Friday 5 February 2010

Flaws in evidence at Lockerbie trial

[This is the heading over a letter from Dr Jim Swire in today's edition of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

The Chilcot Inquiry has examined the role of the Blair government’s Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, allegedly converted to believing the Iraq war to be legal following “consultations in the USA”.

Should not the Lockerbie inquiry, when we get it, examine why the government of the day chose to ignore the words of its Lord Chief Justice, and appointed [Alan] Feraday to supply the forensic input to the Lockerbie trial?

Mr Feraday was criticised by the Lord Chief Justice in the case of R v Berry (1991). He declared that the nature of his evidence was dogmatic in the extreme and that he should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in this field. Also, the Home Office has paid compensation from the public purse to Mr Berry because he was jailed on the erroneous evidence of Mr Feraday.

The Lockerbie case depended heavily upon a piece of timer circuit board allegedly recovered from the wreckage and labelled “PT35B” presented to the court by the same Mr Feraday, who also had consultations with the USA.

Assuming the British Government wanted the Lockerbie trial to reach a fair verdict, was this really the best we had to offer?

16 comments:

  1. "Assuming the British Government wanted the Lockerbie trial to reach a fair verdict, was this really the best we had to offer?"
    The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MISSION LOCKERBIE,
    (computer translation Babylon german/english)

    attn. sfm:
    The answer is the question:
    Who changed the Police-Label 168 and why ? That is the key for the Lockerbie-Affair !
    7 Scottish Officials are still protected! A Dishonor for the Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill !

    Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill it is high time, for disclose the secretly documents (held back with SCCRC) between Switzerland and Great Britain and Scotland, since November 1988 and in following Lockerbie-Affair, so that he truth causes and backgrounds of the large political controversy between Libya and Switzerland become also public !

    Who can to disclose this fact, can uncover the fraud with the MST-13 timer fragment (PT/35) finally!
    MEBO (ebol) can do it! Thus Libya and Mr Abdelbaset al Megrahi can not brought in connection definitely, with the PanAm-103 explosion!

    The Police Label no.168 was the basis in the context for the fraud:
    Before Dr. Hayes and Allen Feraday had completed their examination's by RARDE, at November 1990, some Label's and Documents became different "alteration's" (among other things: Label 168, Label DP/137, Memorandum no.333 and Photomontage no.329, etc) !!!
    The RARDE Draft Report, was opened by Thomas Stuart Hayes and Allen Feraday, on 15th November 1990.

    Detective constable of Strathclyde police Thomas Gilchrist and ex police officer Thomas McColm were numbers of officer who became involved in the inquiry in the aftermath of PanAm 103. Both officer was involved in the recovery of certain debris and personal belongings.
    In the course of duties the officers take part in searches in the field down in Lockerbie and the area. There was a property centre in Lockerbie called Dextar. The duties was carry out there. For the purpose of ingathering aircraft parts a property center was also in Cumbria called Longtown. All parts was marked with a Strathclyde police label from its own force.

    The Label Number 168 was signed from officers Thomas Gilchrist and Thomas Duncan McColm on 13th of January 1989.
    Information appears on the face of the Label, police no.168:

    1st: top of the line says Police No. then was written Label: "PT" no.95 = (PT/95); then chanched on Label *PL" no.95 = (PL/95); then
    chanched again on Label "PI" no.995 = (PI/995) !
    *(The marking *PL" was not used in the Dr. Hayes/Feraday's examinations report, therefore was changed on letters "PI"!;
    2nd: Production, Case Against; ....
    3rd: there's was a first date of 13.1.89, then was later chanched to 17.1.89!;
    4th: Description of article: "cloth" (charred), then was later overwritten with "DEBRIS" and in brackets, (charred)!;
    5th: where Found: I, sector, 502-858;
    6th: two signatures from Thomas Gilchrist and Thomas McColm.
    To demonstrate the liability the label was later then additionally signed by (5) further officials:
    Cal Mentoso (phonetic), Derek Henderson, Tom Hayes, Allan Feraday and Ron McManus...

    Question: Did this persons had to take the responsibility on themselves, if the criminal fraud would be noticed? And had every of these officials to secure himself face to face of the others?
    It is strange and not normal that the altered police label no.168 (PI/995) was signed by 7 officials¨!
    (Lord Advocate Fraser's order was that police labels must by signed by 2 officials).
    The 7 Officials knows obviously about the altering of Label 168, by Allen Feraday!

    continuation down >>>

    ReplyDelete
  3. continuation >>>

    The date 13.1.89 at the bottom left hand corner vertically on the label no. 168, the grid reference and the word (charred) is the writing from officer Gilchrist (writing analysis).
    The manipulated label mark: to PI/995, and the overwritten word "DEBRIS" is the writing of Allen Feraday...
    The fraud with the manipulated MST-13 timer fragment (PT/35) which was the only piece of evidence, brought Libya with the Lockerbie-Tragedy in connection, are in the context regarded:

    > with the altered label No.168 of Strathclyde police;
    > the label DP/137 of (Dumfries & Galloway Constabulary police);
    > the doubtful back-posted MEMORANDUM (Prod.333) of Allen
    Feraday (RARDE) at Inspector William Williamson;
    > the missed Examination's page No.56; > the additional Examinations's page No.51, of Dr. Thomas Heyes (RARDE);
    > the photomontage (photo no.329). Ref. PP'8932, PI/995;
    > and the delivery of a MST-13 Circuit board (prototype) of Swiss
    Police (BUPO) at Scottish police/FBI, (Affidavit from eng. Lumpert, 18th
    July, 2007).

    Some of the Scottish Officials are the true criminals in the Lockerbie Affair are responsible for manipulating evidence in the Lockerbie Affair and are still protected by the Scottish Justice ! (They are not involved in the PanAm 103 bombing, but responsible for the conspiracy against Libya).

    Ex FBI Task Force chief Richard Marquise say: If someone manipulated evidence, if somebody didn't invesitgate something that should have been investigated, if somebody twisted it to fit up up Megrahi, or Fimah or Libya, then that person will go to jail. I mean that sincerely, that person should be prosecuted for that!...

    More information on our webpage: www.lockerbie.ch

    by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland

    ReplyDelete
  4. I agree entirely with Dr Swire. Feraday has much to answer for. The following is an extract from a longer piece to be found on Caustic Logic's Lockerbie Divide site:

    "In addition to the above, we have the fragment of circuit board purported to have come from a timing device employed to detonate a bomb. To believe this, we are expected to accept the evidence of Mr Alan Feraday of the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment. Firstly, Mr Feraday was signally lacking in qualification to make any pronouncements on this item other than the obvious fact that it was a piece of circuit board. Secondly, RARDE had conducted no tests for explosive residues. Thirdly, Mr Feraday had discredited himself as a forensic witness in previous cases involving terrorism and explosives. Fourthly, nobody at RARDE was able to explain why evidence labels and page numbers on notes relating to the fragment were altered. Finally, it seems that Mr Feraday took the item in question to the USA for analysis – this appears to have come as something of a surprise to Carmylie when informed of this on camera (by Gideon Levy: ‘Lockerbie Revisited’): doubtless due to his Lordship’s concerns surrounding the possible tampering with evidence."

    ReplyDelete
  5. MISSION LOCKERBIE:

    Woher kam die vorsätzliche Aufforderung an Lord Advocate General, for Scotland, Neil Forbes Davidson, Baron Davidson of Glen Clova, das Dokument unter National Security (PII) nicht zu öffnen um damit Libyen und sein Offizieller, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, in der Lockerbie-Tragödie offiziell in der Verantwortung zuhalten? Die Antwort darf nicht in den Wind geblasen werden...; rückfolgende Aufklärung bald...

    Babylon computer translation german/english:

    From where did come the deliberate order to Lord Advocate General for Scotland, Neil Forbes Davidson, Baron Davidson of Glen Clova, do not open the document under 'National Security' (PII) thereby Libya and its official Abdelbaset Al Megrahi can hold in the responsibility officially with the Lockerbie-Tragedy? The answer is not blow'in the wind…; imminent clear-up by reverse clear up …, soon....

    by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am a silly chap, aren't I? Find below the link to the piece on the Lockerbie Divide:

    http://lockerbiedivide.blogspot.com/2010/01/message-from-dr-jim-swire.html?showComment=1265309350481_AIe9_BFLSVaVGB_F9EsTVvgPH1XmJcXwdpZBHfkkRgyU8MhI5INbmHC4ccjQM003ZyNH-SQpCjcY6KGzue8Xt4g9R4KjL2v48ZSlFudo_RcLvUDPKd5zVtKsQGaz3uy75FT6jFer8l3xPCN2PFLMtd2hoVH7VTC8d0kGbdrAUU8_OxZRNoGrHHAz-bws_QGlWG1U9jeeeqSAX4TvGg4VC7VWGvonQlBQEcdw4j3rGmiw_lDa7x1iNds#c4358177510682496830

    ReplyDelete
  7. Allow me, QR, to link directly to the piece on The Lockerbie Divide.

    Caustic Logic kindly explained how to do it here.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Dear PH,

    Thank you kindly my man. Must say tis a jolly spiffing and ambitious new site.

    Toodle pip,
    QR.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Was it Feraday or Hayes who presented the exhibit PT35B to the Court?

    I wonder if the actual or anticapted conclusions of the May Inquiry (where Feraday took a bullet for the team?) had something to do with the "switch" from Feraday discovcering the fragment in September 1989 (embedded in the suitcase of Karen Noonan) to Hayes discovering the fragment on the 15th May 1989 in "debris" that linked the fragment with two other key pieces of evidence - a piece of Slalom shirt supposedly purchaded in Malta and the fragments of the "Horton" manual.

    Of course there could have been no "switch" if the discovery of the 15th May was genuine but as Herr Bollier has indicated the transformation of a piece of cloth into this treasure trove of evidence may have been back-dated.

    I previously referred to a memo from Hayes to Orr entitled "The Significance of Explosion Damaged Clothing" which was supposedly created in March 1989 (or earlier) but which refers to "the cassette radio instruction manual" indicating either that it was created later, not to inform Mr Orr but to create an evidential record, or that the discovery of fragments of the Horton manual was anticipated several weeks in advance!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Baz

    Hayes submitted his resignation from RARDE at the end of October 1989. On 20 October 1989, the Home Secretary had appointed Sir John May to investigate the forensic inviestigation surrounding the conviction of the Maguire family for posession and manufacture of explosives. May's appointment followed very shortly after the exoneration of the Guildford 4 at appeal. The Maguires were supposed to have been the bomb makers for the Guildford 4 and were convicted almost exclusively on evidence from RARDE which was proved to be seriously flawed. It was also shown that RARDE scientists withheld evidence which showed that many of their positive tests for nitroglycerine would have given the same "positive" results for many ordinary household substances. As soon as May was appointed, Hayes' days were numbered and he jumped. This might help highlight the point at which he ceased to be the lead scientist in the Lockerbei case.

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  11. Thus, if we suspect Hayes of being materially involved in the alleged fabrication of evidence in the Lockerbie case (principaly PI995 and all its contents), it seems likely this occurred prior to that date.

    He remained on the staff, in a semi-detached way, until June 1990 (about the time Thurman IDed the fragment as being from an MST-13 timer), but it seems a bit unlikely he would have been producing spurious pages of notes and renumbering stuff while he was only on a "consultant" retainer.

    This all fits quite well with September 1989 being the time when this stuff was done (if it was done, of course) - fitting in with Feraday's memo to Williamson. Which suggests the decision to start with the funny business (assuming there was any funny business, of course) was probably taken in August or thereabouts.

    This is a lot earlier than many commentators seem to believe the "change in direction" of the case to point to Libya rather then Iran would have occurred. It's well before the invasion of Kuwait and all that stuff. Nevertheless, I don't see how the timing could be much later. The fragment itself is definitely in the possession of the Scottish police by January 1990.

    This is something that often isn't taken into account by those proposing theories about the change of direction in the case, but it does need to be borne in mind.

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  12. Food for thought. Perhaps the defence at Camp Zeist should have made more of it.

    Of course if Thomas Hayes was on the way out, under a cloud, the question of motive or motivation arises.

    While it may be true that the Maguire 7 where convicted largely on the evidence of RARDE the Guildord 4 were fitted-up by the Police, which led to the link to the Maguires through Gerry Conlon. The nitroglycerine tests had earlier been used in the conviction of the Birmingham 6 by the Lancashire Constabulary and Dr Frank Skuse.

    It was of course in August 1989 that the case literally took a new change of direction with the emergence of the "Frankfurt" evidence and it was the evidence of a timer (rather than a barometric switch) that made Frankfurt and hence "Malta" tenable.

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  13. And the Frankfurt situation is a whole other can of worms.

    Bogomira Erac seems to be on the level, so far as I can make out, but what about the rest of the disappearing records? The potential for the device to have come through from Frankfurt was recognised from the earliest hours of the incident. And yet there was no concerted effort to preserve records and evidence there, and indeed nobody even thought about such preservation. Not airport security, not the Frankfurt police, not the baggage handling managers. Nobody. The bulk of it was just destroyed, about a week later, without a second thought.

    Apparently. I can't help feeling there's a bit more to it than that. And to the fact that the Frankfurt police, when they were handed the Erac printout in January, investigated the Malta connection at the time and then said absolutely nothing at all about it to anyone until August.

    What was that all about then?

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  14. Good points. Might I suggest that the attitude of "the Germans" was exactly the same as that of "the British" - NIMBY. (For American readers Not In My Back Yard).

    The Metropolitan Police and CSP John Orr "eliminated" Heathrow in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary and argued on spurious grounds that the primary suitcase had arrived from Frankfurt. The Indian Head tests (to which "the Germans" were not invited) gave a spurious scientific basis to this claim.
    This was not a collaborative investigation but a case of pass the parcel. Were "the Germans" supposed to put their hands up and take "the blame" when it was clear to them "Heathrow" had never been properly investigated.(see Leppard chapter 4 "London or Frankfurt The Forensic Argument" in "On the Trail of Terror".)

    The fragment of timer embedded within a piece of Malta clothing had been supposedly discovered in May and the investigation in fact "exonerated" Germany by moving the focus to Malta.

    Is that credible? I'm surprised you didn't ask which witnesses had been murdered!

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  15. Well, yes, obviously - to a certain extent. However, a knee-jerk reaction of destroying all the vital baggage records is a bit drastic unless you know there's something you don't want to get out. A spot of officially-sanctioned drug smuggling, maybe?

    Even at that, the scenario is quite surprising. The sheer number of people at Frankfurt who might have been expected to take steps to secure the baggage records must be quite high. Didn't they have a contingency SOP to cover securing these records in the event of an incident? Especially since the BKA knew what the PFLP-GC was up to in that very city and the airport was on alert for exactly that. Press reports from a few days after the incident state that the BKA were investigating the airport - what did they do at that time?

    In fact, records seem to have been deliberately destroyed. The police were at the airport within the time period specified by Bogomira Erac for keeping the records. So what happened? Not only that, there were obviously backups - Mrs. Erac talks about routine printouts and the possibility of backing up to disc, and there's a post on this blog somewhere in which one of the designers of the computerised system described computerised backup discs that should have routinely existed.

    Where was all that lot then? All gone. And nobody even asking questions about why. This intrigues me strangely.

    Then the Erac printout surfaces, apparently by pure chance. And there's that stray line of print that appears to point further back to - Malta, of all places. Nicely matching the blast-damaged clothing. Awfully neat, that.

    Of course there's no evidence that entry was the bomb bag, or that it came off KA180 as opposed to several other possible explanations for its provenance. There wasn't enough information on that single printout to be sure. But it was awfully handy, for all that, in this game of red-hot-poker the airports seem to have been playing, and let them stick it all on Luqa.

    Nevertheless, the BKA sat on the information for six months before they thought of telling the investigation about it. Well, I can't see a hole in Mrs. Erac's story, but even apart from that, something here stinks to high heaven.

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  16. I have no knowledge of records being destroyed at Frankfurt but if you say it happened I believe you.

    My position is that the primary suitcase was introduced at one point only and the evidence is that it was introduced at Heathrow. Therefore what happened at Frankfurt, Larnaca, Brussels or Vienna (while not irrelevant to the creation of the "Libyan solution") does not cast light on the issue of where the primary suitcase was introduced in actuality.

    The decision to "eliminate" Heathrow was not taken in isolation, and was not made solely on considerations of jurisdiction, but because of compelling evidence indicating the primary suitcase had arrived from Frankfurt.

    There was the "Autumn Leaves" case, the (wildly inaccurate) "Helsinki warning" and the warning circulated of aviation bombs concealed within a Toshiba radio-cassette.

    Most of the bags in AVE4041PA had arrived from Frankfurt, all the others (according to Orr) were Interline bags. Enquiries indicated that no Interline passenger had a brown samsonite.

    What would Orr's reaction have been to the news that fragments of a Toshiba radio-cassette had been recovered?

    To Orr "the Germans" prevarication and nitpicking simply indicated they had something to hide a view confirmed by the "discovery" of the Erac material which resolved the "blame" issue on the BSE principal.

    You may be right that "the Germans" thought they had something to hide. I do not dismiss the idea that there were "controlled" (or uncontrolled!) deliveries oof drugs travelling from Frankfurt (or Heathrow?) to the USA, only that there is no evidence of such (or the evidence was fabricated) and that even if there was such evidence it was irrelevant to the bombing
    (unless of course the two "extra" suitcases in AVE4041PA were supposed to contain heroin and it was at Heathrow not Frankfurt that a smuggling operation was infiltrated!)

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