I. The Destruction of Pan Am 103 and the

On Wednesday, 21 December, 1988, an eighteen-year-old Pan American World Airways Boeing 747-121, Clipper Maid of the Seas, took off from London Heathrow bound for New York JFK on Flight PA 103. Cruising over the Scottish town of Lockerbie at just after 7.00 pm, thirty-eight minutes into its flight, the aircraft was destroyed by a bomb which had been smuggled on board. Not only were the 243 passengers and 16 crew sacrificed but falling debris from the disintegrating jet killed eleven people on the ground.

Although it was not immediately clear that a bomb had brought down the aircraft, terrorism was strongly suspected from the outset, first because the authorities had already received ample notice that an attack was in the offing and, second, because various radical groups wasted little time in claiming responsibility. An initial assessment by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency gave most credence to a boast by the “Guardians of the Islamic Revolution” that they had avenged the U.S. Navy’s action in shooting down an Iranian airliner earlier in the year. We shall return to that topic later but for the moment it can be stated that for at least twelve months after Lockerbie elements within the Government of Iran, in association with an extremist Palestinian terror group, were widely regarded by the Western intelligence community as the prime suspects.

However, sometime in 1989 or 1990 attention began to shift towards Libya. The strange and unsettling reasons for that switch have been explored in a number of studies, notably by the late Paul Foot (Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice, London: Pressdram, 2001), by John Ashton and Ian Ferguson (Cover-Up of Convenience: The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie, Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2002), by Davina Miller (“Who Knows about this? Western Policy towards Iran: the Lockerbie Case,” Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, 2011, © Taylor and Francis) and most recently and compellingly by John Ashton (Megrahi: You are My Jury – The Lockerbie Evidence, Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2012, chapter 7, “Target Libya”). The contention of these authors, and numerous other commentators and keen students of the saga, is that placing the blame on Libya was driven not by cold forensic logic based on unassailable evidence but rather by geopolitical expediency. The reasons for reaching that conclusion may be conjectural but for all that are predicated on a solid factual and inferential foundation. Towards the end of this treatise it is proposed to summarise published material, brought into sharp focus by the valuable research conducted by Miller (above), demonstrating more or less conclusively why the United States shifted the burden of accusation away from Iran and the PFLP-GC and on to Libya.

Although there has never been any credible or reliable evidence against anyone associated with the Gaddafi regime there was certainly no lack of grounds for attributing motive to Gaddafi himself. The history of the Reagan administration’s hostility towards the dictator has been convincingly documented in a number of works. To what extent Gaddafi was a sponsor of terrorist actions against the U.S. is moot and has been cast in doubt (ibid). However what is not in doubt is that the 1986 American bombing raid on Tripoli and Benghazi, launched from bases in Britain, left dozens of military and civilian casualties and would have induced a powerful urge for revenge including a very personal motive on the part of Gaddafi himself, who, it was said, had lost an adoptive baby daughter in the raid.

After a three-year joint investigation by the FBI and Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary (described by the Lord Advocate as the UK’s largest criminal inquiry led by Britain’s smallest police force) indictments were laid simultaneously in the U.S. and Scotland in 1991 against two Libyan nationals, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, both allegedly officers in the JSO, the Libyan secret service. Protracted negotiations with Colonel Gaddafi eventually led to the lifting of UN sanctions, acknowledgment by Libya that the destruction of PA 103 had been the work of rogue elements within the regime, renunciation of terrorism and the payment by Libya of $8 million in compensation to each of the families of the victims, and, eventually, the handing over of the two suspects to the Scottish authorities. On 5 April, 1999, they were flown to the Netherlands, which as part of the negotiations had been agreed as a neutral venue for their trial by an ad hoc three-member panel of Scottish judges sitting without a jury. At the end of their nine-month trial in January 2001 Fhimah was acquitted but al-Megrahi was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, to be served in Scotland, with a recommendation tht he serve a minimum of 27 years. His appeal against conviction was dismissed in March 2002, when he was transferred to a Scottish prison, and his application to the European Court of Human Rights was declared inadmissible in July 2003.

Following two highly critical reports by Hans Köchler, the UN observer at the trial and appeal, al-Megrahi applied in September 2003 to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for his conviction to be reviewed. In June 2007 the Commission referred his case to the Scottish Court of Criminal Appeal on the ground of a possible miscarriage of justice, although Köchler criticised the Commission’s 800-page report for exonerating police, prosecutors and forensic staff, choosing instead to place all the blame on “a Maltese shopkeeper” (http://i-p-o.org/koechler-lockerbie-referral-29June2007.htm).

Al-Megrahi was granted leave to appeal, which began in April 2009, but delays saw hearings likely to drag out into 2010. He was now reported to be suffering from advanced stage prostate cancer and, having been given no more than three months to live by a single medical practitioner and the appeal having been withdrawn, the Scottish Minister of Justice granted him compassionate release from prison on 20 August, 2009. In America in particular the decision was met with predictable anger aggravated as it was by reports of a somewhat carnival atmosphere which apparently greeted al-Megrahi on his return home and the widely held belief that it was linked to UK trade prospects with Libya, specifically a BP oil deal. It has since been disclosed that the Brown government had strived mightily to secure Megrahi’s release (see diverse media reports, 7 February, 2011).

To disgruntlement and embarrassment in equal measure al-Megrahi survived until May 20, 2012. Meanwhile, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, Gaddafi’s justice minister who resigned in protest against his leader’s handling of the popular uprising in the Spring of 2011 and became head of the Benghazi National Transitional Council, claimed that the Lockerbie bombing was carried out on Gaddafi’s personal order and that al-Megrahi was involved (Ian Black and Peter Beaumont, “Gaddafi ordered Lockerbie bombing – ex minister,” The Guardian, 23.02.11; see also The Sunday Times, 27.02.11). In the trenchant words of Robert Forrester, Secretary of the Justice for Megrahi Committee–
“Following weeks of protesting that he had irrefutable proof that Colonel Gaddafi had put Mr al-Megrahi up to doing his Lockerbie dirty work, Abdel-Jalil . . . finally revealed all on April Fool’s Day. Apparently, Gaddafi had footed Mr al-Megrahi’s legal bills whilst the prisoner languished at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Well, that’s it then, clear and incontrovertible evidence that Mr al-Megrahi bombed 103! If this is the standard of proof that satisfies Mr Abdel-Jalil, a former judge, one wonders how much the predicament of the long suffering Libyan people might improve under the West’s new found rebel friends.”
In March 2011 Moussa Koussa, Gaddafi’s foreign minister, defected to the UK. Described as having played a leading role in the Lockerbie bombing he has always denied Libyan involvement (Guardian, 31.3.11). Although Prime Minister David Cameron announced that Mr Koussa would be available for questioning by the Dumfries and Galloway police (media, 31.3.11; 1.4.11) it has been widely reported that HMG were in a dilemma. They were clearly wary of “cosying” up too closely to a suspected terrorist organiser whom the Libyan rebels said they wanted to put on trial. At the same time they regarded him as a valuable source of intelligence on the extent to which Gaddafi’s support was ebbing away and how his remaining henchmen might be encouraged to desert. No doubt to that end, it was stressed that the police were merely seeking to question him as a “witness” (eg Evening Standard, 01.04.2011). Following Gaddafi’s final overthrow, capture and death it was reported that Dumfries and Galloway police officers were to be dispatched to Libya in pursuance of further inquiries into Libyan culpability for the destruction of Pan Am 103 (see The Guardian, December 8, 2011).

Such inquires are in train (see XII, 5, (g), below) and are an utter waste of time and money and pure window dressing. The investigators will discover nothing from any secret files or “witnesses” they might stumble upon or be led by the nose to discover. Sensible people who take the trouble to immerse themselves in the essential detail of the Lockerbie bombing come away in little doubt that the so-called “case” against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was a quite ludicrous assemblage of fantasy, belief in which it is almost impossible to credit to grown men. Brand new clothes were supposedly packed in the suitcase with the bomb but this is the story of the King’s New Clothes, a breath-taking collage of fundamental contradiction, flawed science, half-baked investigation, mendacity, manipulation, ill motive and poor scrutiny. All this it only takes knowledge of the case underscored by common sense to appreciate. Statesmen and government officials are not any less equipped with common sense than are ordinary mortals. It has therefore been intensely frustrating for those innumerable private individuals who are familiar with the details to suffer the obstinate refusal of the Scottish, British and US governments both to acknowledge that al-Megrahi’s conviction and the supposed complicity of the Gaddafi regime are just so much hot air, and at the same time to denounce those whom cold analysis plainly shows to be the true culprits.

Their attitude remains all the more mystifying in the light of the increasingly belligerent posture of the Iranian regime, particularly against Israel, Iran’s galloping nuclear programme and its continuing support for the disgraced Syrian dictatorship. The silence of the Government of Israel, whose intelligence services probably know more than anyone about the identity of the culprits and who have the most compelling of motives to reveal what they know, is even more of a puzzle. It may be suspected that they have had to make a hard-nosed, painful decision to forego the propaganda advantage of accusing their enemies, Iran and the Palestinian extremist group bearing responsibility, out of a concern to avoid breaking ranks with, if not offending the collective amour propre, of the American intelligence community.

The main purpose of this study is not to furnish yet another tract in testament of the piffle which constitutes the supposed case against al-Megahi and Libya. That is now clear beyond any shadow of a doubt. Rather, the purpose is to discuss the evidence pointing to the identity of those who probably did perpetrate the atrocity. But by way of background to that exercise it is proposed to demonstrate – again – why the case against al-Megrahi is so risible. To that end it is intended to refer, not to every detail which might be mentioned but certainly to a considerable body of evidence in the case, including much material cited by John Ashton in his seminal study, Megrahi: You Are My Jury. It is proposed to focus on the evidence as a whole, not necessarily on the details of how the evidence was handled, mismanaged, overlooked or even manipulated by the investigators, lawyers and the judges.

It has been too widely reported for dispute that within hours of the atrocity numerous personnel in US Government service had arrived at Lockerbie and were engaged in various unexplained activities not necessarily connected with assisting the regular police and the Air Accident Investigations Board (AAIB) inquiry. What exactly some of them may have been doing has been explored elsewhere and is not of principal concern here but it has been conjectured not without good reason that their concern was to recover material which they preferred to keep from the official inquiry.

On Christmas Eve 1988, three days after Pan Am 103 was destroyed, two police dog handlers recovered a small piece of twisted and blackened aluminium, PSI/1, and next day detectives found another piece, PSI/4, nearby. They were later identified as component struts of the portable luggage container in which the suitcase carrying the bomb was concluded to have been stowed (see further below). The day after that, the two items were sent to the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) where chemical residue tests indicated plastic explosive. The following day, 27 December, 1988, it was officially announced that Pan Am 103 had been destroyed by a bomb.

The tests performed on the two exhibits PSI/1 and PSI/4 led the investigators to conclude that the plastic explosive used in the bomb was Semtex but doubts have been raised about the validity of that finding (see Ashton, Megrahi, p.152). The main constituents of Semtex are compounds with the initials PETN and RDX and while gas chromatography indicated that both ingredients were present the testing method known as TLC confirmed only the presence of PETN. Furthermore the laboratory paperwork did not indicate whether swabs had been taken from the scientists’ hands or the work area to determine the presence or absence of contaminants which might have affected the results of testing the exhibits for explosive residue. (This was a criticism levelled by the Forensic Science Agency of Northern Ireland (FSANI) in a report commissioned by the defence at Zeist: see Ashton, Megrahi, p.217). Whether or not the explosive was in fact Semtex was important essentially for two reasons:

Among debris recovered from the crash site were various reddish brown fragments of a suitcase shell the inner surfaces of some which were blast-damaged and were assumed to be the remains of the “primary” suitcase, as that which contained the bomb was termed. By early March 1989 the investigators established from a shell fragment and a piece of lining that it was a hardsided “Antique Copper” suitcase manufactured by the American Samsonite company and on 22 May, 1989, the investigators were finally able to establish from an embossed number on the lock that it was a Silhouette 4000 hardshell model manufactured by the company for the international market, and that a large proportion of the production run had been sold to the Middle East. From an examination of fragments of outer trim and inner frame it was eventually shown to be the 26-inch model, a significant finding in the context of estimating the exact position of the bomb when it detonated. (See Ashton, Meghrahi, pp.40-41 for the audit trail details).