his family.

Back on that 3rd of July 1988, the ship’s captain Will C Rogers III was led to misinterpret the radar trace of IR Flight 655 as being an attacking Iranian warplane, but it must be remembered this occurred in the tense circumstances of the fire from the Boghammers, and the restrictions placed on his ship’s duties from higher levels of the US navy.

We humans do all make mistakes.

Two of the ships missiles were fired and destroyed the airliner: the wreckage and the 290 bodies plunged into the waters of the Hormuz straits, killing all aboard; among cheers over the threat-resolution from the crew [and a from a media team who happened to be recording the amazing facilities of the ship and her technology that day.]

Captain Rogers remained in charge of his ship, and was later awarded the Legion of Merit decoration "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer of USS Vincennes from April 1987 to May 1989”, though IR655 was downed in 1988. The award was given for his service as the Commanding Officer of Vincennes, specifically highlighting his tactical skills and leadership in the Persian Gulf, including engagements with Iranian surface craft. There was no mention there of flight IR655.

Iranian sources immediately publicly swore revenge upon “The Great Satan”, over the tragic loss of IR655 with all those people aboard.

In November 1991, Scottish and American prosecutors simultaneously indicted Libyans Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. Both were identified as members of the Libyan intelligence service. This was a sudden dramatic reversal of the previous years of work between the disaster in 1988 at Lockerbie and 1991, in which time intelligence services had concluded, as do we now, that the Lockerbie bombing was a revenge attack by Iran in return for the fate of IR 655.

Within some ten days of this startling about turn [published simultaneously in the USA and by Scotland’s Lord Advocate], to blaming Libya, for the Lockerbie disaster, two Western hostages, one of whom happened to be the British Terry Waite an emissary of the UK’s then archbishop of Canterbury and both having been held by Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, were released, others soon followed.

Now that the Persian Gulf is again sporting US warships, with Iran’s leaders no doubt plotting how to manage the repercussions of being bombed this time by US and Israeli warplanes, and also with US marine groups on their way. We need to heed the words of German philosopher Georg Hegel: “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”

For starters the subsequent bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 has been shown for our group ‘’UK Families-Flight 103’ by our own careful researches over more than 38 years, to have been the work of Iran, through the use of Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP-GC terrorist group in Damascus acting as mercenaries and financed - just as Hezbollah in the Bekaa has always been - by the Iranian Ayatollas. The PFLP-GC workshop in Damascus was where a set of cunning IED bombs intended to destroy aircraft in flight was made, under Jordanian Marwan Khreesat meanwhile the capture of a terrorist intermediary had confirmed to us [through incriminating documents found on his person by CIA assets], the passage of funds from Iran to Jibril’s group.

We had also obtained in early 1989 access to an illustrated warning sent in July 1988 to the UK Government, [among many others], by the German BKA police group under Herr Rainer Gobel. Containing colour photographs and descriptions of bombs recovered by them from members of Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP-GC Palestinian terrorist group now caught in the small German town of Neuss, convenient to Frankfurt airport.

Please study the story contained in our book LOCKERBIE: a father’s search for justice (ISBN 978 1 78027 920 6: Birlinn, Edinburgh, reprinted 2025) to understand how our search for the truth as to who had murdered our families was pressed forward over the decades, and how it came to fundamentally differ from the official account. It has had no driving force other than the need for us to know the truth about who really had murdered our family members, and to improve, if we could, the protection for other air travellers in the future. Many who have attempted to understand what is said to be the complex story of why Lockerbie happened, seem unaware of how it was shown that the one seemingly solid link between the bomb used at Lockerbie is nothing other than fake news. The link to Malta for the bomb simply did not exist. Its main support among the story tellers of the world was a tiny fingernail sized fragment of circuit board, named from the Zeist trial onwards as PT35b, and allegedly recovered from the crash debris at the site of the tragedy.

The first pointer we got as to the significance of this forensic element ‘PT35b’ found inside a Scottish police evidence bag and produced in court as proof of the concept of the bomb’s travel from Malta, was words from the USA attributed to Richard Marquise working on the tragedy for the FBI from the USA, who is alleged to have said that a court trial without this tiny piece of evidence would not have been possible.

This fragment now known as ‘PT35b’ was treated with great gravity by those attempting to defend the two accused Libyans. The fragment was submitted to electron microscopic and spectroscopic analysis. What that showed was that in the two surviving tracks on it’s small surface, the copper had been plated with pure tin.

At first this seemed part of the normal manufacturing processes used by a reputable Swiss firm ‘Turing’ who were supplying circuit boards to MEBO, who in turn had made the ‘MST13’ digital timers some of which were supplied by MEBO to the Libyans, and which the prosecution decided had been used for the Lockerbie bomb.

There were however two major problems: FIRST,During the intervening years between the disaster and the trial, the electronics industry had undergone a significant change. Those responsible at an international level for industrial and domestic waste disposal practices had become acutely aware of the risks to human health from the metal lead both in the domestic environment and when deposited in landfill. Rapidly it was decided that the metal lead must be removed from domestic use and in the platings on electronic circuit boards. With the cooperation of the EU, Japan and America in particular, it was agreed that all lead should be forbidden in the manufacture of electronic printed circuit boards. Meanwhile statements from Turing about their circuit board manufacture until after December 1988 confirmed that their output was universally made from boards plated in the standard electronic platings of the time, in which the blend of metals used always consisted of tin and lead.

Turing’s director Bonfadelli signed a sworn statement that his firm had been equipped solely for the application of tin/lead platings, before 1988 and so could not have made the board from which ‘PT35b’ would have had to have come.

Second, the police evidence bag in which the fragment PT35b was found was unique in having had its label altered, and in such a way as to make it evident that debris within should be examined, rather than only the charred cloth also within, (which was readily shown to have originated from Malta). The Zeist court failed to have the details of who might have altered the label and what his/her motives might have been for doing so probed.

It was clear that neither the Scottish police nor any agent for the Crown Office were remotely likely to be responsible for originating ‘PT35b’, for we know that the investigating Scots police were in possession of pristine circuit boards given to them by MEBO, and that these were coated with a tin/lead alloy from which the lead could not be removed by the heat or blast of a Semtex explosion.

The likely origin for PT35b therefore seems to lie outwith the investigating team in Scotland, even though ‘PT35b’ was first revealed from a police evidence bag, and access to the police evidential bags seems to have been most generous for American agents from the FBI or intelligence agents also from the US. Without the ability to investigate the detailed behaviour of US agents in the investigation, we were made aware that a MEBO type timer had been acquired by the CIA from a site in Togo and that that evidence was passed from the CIA to the FBI, to an operative called James Thurman working in the FBI’s laboratories. This man broke the news to US media that he was the man who identified the CIA materials given to him which carried with them Libyan tainted details. He was lauded as man of the month, for establishing in many US minds the concept that this was a link to Libya. Unfortunately Mr James Thurman was soon removed from his position in the FBI labs after it came to light that internal investigations had shown persistent distortions by him of evidence in other FBI major investigations, his removal seems to have been the work of his superior ‘line manager’ Whitehurst.

There can be no doubt that access to potentially evidential materials was gained by US agents right from the earliest hours following the disaster itself, and that this was found shocking by some who were honestly engaged in extensive searching of the disaster crash site. The late Labour MP Tam Dalyell had experienced the doubts of many who had been witnesses to the early evolution of the police investigations. We had hoped that people within the US would gather what evidence they could, and we never have wanted to disturb any ‘closure’ that American bereaved families might feel they had obtained for themselves.

Recent international political and military events, particularly some emanating from the USA have confirmed what we had already discovered the hard way: truth had been suborned into US foreign policy and there crushed underfoot along with the interests of those bereaved families in the UK who merely sought that truth. Inability to reach that truth is echoed in the subheading of the Washington Post newspaper: ‘democracy dies in darkness’.

Knowingly or not those currently assaulting Iran and her people from above will now find themselves embedded in asymmetrical warfare. The story of how Vincennes captain Will Rogers III’s wife Sharon came to escape miraculously from the shrapnel of a powerful pipe-bomb placed underneath the family’s van within the Continental USA itself in 1989 should leave no doubt about that prediction. American investigators were ‘unable to discover’ who had planted that pipe bomb.

Just so long as those in power in Iran, (Ayatollahs or not), remain in power and able to slake their lust for revenge, so long will the world be a needlessly dangerous place. The Iranian people on the other hand have tried to make their dissatisfaction with their regime known with the greatest bravery, losing around10,000 citizens' lives to the weapons of their own rulers recently.

It is a desperately sad aspect of humanity that the first visceral reaction that comes into so many of our human brains when we are attacked, or worse still those we love are killed, is to seek revenge. Yet it does not have to be so. We do not in our group ‘UK Families-Flight 103’ seek revenge against Iran for the Lockerbie atrocity. We have sought the truth, and not simply in ’Truth Social’ either.

Knowledge of what the truth really is about the origins of the dreadful attack on Pan Am 103, has only reinforced the realisation for us that revenge is self-defeating and generates hatred and the lust for revenge.

Revenge attempted by Iran against the family of the Captain of the Vincennes was amplified for many through the killing of 270 people at Lockerbie. Yet there still is another way; from accepting the truth of where blame lies could spring the roots of healing. If on the other hand, for reasons of State, of International Politics or simply from our own human nature we were to enlarge or repeat the words and acts of revenge, where then would be the route to forgiveness or healing? One cannot forget, but can forgive. Even for that, we need to know the truth.

Sometimes it is educational to remember days long past when young. As an eight year old boy, the writer living in the Scottish Island of Skye was aware of family links to Canada, whose current leader speaks so much free common sense nowadays. There, like so many in Scotland we had Canadian cousins, who unlike us in 1946 had freedom already to buy as much food as they required, and who sometimes were able to send to us food parcels to help fill the limitations of post World War 2 rationing. One day a large parcel from Canada arrived for us, inside were large packets of tea and white sugar, sent with love.

Seated around a dining room table in Skye our family were set to work, the younger ones with sharp eyes, but the adults also dedicated to the task of disentangling the contents of those bags, for they had burst and the sugar and the tea leaves so precious to us in those days had mixed in the jumbling of their travels. We were separating tea leaves from grains of sugar. It took all day, with the rain beating on the windows as though it disapproved of this affront to the limits of the post war rationing. Sometimes it is all too easy to think of people together as if all were to be tarred with the same brush and to think that all the parcel contents were good for would be to make cups of exceedingly sweet tea, or plates of sweet but tannin laden porridge. Dealing with Iran can be like failing to disentangle the sweet from the sour. It would be wise to think of Iranian people not as evil but like a mixed up parcel, just like we are here. Iran, after all is the remaining rootstock of one of the greatest civilisations the world has ever seen and its people of today may hold the seed-corn of a great future.

Not being Iranians ourselves we should not seek to distinguish between one Iranian and another, we are not this time best placed to tell the ‘sugar' from the 'tea leaves' and can only say that those who claim to run their Iranian 'theocracy’ have, over many years, held themselves free to attack and destroy the lives of others indiscriminately, whether or not those others appeared to have any connection other than just their nation or even just their common language with any acts of violence or hatred.

True, Iranians have emerged to find themselves governed by a ‘theocracy’ which they themselves may have summoned back from France, but which, given the reins of power, corrupted itself through the lust for even greater influence through militarism and terrorist-related bloody revenge.

Our Western bible does tell us stories of the life of Jesus, and at Easter we are there bidden to remember even stories of resurrection and glory. Let us though not forget, believers or not, how, in one such story when a woman was to be stoned to death for adultery, none of the accusing rabble of men could convincingly tell himself that he ‘at least’ was free of sin, and so they did not cast the first stone, but slunk away, and the woman lived. Elsewhere in that book we are told ‘judge not, that you be not judged, and forgive even those who have sinned grievously against us.

Both Iran and the UK whether Muslim, Christian, agnostic, or atheist can read or listen to the teachings which Jesus Christ left behind, namely that judgement of others should be the realm of God, not us, and that our privilege is to love one another.

By chance it so happens that only last week in England was enthroned a fresh Archbishop of Canterbury, for the first time ever in history a woman. How healing it would be if the people of Iran who have suffered so much already could somehow come to forgive their Western assailants. How hard that would be today with bombs and missiles being showered on them.

But meanwhile here in an act of amnesty towards our little group of Lockerbie victims, (‘UK Families - Flight 103’) now that the bonds between our own country and the USA have loosened considerably, and the truth has been so often crushed, perhaps the restrictions upon being allowed to know the contents of all the files that our own country keeps relevant to Lockerbie, but has kept out of public or media sight in Kew all these years, could be released for us to see. It was after all our loved ones who were killed, and time must have loosened both the need for security over the events of December 1988 and the need to protect any ongoing idea of prosecuting the guilty. We only seek to know the truth and after so many years surely the whole of the truth known, by our Government at least, about the atrocity over Lockerbie could be allowed out into the daylight? As the Washington Post heading proclaims ‘Democracy dies in Darkness'.

Did Israel just settle Lockerbie’s oldest score?

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:13:00 +0000

[This is the headline over an article by barrister David Wolchover published today on the website of Jewish News. It reads in part:]

As the Iran conflict intensifies, fresh scrutiny is falling on the true architects of the Pan Am bombing, which killed 270 people aboard Flight 103 and 11 Lockerbie residents, and on Israel’s long-delayed reckoning with them

With the world focused on the joint US/Israel war against Iran, this may be a timely moment to recall an episode years ago which has had an intriguing outcome in the new conflict.

At the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War, American warships were engaged in protecting tanker movements in the Persian Gulf. On 3 July, 1988, the missile cruiser USS Vincennes was involved in hostile exchanges with Iranian Boghammer fast patrol boats when an IranAir Airbus on flight IR655 took off from Bandar Abbas and was ascending on route to Dubai.

The facts are complex, but by a combination of computer and human error, the airliner’s profile and trajectory were misinterpreted as that of two Iranian F-14A Tomcats descending towards the cruiser. A missile was launched, and all 290 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus died.

The next day, President Reagan referred to the terrible human tragedy but provocatively added that it was a “proper defensive action”, and Vice President Bush subsequently rubbed further salt in the wound. As revealed by contemporary American and Israeli intelligence gained from telecommunications intercepts and mole infiltration, the Iranians were so enraged that they resolved to take revenge.

To do so, they enlisted Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (General Command) to destroy an American airliner using a bomb of the kind the faction had perfected and used previously. Such bombs were typically detonated by an ingenious barometric device triggered by the drop in air pressure as the aircraft gained altitude.

Meanwhile, in the summer of 1988, Israel had incurred Whitehall’s wrath when Israeli agents were found to be treating the UK as their own private intelligence fiefdom and four diplomats were expelled. Then, in November, Israel tipped off MI6 that, as security was lax at Heathrow during the reconstruction of Terminal 3, the airport had been chosen by terrorists to plant a bomb on board an American airliner in revenge for IR655.

The tip-off was dismissed as a facile attempt by Israeli intelligence to worm its way back into Britain’s good books, but it proved to be disastrously prescient.

On 21 December, Jibril’s nephew Marwad Bushnaq flew into Heathrow aboard an IranAir freighter, bringing a suitcase containing a small barometric bomb. He was able to place the bag in a portable luggage container due to be loaded into a Pan American Airways 747 designated for flight 103 to New York JFK, positioning it precisely where it would need to be, up against the hull, to blast a hole in the fuselage.

The bomb detonated over the Scottish town of Lockerbie with the loss of all 270 passengers and crew and 11 Lockerbie residents.

In the months which followed, there was little doubt as to the identity of the conspirators – highly placed members of Iran’s government and their agents, the PFLP-GC – but priorities moved on. The US government was under pressure to secure the release of American and other Western hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon. A scapegoat for Lockerbie had to be found, and these were the Libyans Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi and Lamin Fhima. American indictments were obtained against them in November 1991, and within days, the hostages were released.

The case against the Libyans, which culminated in their trial before a special Scottish judge-only tribunal in the Hague in 2001, was utterly ludicrous. It was contended that the suitcase containing the bomb travelled as unaccompanied luggage from Malta to Frankfurt, where it was transferred to a Pan Am feeder flight to Heathrow.

There, it was alleged, it was hurriedly transferred by innocent baggage handlers on the tarmac to the doomed aircraft, where it happened to end up quite by chance in the exact position necessary to avoid its going off like a damp squib.

The prosecution had to get around the awkward facts (a) that the bomb exploded after exactly the time from take-off at a normal climb rate, which a typical PFLP-GC barometric device would have detonated, and (b) that such a device would have anyway detonated on the first leg. So they alleged the perpetrators used an electronic timer. Yet with the vagaries of pre-Christmas scheduling, that might well have resulted in detonation between flights, a complete waste of effort.

Furthermore, the microchip fragment of a timer, which featured as a key plank in the prosecution’s case, has been decisively exposed as a fake, probably planted at a later date to prop up the Malta origin story. The British were only too delighted to go along with the charade because it got them off the hook for ignoring the Israeli tip-off and exonerated Heathrow.

The Iranian conspirators responsible for commissioning the PFLP-GC included a number of prominent officials, but overall executive responsibility for authorising the atrocity rested with the then president of Iran. It may be some consolation for the Lockerbie victims’ families that he was none other than Ali Khamenei, later Supreme Leader, who finally got his comeuppance courtesy of an Israeli air strike on 28 February.

Lockerbie, petition PE1370 and the continuing political debate

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 08:41:00 +0000

[At a meeting held on 11 March 2026 the Scottish Parliament’s Criminal Justice Committee kept open the Justice for Megrahi campaign’s petition PE1370. What follows is an account of the historical background:]

More than three decades after the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, the political and legal debate surrounding the conviction of Abdelbaset al‑Megrahi continues. One of the most persistent mechanisms keeping the issue alive in Scotland is Petition PE1370, lodged in the Scottish Parliament in 2010 and still technically open today.

The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988 killed 270 people, including passengers, crew and residents of Lockerbie. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack ever to occur in the United Kingdom. The investigation that followed involved police forces and intelligence agencies across several countries and eventually led to charges against two Libyan intelligence officials.

Because of diplomatic complications, the suspects were tried under Scottish law at a special court sitting in the Netherlands at Camp Zeist. In 2001 the court convicted Abdelbaset al‑Megrahi and sentenced him to life imprisonment, while his co‑accused Lamin Fhimah was acquitted. The conviction was upheld in Megrahi’s first appeal in 2002.

However, the case soon became controversial. Critics argued that key elements of the prosecution case were uncertain. Central among these concerns was the testimony of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who identified Megrahi as the man who bought clothing that surrounded the suitcase bomb. Gauci’s identification was criticised as inconsistent and influenced by media exposure. Questions were also raised about the forensic evidence linking a tiny fragment of circuit board to Libyan intelligence and about the broader theory that Libya alone was responsible for the attack.

The debate intensified in 2007 when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission completed a four‑year investigation into the conviction. The Commission concluded that there were six grounds on which a miscarriage of justice might have occurred and referred the case back to the appeal court. That appeal never reached a conclusion because Megrahi abandoned it in 2009 shortly before he was released from prison by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He returned to Libya and died in 2012.

Because the appeal was abandoned, many of the questions raised by the review were never fully tested in court. This gap in the legal process became the central argument for campaigners who believed the case should be re‑examined.

In 2010 campaigners led by Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the bombing, lodged Petition PE1370 in the Scottish Parliament. The petition called for the Scottish Government to establish an independent public inquiry into the conviction of Megrahi. Over the years the Public Petitions Committee repeatedly decided to keep the petition open while related investigations and appeals continued.

The legal debate resurfaced again in 2020 when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the case back to the High Court of Justiciary for a second time. Megrahi’s family pursued the appeal after his death, arguing that evidence had been withheld and that the identification evidence was unreliable. In January 2021 the appeal court rejected the challenge, ruling that although aspects of the evidence had been criticised, a reasonable court could still have convicted Megrahi. In 2022 the United Kingdom Supreme Court refused permission for a further appeal, effectively bringing the legal process in Scotland to an end.

Despite these decisions, the political debate has not disappeared. Some relatives of victims, lawyers and former investigators continue to argue that the conviction has never been adequately scrutinised in light of the concerns raised by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Members of the Scottish Parliament from different political parties have periodically suggested that a public inquiry might still be necessary to resolve lingering doubts.

At the same time the international investigation has continued. In 2022 a Libyan suspect, Abu Agila Masud, was transferred to the United States to face charges related to the construction of the bomb used in the attack. His trial may produce new evidence about the operation that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103.

For this reason Petition PE1370 has remained open within the parliamentary system. By carrying the petition forward into new parliamentary sessions, committees have effectively preserved the option of revisiting the case if significant new information emerges. The petition has therefore become less a single political demand than a continuing parliamentary placeholder for one of the most controversial criminal cases in modern Scottish history.

Timeline of Key Events

1988 – Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Lockerbie, killing 270 people.

1991 – Two Libyan suspects, Abdelbaset al‑Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah, are formally charged.

2000–2001 – Trial held under Scottish law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.

2001 – Megrahi convicted; Fhimah acquitted.

2002 – Megrahi’s first appeal is rejected.

2007 – Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission concludes a miscarriage of justice may have occurred and refers the case for appeal.

2009 – Megrahi abandons the appeal and is released from prison on compassionate grounds.

2010 – Petition PE1370 lodged in the Scottish Parliament calling for an independent inquiry.

2012 – Megrahi dies in Libya.

2018–2020 – Further review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission leads to another referral for appeal.

2021 – High Court of Justiciary rejects the posthumous appeal.

2022 – UK Supreme Court refuses permission for a further appeal.

2022–present – Libyan suspect Abu Agila Masud faces prosecution in the United States.

Key Figures Associated with Petition PE1370

Dr Jim Swire – British doctor and leading campaigner for a full inquiry; his daughter Flora died in the Lockerbie bombing.

Members of the Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee – the parliamentary body responsible for considering and keeping PE1370 open.

Abdelbaset al‑Megrahi – Libyan intelligence officer convicted of the bombing in 2001.

Lamin Fhimah – Co‑accused at the original trial who was acquitted.

Tony Gauci – Maltese shopkeeper whose identification evidence played a key role in the conviction.

Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission – the body that twice referred the conviction back to the appeal court citing possible miscarriage of justice.

Lockerbie bomb suspect appears in US court over confession claim

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:19:00 +0000

[This is the headline over a report published yesterday on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]

A Libyan man accused of building the device used in the Lockerbie bombing has appeared in a US court as his lawyers attempt to stop his alleged confession being used as evidence at his trial.

The US Department of Justice claims Abu Agila Mohammed Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, referred to as Masud, admitted taking part in the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 when questioned at a Libyan detention facility in 2012.

However, Masud has claimed the confession is false, was made under duress and should be ruled inadmissible before his trial in Washington DC later this year. (...)

Wearing a washed-out prison uniform and sporting a short grey beard, Masud listened as the hearing before judge Dabney L Friedrich got under way at the District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday. (...)

Details of Masud's alleged confession were first made public when the FBI criminal complaint against him was published in 2020.

It is claimed Masud admitted bombing the LaBelle Discotheque in West Berlin in 1986, killing three people, including two American servicemen.

He is also said to have further confessed to taking a bomb hidden in a suitcase from Libya to Malta in December 1988, under the orders of senior officials from the Libyan intelligence service.

There, he is alleged to have met two accomplices - Abdulbasset Al Megrahi, the Libyan agent convicted of bombing the plane after standing trial 25 years ago, and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, a former Libyan Arab Airline official who was cleared by the same Scottish court.

According to the confession, Masud set the bomb timer so the explosion would occur exactly 11 hours later, bought clothes to pack into the brown Samsonsite suitcase that held the device, and then handed it to Fhimah at Luqa airport on Malta the next morning.

Fhimah was said to have placed it onto a conveyor belt, introducing the unaccompanied bag into the international baggage system, tagged to be flown to the US.

In court documents lodged before the hearing, Masud claimed he had been forced into making a false confession by three masked men who had threatened him and his family.

In response, the US government said Masud had freely provided a highly detailed insider account corroborated by other evidence from the case. (...)

In 2020, two FBI agents and two Police Scotland officers interviewed the Libyan official who questioned Masud in 2012, referred to in court as "Jamal".

Agent Tunstall said the contents of the confession were supported by evidence from the crime scene, forensics and immigration and flight records.

"Jamal" told the Scots and Americans he had tried to record what Masud was saying, using audio or video on a phone, but the recording was "lost". (...)

The hearing is scheduled to last two days, with the judge expected to issue her decision at a later date.

Lockerbie bomb suspect confession video 'lost or destroyed'

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 18:58:00 +0000

[This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]

A Lockerbie bombing suspect cannot get a fair trial because a video of his alleged confession has been "lost or destroyed", his defence lawyers have claimed.

Public defenders representing Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi in a United States court case said the disappearance of the video deprived him of evidence which could have cleared his name.

They are also arguing the case against the Libyan - also known as Masud - should be thrown out of court because it involves events which took place 37 years ago, outside US territorial jurisdiction. (...)

Masud was forcibly removed from Libya and taken into US custody in 2022, with his trial due to get under way in Washington DC this August after two postponements.

US prosecutors allege Masud admitted his role in bombing the airliner when he was interrogated in a Libyan detention facility in 2012.

According to an FBI summary of the case, he told a Libyan law enforcement officer that the bomb was hidden in an unaccompanied suitcase on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt.

The device was then transferred undetected onto a Pan Am feeder flight to Heathrow, where it was placed in the forward hold of Pan Am 103.

Masud has already claimed he was forced into making a false confession under duress and is arguing that it should be ruled inadmissible.

In a fresh line of attack, his lawyers have said his right to a fair trial has been violated because of the "bad-faith loss of material" during the long history of the case.

That material is said to include a video recording of Masud's alleged confession, made by the Libyan official who had questioned him.

According to the defence, the official claimed to have kept the video in a safe for three years before telling a colleague what had happened in 2015.

Scottish investigators heard about the alleged confession later that year and obtained copies of a written statement in 2017.

The documents were passed on to the Americans and were central to the charges against Masud, which were announced on the bombing of the anniversary in 2020.

The defence says that in 2024, the Libyan interrogator stated he had "located the recording device but could not locate the recording itself".

Federal public defender Geremy Kamens submitted that the loss of the video had deprived Masud of "potentially exculpatory evidence would could have attacked the centrepiece of the government's case against him".

"A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video comprises dozens of pictures every second," Kamens said.

"The interrogation video may have shown Mr Al-Marimi [Masud] appearing nervous, apprehensive, uncomfortable, tense, jumpy, subdued or any combination of these states at various times.

"He may have been sweating, his language may have been stilted, he may have avoided eye contact.

"Any discrepancy between the recording and the written statement or the interrogator's descriptions of the conversation would provide powerful fodder for cross-examination and impeachment.

"It was not until he [the Libyan official] was asked to provide a copy of the recording to US law enforcement in 2024 that the recording suddenly vanished."

Kamens also argued that delays in bringing Masud before a jury would deny him his right to a fair trial.

"It borders on the impossible for Mr Al-Marimi [Masud] to investigate his actions and whereabouts 30 years ago, let alone the government's allegations, whereas the government can rely on the fruits of a contemporaneous investigation and decades of preparation by an international cohort of prosecutors and police."

Kamens said Masud's defence would be hampered by his "mental and physical deterioration" and the deaths of crucial witnesses, including Al-Megrahi.

The US government is expected to respond to the defence arguments this week.

A hearing on the admissibility of the alleged confession is due to be held in Washington next month.

Father of US Lockerbie victim concerned about Masud trial delays

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 11:33:00 +0000

[What follows is excerpted from a report published yesterday on the Devon Live website:]

The dad of a Lockerbie victim has called for greater transparency on the health of the alleged bombmaker - after revealing further delays to his trial.

Libyan Abu Agila Masud, 74, has been accused of making the bomb which killed 270 victims over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 and was originally due to go on trial in Washington in May this year.

But Paul Hudson, who lost his daughter Melina in the bombing as she flew home to New York after a semester at a school in Exeter, Devon, said it has now been delayed until May next year "at the earliest."

He has now raised concern about the health of the defendant, which he says is being held back from the public under 'privacy grounds'.

And he fears his health could be being manipulated - citing the example of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was freed early in the UK under claims he had months to live - but survived for another three years.

Paul said he fears this could be being deployed as a delaying tactic for the trial, which has already been pushed back twice.

He said: "He seems to be stable as of now from what we know. But they are keeping secret his actual medical information. I find it a little strange as that is not something that is prejudicial. They are keeping it secret and the judge is saying it is based on medical privacy standards.

"It seems that should not really apply in cases like this.

"There was something similar in a different context with al-Megrahi. He was let out of prison in the UK prematurely based on claims he was going to pass away within six months. There was never any release of the medical information outside experts could evaluate. It turns out it was completely untrue and he went on to live a lot longer.

"I don't agree with that. There is not much I can do but there should be as much transparency as possible. If health of the defendant and medical issues is used to delay trial - or even accelerate it - it should not be kept secret to anyone.

"Even the judge doesn't have access to it I understand. There is only limited access to the prosecution but none at all for the public. (...)

Mr Hudson has since spent decades fighting for justice for the victims of Pan Am 103.

Masud was initially due to stand trial at a federal court in Washington in May this year accused of two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle resulting in death.

He has denied all three charges and Paul was initially told of a delay due to his health.

After being told his health had improved and a target trial date was set for March next year, further delays have now been confirmed to the victim's families.

Paul added: "There have been more delays and I think we are probably looking at late spring or summer at the earliest for trial.

"I think it requires leadership at a higher level to make it all go forward in a good way.

"I don't trust the prosecutors, the police or judiciary, even if they wanted to.

"One of the things I am hoping for is a meeting with the US attorney general and with the chief prosecutor to make sure all the different parts are moving together to a proper conclusion and schedule.

"Reasons given for the latest delays include a change of personnel in prosecution and the defence law firms.

"They are also going through suppression hearings where the defence will try to exclude evidence the prosecution wants to present at trial.

"There is a confession the defence claims was improper and a bunch of other things they are going through.

"Motions are being filed back and forth. Hearings are mostly closed to the public and to the victims. It is really hard for any outsider to know the know to keep it from potential jurors what evidence is going to be excluded.

"I have read the paper motions but have not been able to go to the hearings before the judge to hear about the evidence in great detail.

"My feeling is I would like to see it happen sooner rather than later to never. However I would like to see it done correctly.

"So on the other hand a trial that begins prematurely could also be negative for prosecution and justice generally." (...)

Masud stands charged with two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle resulting in death.

He has denied all three charges and claims his confession to building the bomb and taking it in a suitcase from Tripoli to Malta was made under duress.

Paul, who is now 79, said he would never stop fighting for justice. (...)

"I am hopeful, not only of a conviction here, but we may have a defendant who no doubt knows other people involved that could lead to further prosecutions."

Currently the only suspect convicted remains Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was jailed for life in 2001 but released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds in 2009.

His co-defendant Lamin Khalifah Fhimah was acquitted but remains the subject of an active US arrest warrant.

US trial of Lockerbie bombing accused delayed further

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 19:16:00 +0000

[What follows is excerpted from a report published this evening on the BBC News website:]

The trial of a Libyan accused of building the bomb that destroyed an American airliner over Lockerbie has been delayed for a second time.

The case against Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir al-Marimi, known as Mas'ud, was due to get under way in Washington in May but was postponed to 20 April next year.

In July his lawyers requested a further delay, saying they needed more time to consider all the evidence from the 37-year-old case.

Mas'ud has denied constructing and priming the bomb which brought down Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988. (...)

Prosecutors from the US Department of Justice argued against a second postponement, but the trial judge has set aside the April start date.

It is understood the legal teams are now exploring whether the trial can get under way in the summer.

A small group of public defenders are representing Mas'ud, who has been in US custody since 2022.

They said they have to review 356GB of data with 413,000 separate files, including expert evidence on DNA, finger and palm prints, explosives, facial recognition and handwriting analysis.

The defence team said they also have to consider "voluminous documents in multiple foreign languages, thousands of pages of prior-trial transcripts, and documentation of a sprawling 37-year investigation".

In a submission to the court, they added: "Mr Al-Marimi is anxious for his trial to begin, but understands the challenges that his current attorneys face."

In response, prosecutors argued a further delay would be "an extraordinary step that could be justified only by extraordinary circumstances which are not present here".

They said many potential witnesses are in their 80s and could become unavailable to testify "due to death or infirmity".

Further delays could "irreparably damage" the prospects of a full and fair determination of the facts, they said.

The Department of Justice team also pointed out that many relatives of the victims are advancing in age and have already "suffered for decades".

BBC News understands that the availability of witnesses next July or August will determine when the case finally gets under way. (...)

Bombing accused Masud confessed in 'safest place' say US prosecutors

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 07:32:00 +0000

[What follows is excerpted from a report published yesterday on the Daily Mail website:]

A Libyan accused of building the bomb that blew up Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie was in the ‘safest place’ when he ‘voluntarily’ admitted his involvement in the atrocity, prosecutors have said.

Abu Agila Masud Kheir Al-Marimi claims he was forced into making a false confession after he was held captive in Libya by men who threatened his family.

But U.S. prosecutors argue that there were no signs of coercion or torture and that the Libyan officer who interviewed him was ‘unarmed’.

In court papers, they state that the 74-year-old, known as Masud, was ‘housed in the same room’ as several other men and ‘appeared to the officer to be in good health, and to have access to necessities and to news about the outside world through a television’.

This is contrary to claims by Masud, who is due to stand trial in Washington DC in April over his role in the 1988 terror attack which killed 270 people, that he was kept in isolation.

He also claims that while in custody he witnessed others being beaten and abused.

Prosecutors, however, state: ‘Based on the officer’s observations, the facility that the defendant was held at was one of the best available during the chaos of the post-revolution period, and it was the safest place for the defendant… given the extent of street violence and anti-Gaddafi sentiment prevailing at the time.’

They add that the officer ‘observed no signs of torture or coercion’ and that Masud was interviewed in a ‘typical office-type room’ during which time he was ‘afforded a lunch break and…the proper facilities to pray’. (...)

The officer asked the defendant whether he consented to be interviewed, and he freely gave his consent.’ Masud’s defence team have filed a ‘motion to suppress statements’, saying the ‘circumstances’ of his arrest, ‘incommunicado detention’ and ‘captivity in a system well known for human rights abuses’ renders his confession ‘inadmissible’.

But prosecutors have urged the court not to accept this ‘fictitious account’.The bomb maker for the Libyan External Security Organisation was extradited to the US in 2022 after allegedly admitting to building the Lockerbie device.

Lockerbie bombing accused Masud says he was forced into false confession

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 06:58:00 +0000

[What follows is excerpted from a report published today on the BBC News website:]

The Libyan accused of building the bomb that brought down an American airliner over Lockerbie 36 years ago has claimed he was forced into making a false confession.

Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, 74, has said he was in custody in Libya when three masked men ordered him to memorise information about the destruction of Pan Am 103 and another terror attack.

Referred to as Mas'ud by prosecutors, he said he repeated what he had learned to a Libyan official, under duress, after the men threatened his family.

Masud's lawyers have asked a federal court in Washington to rule the alleged confession inadmissible in advance of his trial in April next year.

Details of the alleged confession were first made public five years ago after the US department of justice announced it was charging Mas'ud over the atrocity which claimed the lives of 270 people on 21 December 1988. (...)

With just seven months to go until the scheduled start of Mas'ud's trial, public defenders acting on his behalf have lodged a motion with the district court asking a judge to rule that his confession should not be allowed as evidence.

The Libyan has pled not guilty to the charges against him. But the "motion to suppress" reveals for the first time his version of what led to the alleged jailhouse confession.

Setting the scene, the motion quotes a US Department of State report which said Gaddafi's regime had controlled Libya through extrajudicial killings and intimidation, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention.

The document says that after the revolution there was a climate of anger and retaliation against those associated or thought to be associated with Gaddafi.

Contemporary reports by US government officials recount more incidents of "arbitrary and unlawful killings, kidnappings, torture and other cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment."

The defence lawyers say: "Just as... a black man accused of killing a white man in Jim Crow-era Arkansas would fear mob violence... so would a Libyan who allegedly worked for Gaddafi have feared retaliation against himself and his family in post-revolution Libya."

It was against that background, according to Mas'ud, that he was abducted from his home by armed men, separated from his family and his medication, held incommunicado in an unofficial prison facility and denied procedural rights.

He says he saw bodies lying in the streets when he was being driven to the prison and while in custody, and encountered other inmates who had been beaten and abused.

Mas'ud has told his legal team that he was alone in a small room when three men in civilian clothes came in. They were unarmed but wearing face coverings and did not identify themselves.

He says he was certain the men, who handed him the piece of paper, were anti-Gadaffi revolutionaries.

"The single, handwritten sheet began with an order that Mr Al-Marimi confess to the Lockerbie incident, as well as another terrorist attack," his defence lawyers claim.

The men told him to read over the details and to repeat what it said when he was questioned by someone else the next day.

"They told him he had to answer the questions with what was on the paper, otherwise bad things would happen to him or his family.

"Mr Al-Marimi felt he had no choice but to comply. He had ample reason to fear for himself; before his seizure, he had personally witnessed beatings in other prisons.” (...)

The lawyers say a frightened Mas'ud did as he was told when he was questioned by another man the next evening.

They say that - when presented with similar evidence of coercion - American courts have found custodial statements involuntary and inadmissible under the fifth amendment of the US constitution, whether they were made in the United States or abroad.

The defence has asked the court to order the suppression of the alleged statements and has requested a hearing so the issue can be decided.

The FBI has said that the Libyan official who noted Mas'ud's confession in 2012 is prepared to give evidence at his trial.

Prosecutors from the US Department of Justice have not yet responded to the claims made on Mas'ud's behalf.

Sturgeon considered resigning over Lockerbie bomber release

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 06:41:00 +0000

[This is the heading over a section of an article published in today's edition of The Times under the headline Ten things we learnt from Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir. It reads as follows:]

The decision to free Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, almost led to Sturgeon’s resignation from the government, she reveals.

In one of the biggest decisions taken by Salmond’s government, in a move of global significance, Megrahi was released and returned to Libya on compassionate grounds in August 2009.

Suffering from terminal prostate cancer, he was given a prognosis of three months to live, but survived for three years.

Sturgeon recalls bereaved constituents who lost loved ones in the attack informing her that they would see the release of Megrahi a “betrayal of their loved ones’ memories” and she says she did not support his release or transfer. [RB: Opinion polls conducted by Scottish local newspapers showed that the Scottish public supported by substantial majorities the decision to release Megrahi.]

However, she bemoans the lack of consultation with the cabinet over the issue and says she was “astounded” to learn of Kenny MacAskill, then the justice secretary, visiting the terrorist in Greenock prison. She says she later learnt of the decision to release him from Newsnight. [RB: The criticism of Kenny MacAskill's visit to Megrahi in prison is misconceived, as I commented at the time.]

After Megrahi’s releases was confirmed, Sturgeon recalls him arriving “like a conquering war hero returning from battle” in Tripoli, with some in the crowd waving saltires.

[RB: Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who accompanied Megrahi on the plane back to Tripoli denied that he had received a hero's welcome:]

"There was not in fact any official reception for the return of Mr Megrahi, who had been convicted and imprisoned in Scotland for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The strong reactions to these misperceptions must not be allowed to impair the improvements in a mutually beneficial relationship between Libya and the West.

"When I arrived at the airport with Mr Megrahi, there was not a single government official present. State and foreign news media were also barred from the event. If you were watching Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network, at the time the plane landed, you would have heard its correspondent complain that he was not allowed by Libyan authorities to go to the airport to cover Mr Megrahi’s arrival.

"It is true that there were a few hundred people present. But most of them were members of Mr Megrahi’s large tribe, extended families being an important element in Libyan society. They had no official invitation, but it was hardly possible to prevent them from coming.

"Coincidentally, the day Mr Megrahi landed was also the very day of the annual Libyan Youth Day, and many participants came to the airport after seeing coverage of Mr Megrahi’s release on British television. But this was not planned. Indeed, we sat in the plane on the tarmac until the police brought the crowd to order."

What Lockerbie meant for Libyans

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 07:07:00 +0000

[This is the headline over an article by Owen Schalk just published in the July/August 2025 issue of the Scottish Left Review. The following are excerpts:]

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to Detroit exploded over the rural Scottish town of Lockerbie, raining hellfire on the community’s inhabitants. Eleven people were killed by falling debris. All 259 of the plane’s occupants died.

The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom pointed the finger at Libya. In 1992, the United Nations Security Council imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Libya over the bombing, including an air embargo, an arms embargo, and a ban on the sale of oil equipment to the country. In 1996, the US Congress tightened sanctions by passing the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act. These sanctions deprived the Jamahiriya of billions in revenue and contributed to the Libyan leadership’s ill-fated decision to “open up” economically to the West in the early 2000s.

37 years after the Lockerbie bombing, two TV shows aired in Britain: Lockerbie: A Search for the Truth (Sky Studios) and The Bombing of Pan Am 103 (BBC). The production of two TV series about Lockerbie almost four decades after the bombing shows the continued public interest in the case’s many ins, outs, and inconsistencies. Despite this, the retrospectives around Lockerbie leave out one important piece of the story: the Libyans themselves, namely, how they experienced the economic sanctions that resulted from the Lockerbie bombing.

The bombing and the trial

Initial investigations into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 implicated members of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), based in Syria. The group had apparently executed the bombing on behalf of the Iranian government, which sought revenge for the destruction of Iran Air Flight 655, a civilian airbus shot down by the USS Vincennes on July 3, 1988. 290 civilians died in the US warship’s attack.

On November 13, 1991, the Lockerbie investigation abruptly shifted focus from the PFLP-GC/Iran to the Libyan government. Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the bombing of Pan Am 103, recounted his shock at the sudden turn of events: “There were hints from various sources of surprises to come, but nothing has prepared me for this. Today Iran is forgotten; it’s all about Libya.”

An “official story” was provided to the public: the bombing was revenge for the Reagan administration’s assassination attempt against Muammar Qadhafi in 1986, a US attack that had killed dozens of civilians and the Libyan leader’s infant daughter Hana.

According to the main counternarrative of the Lockerbie bombing, the US and UK decided to shift blame for the attack to Libya because Libya, unlike Iran, was more vulnerable to destabilization and less likely to retaliate.

The Libyan government maintained its innocence. After years of diplomatic wrangling, a trial was held for the accused in the Hague. Two Libyans went to trial: Lamin Khalifah Fhimah and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Fhimah was acquitted. Circumstances surrounding the trial remain highly questionable.

The Lockerbie case is a window, albeit a cloudy one, into the tense relationship between the West and Qadhafi’s Libya. Readers in the West have a general awareness about what the case meant to the US and the UK. However, they have little knowledge of what Lockerbie meant for Libyans themselves.

The sanctions period

In Libya, the Lockerbie sanctions resulted in constricted state revenues, which meant unpaid salaries, diminishing subsidies, and goods shortages. Inflation rose, public infrastructure decayed, while a growing number of smugglers and black marketeers sought to resell subsidized goods at higher prices in neighbouring countries. Corruption became increasingly normalized, a system of “favours” and “bribes” running through the public administration, damaging Libyans’ confidence in their socialist-oriented political system. As Matteo Capasso writes, the process of egalitarian development that characterized the early Jamahiriya was “abandoned in the 1990s. The structure of the dominant class started to change, the effectiveness of the newly democratic structures decreased and this affected the entire political edifice of al-Jamahiriyah, leading to the dramatic increase of socio-economic inequalities.”

Estimates have been made regarding Libyan economic losses from the Lockerbie sanctions. One found that between 1992 and 1999, “the oil sector lost between $18 billion and $33 billion both as lost opportunities and lost revenue.” Meanwhile, $8 billion in overseas assets were frozen, “denying [Libya] the cash needed to buy all kinds of equipment, expertise, machinery, food and medicine.”

A former Libyan deputy foreign minister recalled that “steps were taken” by the Libyan government to compile data on economic losses. One Qadhafi-era minister said the Lockerbie losses file contained “everything including the number of deaths” caused by the sanctions. Some of these deaths resulted from a lack of medical care, which forced Libyans to take tortuous routes abroad for treatment. “Because of the sanctions,” writes Libyan academic Mustafa Fetouri, “people wishing to leave Libya had to drive to Djerba in Tunisia for example and take a flight from there.”

Libya’s Lockerbie losses file was destroyed during the 2011 NATO war. Fetouri estimates that the sanctions cost Libya nearly $100 billion. These losses hit the oil sector, aviation, healthcare, agriculture, and industry, and caused thousands of deaths. The daily price of food rose by an estimated 40 percent and the cost of medicine rose by 30 percent (though most medicines were free). In 2003, the Libyan government paid another $2.7 billion in compensation as part of the agreement to have the sanctions lifted.

In the context of massive economic losses caused by the Lockerbie sanctions, many in the Libyan leadership, including Muammar Qadhafi himself, became sympathetic to the idea of economic opening to the West. They believed such an opening would appease the imperialist powers while giving an economic boost to the Jamahiriya, thereby stabilizing the Libyan political system. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

The failure of “opening up”

Libya’s “opening up” was a disastrous failure riven by internal tensions and external interventions, both overt and covert, by the US government. Unlike China’s reform and opening up after 1978, Libya’s was the result of economic strain imposed from the outside, namely, the Lockerbie sanctions and destabilizing interventions from imperialist powers. For an export-dependent, import-reliant country like Libya, these interventions had a wide-ranging impact. The liberalizing reforms would not have happened without the above factors. The sanctions in particular devastated Libya’s economy, hindered Libya’s revolutionary momentum, and set the bounds for internal debate on the Jamahiriya’s economic policy. In order to reach détente with the West and encourage foreign investment, Libya sacrificed its nuclear program and ended support for revolutionary activities abroad. The sanctions were lifted in the early 2000s.

Qadhafi and his allies viewed opening up as a means of encouraging foreign investment in the oil sector, while retaining majority state control, in order to strengthen the economy and thereby stabilize the Jamahiriya political system. Not all agreed with this approach. The reformists – including the Western-trained Mahmoud Jibril and Shukri Ghanem – sought wide-ranging privatizations that would undermine the leading role of the state. For his part, Ghanem declared the need to “change the thinking, the mentality and the culture of the [Libyan] people,” describing the Libyan mindset as “their general feeling that the state is their father and it is their guarantor that has to pay everything for them and provide them with housing, treatment, work and everything else.” In the context of desperation over massive economic losses, individuals like Ghanem were empowered within Libyan power structures.

The US government funded opposition civil society and established contacts with the reformist camp, whose economic policies would give US companies greater access to Libyan labour and resources. Persistent fissures between the revolutionary and reformist camps in the leadership weakened the Libyan state. When protests over housing policy in early 2011 avalanched into a NATO-backed revolution, prominent reformists including Jibril and Mustafa Abdul Jalil defected to the increasingly Islamist-led opposition. (,,,)

Lockerbie sanctions and the fall of the Jamahiriya

The Lockerbie sanctions cost Libya billions of dollars, and they led the Jamahiriya’s leadership to make security concessions to the West and liberalize the economy in order to encourage foreign investment. Various factions in the leadership had conflicting views on how far this liberalization should go, and in the context of continued Western interference in Libya, these divisions proved fatal. Indeed, the sanctions-imposed liberalization spelled the end of the Jamahiriya, leading directly to various wars that have caused thousands of deaths, impoverished hundreds of thousands and led hundreds of thousands more to flee the country.

The above reality cannot be ignored in retrospectives on the Lockerbie bombing. The horror of subsequent tragedies in Libya (the civil war, the open-air slave markets, the Derna floods) may divert attention from Libyans’ experience of the 1990s, but one should remember the steps by which Libya reached its current situation of state collapse and internal conflict. The Lockerbie sanctions – which, it should be recalled, were imposed following dubious legal proceedings – had a significant impact on straining the Libyan economy, which led directly to “opening up” and the fall of the Jamahiriya.

This is what Lockerbie means to Libyans. It should be what Lockerbie means to people in the West too.

Father of US Lockerbie victim on DNA "breakthrough" and health of Masud

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 13:19:00 +0000

[What follows is excerpted from a report published today on the website of the Teignmouth Post and Gazette:]

The dad of a young Lockerbie victim has hailed a "significant" DNA breakthrough - and revealed the alleged bomb-maker was now 'healthy' to stand trial next year.

Paul Hudson, whose daughter Melina died aged 16 travelling home from a semester at a school in Exeter, Devon, said the link to DNA could be 'crucial' in next year's trial of the suspect.

He said he hopes proceedings are now 'on a good path' and the coming months could finally lead to some justice for the families of the tragedy.

Paul also revealed the health of Abu Agila Masud had significantly improved following a delay to proceedings - clearing the pathway for the much-anticipated trial to start in April next year.

He was speaking after forensic experts were reportedly able to extract DNA from the luggage lining that contained the bomb and an umbrella packed inside for the very first time.

Steps are now being taken to see if it is a match for the alleged bombmaker Masud, 74.

Paul, who now lives in Florida and has been campaigning for justice for the families for decades, said: "The DNA testing could be a real breakthrough if it pans out.

"Details are pretty much all kept secret but the judge will rule if it can be presented at trial.

"All I can say is DNA technology has advanced greatly in the last 30 years and they are able to get DNA residue off many things with much more sophisticated testing.

"Assuming they have DNA from the suspect and assuming they have DNA from something that was close to the bomb - that would tend to be good substantial evidence that could be used at a trial.

"Unless the confession is going to be accepted you are going to need circumstantial evidence to prove a case - and scientific findings would be a huge benefit." (...)

Mr Hudson has since spent decades fighting for justice for the victims of Pan Am 103 that claimed the life of 270 people when it exploded in mid-air in December 1988.

Masud stands charged with two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle resulting in death.

He was previously a bomb-maker for the Libyan External Security Organisation and was extradited to the US in 2022. [RB: Masud was not extradited. He was abducted from his home by a local militia, was sold on to US authorities and then became the victim of extraordinary rendition to the United States.] He has denied all three charges and claims his confession to building the bomb and taking it in a suitcase from Tripoli to Malta was made under duress.

Paul added: "Everyone on our side would like to see the trial happen as soon as possible and - assuming he is guilty - with a conviction. But it is more important to get it right than to get it done quickly.

"I don't see the delay as being excessive in the circumstances. The defendant had some medical issues and the impression we've now been given is they've got better. His health has improved so we seem to be on a good path now."

Paul has also been campaigning for the victim's families to be allowed to access the trial remotely - and was part of an audio trial for a previous hearing.

He said: "They are not going to allow access except at certain locations in the US and the UK where people have to physically go to watch a video of the trial.

"I was part of testing for an audio only feed where victim's family members can listen in to parts that are not considered confidential.

"It seemed to work and hopefully going forward when we get to the trial and more hearings, if people can not come to one of the locations at least they can hear the audio.

"I would prefer a zoom type video but it is certainly better than not allowing any remote access other than from a government controlled location."

Paul revealed another recent revelation coming out of Libya from the abandoned archives of the Gaddafi government surrounded the testing of the bomb with this defendant being part of it.

The information was published in a book in France and used during a corruption trial.

Paul, who is now 78, said he would never stop fighting for justice.

DNA extracted from Lockerbie bomb suitcase, 37 years after atrocity

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 06:31:00 +0000

[This is the headline over a report published in today's edition of The Sunday Times. It reads in part:]

Forensic experts have extracted DNA from the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb for the first time and will seek to match it against swabs taken from the Libyan explosives chief accused of Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity.

Advances in technology have allowed Scottish scientists to gather DNA from the suitcase lining and an umbrella packed into the luggage before Pam Am Flight 103 exploded in mid-air in December 1988, killing 270 people.

Prosecutors hope the new evidence could match samples from Abu Agila Masud, 74, the alleged bomb-maker, who is waiting to go on trial in America.

The potential breakthrough is outlined in US court papers obtained by The Sunday Times. The documents identify a list of expert witnesses for the prosecution, including Dr Nighean Stevenson, a leading authority in DNA analysis at the Scottish Police Authority (SPA). She has re-examined exhibits retrieved from the crash site more than three decades ago. (...)

The only suspect convicted to date is Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer who was jailed for life in 2001 following a trial in the Netherlands presided over by Scottish judges.

Megrahi was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds in 2009 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He lived for another 33 months, dying at his home in Tripoli, aged 60.

A co-defendant in Megrahi’s trial, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, another Libyan intelligence officer, 69, was acquitted. However, he remains the subject of an active US arrest warrant.

Masud’s name came up in the original investigation into the atrocity after Scottish police, aided by the FBI, established that the bomb had travelled in an unaccompanied suitcase from Malta to Heathrow, via Frankfurt, before being loaded on to Flight 103. However, investigators were unable to trace him. [RB: The theory that the bomb on Pan Am 103 was in a suitcase offloaded from the feeder flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow has been convincingly demolished by Dr Morag Kerr in her book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies.]

It was only after the fall of Colonel Gadaffi, the Libyan leader, in 2011 that Masud, a bomb-maker for the Libyan External Security Organisation, the intelligence service, was detained by opposition forces.

He was extradited to the US at the end of 2022 after allegedly confessing to building the Lockerbie bomb and taking it in a suitcase from Tripoli to Malta. [RB: Masud was not extradited. He was abducted from his home by a local warlord, sold on to US authorities and then the victim of extraordinary rendition to the United States.] His defence team are set to argue that the confession was extracted in Libya under duress, and is therefore inadmissible. He has entered a not guilty plea.

That means a DNA match between items from the bomb suitcase and Masud could be highly significant.

“If you’ve got his DNA [in the suitcase] … it would knock down the building blocks of his potential defence,” said Dick Marquise, the FBI special agent who led the US end of the original investigation.

Marquise said he was not aware of any DNA evidence collected in the immediate aftermath of the bombing in 1988. “It was much too new a science,” he added. (...)

Outlining her expertise as a potential prosecution witness, US court papers state: “Dr Stevenson examined items relating to an umbrella and an item relating to the lining of a suitcase.

“These items were examined using specialised lighting, and DNA samples were taken from each. The DNA profiles obtained from these items were of varying quality and were generally commensurate with the expectations of these items.”

The document continues: “Analysis of a DNA reference sample relating to the accused nominal [Masud] has yet to be carried out. When a DNA profile relating to this individual has been generated, it will thereafter be compared to any suitable DNA profiles which have already been obtained.”

This weekend it remained unclear whether a DNA match had been found. However, software used by Stevenson’s team is able to generate a “likelihood ratio” of a “person of interest” contributing to a specific DNA profile rather than other individuals.

In theory, the tests could also prove whether Megrahi had handled items packed into the bomb suitcase.

Part of the evidence against him in 2001 revolved around the testimony of a Maltese shop owner, who claimed Megrahi had bought various items of clothing and an umbrella from his business days before the Lockerbie attack.

Masud’s trial in Washington was due to start last month. However, the complexity of the case and the defendant’s poor health have led to it being pushed back until spring.

In his alleged confession, made in a Libyan jail in 2012, Masud named both Megrahi and Fhimah as co-conspirators.

A criminal complaint filed by the FBI states: “Approximately three months after [the bombing], Masud and Fhimah met with the then Libyan leader, Muammar Gadaffi, and others, who thanked them for carrying out a great national duty against the Americans, and Gadaffi added that the operation was a total success.”

[RB: The following comment is from an article published today on Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer's Intel Today website:]

The Old “Look at the Door” Trick

Henri Landru was a French serial killer tried in 1921. During World War I, he posed as a lonely widower seeking companionship through classified ads. In reality, he lured wealthy widows to his villa in Gambais, murdered them, and allegedly disposed of their bodies in his oven.

Ten women—and the teenage son of one of them—disappeared after visiting Landru. There were no bodies, no direct eyewitnesses, and no confession. The entire case was built on circumstantial evidence, which left—just barely—room for reasonable doubt.

Landru’s defense lawyer, Vincent de Moro Giafferri, was a master of courtroom theatrics. During his closing argument, he focused on the absence of physical proof. He knew that if he could shake the jury’s certainty, he might save his client from the guillotine.

At a dramatic moment, Moro Giafferri played a psychological card. As he neared the end of his plea, he said something like:

“One of the women Landru is accused of killing—what if she is still alive? What if she walked through that door right now?”

He gestured toward the courtroom entrance. And naturally, every juror turned to look. Then came the punchline:

“Ladies and gentlemen, you all looked. That means you’re not sure. And in our justice system, if there is doubt, it must benefit the accused.”

Back to Lockerbie

It was a brilliant moment—simple, theatrical, unforgettable. A masterclass in planting uncertainty.Now, 37 years after the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, US authorities claim they have extracted DNA from the suitcase believed to have held the bomb.

The sample is being tested to determine whether it matches that of Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, the Libyan man accused of constructing the device.

Let’s be clear: the FBI and the US DoJ know the DNA won’t match. The purpose of this operation isn’t to prove Masud’s guilt — it’s to perform certainty. It’s the modern version of the “look at the door” trick.

Only this time, it’s not the defense gesturing at the door. It’s the prosecution — and they already know no one’s coming through. Because this trial isn’t for a jury. It’s for public consumption.

By conducting a highly publicized DNA analysis — decades after the fact, with compromised evidence — they aren’t seeking truth.

They’re selling belief. They’re telling the world: “We’re still working the case. We believe in the evidence. We believe in the guilt.”

But they don’t. And we know it.

ADDENDUM

RB: I am grateful to John Ashton for the following comment on the above article:

A couple of points re the DNA story in The Sunday Times. The SCCRC, in its original review, considered a DNA trace on one of the umbrella fragments – see paras 4.50 to 4.56 of the Statement of Reasons). The results, while inconclusive, pointed to the Crown forensic experts. Also attached is a photo of the circuit board fragment from the crown forensic report (see below). All the photos in the report were taken at RARDE. The fact that the fragment was resting on a bare fingertip suggests a lack of regard for DNA evidence (and, for that matter, fingerprint evidence).

The truth died at Lockerbie

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 10:41:00 +0000

[What follows is excerpted from a long article just published in English on the website of Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The original German language version was published on 14 June:]

Thirty-six years after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie, US prosecutors are pursuing a new case stemming from the terrorist attack. At the center of the investigation is a colorful entrepreneur from Zurich and his claims of conspiracy.

Edwin Bollier, now nearly 88 years old, sits in his office on Badenerstrasse in Zurich and says: "The book is written. All I have to do is pull it out of the drawer." In his book, Bollier finally wants to tell what he sees as the whole truth about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, in which more people were killed than in any terrorist attack in Europe since. (...)

Now, at last, US prosecutors are bringing their own case relating to what President Ronald Reagan called the "attack on America." Many years ago, a mid-level intelligence agent from Libya was convicted in Scotland of being involved in the attack. However, some observers never gave up their doubts about this guilty verdict. A figure accused of being an accomplice of the convicted man is currently in custody in the United States, and a new round of legal procedures is underway.

US prosecutors in Zurich

Last year, two prosecutors and a judge traveled to Zurich to question Bollier as a witness. He is confident that the American court will follow his lead when it ultimately makes its ruling. "I have provided all the information necessary to finally expose the conspiracy," he says.

Bollier argues that it was not in fact Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence service that was behind the bombing, but rather a Syrian-Palestinian commando group acting on behalf of Iran.

Bollier says he is waiting for the US court verdict to be issued before publishing his book. However, the court handling the case recently postponed the trial date originally set for May, citing, among other factors, the "complexity" of the case.

Bollier isn’t concerned. He says he is prepared to testify whenever the trial takes place.

No one knows PT/35 (b) as well

The Zurich entrepreneur is also one of the key figures in the US court proceedings. No one is as familiar with the piece of evidence with the file number PT/35 (b) as well as he is. This exhibit is no larger than a fingernail. It is only 1 millimeter thick, and weighs less than 1 gram.

For more than 30 years, the entire Lockerbie case has hinged on this tiny piece of evidence.

It comes from an electronic circuit board, the kind of technology found in every smartphone today. A circuit board is flat, made partially out of conductive metal, and serves as the foundation on which the components necessary for an electronic device are built. The circuit board to which the fragment in question belonged before being torn out by the explosion in the Boeing 747 was part of a timer-based detonator.

Out of the huge, several-ton pile of debris that was recovered in Lockerbie, PT/35 (b) is the only piece that points to Libya. Without this tiny fragment, the Libyan intelligence agent named Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi could not have been charged.

In his office on Badenerstrasse, Bollier is poring over files. He reads them without glasses, even the small print. When he talks about Lockerbie, which he usually does almost without pause for breath, he sometimes mixes up names or dates. Then his wife Mahnaz, a native Persian who came to Switzerland after the fall of the shah, comes to his aid.

It didn't take her long to became part of Team Bollier, and today she knows the Lockerbie case's ins and outs almost as well as her husband.

The film and TV industry has also been subjecting the crash of Pan Am 103 to a thorough reexamination. Several productions have called the Scottish court ruling into question, in some cases openly postulating a miscarriage of justice. The streaming platform Sky is showing an ambitious documentary on the subject, paired with a successful dramatization of the incident as a series starring Colin Firth in the lead role. Its rival Netflix will soon follow with a program produced in collaboration with the BBC.

Too sensitive for Al Jazeera

However, the most controversial production has proved to be a multipart series created by Arab television network Al Jazeera. One episode was withdrawn after broadcast, and the last episode was not broadcast at all. Apparently, it was too controversial for the network’s Qatari owners. The NZZ has viewed all episodes of this series. It reveals previously unknown information that adds weight to suspicions that Iran was behind the attack.

Sooner or later, every documentary filmmaker addressing this subject finds their way to Badenerstrasse 414 in Zurich – that is, to Bollier's office. The BBC has sent its film crews here, as have Sky and Al Jazeera. The multistory concrete building in Zurich's Nova Park gives the feeling of having been drawn from another era. Stepping into the third-floor office with the sign "MEBO LTD," a visitor might well feel that they had been transported back to the 1970s. (...)

Explosives in a cassette recorder

On the evening of Dec 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103, bound from London to New York, had just reached its cruising altitude of 9,000 meters when a bomb exploded in the cargo hold. A timer-based detonator built into a Toshiba cassette recorder had triggered the explosion. The plane crashed.

All 259 passengers and crew members, most of them US citizens on their way to their Christmas holidays, were killed. An additional 11 people at the crash site in Lockerbie also lost their lives.

The delivery to Libya

A few years previously, in 1985, Bollier's small electronics company Mebo had delivered 20 timer devices to Libya – of the same model that triggered the explosion. This delivery is a matter of record and is undisputed.

The name "Mebo" is drawn from the names of the two company founders, Erwin Meister and Edwin Bollier. While Meister has long since withdrawn from public life, Bollier is still fighting on the front lines to defend his company's reputation.

Mebo Ltd. was a simple trading company with a focus on electrical appliances. It even developed a few devices itself. This included a timer with the model number MST-13. An engineer, Mebo’s sole employee, had developed the device in a small workshop. A third-party company manufactured the MST-13 timer according to his plans.

The Libyan army was almost the sole purchaser of these timers. A few additional units were sold to the Stasi, East Germany's secret police agency.

"But we didn't supply detonators to Libya. Just electronic timers," Bollier insists in an interview in his office.

This distinction is important to him – after all, a timer is not in itself a weapon. A timer becomes a weapon only if it is connected to a detonator. Mebo did not do that, Bollier says. Libya thus must have hooked up the detonator itself.

The business owner picks up a timer that is sitting on his desk in his office. The MST-13 is about the size of a fist. It is nothing more than a simple timer, he says. "Similar to an alarm clock or an egg timer, only a bit more robust, fireproof and waterproof."

Mebo had an export license for the delivery of the timer-based switches to Libya and the East German government. The Swiss agency in charge of overseeing such exports did not find that this contract violated the country’s Federal Act on War Materiel.

Because the issue is so important to him, we have agreed with Bollier to use the English word "timer" throughout this article, even in its German-language original – referring both to timers with and without detonators attached.

And what did the Libyan army use the timers from Switzerland for? Bollier insists that the army used them as defensive weapons. The sale came during the desert war against neighboring Chad. The timers were set in military camps where capture was deemed a possibility, he says. If a squad was able to retain its position, it would defuse the explosive. However, if a camp were to be captured by the enemy, the device would go off at some point.

Bollier has never been charged with any crime in connection with the Lockerbie bombing, either as an accomplice or an accessory, even though the Scottish authorities did consider doing so. In Switzerland, the Office of the Attorney General initiated criminal proceedings, but these were discontinued after four years.

Bollier has always appeared in court only as a witness. For more than 30 years, he has been saying the same thing: that the Lockerbie discovery, exhibit PT/35 (b), that tiny fragment of bomb-wrecked timer, differs in various details from the timers that Bollier’s firm delivered to Libya.

For example, he argues that the fragment exhibits characteristics that were introduced only in 1990, more than a year after the crash of Pan Am Flight 103.

Only one conclusion can be drawn from this, says Bollier: "Someone must have placed the find at the crash site after the fact, in order to lay a false trail pointing to Libya."

Brown instead of charred

When investigators from Scotland and the US first showed him a photo of the discovery, Bollier recognized it immediately. That was in 1990. "In the photo, the fragment was brown," he recalls. "But after the explosion, it should have been charred."

When he later saw the original of the PT/35 (b) fragment, it was no longer brown – it was charred, he says. From this, Bollier concludes that the alleged find is not only a forgery, but was also tampered with after the fact.

This is clearly an outrageous accusation. But Bollier stands by it. He refers to the alleged forgers and manipulators of the only piece of conclusive evidence from Lockerbie as "Group XXX." By this he means those within Scottish and American government agencies that he says were responsible for this falsification, in cooperation with the Swiss intelligence service, which was then a part of the Federal Office of Police.

However, as someone making such a serious accusation, Bollier has a problem: His credibility is in tatters.

Someone once said that Bollier was the worst witness imaginable, thanks to his dubious past. Anyone who did business during the Cold War with the secret police and intelligence services of Libya and East Germany, with Gaddafi’s «Jamahiriya» state and the Stasi, has inevitably seen their reputation permanently damaged.

Bollier's fight for the truth, as he calls it, is therefore also a fight for his own rehabilitation. Furthermore, if the trail to Libya does indeed turn out to be falsified and manipulated, this would do more than exonerate Bollier morally – he would also be entitled to the equivalent of millions of dollars in financial compensation.

However, Edwin Bollier is not alone in his assertion that exhibit PT/35 (b) was planted at the Lockerbie crash site after the fact. Jim Swire is convinced of this as well.

Bollier’s opposite

When it comes to credibility, Swire is the opposite of Bollier. The English doctor lost his 23-year-old daughter Flora in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. With his clear independence and unimpugned integrity, he soon became a respected spokesman for the families of the British victims.

Bollier and Swire share the same view. But it is no coincidence that Colin Firth is playing the English country doctor rather than the Swiss wheeler-dealer in Sky’s dramatization of the events.

Since the crash of Pan Am 103, Swire has dedicated his life to finding his daughter’s murderers, as he consistently refers to them. At 89 years old, he still hasn't achieved his goal.

Swire once campaigned vigorously to bring Libyan defendant Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi and his alleged accomplices to trial in Scotland. When, after much back and forth, that trial finally took place on neutral ground at the former Camp Zeist military base in the Netherlands, Swire did not miss a single one of the 85 days of proceedings.

Nothing would have made him happier than to know at last who had been responsible for his daughter's death. But at the end of the trial, he found himself convinced that al-Megrahi was innocent, and had nothing to do with the bombing.

Befriended the convicted attacker

On the day the verdict was announced, Swire was so distraught that he suffered a breakdown. He was shocked by al-Megrahi's conviction – along with the simultaneous acquittal of his alleged accomplice – and disappointed by the Scottish justice system.

Swire visited al-Megrahi several times in prison, and ultimately became friends with him. When the Libyan was diagnosed with cancer, Swire spoke out strongly in favor of his release. «The sooner he is released, the better,» he was quoted as saying in the NZZ am Sonntag newspaper.

When al-Megrahi was dying in 2012, Swire traveled to Tripoli amid the unrest following Gaddafi’s fall. Even on his deathbed, al-Megrahi protested his innocence.

Swire fulfilled his last wish. In his book published in 2021, the key message is that fragment PT/35 (b) cannot have come from any of the 20 timers that Bollier's Mebo had once delivered to Libya – and that al-Megrahi's conviction was therefore a miscarriage of justice.

The FBI on board

The investigation into the bombing was led by the Scottish police. However, the United States' domestic intelligence service, the FBI, was also involved from the beginning – a concession made to the US by the Scottish authorities in view of the large number of victims from America.

The unusual collaboration made the enormous investigation – featuring a debris field alone that stretched over several dozen square kilometers – even more complicated. «We weren't used to not being in the lead,» says the self-assured FBI Special Agent Richard Marquise in one of the many documentaries about Lockerbie.

However, by tapping its global network, the FBI was able to open up various sources that would have remained closed to the Scottish police. "Even the CIA supported us," Marquise once said. Given the rivalry between the two major US intelligence services, this was unusual, he noted.

Yet despite years of investigation and a huge pile of files, the case ultimately led only to the disputed conviction of the single Libyan intelligence agent.

The trail to Iran

Initially, everything pointed in a different direction. Indeed, after just a few months, the Lockerbie case seemed to have been solved, with investigators regarding it as a probable act of retaliation by Iran.

On July 3, 1988, a few months before Lockerbie, a US Navy warship shot down an Iranian passenger plane in the Persian Gulf – accidentally, according to official statements. All 290 passengers, including 66 children, were killed.

Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini publicly vowed revenge, saying that an American aircraft carrying many passengers would be shot down. There was subsequently much to suggest that the Iranian regime had commissioned a commando group from Syria known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, or PFLP-GC, to carry out the retaliatory action.

The PFLP-GC operated from Syria under the command of Ahmed Jibril. In 1970, his agents had used a parcel bomb to bring down Swissair Flight 330 over Würenlingen, killing all 47 passengers. In that instance, the explosive was built into a radio and triggered by an altimeter.

Thanks to the investigations in the Würenlingen case, hardly anyone in the West was as familiar with the PFLP-GC as the Swiss Office of the Attorney General. Six months after Lockerbie, in late May 1989, three Scottish investigators thus traveled to Bern to exchange information with their Swiss colleagues.

The secret meeting lasted two days, turning up striking parallels. The plastic explosive used in the Lockerbie bombing had been Semtex, which was manufactured in Czechoslovakia. This was the same material that had been used in Würenlingen. Even the bomb maker appeared to be the same individual, a Jordanian named Marwan Khreesat.

A few weeks before Lockerbie, in late October 1988, Khreesat had been arrested in Düsseldorf as part of a broad operation dubbed "Autumn Leaves." In total, German police arrested more than a dozen members of the PFLP-GC – dealing a serious blow to the terrorist group.

During the raid, police also seized four electronic devices, all of which had been rigged with explosives. One of these devices was a Toshiba portable radio.

It thus appeared that German police had foiled a planned series of attacks by the PFLP-GC. However, interviews with the detainees revealed that the terrorists had originally prepared five such devices, not just four.

The conclusion seemed obvious: The fifth electrical device must have been the Toshiba cassette recorder that exploded on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.

When the Scottish delegation bid farewell to their Swiss colleagues on May 25, 1989, the case appeared to be solved. Investigators believed that the Toshiba cassette recorder containing the explosives had been loaded into the cargo hold of a Boeing 747 at Frankfurt Airport on the Pan Am 103 A feeder flight to London Heathrow.

This conclusion was stated in the minutes drawn up by the Swiss Office of the Attorney General following the meeting with their colleagues from Scotland. After a lengthy tug-of-war, the Switzerland-based Beobachter magazine published these minutes a few years ago.

But then everything changed.

The shift to Libya

No arrest warrant was issued for Khreesat, the alleged bomb maker, or for any other member of the PFLP-GC initially suspected of involvement.

Instead, the Scottish police and the FBI, who had been focusing their part of the investigation on Iran, issued arrest warrants for two previously unknown Libyans: Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi and an alleged accomplice, the station manager of the Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta.

Exactly how these arrest warrants came to be issued remains unclear today. Apparently, they were based on secret information from the CIA and a somewhat shady agent in Malta.

In his office, Bollier rummages through one of the many piles that have accumulated in an adjoining room over the past decades.

He finds the newspaper article he is looking for, and offers a summary: The surprising turnaround in the investigation was the result of the geostrategic climate at the time, which was very different from today's. The United States and the United Kingdom, which at the time were at war with Iraq, did not want to spoil their relationship with Iran’s government as well.

Thus, the article argued, shifting blame for the Lockerbie bombing to Libyan leader Gaddafi and his intelligence agents proved a convenient alternative. After all, their April 1986 attack on a West Berlin discotheque frequented primarily by American soldiers had gone unpunished.

«It's that simple,» Bollier says, tossing the newspaper article back onto the pile.

It is possible that for the U.S. and the U.K., Libya was seen as a more convenient scapegoat than Iran at that point in history. However, like so much else in the Lockerbie case, this theory cannot be proven.

Gaddafi's photo on the side table

This difficulty doesn't impress Bollier. In his office on Badenerstrasse, the presence of long-deposed Libyan despot Gaddafi can still be felt everywhere. A framed photo of the young Gaddafi is placed on the side table next to the sofa, leaning against an iron palm tree.

During Gaddafi's more than 40 years in power, his regime systematically violated human rights. It engaged in countless arbitrary arrests, imprisoning and torturing opposition figures. Many of these individuals disappeared or were executed.

Bollier offers a kind of counterpoint, however. "Gaddafi may have blood on his hands," he says. But from the leader’s own point of view, he had been acting in the interests of the Libyan people, Bollier says. The entrepreneur counts off the gains: roads, housing, infrastructure – "everything in tiptop shape," he says.

It is jarring statements like this that undermine the image of Bollier as a fearless fighter for the truth.

An office for the alleged attacker

Another startling fact reveals just how close Bollier's relationship with Gaddafi's internationally ostracized regime was: Mebo temporarily rented an office at Badenerstrasse 414 to two employees of the Libyan intelligence services – one of whom was Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

Bollier plays this down. It was purely business, he says. And anyway, al-Megrahi visited Zurich only two or three times a year.

Bollier started doing business with Libya in the mid-1970s. Even before media pioneer Roger Schawinski shook up Switzerland's media landscape by founding his Radio 24 station – which broadcast as a pirate station from Pizzo Groppera in Italy before eventually becoming the country's first commercial radio station – the trained radio engineer Bollier had been operating his own pirate radio station in the North Sea. He had chugged around the international zone in a converted ship, competing in turn with the state broadcasters in England and the Netherlands.

"It was a lucrative business for a while," recalls Bollier – until the authorities shut the pirate station down.

$4.9 million from Gaddafi

That left Bollier sitting on an expensive ship crammed full of electronics that nobody wanted. Only one person showed any interest: Muammar Gaddafi. The Libyan ruler paid Bollier $4.9 million for the former pirate radio craft.

Nor did this prove to be the only such deal. Although Bollier says he never met Gaddafi in person, the Libyan state became the Swiss entrepreneur’s most important customer. Contracts with the military and intelligence services soon followed. In the 1980s, Bollier installed Tripoli’s first fax machines, after purchasing them first from a distributor in Zurich. "For this, the Libyans, who had never seen a fax machine before, celebrated me like a hero," he says.

The fax machines were soon followed by the delivery of the MST-13 timers to Libya.

The circumstances surrounding the discovery of the fingernail-sized fragment PT/35 (b), which is supposed to have come from one of these timers from Zurich, are striking. Scottish police found it six months after the crash, in late May 1989, in a wooded area more than 30 kilometers from the crash site. The fragment was stuck inside the collar of a Salomon-brand shirt that had originally been purchased in Malta.

That shirt had wound up in a maroon Samsonite suitcase along with the Toshiba cassette recorder that was rigged with explosives.

No pieces belonging to the timer's significantly larger and more robust housing were ever found. In some official documents, the date of discovery is given not as May 1989, but rather as January 1990 – that is, more than a year after the crash. These dates are important for Bollier's argument.

The Scottish police initially had no idea what to make of their chance discovery. They searched unsuccessfully at 54 companies across 17 countries in hopes of tracking down the origin of the PT/35 (b) fragment.

Help from the FBI and CIA

In early 1990, the Scottish police asked their colleagues at the FBI for help. These investigators then quickly found what they were looking for: The fragment was an exact match with a timer-based detonator that the CIA had seized during a raid in Togo in 1985, they said. Through some convoluted means, a Mebo MST-13 timer had apparently found its way to the rebels in Togo.

However, over the years, investigative journalists have uncovered inconsistencies in this conclusion. One such reporter is Otto Hostettler from the Switzerland-based Beobachter magazine. He has published several articles on the discrepancies in the Lockerbie case.

Like Bollier, Hostettler also concludes: "The item labeled PT/35 (b) cannot have come from the shipment to Libya that Edwin Bollier made in 1985." The fragment contains technical components that had not even been developed at that time, the reporter notes.

Moreover, in addition to Jim Swire, the representative of the victims' families, and investigative journalist Hostettler, there are still other unimpeachable figures who agree with Bollier that something is not right about PT/35 (b).

The odd role of Switzerland's intelligence service

The role played by one senior member of the Swiss Federal Office of Police, which was Switzerland's intelligence service at the time, is nothing less than striking. It is a matter of record that on June 22, 1989, six months after Lockerbie, this intelligence service agent appeared at the Badenerstrasse 414 building. On the third floor, rather than visiting the Mebo Ltd offices, he instead ended up in the workshop on the other side of the corridor. There he met with the engineer who had developed the MST-13 timer.

This is publicly known because Bollier later reported the intelligence service agent to the authorities. The entrepreneur accused this figure of stealing a timer from Mebo's inventory and passing it on to the FBI, all without a search warrant. Bollier demanded 6 million Swiss francs in damages from the intelligence service agent.

As part of the criminal proceedings, the Swiss Office of the Attorney General summarized the facts of the case in a written statement. That statement is dated July 30, 2012, and is signed by the head of the office's National Security division

According to this statement, the employee of the Federal Office of Police did indeed receive a timer from the Mebo engineer, "which he passed on to the American authorities."

"The evidence is said to have been subsequently tampered with," says the Office of the Attorney General’s written statement. Followed by: "This assertion by Bollier has not simply been pulled out of thin air."

The Attorney General’s Office explains why Bollier’s assertion could be correct as follows: "In any case, an expert opinion provided by the scientific service of the Canton of Zurich proves that the timer handed over to the Swiss federal police and the timer fragment presented as evidence by the Scottish authorities cannot be identical."

No other authority has adopted Bollier’s thesis that exhibit PT/35 (b) was falsified as clearly as the Swiss Office of the Attorney General, in this written statement.

However, the Zurich cantonal police report referred to in the Attorney General’s statement has never subsequently turned up. This is confirmed by respected Zurich lawyer Marcel Bosonnet, who represented Bollier in this case.

The Swiss Federal Supreme Court never addressed the claim for damages – Bollier had submitted it too late.

"In my opinion, there was a lack of will to get at the truth," Bosonnet says. In so doing, Switzerland missed a unique opportunity to resolve the Lockerbie case, he adds.

Al Jazeera reports on secret meetings

This clue prompted the researchers at Al Jazeera's English-language service to work even harder. Their documentary series, which has since been withdrawn, describes how, over the course of 1988, a few months before the Lockerbie crash, several meetings took place involving representatives of the intelligence services of Iran, Syria and Libya, as well as of Hezbollah and the PFLP-GC. The common goal was reportedly a militant campaign financed by Iran against targets in the US and Israel, which was to include shooting down passenger aircraft.

According to Al Jazeera's reporting, these secret meetings took place between March and October 1988 in Malta, Cyprus and Lebanon.

In the documentary, Robert Baer is given considerable time to speak. This author, a former CIA agent, has long argued that Iran, not Libya, was behind the Lockerbie attack. He has been joined by other voices from within American intelligence circles.

Baer told Al Jazeera that he had evidence showing that a few days after the attack on Pan Am 103, in late 1988, $11 million had been transferred from Iran to a bank account in Lausanne. Some of this money was later transferred to the accounts of two leading members of the PFLP-GC, he contends.

Baer is no longer employed by the CIA. Nevertheless, he is bound by the principle that anything he makes public based on knowledge gained during his time in service must be approved in advance by the CIA.

In Al Jazeera’s withdrawn documentary series, he says that he had followed this process in order to divulge his information. He additionally says that there is consensus within CIA and FBI circles that Iran was responsible for the Lockerbie crash.

So has Gaddafi's Libya been wrongly blamed, for more than 30 years, for one of Europe's most devastating terrorist attacks?

Despite the numerous proponents of this theory, the question is still not easy to answer. In fact, a new book published in early 2025 argues against this conclusion.

"Top secret" handwritten letters

In this book, the authors present previously unpublished archive material from the Gaddafi-era Libyan intelligence service. Handwritten letters marked "top secret" describe how, in October 1988, a division of the intelligence service in Tripoli carried out experiments with explosives, including detonating a suitcase.

At the time, the head of this division was Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence agent who had protested his innocence on his deathbed.

Prosecutors in the US are aware of this archive discovery. The postponement of the ongoing trial is likely to be related to efforts to verify documents that were not previously part of the record.

Meanwhile, back in Zurich, Edwin Bollier is keeping his book in his drawer, ready to publish. Mr Lockerbie, as he calls himself in his email address, is at least willing to reveal his title: "The Truth Died at Lockerbie."

Lockerbie bombing suspect's trial scheduled for 20 April 2026

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 06:27:00 +0000

[What follows is the text of a report just published on the website of the United Arab Emirates newspaper The National:]

The US judge overseeing the case of Lockerbie bombing suspect Abu Agila Mohammad Masud has set jury selection for April 20, 2026.

Judge Dabney Friedrich acknowledged the “complicated nature” and “voluminous discovery of evidence” in the case surrounding the 1988 attack that resulted in the explosion of a Pan Am flight and the deaths of 270 people in Scotland.

Mr Masud, 73, limped into court and donned headphones to listen to the status conference in Arabic. He looked straight ahead for the whole proceedings, never glancing at victims' families, who took up several rows of court seats.

He didn't appear to communicate with his court-appointed lawyer [RB: Whitney Minter] during proceedings. In 2023, Mr Masud pleaded not guilty in connection to one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in UK and US history.

Only one other person, former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, has been convicted for the bombing. After his conviction in 2001, Megrahi spent seven years in a Scottish prison, but he was eventually released on compassionate grounds and died in Libya in 2012. In 2003, Libya claimed responsibility for the attack that brought down the plane. [RB: Libya did not "claim responsibility for the attack". It accepted "responsibility for the acts of its officials": https://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2008/08/libyan-august-2003-acceptance-of.html]

The US government filed charges against Mr Masud in 2020, but it took more than two years to extradite him from Libya. [RB: Masud was not extradited from Libya. He was abducted from his home by a local warlord and sold to US authorities who then transferred him to the United States without either his own consent or that of the judicial authorities of Libya.] Mr Masud's health problems, lawyer changes and logistical problems have caused the trial planning to move at a snail's pace.

A court transcript seen by The National show the methodical nature of the case. At least three depositions of foreign citizens will have to take place outside the US before the trial begins, according to the court transcript.

Though specifics are not disclosed, ways of potentially dealing with Mr Masud's health problems are also discussed. His court-appointed lawyers have promised to provide updates about his medical condition to better prevent any delays.

In court on Thursday, Judge Friedrich emphasised the need to stay on schedule. “I want this to be aggressive,” she said, referring to trial planning dates and schedule preparations.

Mr Masud's lawyer told the judge that although there is “some disagreement” about the extent of his medical problems, both defence and prosecutors are on the same page about how to deal with it going forward.

All 259 people on board the Pan Am flight died in the attack and 11 people were killed on the ground by falling debris on December 21, 1988, shortly after the plane took off from London bound for New York.

Of the victims, 190 were US citizens, along with people from the UK and Argentina, India, South Africa and Spain, among others.

[A report on the BBC News website contains the following:]

Kara Weipz is the president of the US group Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 and lost her 20-year-old brother Richard Monetti on the plane.

"I'm just going to pray that it stays at 20 April," she said. "I was 15 when this happened, and I'm 52 now and among the relatives I'm considered young.

"A lot of our family members are in their seventies and eighties and unfortunately, we lose them weekly or monthly now.

"The travesty in all of this that they're not seeing the justice that they've worked 37 years to see.

"That's what concerns us the most, that this trial will come around and we'll have lost more family members." (...)

Some, but not all, of the British relatives have never accepted the verdict against Megrahi, including the Rev John Mosey, whose daughter Helga was on the plane.

"I think they're just waiting for people like me to pop our clogs and get out of the way," he said.

"I'm still pretty cynical about the whole thing. I would like to be proved wrong but I can't see it happening.

"As far as I'm concerned, who made the bomb and who put in on the plane are secondary as to who were the main criminals.

"They were the group of people who had all the warnings that this was going to happen and warned their own people but didn't warn the public."

Masud trial: both sides experiencing difficulties in preparing

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Sat, 31 May 2025 18:45:00 +0000

[What follows is excerpted from an item posted today on the Intel Today website:]

The trial of Abu Agila Masud, the Libyan intelligence official accused of building the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988, is likely to be postponed until at least April 2026. The proposed delay — requested jointly by US prosecutors and defense attorneys — must still be approved by a federal judge.

According to court filings, the main reason for the delay is the extraordinary complexity of the case. Much of the evidence is scattered across multiple countries, requiring extensive international cooperation, logistical planning, and legal coordination. This has made it difficult for both sides to prepare adequately for trial. [RB: A status hearing in the case is scheduled to take place on 5 June 2025 at 11.00 in Washington DC District Court.]

A central piece of evidence is an alleged confession Masud made in 2012 while imprisoned in Libya. Defense attorneys argue that the statement was obtained under duress and may be inadmissible in a US court. Legal arguments over whether that confession can be used at trial are expected to be contentious and potentially pivotal.

While the delay may frustrate families of the 270 victims — many of whom have waited decades for justice — it reflects the high stakes and legal sensitivities surrounding the case. Trying an international terrorism case involving decades-old evidence is inherently difficult. Political instability in Libya, the patchwork of international legal systems, and the reliance on potentially coerced testimony all complicate efforts to ensure a fair and thorough trial.

Adding another layer of complexity is the scheduled 2026 declassification of technical documents related to the Lockerbie disaster. These materials, believed to include engineering and forensic analyses of the explosion and aircraft damage, were reclassified after previously being slated for release — an unusual and controversial move. (...)

[Their] importance is underscored by the shadow of former FBI explosives expert [Tom] Thurman, a key figure in the original Lockerbie investigation. Thurman played a central role in identifying key forensic links — but his credibility was later seriously questioned. In 1997, he was removed from active casework after internal investigations found he had overstepped his authority by claiming scientific conclusions without proper credentials or peer review.

Knowing what is now publicly documented about Thurman’s methods, defense lawyers are expected to examine the forthcoming technical documents with particular intensity, looking for flaws, gaps, or contradictions in the forensic conclusions that originally shaped the indictment and public narrative.

Whether the timing of the trial delay and the documents anticipated release is coincidental or strategic, the outcome could be significant. If these documents (if released as planned) were to contradict past findings — or reveals alternative interpretations — it could reshape the courtroom dynamics entirely.

Ultimately, this is not just a legal trial, but a test of forensic accountability. Ensuring the evidence can withstand modern scrutiny is not a delay of justice — it may be the only way to achieve it.

[RB: A report also now appears on the BBC News website.]

A Libyan perspective on the overlooked side of the Lockerbie bombing

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Mon, 05 May 2025 20:57:00 +0000

[This is the headline over a long and important article by Dr Mustafa Fetouri just published in the May 2025 edition of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It reads as follows:]

The trial of Libyan citizen Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, 74, was due to begin in Washington, DC on May 12, but has been postponed at the request of the prosecution and defense due to Mas’ud’s health issues and the complexity of the case. He is accused of making the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec 21, 1988. Many observers believe if Mas’ud gets a fair trial and good defense, he will not be convicted.

KIDNAPPED AND SMUGGLED TO US CUSTODY

Septuagenarian Mas’ud has been in and out of the hospital almost 20 times since he was kidnapped and smuggled into the US in 2022. He suffers from chronicle illnesses including type one diabetes and had to undergo two operations: first for spine issues and then to amputate three gangrene-affected toes. His family told the Washington Report that they doubt he will survive the trial. The entire episode is outside of any legal framework, and Mas’ud is very unlikely to change the not guilty plea he entered when first arraigned in February 2023.

Back in 2001, two other Libyans were tried in special court in The Netherlands which ended in convicting Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and acquitting Lamin Fahima. Al-Megrahi, who died in 2012, protested his innocence until his last breath. Most observers and legal experts, including Dr Hans Köchler, the United Nations-appointed expert, believed that al-Megrahi and Libya were framed and the court in The Netherlands was neither objective nor fair.

COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT

The US accused the two Libyans of involvement in the disaster in 1991. In accordance with the 1971 Montreal Convention on Civil Aviation, the Libyan government offered to try both men in its courts and invited the US and the UK to submit their evidence; both countries rejected the idea. Libya in turn refused to hand over its citizens. The standstill continued for years.

The Security Council adopted several resolutions calling on Libya to hand over its citizens to stand trial—not in Scotland where the crime took place but in the US. Many legal experts questioned the merits of the Security Council involvement in a purely criminal act.

On midnight of April 15, 1992, Security Council Resolution 748 came into effect, imposing stringent restrictions on Libya including a ban on all civilian flights in and out of Libya while obliging all UN member states to close offices of Libyan Airlines, the national carrier.

That effectively isolated Libya and its people for a crime their government has always denied. In later years several pieces of evidence completely exonerated Libya from the Lockerbie disaster.

Between 1992 and 1999, when sanctions were suspended, the UN Security Council passed three Lockerbie-related resolutions. Nonbinding resolution 731 (1992) called on Libya to hand over the two suspects. In 2003 Security Council Resolution 1506 ended all sanctions. Libya waited another year for the US to lift is own sanctions, some imposed as early as 1986.

NATION IN AGONY

The resolution was only the third time the Security Council had imposed collective punishment on an entire nation. And unlike apartheid South Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and later apartheid South Africa, Libya was sanctioned in the absence of any proof linking the government to the crime.

While much has been written over the last 37 years about the Lockerbie crime, very little has been written about how Libya’s 4.6 million citizens (the estimated population at the time) coped with the harsh sanctions, which affected every aspect of their daily lives, including medicines and equipment for essential services. Travel became cumbersome; people had to travel overland to neighboring countries and then board flights to their final destination. Hundreds of students studying abroad, like myself, had to give up going home during school breaks either because it was too expensive or too time-consuming. To reach Tripoli, one had to fly to Tunisia’s Southern Djerba, take a boat from Malta or fly to Cairo, and then take ground transportation to Libya.

ACCUMULATING LOSSES

The Washington Report spoke to several former Libyan officials, all speaking anonymously, to put together a broader picture of how the country functioned while under almost complete sanctions and how its people went about their lives.

Precise figures of the economic impact of the sanctions are lacking either because of lack of documentation or because much of the government files were looted and destroyed during the upheavals of 2011 and the civil war that followed, again facilitated by the UN Security Council. The former deputy foreign minister estimates that Libya’s overall economic losses between 1992 and 2003 amounted to more than $100 billion.

The former deputy foreign minister said, “Libya took certain steps” to “document” the overall losses incurred because of the sanctions. Asked why not many countries came to Libya’s help, he explained that “many countries tried but could not because UN binding resolutions” are like “international law” and compliance is mandatory. He added, “behind the scenes the US, UK and France scared every country that considered helping Libya.” The three countries have veto power in the Security Council.

His colleague, another Qaddafi-era minister responsible for the Lockerbie losses file, said: “we documented all details including how many people died and were injured” as they took circuitous routes to catch flights to reach their destinations.

The oil sector, the main source of revenue for the state, lost between $18 billion and $33 billion during that period. After Security Council Resolution 883 targeted the oil industry, the country’s production dropped from 1.4 mp/d (thousand barrels a day) to below 1.2 mp/d and the downward trend continued, hitting less than 1 mp/d in some months. The long-term effect was significant: the return to pre-sanction oil production levels entailed raising prices, which affected competitiveness.

Low oil prices and higher production cost meant less cash for the government which, in turn, affected its ability to import things like machinery, consumer goods, food and medicine. Medicine in particular was badly affected; patients continued to receive them for free, even as the cost to the government increased substantially, and certain medications became scarce. In general the healthcare system was disrupted and accumulated an estimated loss of some $92 million. Many Libyans sought treatment abroad, which requires hard currency, increasing demand for dollars and forcing the government to heavily regulate the availability of the dollar. This gave rise to the black market, where the price of the dollar was nearly 10 times that of government-controlled prices.

The transportation sector lost some $900 million as spare parts become more expensive. Government control of hard currency affected both the agriculture and industry sectors, whose combined estimated losses totalled $10 billion.

After the oil industry, the second most impacted sector was aviation. Many Libyan Airlines aircraft were stranded in airports around the world because they were already out of the country when the sanctions hit. It took the company decades to renew its fleet and resume normal services after the sanctions were lifted. Some sources estimate that the sector lost nearly $30 billion during the seven years of sanctions.

Increased road travel led to higher road accidents. An estimated 5,000 to 6,000 deaths were recorded every year during the sanction period. Lack of spare parts, restrictions on importing new cars, crumbling roads and weaker road safety made a bad situation even worse.

By the time sanctions were completely lifted in 2003, every economic sector in the country was in need of heavy government cash injections to revive it. On top of that, Libya had to pay $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of the Lockerbie victims, as part of the settlement with the United States.

WILL LIBYA BE COMPENSATED?

The abduction and subsequent trial of Mas’ud has opened old wounds in Libya. Many Libyans protested what they considered the illegal incarceration of Mas’ud, accusing the Tripoli-based government of selling out after the Lockerbie case had already been settled. In 2008, and as part of the larger agreement to re-establish diplomatic relations between Libya and the US, the two countries signed a Claims Settlement Agreement, ending all claims against each other including all claims arising from the Lockerbie disaster. The agreement does not say anything about possible compensation for Libyan losses.

Many Libyans question how the UN’s highest body, the Security Council, could take aggressive measures against Libya without any hard facts.

Will Libya one day be compensated as a victim of an unjust international system? This is beyond the purview of the Washington court and is likely to remain an open question after the current case is concluded.

Lockerbie documents: genuine or created to focus blame on Gaddafi?

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 21:05:00 +0000

[What follows is excerpted from a report by Jack Dennison-Thompson published today on the Maghrebi.org website:]

Fresh allegations accusing Libya, once again, to be the architect of the Lockerbie bombing in 1998 have arisen, with the US quick to endorse their validity.

According to the BBC, Samir Shegwara, a Libyan writer and politician, has published documents in his new book Murderer Who Must Be Saved, which contains classified documents that he claims he took from the archives of Libya’s former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi after the collapse of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime in 2011. No one, so far, not least the Americans nor the Libyans, have validated the documents and so question marks arise over whether they are genuine or have been created by those with vested interests in keeping the blame for Lockerbie firmly with Colonel Gadaffi.

The classified documents are claimed to have been dated October 4th 1988 with the handwritten report labelled as “top secret” alongside one of the files containing the subject matter “Experiments on the use of the suitcase and testing its effectiveness.”

The report later explains that the tests were effective in avoiding X-ray scanners ideal considering the Pan Am flight did not hand check the bags on the flight but rather just X-rayed them.

The report also details an agent by the name of Aboujila Kheir – believed to be Abu Agila Masud Kheir Al-Marimi – who was involved in the tests. More details are believed to involve the “expenses” of an agent who traveled to Malta days before the attack on Pan Am 103, despite the island effectively being the international base for all of Libya’s foreign intelligence operatives.

The documents reportedly implicate Abdullah Senussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, in planning both the Lockerbie bombing and UTA Flight 772 attack. Senussi was convicted in absentia for the UTA bombing in 1999 but never served his sentence. Scottish and American prosecutors later named him as a Lockerbie suspect in 2015.

Sami Shegwara was arrested on the 20th of March after the documents he released were seen as a national security risk. His publishers have come out and stated that Mr Shegwara is facing legal proceedings over the “alleged possession of classified security documents, without legal justification.”

The strange case around this arrest is that Shegwara who is the mayor of Hay al Andalous in Tripoli has openly shown his possession of these documents since 2018.

Some believe this shows that the document must be real for the arrest to take place yet it also calls into question why it would take seven years for such documents to become of such importance.

The documents have now been described by a former FBI agent as “dynamite” and will be used to prosecute Abu Agila Mas’id Kheir Al-Marimi, known as Masud, who is accused of building the bomb for his trial in Washington.

While these new documents have surfaced and become “dynamite” evidence in the past month, the case of Lockerbie has been a whirlwind of truth and lies.

This is so much so that Nelson Mandela himself was sceptical to blame Libya.

Documents in the National Archive of the UK have shown that Nelson Mandela told the UK that it was wrong to hold Libya responsible for the Lockerbie bombing.

Mandela was acting as the intermediary for Libya and in a conversation with Tony Blair on April 30th 2001 “Mandela argued it was wrong to hold Libya legally responsible for the bombing,” the cables revealed.

Mandela believed that the UN was wrong to impose economic sanctions on Libya after Al Megrahis’s extraction to the Netherlands for trial where he was convicted controversially. (...)

The unusual actions in this case echo a familiar pattern, as the US faces accusations of violating international laws to abduct a Libyan national, fuellng suspicions regarding Libyan involvement in the Pan Am attack.

This occurred in November of 2022 Libyan militiamen captured Abu Agila Mas’ud, accused of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. US agents took custody of the suspect in a controversial midnight raid in Tripoli. The operation highlights ongoing tensions surrounding the Lockerbie terrorist attack.

After decades of silence, the Lockerbie victims’ families have erupted in a rare public challenge, casting doubt on the US justice system’s ability to deliver a truly impartial trial.

Dr Swire who leads representations for the families who have lost loved ones in the attack and who lost his daughter himself believes the US has blurred the lines of this situation even more, with a UN trial being the more just prosecution.

“There are so many loose ends that hang from this dreadful case, largely emanating from America, that I think we should remember what (former president of South Africa Nelson) Mandela said to the world and to us then, and seek a court that is free of being beholden to any nation directly involved in the atrocity itself,” Swire told BBC Radio Scotland.

Their unprecedented call for a UN-led prosecution speaks volumes about the deep-seated suspicions surrounding America’s long-standing narrative of the terrorist attack.

Whilst Libya has been at the forefront for blame over the Lockerbie bombing, there are alternative theories which suggest Libya was not at the forefront for the bombing.

Many journalists support the opposing argument, suggesting that a bomb was planted on the plane at Heathrow Airport by a Syrian terrorist cell that was paid for by Iran.

Whether this theory of the attack is true or whether Libya is involved it appears that the bombardment of blame onto Libya which has been carried for 37 years feels unjust and excessive, to say the least.

The current investigations have begun with the new documents as the Scottish detectives have now been examining the new files to verify Libyans involvement, alongside the US trials still taking place.

After three decades, the case for Lockerbie seems to have a new lease of life rather, it appears it never really lost it as it has constantly been dug up by countless finger-pointing to Libya by the US and the West with no tangible evidence sticking.

These new documents could potentially reshape the understanding of the case. However, a lingering question remains: why are files that have existed for seven years now being presented as urgent and pivotal evidence?

Statement by family of Lockerbie accused Masud

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 06:47:00 +0000

[What follows is a translation of a statement issued in Arabic by the family of Abu Ajila Masud on 16 March. I am grateful to Susan McNarey for procuring the translation.]

TRANSLATION/ In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Tripoli – Saturday, 2025/03/16 – 23:20

Statement on behalf of the citizen Abu Ujaila Majid Masoud Khair Al-Marimi.

Hisham Abu Ujaila Al-Marimi speaks as a representative of the father and regarding the latest developments related to his arrest as he enters the third year of detention… and until this moment, confirming the following is important:

(1)

Everyone knows that he was handed over to the American government for free… without anything in return. We have been saying this since day one… There was no reason or justification for that… and it was only done because it was demanded from those who were required to act.

(2)

The source of the accusation against the father is the American government… it is based on physical coercion imposed on different (33) judges who made the conviction decision against their will.

(3)

The American government itself imposed the condition of a trial… and it is the same government that deliberately created a conviction-based equation. It suggested that he “agrees”… then after three years of detention, he was deprived of his constitutional and personal rights in an unimaginable manner.

(4)

It has become clear that the American government was working to include the father in a claim against his country and its citizens… without regard for the father’s free will and personal choice… and without considering his decision. Thus, this government worked to implicate him and falsely attach him to accusations.

(5)

The father insists on his innocence… which is not just a claim but something the American government itself is aware of… The father had no involvement in what he is accused of… and he was arrested in illegal detention centers… He never had anything to do with the Lockerbie plane case… neither was he a part of it, nor was he in his country at the time, nor was he connected to the heinous crime.

(6)

In a loud voice… and in the presence of (3) out of (5) intensive American prosecutors in the case… and (12 days) before its date… he said he was ready for trial from day one… and that the American government did not confront him with any evidence of what they claim… and until now, it has not fulfilled its promise from the beginning of this month.

(7)

Our expectation today came true, as usual… with the unnatural solidarity and closeness between the prosecution and the defense before the court, which made a fatal mistake… and without setting a new date for the trial… meaning the trial will not take place at all. This has significant implications, including:

(i)

That the father faces a life sentence… without a court ruling… and without any accusation allowing a fair trial.

This solidarity between the defense and the prosecution in the postponement was against the father’s will… and not for any legitimate legal value or consideration of the consequences… The American government bears full responsibility for the father’s personal safety, considering the court’s decision to postpone.

(ii)

We emphasize that the father refused the final postponement… and with the expected results… and the absence of the legitimacy of his detention for even an hour across a third country, we demand the immediate release of the father and compensation for the harm he endured.

(iii)

Among all the constitutional and international violations of the American government, which were approved by the court, we affirm that these aggressive practices and the denial of a fair trial… and the court’s failure to prevent these impossible practices… reaffirm the impossibility of the accusations and the impossibility of conviction.

(8)

Furthermore, all the aggressive and unjust practices by the American government against the father… and this unjust postponement without determining a future trial date… reinforce our confidence that we were in the right position from the perspective of truth, justice, and history. We did not submit to anyone, nor did we wear what did not suit us… What befell us around (1000 days) ago was true… and with the acknowledgment of the American government.

(9)

Thus, with what has already been done in terms of (obstruction) and not merely a postponement of the trial… no argument remains for the wrongdoers or the prosecutors of the trial to continue supporting it.

A trial will certainly not take place… and they must take the correct stance on truth, justice, and history…

We continue to affirm that we have not and will not waver… and this message has reached and is clear to the American government. We extend our deep gratitude to those who have offered us support and solidarity… and we reiterate that there is no time for hesitation and no time for waiting—it will never come. The trial that the American government is pushing for requires action without hope in its timing… and praise be to God alone. Prayer and peace be upon the one after whom there is no prophet.

With sincere respect,

Hisham Abu Jameela Al-Marimi

US judge agrees to delay Lockerbie bombing trial

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 09:33:00 +0000

[What follows is excepted from a report published yesterday on the BBC News website:]

A US judge has agreed to delay the trial of a Libyan man accused of building the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie more than 36 years ago.

The case against Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, known as Masud, was due to begin in Washington on 12 May, but has been postponed at the request of the prosecution and defence.

A new starting date for the trial has not been set but discussions are ongoing.

Masud has denied priming the explosive device which brought down the Boeing 747 on 21 December 1988, killing 259 passengers and crew.

Another 11 people died in the south of Scotland town when wreckage fell on their homes.

Masud, who is in his early 70s, is described as a joint citizen of Libya and Tunisia. He has been receiving treatment for a non-life threatening medical condition.

In submissions to the court, US government prosecutors referred to the complexity of the case and the time required to adequately prepare for pre-trial hearings.

The lawyers also raised the issue of "voluminous discovery, including evidence located in other countries" and the need for the defence to determine how best to defend Masud.

US district court judge Dabney Friedrich agreed to delay the 12 May starting date.

A status conference on the case is due to take place at the court next month.

Scottish and US prosecutors first named Masud as a suspect in 2015 when the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya breathed new life into the Lockerbie investigation.

Five years later, the then US attorney general William Barr announced they were charging Masud with the destruction of an aircraft resulting in death.

He was taken into American custody in 2022 after being removed from his Tripoli home by an armed militia.

A key pre-trial issue is likely to be the admissibility of a confession Masud is alleged to have made in prison in Libya in 2012.

According to the FBI, Masud said he had worked for the Libyan intelligence service and admitted building the device which brought down Pan Am Flight 103.

Lawyers ask for US Lockerbie bombing trial to be postponed

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 08:50:00 +0000

[This is the headline over a report published today on the STV News website. It reads in part:]

Lawyers for both the prosecution and defence have asked for the trial of a suspect in the Lockerbie bombing in the US to be postponed.

Abu Agila Mas’ud Al-Marimi had been due in court on May 12, 2025, charged with building the bomb that downed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988.

But the US Government and Mas’ud’s defence lawyers have jointly requested for it to be called off at court in Washington.

The Libyan national is alleged to have helped make the bomb which killed 259 passengers and crew on board the jumbo jet bound for New York from London on December 21, 1988. (…)

In a motion filed by US prosecutors, the attorneys asked for the scheduled start date to be postponed due to Mas’ud undergoing treatment for a “pre-existing health condition” as well as the complexity of the case.

They previously said they expected Mas’ud’s health condition to cause a delay of approximately 90 to 120 days. In the motion filed on Wednesday, they said an additional delay was expected.

The lawyers also said they needed more time to come up with a “reasonable pretrial schedule and to set a future trial date”.

If the judge grants the motion, a status hearing would be set for the week of March 10.

Mas’ud has pleaded not guilty to three charges including two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death, and a further count of destruction of a vehicle resulting in death.

He faces life in prison, if found guilty.

In 2022, US officials announced that Mas’ud, who allegedly worked as an intelligence agent for the country’s former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, had been taken into custody, two years after it was revealed he had been charged in connection with the explosion. (...)

A section of the aircraft from the Lockerbie bombing was transported to the US ahead of the Libyan suspect’s trial in Washington DC last year.

At the time, Scotland’s Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC said: “The transfer of evidence for the trial in the US is a strong expression of the commitment that Scottish prosecutors and officers of Police Scotland have to bringing all those responsible for this terrible act to justice.” (...)

Laura Buchan, who is head of a team of prosecutors from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service working on the case, said: “Since Mas’ud was taken into custody by the US in 2022, Scottish prosecutors and police have been engaged in a formal evidence sharing process with the US Department of Justice.

“The transfer of physical items of evidence from Scotland into US custody is beginning. The transfer includes parts of the fuselage of Pan Am 103 which are a production in the criminal investigation. We understand that the fuselage will hold significance for many of the families of those who lost their lives and they have been informed of the transfer plans.”

Lockerbie bombing’s lasting impact on a ‘normal little town’

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 09:18:00 +0000

[What follows is excerpted from a report by Libby Brooks published in today's edition of The Guardian:]

Eleven of the street’s residents died when the wing section of Pan Am 103 crashed into Sherwood Crescent with the force of a meteorite on 21 December 1988, gouging a 30ft crater on this spot. The impact was such that some bodies were never recovered.

This once anonymous street was recreated in meticulous detail for the filming of the Sky Atlantic series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, which was first screened last month and stars the Oscar winner Colin Firth as Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed when a bomb exploded on the Pan Am flight from London bound for New York.

Although the drama has been widely praised, some relatives of the 270 people who lost their lives in what remains the UK’s deadliest terrorist atrocity have questioned the need for such graphic depictions of the immediate aftermath. A spokesperson for the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 group described it as “tragedy porn” to the Hollywood news site Deadline, while closer to home a Lockerbie resident who lost her sister and brother-in-law wrote in the Annandale Herald: “I don’t need to be reminded about the terrible scene that night.”

But for a generation born after 1988, this series may be their first exposure to the tangle of legal proceedings, conspiracy theories and international controversy that has become synonymous with the name of one small town in the south of Scotland.

With a second dramatisation airing on BBC One and Netflix later this year, a new BBC Scotland documentary, and the trial of the alleged bomb-maker starting in the US in May, Lockerbie is likely to remain in the spotlight this year, willingly or otherwise.

“It’s the most normal little town in the world, with a strong community, and people are just living their lives,” says the Rev Frances Henderson, a minister at Lochmaben and Lockerbie Churches. “You don’t see the trauma until suddenly you do. It’s there, being carried and dealt with, a trauma that is part of their lives and has shaped the last decades.”

Henderson has not watched the Colin Firth series herself, “not because I object to it but because I feel I’d have to psyche myself up to it,” she says.

“I think most people feel it’s been done respectfully but neither have I heard of many watching it because it’s too real. For those who weren’t there, who may be too young to remember, it’s perhaps useful, but not for those who were there.”

The series was based on Swire’s investigations into the bombing. He and many supporters have argued consistently for the innocence of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence officer who was convicted in 2001 at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands of 270 counts of murder.

Swire believes that Megrahi, who was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government in 2009 after a diagnosis of terminal cancer and died in 2011 in Tripoli, was framed to deflect attention from Iranian and Syrian responsibility. This is rejected as a conspiracy theory by US victims’ relatives, who felt the series misrepresented the trial and portrayed Megrahi as “an innocent man that should be empathised with”.

Swire and other UK relatives continue to demand a public inquiry into the failure to take seriously or make public warnings that an attack on a Pan Am flight was imminent, while in May another Libyan, 72-year-old Abu Agila Masud, will go on trial in Washington accused of building the bomb that brought down the flight. He denies all charges.

Colin Smyth, the Scottish Labour MSP for the region, said: “There has been so much written about the trial and various conspiracy theories, but no one has ever spoken to me about any of that as a constituent.

“People of Lockerbie didn’t choose for their town to be known for this, but they took their responsibility to the victims very seriously from the first night – like the couple who found a young man in their field and didn’t want to leave him so stood vigil until dawn, or the man who scooped up the body of a toddler and drove them into town so they weren’t left in the cold and wet.”

“For decades they have welcomed people with open arms as the families of the victims continue to visit their loved ones’ last resting place. Those relationships have sustained – you hear of relatives staying at family homes in Lockerbie even now.”

Those relationships are woven through the generations, thanks to the enduring scholarship programme between Lockerbie Academy and Syracuse University, New York, which lost 35 students in the disaster.

"All the Lockerbie evidence must be revealed"

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 09:10:00 +0000

[What follows is excerpted from a report in today's edition of The Times:]

The former justice secretary [Kenny MacAskill] said the public deserved answers from British and US intelligence services about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103

The former SNP justice secretary has called for documents about the Lockerbie bombing held by the US and British intelligence services to be released.

Kenny MacAskill, who held the position from 2007 to 2014, said that he thought the public were entitled to know all the facts about the investigation.

“I think what we have to do is get the full documentation and information provided by the UK and USA. They have intelligence documents that they have refused to put out to the general public,” he told ITV Border.

“The Scottish government — certainly the Scottish government I served in — put everything that we were entitled to out there, but there are factors that the UK and USA know about and have not disclosed.” (...)

MacAskill, who became the Alba party’s acting leader after the death of Alex Salmond, released al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds in 2009 after his diagnosis with terminal cancer. Al-Megrahi died in 2012.

Prosecutors have maintained that al-Megrahi did not act alone.

Abu Agila Masud, a Tunisian-born Libyan citizen who is alleged to have helped make the bomb, is due to go on trial in the US in May this year.

The US announced three charges against Masud, which he denies, in 2020 and he has been in custody for two years.

Last year, the former justice secretary said he had “always believed” that Masud was the bomber.

The UK government has previously prevented the publication of secret documents which are believed to implicate Palestinian militants. (...)

MacAskill said: “We do know, for example, that Moussa Koussa, who was the foreign minister under Colonel Gaddafi, defected to Britain, where he was debriefed and then handed over to America.

“He is given the full works, if you could put it that way, and yet we have never been told what it was he said.

“I think what the public are entitled to is to have the full disclosure by the US and British intelligence but I do believe the investigation carried out was right.” (...)

[Christine] Grahame [MSP] brought [a members’ business] debate before Holyrood in response to a book released by Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the disaster, (...) subsequently turned into a drama starring Colin Firth.

In her speech, Grahame laid out the history of the case which put al-Megrahi — the only man convicted of the atrocity — behind bars, including some questions which remain, and called for a public inquiry into its handling.

Serious evidence-based concerns never addressed

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 13:51:00 +0000

[What follows is the text of an article by Dr Morag Kerr which is published today on the Scottish Legal News website:]

Dr Morag Kerr, secretary-depute of Justice for Megrahi, replies to Ronnie Clancy KC’s recent articles on Lockerbie and argues that despite the slur of ‘conspiracy theorist’ used by the UK and Scottish governments, the Crown Office, the SSCRC and the Americans, Mr Megrahi still suffered a miscarriage of justice.

I declare that the bomb that caused the Lockerbie disaster was in the suitcase seen by John Bedford in the baggage container in the interline shed at Heathrow at 4.30 pm, an hour before the PA103 feeder flight from Frankfurt landed. I challenge Mr Clancy, or anyone else, to prove me wrong using facts and reason, not the unevidenced opinions of others, and not legal technicalities.

Mr Clancy makes a number of assertions in his two-part article of 6th and 7th January, and delivers a number of ad hominem attacks on critics of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s conviction, but actual evidence is in short supply. Reasoned refutation is conspicuous by its absence. Much of his argument consists of “the SCCRC have looked at this and say it’s fine, nothing to see here folks,” and “these people are dreadful conspiracy theorists.”

The lazy “conspiracy theorist” slur is a repeat of Magnus Linklater’s perennial articles for The Times, built on a false premise, or rather the logical fallacy of the unexcluded middle. There is a third possibility between that of Megrahi being guilty as charged and the police, the justice system and the SCCRC all being complicit in a conscious conspiracy to perpetuate a miscarriage of justice, and that is the aspect of human nature known as confirmation bias. Reading Mr Clancy’s articles it is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that he too is a victim of this particular form of fact-blindness.

When one is personally invested in a particular conclusion, whether as an individual or as part of a self-reinforcing group, the act of considering the possibility that one might be mistaken can be repugnant, almost painful. This is particularly true when the consequences of having to acknowledge that a mistake has been made are wide-ranging. The brain will seize on any scrap of evidence, however peripheral to the core argument, any line of reasoning no matter how convoluted and sophistic, to shore up the original conclusion and avoid the cognitive dissonance of seriously contemplating a contradictory one.

It is disingenuous in the extreme to cherry-pick public statements by those advancing the proposition that Megrahi was wrongfully convicted to imply that some grand, conscious and co-ordinated conspiracy is being alleged (how could that possibly be, surely these people are malicious!), rather than the obvious interpretation that what is being proposed is that those determinedly shoring up the conviction are mistaken, in thrall to confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. (Indeed, the very title of my own book about the case, referencing the aphorism known as “Hanlon’s Razor”, should have provided something of a clue.)

It is particularly disingenuous do this, and to base an entire argument on the premise that the SCCRC is to be trusted implicitly, in the very week of the debacle in England surrounding the wrongful conviction of Andrew Malkinson and the very credible allegations that the CCRC “has been infected with a culture of denial”. A culture, that is, steeped in confirmation bias. The Malkinson case is not the only one. Can we really, hands on hearts, trust that the SCCRC is a completely different animal?

In the second part of his article Mr Clancy appears to call on specific pieces of evidence to support his position. Nevertheless, once again the argument is little more than “trust the SCCRC, they’ve looked at this very thoroughly,” rather than reasoned, factual refutation.

The timer fragment

Given the mysterious nature of this object it’s hardly surprising to find it surrounded by a fog of speculation and indeed conspiracy theorising. That also is human nature. However, the speculation comes after the observation that this item was not what the prosecution claimed it was, and does not negate that observation.

Dr Swire and Mr Biddulph, and indeed Mr James, are entirely justified in their doubts about the provenance of the fragment, and their criticism of the way this was handled by the SCCRC. To inject some facts into the discussion (a bit of a shock to the system, I know), the central issue is this. It was recognised at an early stage in the investigation that the circuitry of the fragment was coated with pure tin, a technique used by amateur hobbyists making single or small-batch PCBs, and which is not suitable for large-scale commercial use. This was considered a very significant finding when the fragment was first analysed in Scotland in early 1990. While the pattern of the circuitry on the fragment seems to confirm to a high degree of certainty that it was made from a Letraset template produced by the Swiss electronics firm MEBO, all the PCBs for the MST-13 timers that were manufactured from that template for MEBO by Thüring AG had their circuitry coated with a 70/30 tin/lead alloy. Thüring did not have the facilities to apply a pure tin coating. It is one of the many highly regrettable features of the Zeist trial that this discrepancy was fudged and obscured in court, mainly thanks to a highly misleading statement by Allen Feraday, an English forensics expert, and the bench was never made aware of it.

Speculation and conspiracy theorising aside, nobody knows what that fragment is, who made it or when or for what purpose. All that can be said is that it was not from one of the batches of PCBs manufactured by Thüring and which were supplied to Libya by MEBO, as alleged by the Crown. Mr Clancy refers to “… the large body of evidence, including scientific evidence, that questions the accuracy of [these] claims.” What evidence would that be, then? According to their public news release the SCCRC rejected this ground of appeal on the narrow technical point that “… the applicants have not provided a reasonable explanation as to why the fresh evidence concerning the metallurgy issue was not led at the trial,” and because they believed that the failure of the original defence team to uncover the discrepancy did not amount to “defective representation”, not because they had obtained scientific findings which contradicted this evidence.

The suitcase

This is my own personal area of expertise in the case, and Mr Clancy refers to my 2013 book Adequately Explained by Stupidity?, which is largely devoted to examining this issue. I wonder if he has read it?

According to Mr Clancy, “… the SCCRC carried out a thorough examination of the allegation taking account of all the relevant evidence including information which was not available to Justice for Megrahi. The SCCRC concluded that ‘… it was not arguable that the Justice for Megrahi theory could show conclusively that the bomb had entered the airline luggage in Heathrow’.” (Note, not that this information disproved the proposition, merely that it apparently rendered it inconclusive.)

The evidence presented in my book formed part of Justice for Megrahi’s submission to the COPFS which resulted in the police Operation Sandwood. In the course of that investigation I was interviewed by officers on several occasions, going through the evidence and my reasoning in minute detail. Repeatedly, I assured them that I had no dog in this fight beyond a desire to solve the puzzle (which the original forensic investigators had so signally failed to do). I was (and still am) convinced that the evidence proves beyond reasonable doubt that the bomb suitcase was already in London an hour before the flight supposedly carrying it landed. As a scientist, though, I always strive to maintain an open mind. I begged the police officers on several occasions to tell me if they discovered either additional evidence I didn’t have, or an alternative interpretation I hadn’t thought of, that would cast doubt on my conclusion. I stated categorically that if such evidence were to be found, I would withdraw my thesis and issue a public retraction. Nothing of that nature happened. Contact with Operation Sandwood tailed off and then ceased entirely, with no explanation. All I ever got was a personal jibe from Kenny Macaskill to the effect that (and I paraphrase) “I know something you don’t know, so you’re wrong.”

This is more or less exactly Mr Clancy’s position, echoing the position of the SCCRC. They know “something” that allows an entire book full of minute detail and closely-reasoned argument to be dismissed, but no hint at all is given of what this something might be. I find the secrecy over this point very disturbing.

The best guess I can make is that Operation Sandwood, Mr Macaskill, the SCCRC and Mr Clancy are placing the supposed confession of Abu Agila Masoud to having been involved in the smuggling of the bomb on board Flight KM180 in Malta above my analysis. However, this “confession” is a highly contradictory and confusing document, in places flatly contradicting evidence relied on to convict Megrahi. False confessions are one of the most frequent causes of miscarriages of justice and wrongful convictions, and indeed in this case the lord advocate was unable to assure Justice for Megrahi that he was confident that the confession had not been obtained by torture. My position on this matter is that if someone confesses to doing something that provably didn’t happen, it still didn’t happen.

My analysis of the evidence, which is entirely theoretical, has recently been independently confirmed experimentally.[1] A Dutch forensic scientist, Dr Erwin Vermeij, carried out multiple test explosions using used aluminium LD3 containers with mocked-up suitcases and IEDs made to simulate the Lockerbie bomb, with the bomb suitcase in various positions in the container. These experiments were far more rigorously designed and executed than the botched tests carried out in the USA in 1989. His conclusion states:

Regarding the damage to the luggage containers, experiment 7 where the IED suitcase was in the first (bottom) layer with one end slightly elevated on to the horizontal strut comes closest to replicating the damage observed on LD3 luggage container AVE4041. This suggests that the reported so called Claiden spot is probably too high, presuming that 450g explosive was used. If the center of the Lockerbie bomb was really on the Claiden spot, the only possibility is that the explosive charge must have been larger than 450g.

It was demonstrated in court that it was impossible to get more than 450g of Semtex inside the radio-cassette player used to construct the IED. The position that “comes closest” to the damage observed on the Lockerbie luggage container is the one described in my book.

The luggage tags

The single piece of actual evidence discussed by Mr Clancy is the peripheral matter of an entry in the diary of Lamin Fhimah, Megrahi’s co-accused, relating to his obtaining “taggs” (sic) for Megrahi. As a statement by someone other than Megrahi himself, this was held by the trial court not to be evidence against him. However, it was admitted by the court in the 2021 appeal in order to “considerably bolster” the evidence that the bomb was infiltrated in Malta. There’s no evidence that these tags were even obtained, let alone given to Megrahi, or what he did with them if they were. The accuseds’ explanation was that they were needed as samples to get a printing quote. The re-introduction of this extremely trivial and non-probative evidence suggests to me that someone was getting a bit desperate.

The identification evidence

This is barely touched on by Mr Clancy, despite its actually being the central issue as regards Megrahi’s conviction. He describes it as “qualified (resemblance) identification”, which is being remarkably kind. Frankly, no normal human being, as opposed to angels dancing on the heads of pins, could possibly imagine that the bribed and cajoled Tony Gauci’s fifty-year-old, over six feet tall, dark-skinned, heavily-built customer was in fact the 36-year-old, five feet eight, light-skinned, slightly built Megrahi. Even Tony prefaced his line-up “identification” with “Not the man I saw in my shop, but…” The identification is in fact the shaky hook on which the entire daisy-chain of circular reasoning dreamed up by the police investigation and embellished by the trial court was hung. It has been challenged by four eminent experts in the psychology of memory – Prof Timothy Valentine (70 pages, 2008), Professor Steven Clark (49 pages, 2008), Professor David Canter (105 pages, 2010) and Professor Elizabeth Loftus (seven page journal publication, 2013[2]). The full list of problems with it is much too long to go into here, and it seems yet another problem has now arisen.

One of the things Masoud allegedly confessed to doing, in these interviews in the prison dungeon in Tripoli, was buying the clothes from Tony Gauci. Tony described one customer, not two, and as he has since died, the police have no further opportunity to go back and persuade him to change his statement on that point also. If Masoud bought the clothes, Megrahi didn’t, and if he didn’t, the entire case is a pile of daisy-heads on the floor. However, if Masoud’s confession is required in order to refute the suitcase evidence, this must create a bit of a dilemma for his prosecutors.

Conclusion

Over many years Justice for Megrahi has raised serious, evidence-based concerns about the conviction. These concerns have never been addressed in detail, or at all, by the Crown Office or by any of those who support the conviction – they have simply been cavalierly dismissed and those raising them stigmatised as conspiracy theorists. That must now change. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle dared to challenge the conviction of Oscar Slater, the response of the prosecution authorities was as dismissive as that of the Crown Office in relation to the Megrahi conviction. But history proved Conan Doyle to be right.

Reference 1: Vermeij, E. (2024) Survivability of IED components, suitcases, their contents and luggage containers in suitcase bombs. Elsevier: Forensic Science International: Reports, vol 9, July 2024.

Reference 2: Loftus, E. F. (2013) Eyewitness testimony in the Lockerbie bombing case. Memory, vol 21 issue 5, pp 584-590.

Questions continue to haunt family members

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Black) — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 17:49:00 +0000

[What follows is excepted from an article published today on the website of Hollywood Reporter:]

CNN Originals is launching a four-part documentary series on the 1988 Lockerbie bombing on Pan Am flight 103.

Lockerbie: The Bombing of Pan Am 103, which examines the mysterious circumstances around the bombing, which was the deadliest terror attack on United States civilians before Sept 11, premieres with two episodes on Sunday, Feb 16 at 9 pm ET/PT on CNN. The following two episodes will air on Sunday, Feb 23 at 9 pm ET/PT.

(...) The series is produced by Mindhouse Productions in association with Sky Studios and CNN Original Series.

The series features interviews with Lockerbie residents and family members of the passengers and also examines the multiple theories that emerged from the resulting investigation. While a conviction was upheld in 2000, there are still questions over who was ultimately responsible.

“Viewers consistently look to CNN to tell the human stories behind world-shaking events,” said Amy Entelis, executive vice president of talent, CNN Originals and creative development. “The Lockerbie bombing commanded the world’s attention at the time, and the questions that continue to haunt the family members of the victims endure still today. This series is a stirring combination of investigative and highly emotional storytelling that CNN Original Series has come to be known for.”

The attack was also recently brought back into the news with the release of the Peacock Original series, Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, starring Colin Firth.

The CNN series will stream live for pay TV subscribers on the news outlet’s website, connected TV and mobile apps on Feb 16 and will be available on demand beginning Feb 17 to pay TV subscribers.

Lockerbie is executive produced by Nancy Strang for Mindhouse, Poppy Dixon for Sky Studios, and Amy Entelis and Lyle Gamm for CNN Original Series.