Culprits of Lockerbie a treatise Concerning the Destruction
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- Conflicting evidence over interline shed X-ray operators’ tea breaks
- 5. Necessary use of a radio-cassette player
- 6. The mystery surrounding Pan Am 103A and 103 passenger Khaled Jaafar (a)
- Informants from the Bekaa
- Key question over whether Jaafar’s two holdalls were check-in items or hand luggage
- Significance of same sector discovery
- No check-in labels attached
- No evidence of blast damage
- Jaafar’s father tells the investigators that his son only travelled with carry-on items
- Jaffar’s Dortmund host Hassan El-Salheli claims Jaffar only took two small bags
- Pan Am passenger Yasmin Siddique
- Size of the holdalls meant that they were likely to have been permitted hand luggage
- Contents suggest they were hand luggage
- Queries relating to Jaafar items recovered in a different sector from that in which the holdalls were found
- Exhibit PH/695 items supposedly bore no “particular” signs of explosive
- Change of description of the piece of material containing items comprising PH/695
- Other Jaafar items fingerprinted
- Could PH/695 have come from one of the Jaafar’s holdalls
A more likely scenario What seems most likely is that after Bedford left for his tea-break a terrorist confederate walked into the shed masquerading as an airline worker. With the assistance perhaps of IranAir, who that day were using a nearby gate for docking and loading the confederate would have trollied the bomb-laden suitcase into the interline shed and presented it to either Kamboj or Parmar or both operators for x-raying as if he were delivering a single bag – possibly a stray one – in an entirely normal way. On December 21, 1988, the German “Toshiba” warning had still not been disseminated in the UK. In addition to lax security at Heathrow this may be why the terrorists chose Heathrow rather than Frankfurt to get the bomb into the system. Consistent with UK non-dissemination Kamboj testified (as did Bedford) that he was unaware of the warning. Accordingly, he conceded in evidence, he could well have let through a bag containing such a machine. X-ray sticky tape would have been applied and the terrorist would then have placed “his” bag in the container, arranging its position to lethal effect, either noticed or not by the x-ray operators. Bedford and Kamboj both testified that security was so lax at Heathrow airside that anyone masquerading as an airline worker and equipped with an airside pass, could enter the shed unchallenged and handle baggage. By strolling casually past the interline shed and glancing through the doorway the terrorist would have established that Bedford was the man on duty loading containers in the shed that day. From the distance Bedford would have been seen leaving the shed to take his tea break. It may be that by keeping watch on previous days the terrorists learnt if there was any pattern to his breaks. With Bedford safely out of the way on his break the lone “handler” would swiftly have pushed the primary suitcase, on a sack trolley perhaps, into the shed and presented it for x-ray. From a certain collaborating airline the terrorists would probably have confirmed that the Toshiba alert had not yet been disseminating in the UK and would have been confident that the swuitcase could be put through the x-ray machine without raising any questions. After x-ray he carried he would have carried it over to AVE4041, plainly identified as Pan Am’s by it prominent company roundel and logo. Designed exclusively for wide-bodied jet hulls the perceived likelihood would have been that it was earmarked for the 747 on flight 103. Perhaps the terrorist even asked the x-ray operator if AVE4041 was destined for that flight. With the operator or operators taking little notice the terrorist would have enjoyed an unencumbered opportunity to lay the primary suitcase in the desired position. It is noteworthy that Kamboj, one of the two x-ray operators, never mentioned such an episode although many days had passed before he was questioned and if it had not been unusual for a porter or handler to place a bag in a container why would he necessarily have remembered such a event? As we have seen (at (g) above, p.64) he only maintained that he had not placed any bag in the container (“it wasn't his job to do so”) and denied telling Bedford that he had done so. The answer may be simple enough and is considered next. Conflicting evidence over interline shed X-ray operators’ tea breaks In evidence during the trial Kamboj claimed, like Bedford, that he too left the shed for a snack (although he did not say when). In evidence Bedford said that only Kamboj was in the shed when he went off for his tea but Kamboj said Parmar was usually there with him and finished when he did. Not only would the slick tactic conjectured here not have required the shed to be left unattended by the x-ray staff at all but on the contrary would have been facilitated by their presence and unwitting co-operation, which would have dispelled all risk and suspicion. One explanation as to why Kamboj had no memory of any exchange with the terrorist was that he too was on his break and it was Parmar who in fact dealt with the man. As we have seen nothing is known about Parmar but it was never suggested he was in league with the terrorists or that there was any reason to question his bona fides. It seems he was simply never asked about the matter. Interline tags On appeal it was argued by William Taylor QC that if the bomb suitcase was the one seen by Bedford it would not necessarily have required an interline tag since Bedford had said that the handles were facing inwards, which would have concealed the absence of a tag. On the other hand, Philip Radley, a security officer called by the defence at the appeal, gave unchallenged evidence that tags were not always kept secure and one could easily have been purloined in advance. Moreover, a tag could have been supplied by rogue personnel from an airline using Heathrow (as to which see VII, 7, (b)). (For a thoroughgoing forum on the smuggling of the bag airside at Heathrow see Lockerbie: London Origin Theory, JREF forum, eleven pages, http://forums.randi.org/ showthread. php?t=165824.) 
Fig. 9 The Heathrow interline shed 5. Necessary use of a radio-cassette player There is one other important question which necessitates consideration. If the scheme had been to smuggle a bag containing the bomb into Heathrow airside, why would there have been any need to go to the trouble of concealing the bomb inside a radio-cassette player, with its limit on the amount of Semtex which could be used? Packing a suitcase 
Fig. 10 Interline shed X-ray station full of Semtex would have obviated the need to locate the suitcase close to the hull because an unrestricted amount would have been likely to destroy the aircraft wherever it was stowed. If the bomb was to be smuggled from the Continent or Scandinavia into Britain via a ferry route the possibility of a customs search could hardly be ruled out and as soon as a suitcase was opened a large Semtex bomb would be instantly obvious. If, on the other hand, the tactic canvassed at VII, 7, (b) below, was employed, it would be have been prudent in the event of a challenge by airside security staff not to be caught in possession of a bag full of semtex. However, more importantly, and very simply, the method of approach conjectured here would actually have depended on the brazen presentation of the suitcase for x-ray, necessitating the use of a radio-cassette player. 6. The mystery surrounding Pan Am 103A and 103 passenger Khaled Jaafar (a) Ingestion of the bomb at Frankfurt using Turkish baggage handlers? Early intimations As early as 30 December 1988 the Washington Times carried a report that the terrorist perpetrators were believed to have planted the bomb in the luggage of Khaled Jaafar, a 20-year old Lebanese-American who had flown on PA103A before transferring to Pan Am 103. The next day the Daily Express carried the same story, claiming FBI and Metropolitan police sources. That the authorities had quickly become interested in Jaafar in the wake of the disaster is evident from the disclosure by a Scottish police officer in an unattributable interview with John Ashton (see Megrahi, p.55 reiterating Ashton and Ferguson, Cover-Up of Convenience, p.23). The officer had been deployed to recover debris from search Sector D and said he had been briefed to be on the lookout for heroin, which a young Arab passenger was suspected to have been smuggling. Jaafar was the only Arab male on board The Interfor report’s story of the safeguarded heroin smuggling route The supposed involvement of Khaled Jaafar resurfaced in 1989 when Pan Am and their insurers, the United States Insurance Group, were facing an action in negligence brought by the families of the Lockerbie victims. Lawyers acting for the airline and the insurers engaged the New York private inquiry firm Interfor, operated by a controversial Israeli named Yuval Aviv, to investigate the background to the bombing. Quite quickly Interfor delivered a report – subsequently leaked – which purported to expose the existence of an agreement between a gang of Middle-Eastern heroin smugglers and certain CIA agents who were working to secure the release of kidnapped American hostages held captive in the Lebanon by Syrian and Iranian-backed militia groups. In exchange for giving the CIA personnel help over the hostage-release the smugglers were guaranteed that shipments of heroin to North America on certain civil air routes would be unimpeded, or protected. In its report Interfor claimed that the protected drug route operated through Frankfurt airport and used Turkish Islamic fundamentalist baggage handlers who were well placed to switch a clean suitcase checked in by a courier with a similar bag containing a heroin shipment. The Interfor report claimed that the terrorist bombers had managed to suborn one of the handlers to switch a clean bag with a bag containing not heroin but the fatal bomb. It was claimed that the courier, or “mule,” was Khaled Jaafar, who presumably thought he was merely going to be smuggling drugs into America. The report was sensationally leaked to the media and Juval Aviv found himself facing several years of difficulty at the hands of the American authorities (see eg Ashton, Megrahi, at pp.190-195). Working the switch It is worth considering briefly how the protected trafficking scheme might have worked at Frankfurt. It is assumed that neither the smugglers nor the CIA would have had many members of the airport workforce under their thumb. A protected drug smuggling route does not mean that the corrupt handlers would not have needed to take great care to avoid being observed. Although Interfor referred to the switching of a bag would it actually have been necessary for the bag itself to be switched? Once the collusive handlers had identified the courier’s suitcase at an appropriate point after it was removed from the conveyor taking it from check-in to the loading station might they only have needed to open the bag (conveniently left unlocked, of course) and, out of sight of any security staff or other airport workers, quickly slip in the drugs package? However, opening a bag and adding an extra item to the contents would naturally involve more risk of being seen than deftly unpeeling the check-in tag, re-attaching it to the substitute suitcase and then disposing of the checked-in one. The smugglers would doubtless have preferred to use a dupe who was unaware that he was being exploited in order to avoid his becoming nervous and inviting suspicion. On the other hand, unless the substitute bag was absolutely identical in every respect to the original bag the innocent dupe on reaching baggage reclaim at JFK or other destination could well end up failing to pick up the substitute bag and might even cause problems by reporting his own as missing. Where the smugglers chose to use a dupe it would be wiser to use the innocent traveller’s own suitcase, placing the drugs in it on the way from the conveyor to the aircraft. When reclaimed at JFK the unknowing and relaxed courier would be waved through by Customs at the request of the CIA personnel involved. The Interfor report’s claim about Pan Am 103 passenger, Major Charles McKee Against the background of the realities of Middle Eastern intrigue the story about the protected drugs route deal was perhaps not so very hard to assimilate. Nor would it have been so very difficult to take on board the next part of the report. It was suggested that the deal over the protected drugs route for help regarding the hostages had become known to Major Charles McKee, who was conducting a hostage rescue mission of his own in the Lebanon. He supposedly believed that even for such a noble cause as rescuing American hostages the CIA ought to have stopped short at aiding and abetting drug trafficking and it was suggested that the purpose of his return to Washington was to confront the CIA. The Interfor McKee claim’s indigestible dish It was at this point however that Interfor went on to make a rather more outlandish claim, one which quite simply demands the total suspension of believe. It was suggested that the rogue CIA group were privy to McKee’s intent and had somehow fortuitously discovered, too, that the terrorists were going to blow up the plane on which McKee would be flying home. In order to protect their operation, it was suggested, they cynically allowed the plan to go ahead. Some students of Lockerbie have long debated the supposition. We shall not. (b) Could Khaled Jaffar have been the bombers’ dupe? Jafaar in the Bekaa valley in the Autumn of 1988 Until six weeks prior to Lockerbie Jaafar had been spending the Autumn with relatives in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon in order to be near his fiancée, with whom he was said to have been infatuated. The Bekaa has long been known as a Middle Eastern centre for drug cultivation and distribution, as well as being a stronghold of various anti-Western factions supported by Iran and Syria. Jaafar had then moved on to West Germany, staying in Dortmund with childhood friends, Hassan and his brother Souheil El-Salheli, before setting off for Frankfurt airport to return to his home in Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit. It has been suggested that some of his clan in the Bekaa were involved in drug smuggling and that he had somehow been persuaded at a personal level to become involved in some sort of smuggling. Informants from the Bekaa In February 1989 a cousin of Jaafar’s approached the FBI and told them that although Jaafar would not have carried drugs he could have been an easy prey to terrorists seeking a dupe to assist in smuggling (FD 302 statement, cited in Ashton, Megrahi, p.122). Another cousin then came forward to say he knew Jaafar quite well, having observed him in the Bekaa during his stay there, and to please his fiancée, whose brother was a Hezbollah captain, Jafaar had been persuaded to carry drugs and to take a radio-cassette player as a gift, unaware that it contained a bomb (interview in The Maltese Double Cross documentary: see Ashton, Megrahi, p.123). The information may have been treated with a pinch of salt, as the relative apparently asked to be allowed to import a consignment of cannabis into America as a reward for his tip! (ibid). Could there be any truth in the proposition that he had been persuaded to take a suitcase containing heroin, which had then been switched by Frankfurt handlers for a similar suitcase carrying the Lockerbie bomb? To examine that question it is necessary to scrutinise the trial and other evidence regarding his luggage. (c) Zeist disputation over whether Jaafar could have been associated with the primary suitcase Key question over whether Jaafar’s two holdalls were check-in items or hand luggage Two holdall-type bags identified as Jaafar’s were recovered from the crash site in Sector D. Very significantly, Pan Am documentation showed that he had checked in two items for PA103A at Frankfurt and the key question was whether the holdalls were the check-in items or were hand luggage he had taken with him into the cabin. If both had been check-in luggage Jaafar would have been unlikely to be a passenger travelling with the primary suitcase. At Zeist the Crown’s agenda was to establish that the holdalls were the two check-in items consistent with the Pan Am manifest, in order to eliminate Jaafar from association with the terrorists and thus to strengthen their case that the bomb bag had come from Malta. Conversely, the defence sought to suggest that at least one (and possibly both) had been hand luggage and that Jaafar had travelled with at least one other check-in item, missing from the list of recovered baggage and therefore quite possibly the primary suitcase. This would implicate Frankfurt as the point of ingestion and, it followed, would exculpate the defendants. Significance of same sector discovery The fact that both holdalls were found in the same sector (D) strongly indicates they had been more or less together in the aircraft, either in the cabin or in the hold. If in the cabin, the Pan Am documentation would indicate Jaafar was or was supposed to be travelling with two other items in the hold. No check-in labels attached Neither of the recovered holdalls had check-in labels attached and it seems unlikely that both would have lost their labels during the descent. Moreover no labels relevant to the bags were ever recovered. This supported the likelihood of their being hand luggage. No evidence of blast damage Neither bag showed evidence of blast damage. Had they done it would have provided strong evidence that they had been placed in AVE4041 (see Ashton, Megrahi, p.123) but not all items in the container displayed evidence of proximity to an explosion. It follows that the absence of blast damage can obviously not indicate if the holdalls were likely to have been in the cabin. Jaafar’s father tells the investigators that his son only travelled with carry-on items In spite of the document-ation Jafaar’s father Nazir told investigators that his son was completely westernised, had nothing to do with terrorism and that he had only travelled with the two carry-on bags. He may have had good reason to be sure of his son’s attitudes but it is not clear how he could have known about the bags if he was in America when his son set off from Frankfurt. Perhaps he was repeating what his son’s companions in Drtomund had told him (see next paragraph). Jaffar’s Dortmund host Hassan El-Salheli claims Jaffar only took two small bags For what it was worth, at Zeist the Crown called Hassan El-Salheli Jaafar’s host in Dortmund, citing his 1989 statement to the BKA, in which he had described being present when Jaafar packed his bags. He recalled that there were only two small ones and gave a precise description of the bags and, more curiously still, of their contents. Though not called as a witness his brother Souheil (and their cousin Hussein Ali Allam) had also told the BKA that Jaafar had taken only two small bags. Pan Am passenger Yasmin Siddique Pan Am 103A passenger Yasmin Siddique stated that she had been standing directly behind Jaafar in the queue for passport control at Frankfurt and professed to state in the first instance that she could not recall seeing him with any hand luggage. If her memory was correct it went to support the likelihood that his bags had indeed been checked in. However, at the best of times this might not be thought to be the first thing a fellow passenger would normally notice and it raises the possibility that her original assertion may have been prompted by an agenda on the part of the statement taker, a repeated theme of the Lockerbie inquiry. The real state of her perceptive faculties eventually became tolerably clear. It seems that the crux of what she had actually found memorable about Jaafar was not his luggage but his “very nervous and strange behaviour,” as might well be evinced by an inexperienced drugs mule (a topic we shall develop further). Cross-examined by leading counsel for al-Megrahi she conceded that her attention was focused on Jaafar’s behaviour rather than on whether he was carrying hand luggage. Size of the holdalls meant that they were likely to have been permitted hand luggage One of the holdalls was smaller than the maximum size permitted by Pan American as hand luggage. The other only very slightly exceeded the size limit and (in the days before the unrelenting régîmes of Easyjet and RyanAir) would almost certainly have been allowed into the cabin. Contents suggest they were hand luggage On a long overnight flight exceeding ten hours a passenger would be likely to take on board at least one item of hand luggage, possibly two (see Ashton, Megrahi, p.123). The items in the holdalls included two small document pouches and travel paperwork which an air traveller would normally need to have with him. By the same token they did not contain toiletries, which travellers would normally be expected to carry when away from home for an extended period. Those personal necessities would have been likely to be packed in checked-in bags Queries relating to Jaafar items recovered in a different sector from that in which the holdalls were found It has already been mentioned that the two holdalls were found in Sector D. However, in Sector H the searchers found papers belonging to Jaafar contained in a piece of brown material (PH/695) which the police originally described as part of a suitcase lining. The suggestion was that they had come out of a separate item of luggage in the hold, nominally attributed to Jaafar. That would have been consistent with the holdalls being in the cabin with two other items recorded in the Pan Am documentation as checked-in being stowed in the hold. Exhibit PH/695 items supposedly bore no “particular” signs of explosive If the items in PH/695 had been in the primary suitcase they might have been expected to have shown signs of blast damage. PH/695 was flown to RARDE as early as 21 February 1989 but against each of the items in a list included in RARDE examination notes dated 29 March 1990 is the notation “N.P.E.S.,” standing for “no particular explosive sign” (ref PT/91; Crown Production 1498). It has been pointed out that no material to support this assertion has ever been disclosed (Ashford, Megrahi, p.124). Change of description of the piece of material containing items comprising PH/695 Although the police had originally designated the brown material enclosing the items in PH/695 as “suitcase lining” by the time they were returned to Nazir Jaafar the material was described as a “pocket” and Det Insp William Williamson said he understood this to have been a pocket from one of Jaafar’s garments (SCCRC interview, 5 Jan 2006). It may be asked whether the change of description was the result of “objective reconsideration” after closer scrutiny of the brown material or a presentational adjustment in keeping with the need to eliminate the possibility that neither of Jaafar’s checked-in items were his holdalls, and that he was travelling with missing checked-in items (one of which would have been the primary suitcase). Other Jaafar items fingerprinted It was revealed in 2007 that 41 sets of finger marks were recovered from various of Jaafar’s belongings but whether they were ever compared with Autumn Leaves suspects has never been revealed (Ashton, Megrahi, p.124). Question whether PH/695 might have come from a checked-in suitcase associated with Jaafar It has already been noted that if PH/695 had been in the primary suitcase the items comprising the exhibit would inevitably have borne evidence of blast damage, and apparently none of them did. On the other hand, if Jaafar’s own suitcase had been nefariously switched with another, and his own left behind, there should have been no PH/695 belongings to be found unless they were removed by the corrupt handlers and placed in the primary suitcase switched with Jaffar’s bag. However, in that event, they would have shown signs of blast damage. It is of course possible that it did come from a checked-in suitcase, never officially recovered by the police, but not the primary suitcase. We shall return to that possibility shortly. Could PH/695 have come from one of the Jaafar’s holdalls? If there were no third and fourth Jaafar bags could PH/695 have come out one of the holdalls? The fact that it was found in a different sector is hardly conclusive against such a possibility. It could have fallen away from them in the gale. Presumably nothing was found in the holdalls to match the brown material. The police would certainly have had an interest is disclosing this since it would have gone towards eliminating a third bag associated with Jaafar. Directory: docs docs -> Application for acem docs -> Observational Assessment of Teaching Practices Teaching Assessment Initiative Proposal Submitted to The Teachers for a New Era project docs -> Traditional British values docs -> From Warfighters to Crimefighters: The Origins of Domestic Police Militarization docs -> Borzoi Club of America Register of Merit Program I. What is a Register Of Merit docs -> Protecting the rights of the child in the context of migration docs -> United Nations E/C. 12/Esp/5 docs -> 9th May 1950 the schuman declaration docs -> Getting To Outcomes® in Services for Homeless Veterans 10 Steps for Achieving Accountability Download 0.96 Mb. Share with your friends:
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