Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Paul Channon. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Paul Channon. Sort by date Show all posts

Monday 16 March 2015

George H W Bush, Margaret Thatcher and Paul Channon

[On this date in 1989, a significant event in the Lockerbie story took place (and quite possibly two). Here is what Paul Foot wrote some five years later in a review in the London Review of Books:]

The American investigative columnist Jack Anderson has had some scoops in his time but none more significant than his revelation – in January 1990 [RB: 11 January 1990 in The Washington Post] – that in mid-March 1989, three months after Lockerbie, George [H W] Bush rang Margaret Thatcher to warn her to ‘cool it’ on the subject. On what seems to have been the very same day [RB: 16 March 1989], perhaps a few hours earlier, Thatcher’s Secretary of State for Transport, Paul Channon, was the guest of five prominent political correspondents at a lunch at the Garrick Club. [RB: They were Ian Aitken of The Guardian, Chris Buckland of Today, Robin Oakley of The Times, Julia Langdon of the Daily Mirror and her husband Geoffrey Parkhouse, then of the Glasgow Herald.]  It was agreed that anything said at the lunch was ‘on strict lobby terms’ – that is, for the journalists only, not their readers. Channon then announced that the Dumfries and Galloway Police – the smallest police force in Britain – had concluded a brilliant criminal investigation into the Lockerbie crash. They had found who was responsible and arrests were expected before long. The Minister could not conceal his delight at the speed and efficiency of the PC McPlods from Dumfries, and was unstinting in his praise of the European intelligence.

So sensational was the revelation that at least one of the five journalists broke ranks; and the news that the Lockerbie villains would soon he behind bars in Scotland was divulged to the public. Channon, still playing the lobby game, promptly denied that he was the source of the story. Denounced by the Daily Mirror’s front page as a ‘liar’, he did not sue or complain. A few months later he was quietly sacked. Thatcher, of course, could not blame her loyal minister for his indiscretion, which coincided so unluckily with her instructions from the White House.

Channon had been right, however, about the confidence of the Dumfries and Galloway Police. They did reckon they knew who had done the bombing. Indeed, they had discovered almost at once that a terrorist bombing of an American airliner, probably owned by Pan-Am, had been widely signalled and even expected by the authorities in different European countries. The point was, as German police and intelligence rather shamefacedly admitted, that a gang of suspected terrorists had been rumbled in Germany in the months before the bombing. They were members of a faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Ahmed Jibril. The aim of the gang was to bomb an American airliner in revenge for the shooting down by an American warship of an Iranian civil airliner in the Gulf earlier in the year. On 26 October 1988, less than two months before the bombing, two of the suspects – Hafez Dalkamoni and Marwan Abdel Khreesat – were arrested in their car outside a flat at Neuss near Frankfurt. In the car was a bomb, moulded into the workings of a black Toshiba cassette recorder. In the ensuing weeks other raids were carried out on alleged terrorist hideaways in Germany, and 16 suspects arrested. One of them was Mohammad Abu Talb, another member of the PFLP, who was almost instantly released. Even more curious was the equally prompt release of Khreesat, who was suspected of making the bomb found in Dalkamoni’s car.

The finding of the bomb led to a flurry of intelligence activity. It was discovered that the bomb had been specifically made to blow up an aircraft; and that the gang had made at least five bombs, four of which had not been found. At once, a warning went out on the European intelligence network to watch out for bombs masked in radio cassette recorders, especially at airports.

[RB: Further details of these incidents can be found in Paul Foot’s Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice, pages 3 to 5; in this article in the Executive Intelligence Review of February 1990; and in John Ashton’s Megrahi: You are my Jury, pages 52 to 54.]

Saturday 20 February 2016

Thatcher banned Lockerbie inquiry

[This is the heading over an item posted yesterday on Lockerbietruth.com, the website of Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph. It reads as follows:]

Today's release of Thatcher cabinet papers from 1988/89 contains a sinister footnote to the Lockerbie story.

Pan Am 103 was blown from the skies over the Scottish town of Lockerbie just after 7 pm on the evening of the 21st December 1988. Within hours US FBI teams arrived in Lockerbie to "assist" the Dumfries and Galloway police force.

Phone lines between the White House, the US embassy in London, and the offices of MI6 were running hot. The US ambassador to the UK had been kept informed. The secret US Navy base at Machrihanish on the Mull of Kintyre had been alerted and at dawn a surveillance helicopter would be scrambled.

At 9.30 on the morning of the 22nd December Thatcher and her cabinet met to decide what to do.  Information about the tragedy had flooded into Downing Street from 8 pm the previous evening. Thatcher and entourage would fly to Scotland later that morning to survey the devastation.

At the cabinet table was head of MI6 Sir Christopher Curwen. He reported that US intelligence had instructed that on no account was there to be any form of public inquiry. His advice was supported by British Secretary of State for Transport Paul Channon.

The tragedy would prove to be the biggest attack on the British mainland since the Second World War, yet no public inquiry must be allowed. If such an inquiry were to happen, the following matters would be open to public scrutiny and questioning:

1. On board Pan Am 103 was a six-man CIA team returning from Beirut. In the suitcase of the team leader Charles McKee were sensitive state papers. The team had been on a praiseworthy mission to attempt to negotiate the release of US hostages at that time held in the Middle East.

2. One of the Pan Am passengers was Khaled Jafaar, a drug courier for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). His job was to take consignments of heroin originating from the Bekaa Valley to the US, to assist with the capture of drug traffickers in Mexico and the USA. UK security authorities cooperated with the drug shipments, known as "controlled deliveries" and sometimes "high risk flights". Passengers and public were unaware of the process.

3. Transport Minister Paul Channon was aware of a telephoned warning - made just days before the bombing - about possible bombs on US aircraft flying to the US. Known as the "Helsinki" warning it was, in the view of Heathrow security chiefs, a hoax. And yet the Department of Transport telexed the warning to Interpol and all airlines. Why would they do that, if the warning was a hoax?

4. Channon was aware also of a second warning from the German authorities in the form of a multi page coloured brochure. This included a photo of a mock-up of a bomb discovered in late October made by a terrorist group funded by Iran and Syria. It was certain that five bombs had been made by the group. Four were retrieved. A fifth bomb was never found.

5. In both warnings the Department of Transport had instructed airline check-in and security staff that if a tape recorder or radio in a passenger's luggage seemed suspicious, it should be "consigned to the hold of the plane". That is, exactly where the terrorist would want it to be.

6. Paul Channon was aware that Heathrow security was known to be in chaos. On the day of the Lockerbie attack 70,000 airside passes were in circulation at Heathrow, distributed to many nationalities and construction workers. The head of Heathrow security believed any country could have planted a bomb. There was no screening of staff, no restrictions on people walking through with bags. A rogue bag could be easily inserted into the baggage chain. [This information would be revealed to journalists in March 2012 by the Head of Heathrow Security following his retirement].

But...  

Important as they were, none of the above were recorded in Cabinet minutes or released under the thirty year rule.
 
Instead, all that is recorded and available to the public is that Thatcher and her ministers agreed that it was "not clear whether any further public inquiry would serve a useful purpose". An independent investigation would "serve no useful purpose". In general "it was important to avoid a plethora of inquiries that caused distress to individuals while unearthing no new facts."

On the contrary, Jim Swire and many bereaved relatives will be happy to undergo further distress caused by an independent inquiry. But will the Americans ever allow it?

Margaret Thatcher sleeps soundly in her grave knowing that her 1993 memoirs The Downing Street Years have consigned 270 murdered Lockerbie souls to the dustbin of history.  In 914 pages of closely remembered events and text she does not mention the word "Lockerbie".

The renowned journalist John Pilger has an appropriate saying for Thatcher's chicanery. When an event is inconvenient a government - aided by its intelligence services - will ensure that it "never happened".

Friday 6 January 2017

“Charges are now possible”

[On this date in 1994 the London Review of Books published a review by Paul Foot of Donald Goddard and Lester Coleman’s Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie. It reads in part:]

The American investigative columnist Jack Anderson has had some scoops in his time but none more significant than his revelation – in January 1990 – that in mid-March 1989, three months after Lockerbie, George Bush rang Margaret Thatcher to warn her to ‘cool it’ on the subject. On what seems to have been the very same day, perhaps a few hours earlier, Thatcher’s Secretary of State for Transport, Paul Channon, was the guest of five prominent political correspondents at a lunch at the Garrick Club. It was agreed that anything said at the lunch was ‘on strict lobby terms’ – that is, for the journalists only, not their readers. Channon then announced that the Dumfries and Galloway Police – the smallest police force in Britain – had concluded a brilliant criminal investigation into the Lockerbie crash. They had found who was responsible and arrests were expected before long. The Minister could not conceal his delight at the speed and efficiency of the PC McPlods from Dumfries, and was unstinting in his praise of the European intelligence.
So sensational was the revelation that at least one of the five journalists broke ranks; and the news that the Lockerbie villains would soon he behind bars in Scotland was divulged to the public. Channon, still playing the lobby game, promptly denied that he was the source of the story. Denounced by the Daily Mirror’s front page as a ‘liar’, he did not sue or complain. A few months later he was quietly sacked. Thatcher, of course, could not blame her loyal minister for his indiscretion, which coincided so unluckily with her instructions from the White House.
Channon had been right, however, about the confidence of the Dumfries and Galloway Police. They did reckon they knew who had done the bombing. Indeed, they had discovered almost at once that a terrorist bombing of an American airliner, probably owned by Pan-Am, had been widely signalled and even expected by the authorities in different European countries. The point was, as German police and intelligence rather shamefacedly admitted, that a gang of suspected terrorists had been rumbled in Germany in the months before the bombing. They were members of a faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, led by Ahmed Jibril. The aim of the gang was to bomb an American airliner in revenge for the shooting down by an American warship of an Iranian civil airliner in the Gulf earlier in the year. On 26 October 1988, less than two months before the bombing, two of the suspects – Hafez Dalkomini and Marwan Abdel Khreesat – were arrested in their car outside a flat at Neuss near Frankfurt. In the car was a bomb, moulded into the workings of a black Toshiba cassette recorder. In the ensuing weeks other raids were carried out on alleged terrorist hideaways in Germany, and 16 suspects arrested. One of them was Mohammad Abu Talb, another member of the PFLP, who was almost instantly released. Even more curious was the equally prompt release of Khreesat, who was suspected of making the bomb found in Dalkomini’s car.
The finding of the bomb led to a flurry of intelligence activity. It was discovered that the bomb had been specifically made to blow up an aircraft; and that the gang had made at least five bombs, four of which had not been found. At once, a warning went out on the European intelligence network to watch out for bombs masked in radio cassette recorders, especially at airports. There were more specific warnings. On 5 December 1988 the US Embassy in Helsinki got a telephone warning that 'within the next few weeks' an attempt would be made to bomb a Pan-Am flight from Frankfurt to New York. On 8 December, Israeli forces attacked a PFLP base in the Lebanon and found papers about a planned attack on a Pan-Am flight from Frankfurt. This information, too, was passed on. On 18 December the German police got another warning about a bomb plot against a Pan-American flight. This message was passed to American embassies, including the embassy in Moscow, and as a result of it 80 per cent of the Americans in Moscow who had booked to fly home for Christmas on Pan-Am flights canceled their reservations. (...)
Though the German police dragged their feet and were singularly reluctant to disclose any documents, the facts about the Jibril gang were known to the Scottish police by March 1989. All the ingredients of a solution were in place. The motive was clear: revenge for a similar atrocity. The Lockerbie bomb, forensic experts discovered, had been concealed in a black Toshiba cassette recorder exactly like the one found in Dalkomini's car two months earlier. The German connection was impossible to ignore: the flight had started in Frankfurt. The identity of the bombers seemed certain, and surely it was only a matter of time before they could be charged. But, like Channon, the police were unaware of the telephone conversation between Bush and Thatcher. When Thatcher sacked Channon a few decent months later, she appointed Cecil Parkinson in his place. Shaken by the grief of the Lockerbie victims' families, Parkinson promised them a full public inquiry. Alas, when he put the idea to the Prime Minister she slapped him down at once. There was no judicial or public inquiry with full powers—just a very limited fatal accident inquiry, which found that the disaster could have been prevented by security precautions which are still not in place.
All through the rest of 1989 the Scottish police beavered away. In May they found more clues. A group of Palestinian terrorists were arrested in Sweden, among them Abu Talb. Talb's German flat was raided. It was full of clothing bought in Malta. The forensic evidence showed that the Lockerbie cassette-bomb had been wrapped, inside its suitcase, in clothes with Maltese tags. Talb was known to have visited Malta some weeks before the bombing. Off flew the Scottish police to: Malta, where a boutique-owner remembered selling a suspicious-looking man some clothes—similar to those found in the fatal suitcase. Closely questioned by FBI video-fit (or identikit) experts, the boutique-owner's answers produced a picture which looked very like Abu Talb. When a computer print-out of baggage on the fatal airliner appeared to show an unaccompanied suitcase transferred to PanAm 103 from a flight from Malta, the jigsaw seemed complete. Jibril had agreed to bomb an airliner, probably in exchange for a huge reward from the Iranian Government. The task was taken on by a PFLP team in Germany, led by Dalkomini. It was joined by Khreesat, who made several bombs, only three of which were ever discovered. One of the other two found its way, probably via Talb, to the hold of the airliner. The culprits were obvious. But the authorities still dragged their feet. The initial determination to identify the conspirators and bring them to justice seemed to have waned. The Scottish police were exasperated. They made more and more of the information available. Much of it appeared in the Sunday Times in a series of articles leading up to the first anniversary of the bombing. No one who read them could doubt that the bombers were Syrians and Palestinians. The series, mainly written by David Leppard, who worked closely with the Scottish police team, ended with a scoop: white plastic residue found at Lockerbie was traced back to alarm clocks bought by the Dalkomini gang. There seemed no more room for argument. 'The Sunday Times understands,' Leppard wrote, 'that officers heading the investigation — despite a cautious attitude in public — have told their counterparts abroad that under Scottish law "charges are now possible against certain persons."'
There were no charges, however — not for a long time.
[RB: And when they came, the charges were -- surprise, surprise! -- against two Libyans.]

Thursday 28 April 2011

Significance of Lockerbie for Scotland's future leaders

[What follows is the text of a letter submitted by Dr Jim Swire on Tuesday to The Herald. It has not (yet) been published.]

Today we have confirmation, from Susan Stipp of the University of Copenhagen, that to have flown civil aircraft during the ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland might have endangered innocent lives. At the time Willie Walsh of British Airways actively sought to have the flight bans lifted. This from the CEO of the airline which in 1982 had come within a whisker of losing a 747 to the ash cloud from Mount Galunggung in Indonesia. There were 247 passengers plus the crew aboard that aircraft. A close match for the 259 aboard the Lockerbie flight.

In 1988, on the night before Lockerbie, we now know, though the Zeist trial court did not, that Heathrow airport was broken into, close to where the bags for the Lockerbie flight were assembled the following evening.

Although reported immediately in its night security log, the airport took no steps to find out the identity or motive of the intruder, nor to prevent any consequences. That would have entailed a costly suspension of outgoing flights on 21st December 1988. 16 hours later 270 people died at Lockerbie, thanks to a bomb loaded at that same airport, with bags assembled for the flight adjacent to the break-in point. Only then were outgoing flights suspended, pending investigation. It was not till after the verdict against Mr Megrahi that the break-in came into public view, despite 12 years of Scottish police investigation.

On 22 December 1988, in the House of Commons, Nicholas Soames MP asked Paul Channon, (Transport Secretary): 'May I ask my Right Honourable Friend to confirm that security at Heathrow and Gatwick is at a very high and sustainable level and will remain so?'

Paul Channon replied: 'I certainly confirm that the security arrangements at Heathrow and Gatwick are among the best in world. We intend to maintain them at that level, and if more needs to be done it will be done.' *

Yet during the night of 20/21 December the Heathrow night security logs had shown that a break in had occurred, about which no action was taken until after 7.03 the following evening of 21 December. Had Channon been informed? All we know is that Heathrow did know immediately but had failed to act, and that the Metropolitan police were actively investigating the break-in by January 1989. Therefore it is hard to believe that the Scottish police did not know throughout their more than a decade long marathon investigation.

The priorities of Mr Walsh and, far more culpably, of the Heathrow authorities, are expressions of the ethos of modern British capitalism.

In Scotland we investigated and tried two Libyans for causing the Lockerbie atrocity, then we set one free using the compassion built into our justice system. Of that last act, I believe, we should be proud.

However the manner of conducting the Lockerbie investigation and the trial of the accused are increasingly seen to have been deeply flawed, and thus far Scotland has proved incapable of re-examining what she has done: does this matter after all these years?

Of course it does to us relatives of the dead who still seek the truth. It should also matter to all who use Heathrow airport, and to all Scots.

However I was astonished when David Cameron, despite the lessons of recent history, took a lead in seeking to enforce regime change upon Libya (for that is what it has become). I have heard from credible insiders that the reason he did this was in part because he was incensed by the pictures he saw of the reception of Mr Megrahi, as a hero, at Tripoli airport, on transfer home from Scotland.

The Prime Minister again and again refers to Mr Megrahi as 'the Lockerbie bomber' yet there is available now sufficient evidence to show, at the very least, that Mr Megrahi should never have been convicted in the first place. Of course that neither exonerates nor implicates the regime for which he worked

It seems that to dislodge the perception of Mr Megrahi's guilt will require that the natural desire of Scottish authorities to protect their own reputations over this disastrous failure of investigation and justice, now so deeply ingrained, will require a strong and astute leadership in Scotland. That this be achieved ought to be of prime concern to all Scottish citizens: who knows when he may need accurate investigation or impartial justice?

Shortly we will be voting, I hope that the result will be strong and astute leadership, willing to concede the vital importance of re-assessing the Lockerbie case for Scotland's reputation and the well being of her citizens.

There is so much we could improve, and even as polling day approaches, the activities of 'the Old Firm's' hatreds also trumpet the need for a strong hand at Scotland's tiller. Democracy dictates that we all have a hand in the choice as to whose that hand should be.

Unless we take that difficult (and costly!) step we will be mimicking, and by association supporting, the complacent and dangerous nonsense heard in the Westminster Parliament on 22 December 1988.

* These quotations are taken from the booklet Lockerbie, a "Bum Rap" published by the late David Rollo of the SNP, dedicated to the support of Marina Larracoechea**, Tam Dalyell, John Mosey, Jim Swire, and Teddy Taylor, in their search for truth and justice.

** RB: A letter from the indefatigable Marina de Larracoechea appears today on the Spanish Deia website, responding to an article on 22 April about her views on the Lockerbie case and her reaction to current events in Libya. Well worth reading if you have some Spanish. Google Translate gives a flavour, but no more than 75 per cent accuracy.

[This post has now been picked up by Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm. The relevant articles can be read here and here.]

Tuesday 22 December 2015

A town laid to waste

[This is the headline over a report published in The Scotsman on this date in 1988. It reads in part:]

The peaceful Borders town of Lockerbie was left with smoking ruins and grieving families last night after a flaming Boeing 747, laden with more than 270 people, scattered death and destruction before crashing alongside the A74.

There were no survivors among the 273 adults and three children on board the Pan American flight front London to New York. An unknown number of people were killed on the ground. in their homes and in their vehicles, in the Dresden-like maelstrom of burning homes and cars.

The jet destroyed or damaged at least a dozen houses and narrowly missed a petrol a station before crashing beside the A74 on the edge of the market town, ten miles cast Of Dumfries, in what was Britain's worst air disaster.

Eye-witnesses spoke of a gigantic explosion and a huge fireball as the jumbo crashed, soon after 7 pm. One described how the stricken plane "rained liquid fire" as it roared earthwards. An RAF spokesman said: "The plane demolished two rows of houses. There are no survivors from these houses. There will be a lot of digging needed tomorrow."

The ill-fated flight, thought to have been full of Americans returning home for Christmas - including some US servicemen - left Heathrow 25 minutes late, at 6:25 pm. It disappeared from radar screens 54 minutes later.

Trouble appears to have struck the 747 somewhere over Langholm approximately 13 miles to the cast where residents found lumps Of aircraft metal and suitcases.

The crippled aircraft struggled west at low level, apparently clipping a hill about three miles east of Lockerbie.

More wreckage fell on houses on the northern edge of the town before the plane finally crashed near Sherwood Crescent.

The end came in a blinding ball of flame that lit up the night sky, as the aircraft just missed a petrol station.

A huge blazing 40-foot deep crater was torn in the ground and earth and rubble covered the A74.

At a 1am Press conference, Chief Constable John Boyd of Dumfries and Galloway Police said that he feared for casualties in Lockerbie.

He said: "Wreckage is spread over a very wide area about ten miles in radius and parts of wreckage have fallen on two residential areas of the town, causing considerable damage and setting fire to a number of houses. There is severe damage to houses at Sherwood Crescent and I am fearful about casualties at that site."

He added: "It would appear that wreckage has fallen at six different locations both within Lockerbie and some miles outside the town. There are bodies at each of these locations."

District nurse Sheila Macdonald was with her two children in a car delivering presents to a friend's house on a hillside overlooking the town when she saw the plane come down.

She said: "There was a horrible droning noise and then this V-shaped object came sweeping down ... it was obviously the wings and the front part of the plane. It was accompanied by showers of what looked like sparks. Another part of the plane came afterwards and it just seemed to plough into the town. There was a sheet of flame and everything shook I knew then it was some terrible catastrophe."

A former police inspector, Mr Archie Smith, lived only yards from the residential crescent which was devastated in the impact and he said: "Four or five houses are just simply gone. The flames spread quickly and suddenly my house was on fire and it just went out of control and has now been destroyed."

He added: "I had more than thirty years in the police force and never saw anything so appalling or with so much horror as this."

Lockerbie resembled a war zone last night with debris strewn all over the streets. The town centre was lined with ambulances and police cars as the search for bodies went on. Seriously injured people were being taken to Dumfries Royal Infirmary while the town hall was being used as a temporary mortuary.

The building was also the centre for anxious people seeking relatives from the area devastated as the 747 crashed. A list of evacuees was pinned on the front wall of the town hall.

The quiet Dumfriesshire town was strewn with debris as the stricken aircraft lurched across the sky to its final impact on Lockerbie's southern outskirts beside the A74.

Phones in the area were knocked out by the explosion. Ambulances came from as far away as Edinburgh, Livingston land Glasgow. Helicopters quartered the sky in a search for any survivors and Territorial Army volunteers plus Royal Air Force staff from Carlisle were also helping to try to wrest some order out of the widespread confusion.

In a grim pointer to the high death toll, a spokesman at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, Mr Les Callaghan, said it had received only a, 'very, very small number of casualties," nearly two hours after the crash.

A fleet of 12 helicopters from as far away as Hampshire, two RAF mountain rescue teams and a coastguard team from nearby Kirkcudbright joined Scotland's biggest emergency rescue operation.

A special landing zone was organised by officers at Lockerbie police station, which was set up as the disaster headquarters.

Early reports said 12 people had been taken to the hospital - they were thought to be residents of Lockerbie, which has a population of about 3,000.

One eye-witness, Mr Jack Glasgow of Mount Florida, Glasgow, said: "We tried to get near the plane but it was completely on fire. There were no bodies about. I don't think there would be any chance of anyone getting out of it. It went up in a fireball."

Mr Glasgow said the aircraft hit the road, carried on for about three quarters of a mile and then exploded.

A Dunfermline businessman, Mr Edward Killeen, was a few hundred yards away from the scene. He was driving to his home in Gowanbrae Drive Dunfermline, from Bolton and from the scene last night said: "It was quite unbelievable.

"I saw a tremendous burst of flame and explosion. The traffic immediately ground to a halt and even from the distance I could see the sky lit up.

"Very shortly afterwards, the emergency services arrived but found obvious difficulty approaching the scene because of the congestion."

Mr Colin Gourlay, of Hightae, two miles south-west of Lockerbie, said: "We heard a roar, and the roar got louder and everything started to shake. I thought it was maybe a earthquake or a meteor and the atmosphere was burning up. Everything outside was a huge orange glow. My wife was frozen to the ground with fear."

Mr Mike Carnahan, who lives two miles south of Lockerbie, said: "I was driving past the filling station when the aircraft crashed. There was a terrible explosion.

"The sky was actually raining fire. It was just like liquid. We have actually found an aluminium rivet embedded in the metal of my car."

One resident near to the impact scene, Mr Raymond Lees (71), said 'We heard this rumbling, a terrible noise as though it was a vehicle in trouble.

"Then we looked out the window and we could see this debris falling. It just went past the window. There was a massive explosion as though it was fuel that went up. We could see the houses and roofs on fire within yards of us.

"It must have missed this place by a few inches.

"We walked to the A74 and had a look and could see a terrific burning. There were cars and houses on fire. It was complete mayhem."

A school teacher who declined to be named helping control crowds outside the town, hall said of the crash: "There was a sort of rumble. We thought it was an earthquake and ran outside just as the sky lit up."

All roads to Lockerbie were reported blocked with telephone lines down.

Fire services said the A74 the main road between Scotland and the English border had been cut and several cars appeared to have been set alight.

For the first time Dumfries and Galloway Regional Council activated its emergency back-up service to help to provide rescue co-ordination. A spokesman said that there never had been a disaster on such a scale in the area.

A Boeing team will be travelling to Scotland along with representatives of the US National Transportation Safety Board, a Boeing spokesman said in Seattle, Washington, last night.

Mr John Wheeler, Boeing's public relations manager, said: "We will probably he sending a team of two to three experts. They will join the NTSB team."

The Jumbo, a 747-121 class named Clipper Maid Of The Seas, had reached an altitude of 31,000 feet before it ran into trouble, an aviation official said. (...)

Among the dead passengers were at least 36 students from Syracuse University in New York State. They had been studying in London since September, and were returning for Christmas.

A Department of Transport air investigation branch team will be going to the scene of the crash today to carry out an investigation.

The Transport Secretary, Mr Paul Channon, will make a full Commons statement on the tragedy at 11 am today.

[Paul Channon’s statement in the House of Commons and the ensuing debate can be read here.]

Sunday 29 January 2017

Tam Dalyell’s last interview: Megrahi conviction “massive injustice”

[What follows is excerpted from an article by John Ashton (wrongly attributed originally to Neil Mackay) in today’s edition of the Sunday Herald:]

Tam Dalyell, the former campaigning MP who died on Thursday, said in a poignant final interview he would go to his grave believing that the conviction of the alleged Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was a “massive injustice.”

He recalled that after visiting Megrahi in prison, “I was absolutely convinced that he was not involved in Lockerbie.” (...)

The ex-Linlithgow MP, who inherited the Baronetcy of the Binns in 1972, spurned his title and was never known as Sir Tam. His interest in the Lockerbie case began 10 days after the bombing when he was approached by a police whistleblower who complained that American agents were wandering the crash site without police supervision.

The officer, a constituent, was among hundreds of Lothian and Borders police sent to Lockerbie the day after the crash to help the local Dumfries and Galloway force.

In his last interview Dalyell recalled, “[The officer] said he was very uncomfortable because Americans were allowed to go around where they liked in a way that would not be acceptable in any Scottish murder investigation and the normal police rules were absolutely being thrown to the wind.”

He said the officer had never wavered from his claims and had last repeated them only two years ago, but did not wish to go public. “I think this is partly about pensions and police etiquette, but he sticks absolutely to his story,” Dalyell said.

There are longstanding claims that large quantities of drugs and cash were removed by Americans agents from the crash site. The agents were also said to be concerned about items belonging to a US intelligence team who died on Pan Am 103 while returning from an aborted hostage rescue mission in Lebanon.

Some of Megrahi’s supporters suspect that American intelligence agents manipulated evidence in order to frame Megrahi and conceal the truth about the bombing. Initial indications suggested that the bombing had been commissioned by the Iranian government and carried out by a Syrian-based group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).

Two months before Lockerbie the German police caught members of the group with a bomb designed to detonate at altitude, built in to a Toshiba radio-cassette player. Forensic evidence suggested that the Lockerbie bomb was also contained within a Toshiba radio-cassette player, although a different model.

Three months after the bombing the UK government’s transport secretary Paul Channon privately briefed lobby journalists that the PFLP-GC was behind the attack He later lost his job after being named as the source of the story. Dalyell, who was a close friend, revealed that Channon was angry at his treatment by the government.

Many were surprised when, in 1991, the then Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, and US Department of justice announced charges against Megrahi and another Libyan, Lamin Khalifa Fhimah. The UK and US governments both made clear that Iran and the PFLP-GC had been exonerated.

Dalyell condemned Fraser as being a “quite unsatisfactory Lord Advocate [who] just went along with the Crown Office line.” He added, “[He] was absolutely beholden to Mrs Thatcher because he had lost a blue chip seat in Angus so had no job and was made a law officer by the generosity of the Prime Minister.”

During the nineties Dalyell frequently urged the Conservative government to agree to Libyan proposals to try the two suspects before a Scottish court in a neutral venue. He also tabled numerous parliamentary questions about events at the crash site and other facts that challenged the official narrative. He initiated sixteen adjournment debates on Lockerbie, which he said was four times as many as anyone had ever had on a single subject.

In 1997 the new Labour government signaled that it was prepared to accept a neutral venue trial and in 2000 Megrahi and Fhimah were tried before three law lords at a specially-convened Scottish court at Kamp Zeist in The Netherlands. Fhimah was acquitted and Megrahi was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum 20-year tariff, later increased to 27 years.

Dalyell believed the guilty verdict was built on unreliable evidence and flawed reasoning. The judges accepted the prosecution claim that two weeks before the bombing Megrahi bought the clothes that were later packed in a suitcase with the bomb from Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci. However, evidence suggested that the clothes were bought when Megrahi was not in Malta and Gauci described the purchaser as being considerable older and larger than Megrahi.

Visits to Megrahi in Barlinnie and Greenock prisons convinced him that the Libyan was innocent. “With 43 years in the House of Commons one develops an instinct as to whether one is being told the truth or spun a yarn,” he recalled, “My whole body reacted to the fact that I was being told the truth.”

Following a failed first appeal, in 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission granted Megrahi a second appeal on six grounds including flawed reasoning by the trial court judges. In 2009, following a diagnosis of terminal cancer, Megrahi abandoned the second appeal in the belief that it would aid an application to Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill for compassionate release. MacAskill controversially granted the application a few days later and Megrahi was allowed to return to Libya, where he died three years later.

Saturday 21 March 2015

Minister's Lockerbie press briefing leads to the chop

On this date in 1989 a debate was held in the House of Commons as part of the fallout from media reports following the “lobby terms” lunch briefing on the Lockerbie investigation given by Margaret Thatcher’s Secretary of State for Transport, Paul Channon, to five political correspondents on 16 March. The Hansard report of this debate (on a private notice question from the Leader of the Opposition, Neil Kinnock) can be read here. While a handful of Conservative MPs offered somewhat tepid support to Mr Channon, the bulk of those who participated -- Labour, Liberal Democrat (particularly Paddy Ashdown) and Scottish National Party (particularly Jim Sillars) -- were utterly scathing. The wounds to the Secretary of State were politically fatal. He limped on until 24 July 1989 when he was sacked by Mrs Thatcher.

Sunday 17 January 2016

Britain cracks down on airport security

[What follows is the text of a report issued by The Associated Press news agency on this date in 1989:]

The government yesterday tightened security procedures for airport workers after two journalists posing as cleaners exposed major lapses at London's Heathrow Airport after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Earlier, the Sunday Post newspaper in Scotland quoted a former high-ranking Israeli intelligence agent as saying he believes Abu Ibrahim, head of a Palestinian group, planned the Dec 21 bombing, which killed 270 people.

ABC News, citing unidentified US and Western intelligence sources, reported yesterday that several dozen intelligence agents from the Palestine Liberation Organization are working with Pan Am on the investigation of the bombing. PLO leader Yasser Arafat had pledged his group's help in the investigation, and ABC quoted its sources as saying the PLO's help has been exceedingly valuable.

Transport Secretary Paul Channon said passes will be issued only to airport employees or to outside companies "which the airport manager is satisfied are reliable and reputable."

"Clearly, some of the firms in this field in the past have been far from reliable," he said in a statement.

Channon said cleaners and other airport workers now will have to have held security passes for at least six months before being allowed unsupervised access to aircraft and checked-in baggage.

He also praised the "swift action" of the British Airports Authority in withdrawing access to airplanes from two privately owned cleaning companies at Heathrow. Graham Dudman of the Daily Express and Stewart Norris of London Weekend Television, working independently, told Friday how they got jobs as airplane cleaners at Heathrow using fake applications.

They said that with passes issued by the two cleaning companies involved, they were able to wander on and off a dozen jets where they said they could easily have planted a bomb.

New York-bound Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb over the Scottish village of Lockerbie, killing 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground.

The flight originated in Frankfurt, West Germany, and baggage and passengers were transferred to the Boeing 747 at Heathrow.

In Glasgow, the Sunday Post newspaper quoted former Mossad officer Raphael Eitan as saving he had "no doubt" the bombers were Ibrahim's May 15 Palestinian group, based in Baghdad, Iraq, and that the bomb was made there and probably carried on board the plane by an unwitting accomplice.

"They are led by Abu Ibrahim, a qualified engineer. In the early days Ibrahim received all his financial support from Iraqi intelligence, who continue to provide him with cash and premises," Eitan was quoted as saying.