Fresh appeal applied for in the Lockerbie case

[Rolfe]

I began this exercise by trying to explain 8849. I thought that if I could find a plausible explanation for that tray, it would destroy the entire conviciton. If I could have found one, it would have. I couldn't.

The plausible explanation that showed up was for the other mystery tray 5620, and it shows what a plausible explanation looks like. A known piece of passenger luggage for PA103, and a plausible way it could have got itself coded in what appeared to be the LH1071 coding window. Almost the same explanation as the explanation for the two 11.31 items. Luggage which for some reason was sent down the Fehlerbahn, and was re-entered into the system in the central hall, immediately before or immediately after an actual wagon of luggage.

There's no more luggage to be explained in that way. And station 206 where luggage from KM180 was coded wasn't in the central hall.

Rush tag luggage won't help us either. We can see what happened to rush tag luggage that wasn't misrouted or delayed by looking at Susam Costa's case. It was coded with the flight it arrived on, and there was documentation with it. There was no such luggage on KM180. We can invoke undocumented rush tag luggage to explain the supernumerary trays in the 11-item batch from PA637, because that entire flight is undocumented thanks to Fuhl simply not catching on early enough. We know Berlin was sending stuff to Heathrow on that flight. We know about two items by pure chance (Hubbard's case being misrouted at Heathrow), and there's no reason there weren't a few more.

There's no scope to invoke something like that for 8849. Its being coded at V3 is a genuine problem there. Only transfer luggage was coded there. Anything that got lost or was misrouted went to the central hall to be sorted out.

Any explanation you dream up is implausible. Implausible things do happen, but it's the implausible thing happening and pointing right to the place where the clothes were bought that really stretches credulity.

I'm making a better case for that tray having the bomb in it than the police did, but I know the bomb wasn't in that tray because of what Bedford saw. So what was it?

[Ambrosia]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

There's no scope to invoke something like that for 8849. Its being coded at V3 is a genuine problem there. Only transfer luggage was supposed to be coded there. Anything that got lost or was misrouted was supposed to be sent to the central hall to be sorted out.

Will write more tomorrow as I'm about to go out.

1 quick thing though. I've added my thoughts into the quote above.

You're assuming that the systems in place at Frankfurt worked as advertised. I'm not sure about that.

What was Frankfurts score for dealing with luggage? how much got lost/misrouted while in their care? I think human error can plausibly account for an anomaly in the records that we still have, and I'd bet that if you combed through a n other day from a similar time period you'd find some similar unexplainable anomalies. Caused by basic human error.

IF A then B=FALSE

We know the security at Luqa was very good(A), then 8849=bomb from Malta(B) must be false.

If there really is no plausible explanation you can posit for 8849 then the only remaining sinister explanation is that the bomb was introduced at Frankfurt by someone there who added it to the system at the right place and right time and it had a tag on it from KM180.

If 8849 is the bomb though then you are left with how to explain the Bedford case and also how the bomb was so well positioned in the luggage container. Both of those are larger anomalies than not being able to work out where 8849 came from.

[Rolfe]

I know the bomb was in the Bedford suitcase. That's not even up for debate now.

I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on with 8849, in that context. Even knowing that it wasn't the bomb doesn't help. I've now analysed the Frankfurt luggage records more closely than anyone else has done, and it's more of a mystery than it was to start with.

It's always possible some sort of brain-fart in the system produced that record. You could even postulate that it's a purely digital artefact without any physical tray or piece of luggage involved. That's not exactly likely though. Otherwise, we need to think about the detail of what Koca might have seen in front of him that caused him to code a tray for PA103 at 13.07.

The wagon of interline luggage from KM180 was presented to Koca at station 206 and he started coding it at 13.04. He finished at 13.10, I believe, simply because six minutes is about right for the 30 items that were in the container. Even if it was 13.16 for some inexplicable reason, it doesn't alter the argument.

Something he saw at 13.07 caused him to code a tray for PA103.

It wasn't one of the 30 interline items from KM180, because we know none of these were coded for PA103. They were all correctly coded.

Could it have been an empty tray? It's not impossible, but what on earth would have possessed Koca suddenly to code an empty tray for PA103 while he was in the middle of dealing with a completely unrelated flight? If he did, we're back in the "wild, woolly and incredibile coindicence" territory again. It's no more likely than that the computer itself generated the entry out of raw electrons.

This is the point where we have to consider that something else was introduced into the wagon containing the KM180 interline luggage. If we could see the full computer records that were over-written I think it's inevitable they would imply this. They would show 31 items coded at station 206 between 13.04 and 13.10. 30 of these would be coded for Miami, Cologne, Prague and the other places we know the KM180 transfer passengers were headed for, and the 31st would be 8849, coded for PA103.

So there was a piece of luggage in front of Koca at 13.07, and he entered the code for PA103.

How did it get there? There are only two ways. Either someone barged in while the coding was in progress and "jumped the queue" while Candar was turning to get the next thing off the wagon, or something was tossed into the wagon before or as it approached the coding station. Either of those, I think, is possible, but the latter is a lot more plausible given that coders were meant to code one wagon at a time.

What was it? Now we're a bit stuck. There's no legitimate luggage for PA103 that it could have been. Everything has been traced, even to stuff that might have been left behind from PA107 (which would have been re-coded in the central hall, not V3), and there's nothing left.

The absence of anything left behind at the departure gate also argues strongly against something meant for another flight being wrongly coded for PA103. It was SOP for the tags to be checked at the departure gate and anything that had been wrongly coded would be left behind. Nothing was left behind.

But it's the best solution. Something fell off another wagon on the way to the V3 coding stations. Someone picked it up and instead of chucking it back on the wagon it came from, chucked it on the KM180 wagon instead. Then Koca misread the outgoing flight number and coded it for PA103. At the departure gate the miscoding was overlooked, and the item was loaded on the plane. Either it was left circling the carousel at Heathrow, unclaimed, and this occurrence failed to get itself into Fuhl's report (yes he did check Heathrow), or it was loaded on to Maid of the Seas and was one of the few items that vanished completely, or at least it was never claimed. (John Ashton said there were a few cases found that were never identified to a passenger.)

We're still in wild coincidence-land. The one anomalous coding in the entire flight, produced by a series of coincidences (something being replaced in the wrong wagon, then being coded for the wrong outgoing flight, then not being caught and held at the departure gate, and then not being identified after the fact either as lost luggage at Heathrow or as misrouted luggage on the grass at Lockerbie). And it points right at the airport three miles from the shop where the clothes were bought.

My disbelief is refusing to be suspended.

[Rolfe]

I said I had a proposed explanation that wasn't coincidence and made sense in context. Take as many pinches of salt as you need, but think about it.

Trail of sweeties. Tray 8849 considered as a sweetie.

Someone deliberately bought brand new, locally-manufactured, easily-traceable clothes in a small owner-run shop only three miles from Luqa airport.

Someone (and I'll leave the identity of the someone right up in the air) then engineered the presence of tray 8849 to match up to the clothes to lead an investigation to believe that the bomb had come from Malta. Maybe the emphasis should be the other way round. Someone deliberately engineered the presence of tray 8849 in the system to lead investigators to Malta, and to embellish that they also acquired clothes to put in the bomb suitcase that were traceable to a shop near the airport.

If someone was familiar with the way the Frankfurt system operated and could infiltrate the airside area, it wouldn't be that hard. Prepare an innocent suitcase with no bomb in it. Get a tag to go on it that could be filled in to indicate that the case should go on the feeder leg of PA103 as far as Heathrow only. And (this is important) it should be an Air Malta tag. It's always possible the wagon driver or Koca or Candar might notice a tag from another airline that was out of place, and query it.

Hang around somewhere along the route the wagon of interline luggage from KM180 would take on its journey to the coding stations. There would probably be a corner somewhere, where cases might occasionally fall off a wagon. Having timed this so that the wagon isn't going very fast, just chuck the extra case in with the legitimate items. If anyone queries this, just airily indicate that you saw the case fall off and you've kindly returned it. If they check, it has an Air Malta tag. Maybe the suspicious person won't be able to tell it from the rest of the luggage. If they get even more suspicious, maybe want to open it, well there's no bomb in it anyway.

But probably nobody would bat an eyelid. People who work airside say cases fall off wagons all the time, and get put back on. So the thing is right there and Koca codes it with the legitimate stuff, coding it as is written on the tag. London Heathrow via PA103. And never notices a thing.

What better way to produce the extra item of luggage seeming to have come from Malta on to PA103, than to do it for real?

So the fake or complicit baggage handler slopes off. And the decoy piece of luggage is loaded on to the feeder flight, and off-loaded at Heathrow. There it is taken to the carousel, and doesn't draw any attention to itself by circling unclaimed. It is calmly picked up by a passenger on the flight who disembarked at Heathrow.

Parvez Tahiri.

Well, you wouldn't want your decoy sweetie landing on the grass at Lockerbie, would you? Its tag might still be on it, identifying it as having come from KM180, and so neutralising the great decoy plan in one fell swoop.

You know, the bomb could have been introduced this way, if you were reasonably confident that Kurt Maier wouldn't spot it on the x-ray. (I think actually Maier would have said something if he'd seen that radio.) It's just that it wasn't. But it's possible something was, as part of the greatest red herring operation in the history of aviation terrorism.

You may say, that's far-fetched. So it is. But so are the alternatives. And Parvez Tahiri really did fly to Heathrow that afternoon on the PA103 feeder flight, and back on Christmas Day. And Parvez Tahiri was mixed up with the PFLP-GC.

[Rolfe]

Everybody's gone a bit quiet.

I think what I'm trying to say is this. We have two possible explanations here for 8849. The first one, the one Ambrosia has been suggesting and the one I tried to delineate in post 283, is the "coincidence" one. It's possible. However, it doesn't just require a single slip-up. It requires a series of slip-ups one after the other, all culminating in the false appearance of a line of computer code seeming to indicate an item of luggage having been transferred to PA103 from KM180, the flight that started at the same place the clothes packed in the bomb suitcase were bought.

The second one requires no coincidences at all. It demonstrates how exactly that could be accomplished deliberately by someone intent on laying a false trail.

I find the coincidence explanation breaks my brain. Just too much has to happen to get the result as it appears, when you drill down into the system.

On the other hand, the deliberate red herring explanation also seems far-fetched. Terrorists don't usually do this sort of thing. They plant the bomb and they get the hell out, and trust to their ability to go to ground to save them from the pursuit of the law.

But Parvez Tahiri really was on that plane.

I don't think this is a false dichotomy. I can't think of another explanation for that tray, unless you want to start suggesting the printout itself was faked by Bogomira Erac or something like that, which is a whole other can of worms. So, assuming the printout hasn't been tampered with (and I think if hasn't), are we for the coincidence of the bloody millennium, or the complicated false trail?

[Ambrosia]

Been megabusy with work so had little time to post here.

I'm still not really buying the 'series of coincidences' explanation for 8849 as being that far fetched. Its surprising for sure, but really rare sequences of events can and do happen.

Watch any roulette wheel when a sequence of 10 reds or blacks has come in and almost everyone bets on the opposite. Gamblers fallacy. Of course every event is independent and the odds remain the same every spin. Though I think the same kind of thinking can come into play regarding investigations.

(Ockhams fallacy?) all things being equal the simplest explanation is usually correct. but "usually" is a bit of a weasel word. People get a bit carried away and assume sometimes that the simplest explanation is *always* correct.

A run of 15 blacks in a row is vanishingly unlikely, but it does happen.

I've not spent nearly the same amount opf time and effort looking through baggage records, perhaps when you look a lot closer at them and the systems in place in Frankfurt at the time then you are more sure that 8849 is an oddity that can be better explained as a deliberately planted false trail than a series of cock ups.

Who is Parvez Tahiri?

[Samson]

So we have two new suspects to fit into the crime. I wonder what this means for your case Rolfe.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...cts-pan-am-103

[zooterkin]

Originally Posted by Samson

So we have two new suspects to fit into the crime. I wonder what this means for your case Rolfe.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...cts-pan-am-103

Well, it doesn't seem like a major change since they think those are in addition to the two previously charged, not instead of.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by zooterkin

Well, it doesn't seem like a major change since they think those are in addition to the two previously charged, not instead of.

I have no idea. I hope Rolfe can help with this one, but it does crop up. The cases I am thinking of are Teina Pora and Amanda Knox, where suspects are added, and the originally charged are still held.

[Blue Mountain]

Originally Posted by Samson

So we have two new suspects to fit into the crime. I wonder what this means for your case Rolfe.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...cts-pan-am-103

The problem with that is if the bomb was not introduced in Malta, then chances are the Libyans weren't involved at all. The suspects are being named by the same Scottish justice system that screwed up so badly in the first place.

[Antony]

Originally Posted by Samson

I have no idea. I hope Rolfe can help with this one, but it does crop up. The cases I am thinking of are Teina Pora and Amanda Knox, where suspects are added, and the originally charged are still held.

There's no parallel. In the Knox case at least (I'm not really familiar with Teina Pora), there was no connection between the new suspect and the 3 originally arrested - the prosecution, convicting judges and guilt "campaigners" tied themselves into knots trying to contrive one out of a one-time chance meeting between Knox and Guede (the man now standing convicted).

In the Lockerbie case, it's the reverse: linking the 2 new men to the crime depends upon their connection to Megrahi, and to Libya. Since the Megrahi/Libya "connection" is a fiction, this is simply another layer of the same fiction being added a generation down the line.

[Ambrosia]

Originally Posted by Blue Mountain

The problem with that is if the bomb was not introduced in Malta, then chances are the Libyans weren't involved at all. The suspects are being named by the same Scottish justice system that screwed up so badly in the first place.

So there's a new PBS doc being aired very soon that will showcase the new evidence that has come to light.

The issue with this new evidence is that it depends upon the bomb being introduced in Malta.

As the evidence we have stands right now we can rule out Malta as the point of origin for the bomb, instead the evidence points squarely at Heathrow.

So there'd need to be compelling new evidence that Malta was the point of origin for this to hold water.


It's entirely possible that these people were involved in the bombing somehow, and I'll be interested to see what new evidence there is. I hope it's not guilt by association, "these are bad people, and we can place them at Malta airport with Megrahi"


The evidence there is now points to Lockerbie being a revenge attack for the shootdown of Iran Air 655, carried out by PFLP-GC, with the bomb being one of Marwhan Khreesat manufacture, that was put onto the plane at Heathrow.

It's quite possible that Libya or Libyans were involved in the bombing, in the planning, perhaps even in the execution, but there's little or no evidence for it, and certainly not enough to convict Megrahi in particular.

Lets see what new evidence emerges and whether or not it points elsewhere.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Antony

There's no parallel. In the Knox case at least (I'm not really familiar with Teina Pora), there was no connection between the new suspect and the 3 originally arrested - the prosecution, convicting judges and guilt "campaigners" tied themselves into knots trying to contrive one out of a one-time chance meeting between Knox and Guede (the man now standing convicted).

In the Lockerbie case, it's the reverse: linking the 2 new men to the crime depends upon their connection to Megrahi, and to Libya. Since the Megrahi/Libya "connection" is a fiction, this is simply another layer of the same fiction being added a generation down the line.

I take it this means you concur with Rolfe's research? I hope she has it right after investing prodigious effort. I just can't devote the time.

[Elagabalus]

Originally Posted by Ambrosia

So there's a new PBS doc being aired very soon that will showcase the new evidence that has come to light.

The issue with this new evidence is that it depends upon the bomb being introduced in Malta.

As the evidence we have stands right now we can rule out Malta as the point of origin for the bomb, instead the evidence points squarely at Heathrow.

So there'd need to be compelling new evidence that Malta was the point of origin for this to hold water.


It's entirely possible that these people were involved in the bombing somehow, and I'll be interested to see what new evidence there is. I hope it's not guilt by association, "these are bad people, and we can place them at Malta airport with Megrahi"


The evidence there is now points to Lockerbie being a revenge attack for the shootdown of Iran Air 655, carried out by PFLP-GC, with the bomb being one of Marwhan Khreesat manufacture, that was put onto the plane at Heathrow.

It's quite possible that Libya or Libyans were involved in the bombing, in the planning, perhaps even in the execution, but there's little or no evidence for it, and certainly not enough to convict Megrahi in particular.

Lets see what new evidence emerges and whether or not it points elsewhere.

Here is episode 3:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365582077/

Probably the most important one. Ken Dornstein tracks down Musbah Abulgassem Eter who helped with the La Belle Disco bombing in Berlin. Also brought in to help was a mysterious dark skinned man whom Eter identified as Abu Agela* and was considered to be a bomb making expert. The East German Secret Police (STASI) had been watching the Libyans both before and after the bombing and even managed to get Abu Agela's passport number.

Guess who flew out of Malta the day of the 103 bombing with the same passport number? Also taking that flight home was Abdel Baset al Megrahi using a known alias.



*his full name is Abu A'ujilah Masoud

[Antony]

Originally Posted by Samson

I take it this means you concur with Rolfe's research? I hope she has it right after investing prodigious effort. I just can't devote the time.

I recognised this case for what it was long before I ever came across JREF/ISF or ever heard of Rolfe's analysis. The political nature of the Camp Zeist trial was evident right from the beginning.

The security breach at Heathrow was in the news on the day of the verdict, I remember, and there were any number of other things wrong with the process. Whatever the merits of Rolfe's research, it wasn't the reason I'm convinced that Megrahi and Libya had nothing to do with it.

[Damien Evans]

Originally Posted by Elagabalus

Here is episode 3:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365582077/

Probably the most important one. Ken Dornstein tracks down Musbah Abulgassem Eter who helped with the La Belle Disco bombing in Berlin. Also brought in to help was a mysterious dark skinned man whom Eter identified as Abu Agela* and was considered to be a bomb making expert. The East German Secret Police (STASI) had been watching the Libyans both before and after the bombing and even managed to get Abu Agela's passport number.

Guess who flew out of Malta the day of the 103 bombing with the same passport number? Also taking that flight home was Abdel Baset al Megrahi using a known alias.



*his full name is Abu A'ujilah Masoud

Who cares who did what at Malta? It's physically impossible that the bomb was put on at Malta.

[Ambrosia]

Originally Posted by Elagabalus

Guess who flew out of Malta the day of the 103 bombing with the same passport number? Also taking that flight home was Abdel Baset al Megrahi using a known alias.

I can also tell you the names of people that flew out of LAX on that day, as well as the names of people that flew out of Guangzhou.

The bomb was put onto the plane at Heathrow, we can prove it using the evidence that's already out there.

Short of compelling evidence that proves Malta was where the bomb was loaded, you could have eyewitness testimony that Elvis was at Malta airport in time to catch that flight and it would be about as relevant.

[Elagabalus]

Originally Posted by Ambrosia

I can also tell you the names of people that flew out of LAX on that day, as well as the names of people that flew out of Guangzhou.

The bomb was put onto the plane at Heathrow, we can prove it using the evidence that's already out there.

Short of compelling evidence that proves Malta was where the bomb was loaded, you could have eyewitness testimony that Elvis was at Malta airport in time to catch that flight and it would be about as relevant.

Wow. Don't shoot the messenger. Maybe you should just watch the program. Apparently Eter has been talking to the CIA and implicated Said Rashid, Abu A'ujilah MasoudSaid and Megrahi. This information is touted as a new development in the ongoing investigation of 103. Perhaps it isn't. Perhaps, it's an old piece of news that you are familiar with? I haven't been following this too closely but I thought this new development was interesting ...

[Ambrosia]

Sadly Rolfe no longer posts here , although I wish she did.

For latecomers to this thread I was involved, with others, in discussions with Rolfe in the old Lockerbie threads in the conspiracy forums here, which lead eventually to Rolfe writing a book about Lockerbie, and her research leads us to the following.

i) the bomb was placed in a brown Samsonite type suitcase in a particular luggage container.

ii) We have eye witness testimony from the baggage handlers that they saw such a suitcase in this particular luggage container prior to the Frankfurt flight connecting.

iii) forensic evidence puts the centre point of the detonation that brought down PA103 almost exactly where the baggage handlers said they saw this brown samsonite case.

iv) the computer printout said by the prosecution to show the bomb case came via Malta could have been one of a number of other possibilities (as well as potentially the bomb case)

v) There is no other evidence, either in the witness testimony, or the fragments of wreckage that shows that another brown samsonite case was present in this luggage container.

vi) the night before PA103 departed Heathrow there was a break in at the Heathrow baggage area.

vii) despite being specifically instructed to look out for a bomb in a Toshiba Radio Cassette player, (the bomb was indeed housed in a Toshiba Bombeat radio cassette player), the Heathrow Airport screening security didn't pick up any such devices on the day that baggage was loaded to PA103.

viii) Malta airport was sued in a civil case re the bomb being loaded at Malta. They won the case.




In order to show that the bomb was loaded at Malta we need new evidence that fits the facts better than the Heathrow origin hypothesis.

The Heathrow hypothesis is that persons unknown broke into the Heathrow baggage area the night before PA103 departed, and put the bomb case into the relevant container before the Frankfurt flight landed, this case was seen by the baggage handlers at the time, and they both thought the other had put it there. The type and location of the case matches the forensic evidence that states the bomb was in a brown samsonite case at approximately that location, in exactly that particular baggage container.

there is no other brown samsonite case in the luggage records for the flight, and noone saw another similar case in this container.

If you have such evidence, we're all ears.

[Ambrosia]

Originally Posted by Elagabalus

Wow. Don't shoot the messenger. Maybe you should just watch the program. Apparently Eter has been talking to the CIA and implicated Said Rashid, Abu A'ujilah MasoudSaid and Megrahi. This information is touted as a new development in the ongoing investigation of 103. Perhaps it isn't. Perhaps, it's an old piece of news that you are familiar with? I haven't been following this too closely but I thought this new development was interesting ...

I don't mean to shoot any messengers, and any new evidence re Lockerbie is welcome.

but, the prosecutions star witness prior to the trial was a CIA informant named Giaka. It's his testimony that got the indictments against Megrahi and Fhimah in the first place.

After CIA cables were disclosed to the defense, Giaka was thrown out of court for being an obvious lying barsteward.

so new evidence to the case from the CIA is treated with more skepitcism than it might otherwise get.

There remains no evidence that Megrahi was connected to the bombing, the opinion of the 3 judges says as much, and they still convicted him anyway.

[Blue Mountain]

Originally Posted by Ambrosia

Sadly Rolfe no longer posts here , although I wish she did.

For latecomers to this thread I was involved, with others, in discussions with Rolfe in the old Lockerbie threads in the conspiracy forums here, which lead eventually to Rolfe writing a book about Lockerbie, and her research leads us to the following.

(Remainder snipped for space. If you want to read it, it's only two posts above this one.)

I'd like to add the following to your excellent post:the fact the bomb exploded only half an hour into the flight. This strongly indicates it had a barometric trigger designed to set off the bomb at a given altitude rather than a given time.

Why is this so important? Two reasons:

1. If it was a barometric trigger, it simply could not have been introduced in Malta or in Frankfurt, otherwise it would have gone off on those flights.
2. The flight was several hours long over the Atlantic Ocean. Who in their right mind would set a timer to blow a bomb only 30 minutes into an hours long flight? A simple delay and the plane could still be on the ground.

Another factor favouring a Heathrow introduction is the fact the bomb suitcase was placed in almost exactly the right position to do the most damage. If the suitcase was introduced in Malta or Frankfurt, its final position in the luggage containers would be left to chance. If that's the case, the bombers got extraordinarily lucky.

[Samson]

Originally Posted by Blue Mountain

I'd like to add the following to your excellent post:the fact the bomb exploded only half an hour into the flight. This strongly indicates it had a barometric trigger designed to set off the bomb at a given altitude rather than a given time.

Why is this so important? Two reasons:

1. If it was a barometric trigger, it simply could not have been introduced in Malta or in Frankfurt, otherwise it would have gone off on those flights.
2. The flight was several hours long over the Atlantic Ocean. Who in their right mind would set a timer to blow a bomb only 30 minutes into an hours long flight? A simple delay and the plane could still be on the ground.

Another factor favouring a Heathrow introduction is the fact the bomb suitcase was placed in almost exactly the right position to do the most damage. If the suitcase was introduced in Malta or Frankfurt, its final position in the luggage containers would be left to chance. If that's the case, the bombers got extraordinarily lucky.

Is there a counter argument to the barometric device?
Does an introduction at Heathrow eliminate plausible participation by Megrahi?
Is there a third option besides timer or barometric?
If not, the evidence becomes so clear cut I can see why Rolfe and others are preoccupied with the case.

[Ambrosia]

Originally Posted by Samson

Is there a counter argument to the barometric device?

Yes. It's that a countdown timer was used. There is a fragment of circuit board which the Crown claim is a fragment of the timer used in the bomb.

It's provenance is questionable. Though it remains a central plank of the prosecutions case, and it's one of the main things that tie Megrahi to the case, (the other being the supposed identification of Megrahi by the guy that sold the clothes found to be in the case.(Gauci).

The Crown case is that a countdown timer was used and set before the bomb was loaded at Malta, and it just happened to explode when it did.

The identification of Megrahi by Gauci is *seriously flawed*, how it wasn't thrown out of court is a mystery.

Quote:

Does an introduction at Heathrow eliminate plausible participation by Megrahi?

No, though it rules him out as having planted the bomb, which is what he was convicted for, (he was at Malta airport the day of the bombing when the flight that is alleged to carry the bomb from Malta departed.) There is no other evidence besides the timer fragment and the identification that points to Megrahi.

It's possible that he was involved somehow, in planning or financing, or some other capacity, if the timer fragment was genuinely part of the bomb that brought down the plane. Megrahi and Bollier (who owned MEBO) knew each other, but Megrahi worked for Libyan security services and was involved in obtaining stuff that sanctions would have made difficult to obtain, and Bollier would sell anything to anyone, so it's not unsurprising that they might know each other.

Quote:

Is there a third option besides timer or barometric?

No. A barometric timer points to a bomb maker called Khreesat, and to PFLP-GC.

A 'normal' timer could point at anyone, though if the timer fragment is genuine then it points to Libya via the company MEBO.

The case against Megrahi basically comes down to:

IF Megrahi bought the clothes, AND the bomb was loaded at Malta, AND a countdown timer made by MEBO was used THEN Megrahi is guilty.

Only they didn't prove any of those 3 things and use circular reasoning in their judgement to infer one from the other.

[Blue Mountain]

Originally Posted by Samson

Is there a counter argument to the barometric device?

A timing device. A circuit board fragment that was part of an MST-13 timer board thought to have been sold to Libya was found among the wreckage. Unfortunately for the prosecution, the fragment's provenance is doubtful, and composition of the solder on the timer fragment was different from the solder on the lot the Libyans bought.

See the thread Was the MST-13 timer fragment planted in the wreckage of Pan Am 103? for an exhaustive discussion of the MST-13 timer fragment.

Quote:

Does an introduction at Heathrow eliminate plausible participation by Megrahi?

Pretty much so, along with Libya as a whole.

Quote:

Is there a third option besides timer or barometric?

Not really. These days cell phones are popular devices for triggering bombs, but the Lockerbie tragedy occurred in 1988. Cell phones back then were expensive and likely had limited service availability.

Quote:

If not, the evidence becomes so clear cut I can see why Rolfe and others are preoccupied with the case.

Indeed. It's why many folks today bristle when Megrahi is described in the media as "the Lockerbie bomber." He was convicted, yes, but his trial left a lot to be desired.

If you do a search on this board for "Lockerbie," you'll find 22 threads (4600+ posts) with that word in the title. That doesn't include the MST-13 time fragment thread (almost 1,000 posts) I mentioned earlier.

[zooterkin]

Originally Posted by Blue Mountain

If you do a search on this board for "Lockerbie," you'll find 22 threads (4600+ posts) with that word in the title. That doesn't include the MST-13 time fragment thread (almost 1,000 posts) I mentioned earlier.

You can also click on the tags at the top of the page (or here).

[Blue Mountain]

Originally Posted by zooterkin

You can also click on the tags at the top of the page (or here).

Excellent tip. I did a tag search simply for "Lockerbie" and got all of two results. (I typed the word quickly and hit just Enter, without waiting for the auto-complete to show me "Lockerbie bombing" and "Lockerbie bomber".)

[davefoc]

duplicate post

[davefoc]

I came to this thread looking to see what Rolfe had to say about the new Frontline documentary. It seems she doesn't post here anymore. One more major loss to ISF, very sorry to read that.

I did find Rolfe's comment on the Frontline documentary here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...nate-theories/

It's a long response and I don't think I can quote it all out of fairness or forum rules. Unfortunately, it all seemed relevant and I don't see how to quote a snippet that provides the gist of it. But here's a piece of it none the less:

Quote:

...
The narrative seems to accept as a given that the bomb was indeed introduced at Luqa via KM180, but Ken Dornstein knows very well that this is seriously disputed. He knows that both Jim Swire and John Ashton believe it was introduced at Heathrow, and he knows that I have evidence for this. He even met me one day when we discussed an early version of my thesis. I can’t believe he hasn’t read the book I published about it just over a year after we met - it should have been an essential part of his research.
...

ETA: Thank you to Ambrosia for the overview. I haven't understood the issues at even a cursory level and your post helped me significantly with that.

[pete2]

FWIW, an executive summary of Dr Morag Kerr's proof that the Lockerbie bomb was ingested at Heathrow. The argument rests on three strands of evidence, all of which were gathered during the original investigation but were not combined at that time. These are

(a) the blast-damaged luggage recovered from the ground;

(b) the arrival times of the various connecting flights bringing passengers and/or baggage to travel on Pan Am 103;

(c) the witness statements of the baggage handling staff at Heathrow, especially loader/driver John Bedford, who was responsible for packing container AVE4041.

Bedford described his habitual method for packing a container. Combining this with (b) tells us which bags were in the container, and in which positions, at the time Bedford took a tea break on the afternoon of 21 December. When he returned, he noticed that two additional bags had appeared. They bore security tape and were placed they way he would have loaded them, so he left them as they were. The bag on the left was 'a brown hard-shell, of the type Samsonite make'. Bedford towed the container out onto the tarmac ready to receive the transfer bags from Pan Am 103A, and went home.

It was later discovered by forensic scientists that the IED had been in an brown ('antique copper') Samsonite hard-shell case.

Looking at the explosion damage suffered by those first few bags, knowing where they were placed by Bedford, reveals firstly that the IED was in a bag in the position of the mysterious brown Samsonite seen by Bedford; and secondly that a couple of bags had been moved from their original positions. In particular, the right-hand bag of the two additional bags seen by Bedford was in fact one he had already loaded. We can conjecture that this bag was placed there to ensure that the Samsonite stayed on the left. This is important since the IED was packed along the left-hand edge of the case, putting it as near as possible to the aircraft skin.

There's a lot more to it than this, of course - read the book!

Two obvious questions arise:

(1) Why didn't the RARDE people do all this in 1989? The answer seems to be, at least in part, that they were only given item (a), the physical evidence. Items (b) and (c), the documentary evidence, were kept by the police. Nobody thought they might be helpful to the forensic scientists.

(2) The Bedford bag is obviously a huge lead. Why wasn't it followed up vigorously? The answer to this is unclear. It seems everybody had made their mind up that the bomb had arrived from Frankfurt, and nothing could persuade them otherwise.

[Ambrosia]

Originally Posted by pete2

(2) The Bedford bag is obviously a huge lead. Why wasn't it followed up vigorously? The answer to this is unclear. It seems everybody had made their mind up that the bomb had arrived from Frankfurt, and nothing could persuade them otherwise.

This is possibly the biggest question.

It's entirely possible that with a large investigation it just slipped through the cracks. Much effort was spent identifying and sourcing the contents of the case, notsomuch on the case itself.

Then you also have to consider politics. There's a great piece of contemporary journalism by Paul Foot that goes into some of the thoughts of the time that's worth a read.

This was a lengthy investigation and the bombing itself took place in December 1988.

Some world events of the time include the Lebanon hostage Crisis, Bush won the White House ("Read My Lips, No New Taxes"), The First Gulf War (Desert Storm), Oliver North is convicted over the Iran Contra scandal after a lengthy TV trial, (then wins his appeal the following year). Thatcher resigns as UK PM and the UK economy goes into recession in Q3 1990, with an almost worldwide recession happening around the same time. The Berlin Wall fell.

Megrahi and Fhimah were indicted November 1991.

You can come up with a number of political reasons why investigators might well have been told to "blame anyone but Iran"

You can also see why UK investigators might have been very keen for a n other country to have been the source for the bomb. As if UK air travellers thought that Heathrow airport security was terrible (Heathrow is THE flagship airport here in the UK) then that could possibly hurt the UK economy a lot. It didn't help that the other airport options included Frankfurt, and the Brits like to blame the Germans for lots of things.

All of which such reasoning is speculation. In an ideal world investigators chase the truth and let the chips fall where they may, but investigators are human, and might well be swayed in a certain direction for any number of reasons.

[LondonJohn]

Originally Posted by Ambrosia

This is possibly the biggest question.

It's entirely possible that with a large investigation it just slipped through the cracks. Much effort was spent identifying and sourcing the contents of the case, notsomuch on the case itself.

Then you also have to consider politics. There's a great piece of contemporary journalism by Paul Foot that goes into some of the thoughts of the time that's worth a read.

This was a lengthy investigation and the bombing itself took place in December 1988.

Some world events of the time include the Lebanon hostage Crisis, Bush won the White House ("Read My Lips, No New Taxes"), The First Gulf War (Desert Storm), Oliver North is convicted over the Iran Contra scandal after a lengthy TV trial, (then wins his appeal the following year). Thatcher resigns as UK PM and the UK economy goes into recession in Q3 1990, with an almost worldwide recession happening around the same time. The Berlin Wall fell.

Megrahi and Fhimah were indicted November 1991.

You can come up with a number of political reasons why investigators might well have been told to "blame anyone but Iran"

You can also see why UK investigators might have been very keen for a n other country to have been the source for the bomb. As if UK air travellers thought that Heathrow airport security was terrible (Heathrow is THE flagship airport here in the UK) then that could possibly hurt the UK economy a lot. It didn't help that the other airport options included Frankfurt, and the Brits like to blame the Germans for lots of things.

All of which such reasoning is speculation. In an ideal world investigators chase the truth and let the chips fall where they may, but investigators are human, and might well be swayed in a certain direction for any number of reasons.

I agree. But at the same time, I am coming to the belief that this case is not as "one or the other" as some people would position it. I personally am in very little doubt that the actual mechanics of the bomb making and its planting are contrary to the current official version: I believe the bomb was made by a PFLP-GC cell in Germany, and that it was placed at LHR. I actually think that a timer may have been used rather than a barometric+delay switch, since I don't think the bombers (or their paymasters) would have planned for the aircraft to come down over land. The delay to take-off scuppered their plan.

However..... I am coming to the belief that the Libyans may well have had some level of participation in the planning and strategy of the operation. I think it's far from unlikely that Al Megrahi - together with other Libyan operatives - may have participated in some form of planning meeting/meetings in Malta, and that Libya might have provided some form of strategic and/or financial assistance for the operation.

So my current belief is tending towards thinking that both "sides" are right and wrong at the same time. I think that the basis upon which Al Megrahi was convicted was fundamentally flawed and grossly unjust, and I don't think Al Megrahi had anything whatsoever to do with the actual execution of the bombing, but I also think he may have played some other part in the operation.

[Ambrosia]

Originally Posted by LondonJohn

So my current belief is tending towards thinking that both "sides" are right and wrong at the same time. I think that the basis upon which Al Megrahi was convicted was fundamentally flawed and grossly unjust, and I don't think Al Megrahi had anything whatsoever to do with the actual execution of the bombing, but I also think he may have played some other part in the operation.

Libyan involvement is plausible, Libya happily cosied up with PFLP-GC and offered them support. So some people in Libya being involved in some aspects of the attack could well have happened.

Megrahi's involvement much less so. He worked, as far as we can tell, procuring stuff for Libya that it wasn't able to buy on the open market because of sanctions.

He had an office in the same building as Bollier, who would sell anything to anyone for the right price.

That's the sum total of evidence against him.

He didn't buy the clothes that were packed in the case, and him being at Malta airport when the bomb was alleged to have been planted is irrelevant as the bomb was actually planted in London.

If you believe the MST-13 fragment to have been a genuine part of the bomb then you can connect Bollier to the bomb plot, and infer Megrahi might have been involved. (though more recent evidence that came to light about the chemical composition of the soldering on the fragment suggests otherwise)

Megrahi was involved because of Giaka, the lying through his teeth to try to make a better life for himself CIA informant, who made stuff up and Megrahi happened to be the guy that he made stuff up about. When Giakas testimony was thrown out, the entire case ought to have been thrown out.

Over the course of his 'employment' Giaka was paid over $100k by the US.

more detail on Giaka, and his incredible claims here.

At the time of the trial then you could plausibly connect Megrahi to the plot. It didn't emerge till much later on that the MST-13 fragment at the very least wasn't what the prosecution claimed it was, and the London origin of the bomb hadn't been developed.

To go back to:

Quote:

IF (a)Megrahi bought the clothes, AND (b)the bomb was loaded at Malta, AND (c)a countdown timer made by MEBO was used THEN Megrahi is guilty.

He shouldn't have been convicted because they didn't prove he'd bought the clothes.

Today evidence has also disproved (b) and (c).

[Elagabalus]

And, yet, when Megrahi gets back home he is greeted at the airport by all the major players for both the Lockerbie and the Berlin disco bombings. Some of these people he has denied even knowing but there they are giving him a kiss on the cheek. Hmmmm ....

[Ambrosia]

Originally Posted by Elagabalus

And, yet, when Megrahi gets back home he is greeted at the airport by all the major players for both the Lockerbie and the Berlin disco bombings. Some of these people he has denied even knowing but there they are giving him a kiss on the cheek. Hmmmm ....

Who are the major players for the Lockerbie bombing?

We still have no idea who carried out the attacks. All we can say for sure is it wasn't Megrahi. There is sufficient evidence to suggest it was a PFLP-GC plot, but there's nothing concrete, and certainly not enough to issue indictments. This was the worst terror attack until 9/11 and despite the combined might of pretty much all of the Wests intelligence agencies, we're still none the wiser.

The trial made Megrahi into a celebrity, he ended his life as a convicted terrorist, it's not surprising that Gadaffi played up his return to Libya for as much PR as he could squeeze out of it.

Libya was a known sympathiser of terror groups(I say was, as it's hard to tell what is going on there atm), and they carried out many terrorist actions over the years. Gadaffi was a brutal dictator. There were very many bad people in Libya. There's still very little evidence that they were involved with this particular terrorist attack.

[Rolfe]

As has been mentioned, I don't post here any more. I occasionally swing by to check on the ongoing circular firing squad that is the Amanda Knox thread and I only just saw this thread had been bumped. I don't imagine I'll come back, it's not worth the grief and the hassle, but hi for now anyway.

Originally Posted by Ambrosia

Short of compelling evidence that proves Malta was where the bomb was loaded, you could have eyewitness testimony that Elvis was at Malta airport in time to catch that flight and it would be about as relevant.

That is so good I'm stealing it.

Originally Posted by Elagabalus

This information is touted as a new development in the ongoing investigation of 103. Perhaps it isn't. Perhaps, it's an old piece of news that you are familiar with? I haven't been following this too closely but I thought this new development was interesting ...

It's not a new development. It's almost all old news that people familiar with the Lockerbie case have been aware of for many years. Masoud and Senoussi were always the "accomplices" the Scottish Crown Office were after when they went hunting in Libya back in 2012, them and Moussa Koussa who was wined and dined by the Foreign Office and then sent on his way to spend more time with his ill-gotten gains in Qatar.

Senoussi and Masoud were well on the radar along with Megrahi and Fhimah in 1991, but the authorities decided not to indict them. It's very old news. 24-year-old news.

The Scottish authorities didn't find anything worth reporting when they investigated Libya with the FBI a few years ago. But they kept saying they were still looking, because they're absolutely desperate to maintain the narrative of "Megrahi did it at Malta" and spare themselves the embarrassment of having to acknowledge that the investigation was off the rails from about day 10 and got not just the culprit but the modus operandi completely wrong.

Then along comes Ken Dornstein, who has devoted his career to trying to find out more about Lockerbie. He resolutely believes Megrahi did it and is entirely cloth-eared to any evidence that contradicts this. He was given assistance by both the Crown Office and the FBI to go into Libya himself in (I think) 2013. He was given a number of names to follow up, including Masoud and Senoussi. He ferreted out some fairly inconsequential connections between Megrahi and Masoud. That's about it.

IF Megrahi was involved in introducing the Lockerbie bomb on Malta that morning, the connections might be interesting. But since he wasn't, well - Elvis?

Originally Posted by LondonJohn

.... I don't think the bombers (or their paymasters) would have planned for the aircraft to come down over land. The delay to take-off scuppered their plan.

The plane wasn't late. There was no delay to take-off. Give it up.

[LondonJohn]

"Give it up"? Charming sentiment, as ever

ETA: Is this account pure fiction then:

"Captain Jim MacQuarrie apologised to the passengers for the delay which meant flight Pan Am 103 to New York was 30 minutes behind schedule.

He knew they wouldn't mind a brief hold-up, but he would never know how historically important it would become.

For had the plane moved off on time, detonation would probably have occurred over the sea."

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/DEATH+......-a069786281


Wouldn't this have been captured on the CVR? Or did this author totally invent the Captain's apology?

As an aside, wasn't the original (and usual) flight plan supposed to take the aircraft out over the middle of Ireland, as indicated below:



If it had taken this route, then it would have reached the open water of the Atlantic far more quickly. Is it correct that its flight plan was altered by ATC owing to a combination of weather and overcrowding of the normal air corridor?

And no withering insults in the reply, if possible, please

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by LondonJohn

"Give it up"? Charming sentiment, as ever

ETA: Is this account pure fiction then:

"Captain Jim MacQuarrie apologised to the passengers for the delay which meant flight Pan Am 103 to New York was 30 minutes behind schedule.

He knew they wouldn't mind a brief hold-up, but he would never know how historically important it would become.

For had the plane moved off on time, detonation would probably have occurred over the sea."

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/DEATH+......-a069786281

Wouldn't this have been captured on the CVR? Or did this author totally invent the Captain's apology?

I'm afraid the journalist invented it. Just like Emerson and Duffy invented all that twaddle about a suitcase sitting in JFK arrivals, bedecked with numerous baggage tags, and other similar embellishments that have appeared in other accounts. Journalistic/poetic licence I suppose. If anything was recorded on the CVR at Heathrow, it has not been reported and it is not in the public domain.

The plane wasn't late. Its scheduled gate departure time was 18.00. Its doors closed perhaps a couple of minutes after that (regular readers will remember why the couple of minutes part), and it pushed off from the stand at 18.04. It faffed around on the taxiways and the runways for about 20 minutes, as planes do, and its wheels left the runway at 18.25. It didn't miss its departure slot.

If you're setting off for a transatlantic flight that's going to take eight hours or so, and the timetable says 18.00, the doors close at 18.02, the plane goes off-block at 18.04 and it is actually physically airborne by 18.25, that's well up to time in anybody's book.

It's true that "the plane was late" is a persistent Lockerbie myth, but it's a myth that has been explored and explained and debunked to hell and back in the JREF threads going back about five years. Repeatedly.

Originally Posted by LondonJohn

As an aside, wasn't the original (and usual) flight plan supposed to take the aircraft out over the middle of Ireland, as indicated below:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com...a684628a08.jpg

If it had taken this route, then it would have reached the open water of the Atlantic far more quickly. Is it correct that its flight plan was altered by ATC owing to a combination of weather and overcrowding of the normal air corridor?

And no withering insults in the reply, if possible, please

No. I could be quite withering about the inability to use a ruler demonstrated by that reply, but I won't.

It has long been assumed that the usual flight plan was as you show in that graphic. I'm wondering if that's another persistet Lockerbie myth as I've never read any primary source confirming it. The "Daventry departure" route the plane actually took was a perfectly normal route out of Heathrow at that time and I don't have any confirmation the plane didn't always go that way.

However, if we assume (as I did in my book, the doubts are recent) that the illustrated flight path was the usual one, then on that route the plane probably wouldn't even have made it as far as Dublin, let alone cleared Ireland. It couldn't possibly have got anywhere near the Atlantic. Its only chance to go down in water would have been in the Irish Sea. This could have happened, depending on the exact route and speed of the plane.

So tell me again why these terrorists thought it was a good idea to set the timer for a time that was only about 45 minutes after the earliest possible moment the plane could have taken off, when it wasn't scheduled to get into JFK until over seven hours later and would have been over ocean for much of that?

Airliners miss their departure slots all the time. This one could easily have done that, particularly as it had to wait for a connecting flight that was itself running 20 minutes late that evening. If it had missed its departure slot it would still have been on the ground at 19.03, the time the IED exploded. There would have been a small hole in the plane, a few shredded suitcases, and a bunch of people would have got the fright of their lives. Nobody would have been injured. And all the evidence would have been right there on the tarmac for the police to collect at their leisure without having to organise a fingertip search over several counties.

Tell me again why the terrorists thought 19.03 was a good time to set that timer for?

[Rolfe]

I'm intrigued by why people keep trying to work Megrahi into the Lockerbie plot somehow, even after the original evidence that convicted him has been discredited.

He was suspected because he was Libyan, and the investigators had decided to give up on the PFLP-GC in favour of Libya as the culprit state. Megrahi's name was one of several provided to the Scottish police with the suggestion they should follow him up. This was on the basis of the unreliable say-anything-for-money Giaka having told the CIA he was a Libyan intelligence operator. (He was Giaka's boss, and they didn't get on. A nice piece of revenge against the boss who doesn't like you pilfering, no?)

The reason for coming round to believing that Libya was the culprit was the timer fragment, which was believed to have come from one of a batch of instruments sold to Libya in 1985. However it has now been shown that the fragment doesn't match that batch of timers and so the essential original link to Libya has been broken.

The Scottish police basically groomed, hinted, prodded and bribed Tony Gauci into fingering Megrahi's photo in a photospread, despite the man himself bearing almost no resemblance to Gauci's original description of the clothes purchaser. It has now been shown that the purchase didn't take place on 7th December, the only day Megrahi could have visited Gauci's shop, so that vital piece of evidence falls.

They later discovered that Megrahi had been at Luqa airport at the time KM180 departed, travelling under an assumed name. They were already convinced the bomb had been on KM180. Quite a coincidence. No wonder the police became utterly convinced they had their man. But the bomb was in the interline shed at Heathrow airport by 4.45 pm, and so could not possibly have travelled on KM180 and been transferred to the feeder flight. Megrahi was at the airport at Malta, sure, but the bomb wasn't.

There's nothing left.

Libya might have been involved and it might not. It was certainly a terrorist state containing some very bad people. However, we can only speculate as there is no actual evidence of Libya's involvement at the moment.

What is stretching credulity past breaking-point is the continuing assertion that Megrahi himself was involved, just not in any of the ways the court decided he was. Why? What is the basis for this allegation? He knew some dodgy people and some of his relatives were dodgy people. Libya has a population of about 5 million and within the different tribes everyone knows a lot of people.

But there is no evidence at all of his involvement in Lockerbie, or indeed in any other terrorist or criminal activity. Why the persistent efforts to keep him in the frame?

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

Libya might have been involved and it might not. It was certainly a terrorist state containing some very bad people. However, we can only speculate as there is no actual evidence of Libya's involvement at the moment.

What is stretching credulity past breaking-point is the continuing assertion that Megrahi himself was involved, just not in any of the ways the court decided he was. Why? What is the basis for this allegation? He knew some dodgy people and some of his relatives were dodgy people. Libya has a population of about 5 million and within the different tribes everyone knows a lot of people.

But there is no evidence at all of his involvement in Lockerbie, or indeed in any other terrorist or criminal activity. Why the persistent efforts to keep him in the frame?

Is it not simple fear that if you take one of the foundation cards out of a house of cards it is almost inevitably going to collapse into nothing?

[Captain_Swoop]

Quote:

But there is no evidence at all of his involvement in Lockerbie, or indeed in any other terrorist or criminal activity. Why the persistent efforts to keep him in the frame

The usual stuff, 'no smoke without fire' and 'throw enough mud'