Lockerbie - 'new' evidence
Discussion
Private Eye 1315 said:
For 19 years prosecutors and investigators kept secret a detailed report about the most important forensic evidence recovered from the debris of Pan Am 103 at Lockerbie – a fragment of timing device circuit board – which completely undermined their own case against Megrahi.
That such crucial material, obtained by the Eye, was never disclosed before the Libyan was convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity on UK soil, should in itself be sufficient grounds for a public enquiry. Added to the wealth of evidence concealed from his trial, the deeply flawed identification evidence “linking" Megrahi to the bombing, the use of a discredited Walter Mitty-type CIA informer as a “star witness", and the fact that other material in the case is still secret protected by "public interest immunity", the stench of a cover-up becomes overwhelming.
The 11 page report details the forensic analysis of the circuit board. It reveals that police and experts were aware, relatively early in the investigation, that there was something "very unusual" about the board. It had found that tracks on it were coated with pure tin, whereas the vast majority in manufacture have a tin/lead mix. This was a significant lead.
"Without exception it is the view of all experts involved in the PCB industry who have assisted with this enquiry that the tin application on the tracks of the circuit was by far the most interesting feature," said the police report.
Scandalously this was never revealed at Megrahi’s trial and not disclosed to his defence lawyers until 2009 – a month before he was freed from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds to return to Libya where he recently died.
The Crown's case against Megrahi regarding the circuit board was always the opposite: namely, that the fragment was identical to circuit boards used in time as the supplied to Libya by a Swiss company, Mebo. But these were not remotely "unusual" as they had the common tin/lead mix.
Earlier this year writer and researcher John Ashton, in his book Megrahi: you are my jury, revealed how government forensics scientist Alan Faraday, who had told the trial that the circuit fragment was "similar in all respects" to the Mebo devices, had in fact overseen tests on the fragment and a control sample circuit board (revealed in recently disclosed notebooks) which pointed up the differences between the two.
As this document shows, the significance of such findings was known more widely. This raises serious questions about why the evidence remained buried the years and who exactly know the Mebo timers were different.
The piece of board was found among parts of a man's shirt recovered from the crash site. The shirt was in turn traced to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who put Megrahi in the frame and three years after the bombing, saying he resembled the man who had bought the clothing. (As Eye readers know, Megrahi bore no resemblance to the man first described by Gauci, and it later emerged that the shopkeeper and his brother had been handsomely "rewarded" by the FBI.)
The new material, and the doubts about the veracity of the Gauci evidence, undermine the two main pillars of Megrahi’s conviction. And while the Libyans were not averse to state-sponsored terrorism at the time of the bombing in 1988, it remains the case – as the late Paul foot pointed out in the Eye’s special report, Lockerbie: the flight from justice, in 2001 – that the attack bore the hallmarks of a Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorist cell which had been caught red-handed with devices equipped to bring down planes. The excuse given for not holding a public enquiry into Megrahi’s conviction is that the criminal investigation is continuing. So far investigators only seem to have travelled to Libya-no doubt to see if they can obtain new evidence that might somehow prop up the crumbling conviction.
The quote is not verbatim. That such crucial material, obtained by the Eye, was never disclosed before the Libyan was convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity on UK soil, should in itself be sufficient grounds for a public enquiry. Added to the wealth of evidence concealed from his trial, the deeply flawed identification evidence “linking" Megrahi to the bombing, the use of a discredited Walter Mitty-type CIA informer as a “star witness", and the fact that other material in the case is still secret protected by "public interest immunity", the stench of a cover-up becomes overwhelming.
The 11 page report details the forensic analysis of the circuit board. It reveals that police and experts were aware, relatively early in the investigation, that there was something "very unusual" about the board. It had found that tracks on it were coated with pure tin, whereas the vast majority in manufacture have a tin/lead mix. This was a significant lead.
"Without exception it is the view of all experts involved in the PCB industry who have assisted with this enquiry that the tin application on the tracks of the circuit was by far the most interesting feature," said the police report.
Scandalously this was never revealed at Megrahi’s trial and not disclosed to his defence lawyers until 2009 – a month before he was freed from a Scottish jail on compassionate grounds to return to Libya where he recently died.
The Crown's case against Megrahi regarding the circuit board was always the opposite: namely, that the fragment was identical to circuit boards used in time as the supplied to Libya by a Swiss company, Mebo. But these were not remotely "unusual" as they had the common tin/lead mix.
Earlier this year writer and researcher John Ashton, in his book Megrahi: you are my jury, revealed how government forensics scientist Alan Faraday, who had told the trial that the circuit fragment was "similar in all respects" to the Mebo devices, had in fact overseen tests on the fragment and a control sample circuit board (revealed in recently disclosed notebooks) which pointed up the differences between the two.
As this document shows, the significance of such findings was known more widely. This raises serious questions about why the evidence remained buried the years and who exactly know the Mebo timers were different.
The piece of board was found among parts of a man's shirt recovered from the crash site. The shirt was in turn traced to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who put Megrahi in the frame and three years after the bombing, saying he resembled the man who had bought the clothing. (As Eye readers know, Megrahi bore no resemblance to the man first described by Gauci, and it later emerged that the shopkeeper and his brother had been handsomely "rewarded" by the FBI.)
The new material, and the doubts about the veracity of the Gauci evidence, undermine the two main pillars of Megrahi’s conviction. And while the Libyans were not averse to state-sponsored terrorism at the time of the bombing in 1988, it remains the case – as the late Paul foot pointed out in the Eye’s special report, Lockerbie: the flight from justice, in 2001 – that the attack bore the hallmarks of a Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorist cell which had been caught red-handed with devices equipped to bring down planes. The excuse given for not holding a public enquiry into Megrahi’s conviction is that the criminal investigation is continuing. So far investigators only seem to have travelled to Libya-no doubt to see if they can obtain new evidence that might somehow prop up the crumbling conviction.
A scandal that the government seems not to care about.
There was a report, in the Guardian I think, at the time of the release which said that new evidence recently obtained by the defence would have meant that an appeal would have succeeded so it was felt opportune to release Megrahi. I wonder if this was the evidence 'obtained'.
Some have suggested on here that it was a dark day for Scottish justice but there seems little doubt that the government, or rather governments, were complicit in the fitting up of Megrahi.
I wonder why the government of this country, together with one or two others no doubt, doesn't want an enquiry into the matter. (Where's a smiley for hysterical laughter when you need one?)
I've been a regular reader of Eye for years. It seems to be the only paper that investigates any more or which doesn't kow-tow to whatever government is in power.
Edited by Derek Smith on Saturday 9th June 21:16
Derek Smith said:
I've been a regular reader of Eye for years. It seems to be the only paper that investigates any more or which doesn't kow-tow to whatever government is in power.
I know the Eye doesn't always get it right, but I've always thought of it as the 'real' news, not the spun stuff we get from Westminster, or the diluted stuff we get from normal channels with their own agenda.tr7v8 said:
odyssey2200 said:
I never believed Megrahi did it.
He was a political sacrificial lamb.
Quite agree, Syria were in the frame a while ago. Looks like that could be a stronger hunch than I originally thought.He was a political sacrificial lamb.
Countdown said:
It was commissioned by Iran, and implemented by PFLP-GC who were based in Syria. It was always considered to be payback by Iran for Iran Air 655
The USA concentrated on the Iran connection early on in the investigation then politics came into the equation. All of a sudden it was not felt 'appropriate' to crticise the regime so a scapegoat had to be found.Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff