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4th September 2009, 05:00 PM | #201 |
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I'm conscious of the number of posts I've made in this thread, but it's a useful way of getting things straight as I get my head round them.
I can see I've made a number of errors on the way past, such as the number of bags on the Malta-Frankfurt flight (it was 55, not 15), and the amount of money offered by Iran to whoever would down a US airliner ($10 million, and it was £5.9 million that was paid into a German bank account controlled by the PFLP-GC from Iran very shortly after the crash, and yes, a credible source is cited for that). I just hope nobody is using me as a reference source! Rolfe. |
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4th September 2009, 05:06 PM | #202 |
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In case it might help, here is one account of the way the trial was conducted. It's written by a senior lawyer. It begins by talking about the grounds for appeal, but deals with the original trial later on. http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/20...july-2007.html Rolfe. |
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4th September 2009, 05:35 PM | #203 |
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Hmmm, I note Paul Foot covers that. He cites an article in Der Spiegel, from August 1997, reporting that an Iranian named Mesbahi had made statements to the effect that the bomb was taken from Frankfurt to London by air, in pieces. The bomb was then assembled in London and loaded on to Maid of the Seas. Of course if the Palestinians did this, the bomb would have had to be introduced at Heathrow. Their timers were set to go off 40 minutes after takeoff. If they had introduced it at Frankfurt it would have detonated over France. (I'm guessing that the whole point of the exercise was to down an aircraft headed for America.) If that is the case, it suggests the Mebo timer was planted, as has been alleged by several sources. The top-secret document that all the fuss was about (the reason the appeal was delayed) was apparently related to the Mebo timer. The Crown was last seen refusing to release it on grounds of national security, with stuff about "damaging Britain's relations with a friendly power." I wonder if we'll ever find out what that's all about? If this version is correct, then it highlights another coincidence. The apparent record at Frankfurt suggesting that an unaccompanied bag might have gone on to PA103A from Malta. The very place where the clothes in the suitcase were definitely bought. If on the other hand the Mebo timer is genuine, it means that the Palestinians are much less likely to have been involved - why would they sudddenly use a different type of timer? If the Mebo timer was the trigger, the 40-minute detonation (consistent with an ice-cube timer) is the coincidence. Also, that the Palestinian cell were making radio-cassette bombs out of almost identical Toshiba machines, that very autumn. In Frankfurt. And the £5.9 million they got from the Iranians. Occam says he doesn't want to play any more. Rolfe. |
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4th September 2009, 09:37 PM | #204 |
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Originally Posted by Rolfe
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5th September 2009, 07:25 AM | #205 |
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Hmmmm, I still need to read a lot more. I note the UN observer was highy critical of the conduct of Megrahi's defence. Some sources have praised the defence for shredding the credibility of Giaka and Bollier. However, Koechler takes a different view, particularly as regards the handling of the first appeal.
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5th September 2009, 08:58 AM | #206 |
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Coincidences? The affair is full of them. While it would be nice to devise a neat Agatha Christie-style explanation that ties everything in, I suspect it's impossible. I don't know what to think about the CIA operatives. Maybe it was pure coincidence. Maybe CIA operatives travel transatlantic a lot in connection with their jobs, so there was a fair chance of hitting on a plane with some of them on it. Maybe the bombers knew about the CIA operatives' movements, and deliberately chose the plane for that reason. And maybe one of the wilder CTs, which asserts that the bombing was an inside job designed to murder Charles McKee, because he was returning to the USA to blow the whistle on a "drugs for hostages" operation being run by Oliver North, is actually true! How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? Rolfe. |
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5th September 2009, 03:37 PM | #207 |
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This is at least conceivable, but strikes me as unlikely. I think sheer coincidence is the most conservative explanation. The CIA could have been smuggling drugs on the flight or something, but I imagine just about any documents a CIA officer might be carrying would be of a nature such that the CIA wouldn't want them blowing all over the landscape, so even if the CIA was on the scene quickly that isn't necessarily proof they were up to no good.
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5th September 2009, 03:44 PM | #208 |
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I'm inclined to agree. The idea that this was an inside job has no evidence to support it at all. There is some evidence that those "in the know" may have known in advance that the plane was going to explode, and some VIPs were pulled off the flight. However, it's weak. There are a couple of documentaries that make the case, but it's not wildly convincing, and almost entirely hearsay.
It's not the craziest theory though. There's a vocal contingent of blog commentators who simply assert that Arabs would not/ could not do such a thing, and it was obviously the Jews that did it to make the Arabs look bad. Rolfe. |
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6th September 2009, 01:50 AM | #209 |
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Agreed. And resembling the Lady Di CT for implausibility.
Unfortunately there's enough vague and conflicting detail surrounding the Lockerbie bombing that it's prime material for CTists. For my own part I'd go with political and economic expediency as the motivation for framing the Libyans. That is, replacing the most likely guilty (and original) suspects - Syria,Iran,PPLO - with a much more productive suspect, i.e. Libya. The shenanigans can then be organised with an adequate degreee of plausible deniability. |
6th September 2009, 04:45 AM | #210 |
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That's my feeling too. The trouble is, there's good evidence of other shenanigans surrounding that plane - CIA operatives, drug smuggling and interference with the evidence right from day one - that you keep tripping over this and getting drawn into wilder hypothesising. It's a lot more likely that this was coincidence though, just like the "Helsinki warning". That's why I was surprised to find nothing on this board discussing it when I started this thread over two years ago. I've found stuff since then, but even so, the CT enthusiasts seem keener on proclaiming "it was the Jews!" than looking at the shenanigans for which there is evidence.
Rolfe. |
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7th September 2009, 09:45 AM | #211 |
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A square peg.
So effectively the Libyans were a square peg forced to fit a round hole as all other avenues would have been less suitable to the US. Were there no other nations involved in the trial process that would have needed coercing? Anticipating the sanctions afterwards was there nothing at all to be lost in the inevitable situation? Did other nations, including the US, not lose out on the oil business due to the embargo?
I am not saying that everyone is wrong as you have all obviously looked quite deeply into this case. I just want to be sure that this isn't a very convincing CT. |
7th September 2009, 11:47 AM | #212 |
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My default position has always tended to be that the investigating authorities went after Libya after failing to find the sort of evidence against Syria/Iran that they would have needed to bring a case to court. Just as has happened so often in the past, when "getting a conviction" was the important thing, never mind if you've got the right person or not.
Certainly, that is probably the explanation for the astonishing decision of the judges at Camp Zeist. The political pressure to get at least one conviction out of that three-ring circus seems to have blinded them to the incongruity of their judgement. The Scottish court system was quite inordinately puffed-up with pride about the whole damn charade, and that's not a good mind-set. Also, the two defendants had been charged years previously, and the world had been assured that the evidence against them was "incontrovertible". To have found no case to answer (which frankly there wasn't) after all that - it was probably too horrible to contemplate. Possibly even for the defence team, who seem to have made some inexplicable blunders, especially at the appeal. However, the more I look at the evidence, the more questions arise. The amount of evidence that had to be ignored to make the case against Libya was remarkable. The explanation that in 1989 it became not expedient to pursue the case against Iran and Syria, and that in 1990 it was decided to manufacture a case against Libya, is very compelling. And the only countries involved were America and Britain. With Maggie Thatcher almost having an orgasm if Ronnie Reagan spoke to her, America had it pretty much its own way. Given that they announced to the world that they had incontrovertible evidence against Libya (which of course couldn't come to court as the defendants could not be extradited), who was going to contradict them? Rolfe. |
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7th September 2009, 12:05 PM | #213 |
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Minor nitpick there, Reagan left office a month after the Lockerbie bombing. It would have to be Bush Senior tickling Maggie's fancy, which I'm sure he was eminently capable of doing.
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7th September 2009, 12:32 PM | #214 |
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7th September 2009, 12:44 PM | #215 |
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Not only number but size, my word. One imagines you'd be nearing the edges of what's available or something. I do know a bit where you're coming from, having started a few threads where I just go off on a point in major detail, usually to make a set point but also to discover along the way how good a point it really is. It's a great way to learn and study a subject, but you usually suffer a lack of outside input and criticism as people stand back and go "what's that raver's problem?" Least how it seems when it happens to me.
Coincidences do happen, I have to remind myself. But not everything that cold be is, especially in some cases. Is this one of them? I dunno. A lot of unknowns tho (how quick do CIAs get on scene usually??), etc. Whatever the actual consiracy of the bombing, based on what I've seen here, al Megrahi was definitely framed and not guilty. On the actual perps, just because there was an original lead doesn't mean that was correct either. Does the CIA ever get fingered up-front? But on the longer-term implications of the blame-shifting, that's interesting to me. I'm hazy on what positive attraction there was in smacking lybia with the bill, but I'm sure reasons existed. From what it seems, Iran was de-emphasized to not aggravate them as attention came on Iraq. That war sort of never ended (to count the sanctions-n-bombings dead or to hear Bush/Cheney speak in 2001-3), and of course is culminating around now, perhaps almost over, with British and US troops mostly gone. and while Iran stayed a definite bad-guy state worthy of blaming for a bombing, we haven't been shooting at them for the last 20 years that Iraq's been the project. Now at around the same time coalition forces are leaving Iraq, or trying to, al Megrahi is released, discussion resumed, Iran belatedly taking the blame, not long after their "election" debacle... Coincidence? Oh, and on why other CTists aren't involved much, I think that it's too boring and not CIA-blaming enough. I'ts all over which foreign non-white terrorists were responsible, although there is a frame-up and deceit, they payoff just isn't worth the work. |
7th September 2009, 12:49 PM | #216 |
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And quite right. But, as we've discussed, the possible CT 'accusation' arises the moment you start to move away from known facts and into the realms of political motives, devious schemes and speculation. I've done this myself, truth told, which is weak.
But what appears to be true (though I'm willing to listen to evidence to the contrary) is that the case against Megrahi is worse than tissue-thin, it's plain disgraceful. Where we should go from there I don't know, but speculation is almost inevitable. Then things are likely to get debatable, which simply clouds the basic issue. |
7th September 2009, 12:56 PM | #217 |
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7th September 2009, 02:38 PM | #218 |
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I do have a slightly obsessive personality, but in fact I've tried to get my head round this one several times in the past. The sheer complication of the whole thing, plus the variety of CTs (from the plausible to the downright paranoid) have previously defeated me. And in 2001 there wasn't much on the Internet. The thing is, it's such a hot topic here that any time I'm typing a post, it's likely that something will come on radio and TV in the background about it, right now it's whether the full SCCRC report will be made public. I'll be surprised, I have to say, because we're getting code for "the USA does not want this published" in the reports. Not only are several local people interviewed in the various documentaries saying that there were Americans poking around in the wreckage within a few hours of the crash, one of the documentaries interviews someone from London saying that among other air traffic control problems just after the crash, they had to get an executive jet of US personnel there ASAP. Well, apart from the fact that the evidence is public and anyone can have a look for themselves and see how thin it is, there comes a point where there are too many respectable people with no obvious axe to grind making a cause of this for it to be dismissed as raving. You can declare that Jim Swire has Stockholm Syndrome if you like (and presumably Martin Cadman too), but add Hans Kochler, Robert Black and Tam Dalyell to that and it starts to look as if something's very wrong. Look at Hans Kochler's web site about the issue. Oh, probably. Unless someone managed to give Megrahi aggressive prostate cancer on purpose! This affair seems to attract coincidences like flies to jam. Oh, it can be CIA-blaming with no trouble at all. You may note a couple of my posts saying, "I keep coming back to that timer." Well, the more you think about it, the more the timer sticks out as inconsistent. It simply makes no sense, whichever way you slice it. Having looked at the earlier commentary on the subject, I started to wonder if there was indeed any way the timer fragment had been planted, as Foot sort of hints he might half-suspect. Now, having looked at more recent commentary, I see this is exactly where it's going. Private Eye have an update article about that. Fragment of the Imagination. It looks as if even Hans Kochler is entertaining that theory. The subtext is going round that this is what the ultra-top-secret document is about, the one that Megrahi's defence team wanted admitted as evidence, but Westminster vetoed under "public interest immunity", on the grounds that publishing it would be damaging to our relations with a friendly power. Suspicions are held that the document shows that the CIA planted the fragment of the timer. And if the CIA deliberately framed Megrahi, as looks entirely possible (whether or not the timer fragment was planted), it makes the recent US posturing about his release particularly nauseating. Actually, I'm going on holiday tomorrow and I'll probably lose meaningful internet access, but when I get back I think I'll start a thread just on the provenance of the fragment. If 9/11 CTs can have an entire subforum, this one can at least have two threads! Oh yes, and if you want to go even further, there's a LIHOP theory which hasn't been knocked down yet as far as I can see, and may actually provide the closest thing there is to a single explanation for all the observations. And the more extreme fringe also have a MIHOP version. Just because it was Bush Snr at the helm and not Dubya, surely isn't enough to choke these guys off! Rolfe. |
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7th September 2009, 02:47 PM | #219 |
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How do you define a CT anyway? One that turns out not to be true? As I said, I'd like to see Gravy take this one on and see what he can debunk. A lot of the bunk looks pretty solid to me. The only person supporting the Official Version (apart from the officials, of course) is David Shayler! And his line simply seems to be, well but they should have taken Giaka seriously anyway (no you moron, it was proved he was making it up to curry favour with his CIA handlers who were pressing him to help them get a conviction), and Libyan Arab Airlines had a desk at Luqa next to Air Malta so it would have been simplicity itself to get a bag on board (no, you idiot, that's the one place where the records were bullet-proof enough to convince everyone but the judges that it couldn't have gone on there), and anyway the evidence satisfied the judges to he must have been guilty. I don't think he knows the first thing about it. I can't see how anyone who has read about the problems with the Gauci identification and the impossibility of the bomb having got on board at Malta and the way the CIA tried to convict both men using a proven liar who was desperate to keep himself in their favour, can possibly imagine Megrahi actually did it. Rolfe. |
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7th September 2009, 05:10 PM | #220 |
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Absolutely. I'm poking around a little more myself and may even be of help. Thanks for the links, I have bookmarks folder for the subject now.
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7th September 2009, 05:50 PM | #221 |
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Well, I have to log out now, and if I have online access at all for the next week it will be at an inordinate price on a cruise liner in the Mediterranean. I'm not going to post the OP of my thread on the timer right now, as I won't be around to discuss it.
See you next week, I expect. Feels a bit odd packing my suitcase to catch the plane, after all this! Rolfe. |
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8th September 2009, 09:22 AM | #222 |
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Don't mention Megrahi in Libya.
Well today I got a serious warning about my actions in discussing the release of Megrahi with my Libyan colleagues. This came after a couple of my ex-pat friends commented that I was pushing the boundary of debate with my religious arguments. I feel a little shocked as this came from the top man within my company. I've been told that the whole oil field is talking about what I have said. I was told that this topic is super hot here in Libya and that people are being arrested and 'detained' for talking about it. I guess it's finally time for me to zip it. I'd hate to think I lost my job over it.
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8th September 2009, 03:42 PM | #223 |
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Jesus. I'm not sure what that tells us about Megrahi's innocence or otherwise, but don't stick your neck out on our account!
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9th September 2009, 09:34 AM | #224 |
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9th September 2009, 12:03 PM | #225 |
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9th September 2009, 02:11 PM | #226 |
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Duh? I'm trying to figure out what you actually said! But as I'm on a slow and expensive satellite connection I'm not going to scroll back to find out. (I'm cruising in the Med, but I think I'm far enough out from Libya to get away with whatever I want to say. And Scotland, as yet, is not a police state.) I set off on holiday with the Private Eye Lockerbie report as holiday reading, all nicely comb-bound, in clear covers. Got a couple of odd looks in the plane for that! Then at Palma airport I had a luggage trolley that wouldn't run straight, and left the damn report in the basket when I switched my suitcase to a better one. I wonder if anyone will read it! I l'll just have to make a new printout when I get home. Pity, because I was beginning to figure out where the interesting bit was - what happened between March 1989 and about September 1990. I imagine the evidence is so corrupted by now that nobody will ever figure it out short of an actual confession or two, but it would be good to understand what the possibilities are. Rolfe. |
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9th September 2009, 03:17 PM | #227 |
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10th September 2009, 09:08 AM | #228 |
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I'm in no danger of being assassinated Actually I think I will be ok and remain employed too. I'm hoping that I may have over reacted to my warning.
I simply had a fairly heated debate that started as an inquiry into my opinion regarding the release of Megrahi and escalated into a discussion on the 40 year dictatorship of Gaddafi. This is something that absolutely should not be discussed in anything other than a positive light. We also discussed the Jewish issue and the USA. Again these are topics best avoided in Libya and many other Islamic country's. In Libya there are still government informers and hard liners who will report perceived anti-government sentiment to officials. This is still a very restrictive society. |
10th September 2009, 12:45 PM | #229 |
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Ah, general criticism of Qadaffi (how many spellings are there?) is certainly something that might be bad. I'm curious tho what people are being arrested for saying. I presume it's people insisting Megrahi's guilty and it's a travesty to let him live his last years in freedom. Of course no one should be troubled for just speaking teheir mind, but rather countered with facts and discussion.
PS sorry my post was a little snarky. |
10th September 2009, 02:13 PM | #230 |
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What I don't really understand is the number of people prepared to declare Megrahi is guilty. I just can't see how anyone, having read the totality of the evidence, could believe that.
Well, OK, I know the judges did, but there was maybe just a teensy bit of political pressure not to let that pantomime at Camp Zeist wrap up without convicting someone. I wouldn't give anyone a parking ticket on that evidence. Rolfe. |
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10th September 2009, 04:24 PM | #231 |
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Well, the judges, national governments, most media outlets, a couple decades for presumed guilt to soak in, etc. might have something to do with it. It's really not mysterious at all IMO that so many will repeat the mantra. I guess Mr. Change Obama himself called the release a travesty or something. I'm no expert on any of this, but when Libya wound up on the UN Human Rights Commission (IIRC) a few years back, someone mentioned what a travesty that was. Curious, I asked why. He said it was because they had supported the Lockerbie bombing and had still not atoned for the sin. That and Ghadaffi was a dictator. That's all most people need to know, apparently. I didn't even know the most inflamatory part of that gripe is (apparently) untrue.
ETA: Glad you've got some kind of link there, Rolfe, and hopefully your lost notebook will be found by an open mind intrigued by their strange find. |
11th September 2009, 10:40 PM | #232 |
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Obama's quote (one at least)
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I hadn't even read a wiki on al Megrahi yet, until just now. I always had the impression as a Libyan "agent" he'd be some kind of street-level terrorist with some shady state links. But no:
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Holy crap I'm in need of education here. I can see with his expertise in airline security why he'd be a good target - he knows how to work around it, duh! Surely his respected and influential situation also helped. High-status... in evil Arab Libya! So the judges believed that between briefings and meetings he went to Malta and bought baby clothes to wrap the bomb with, or what have you, and personally set the attack up. And then went back to work securing his own airplanes and helping Ghadafi plan its strategic moves, prob'ly to blow up more white people planes but luckily they was stopped! So is that about it (give or take)? |
11th September 2009, 11:35 PM | #233 |
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That's about it, although there seems little doubt that he was actually in Malta on the second date that the Gauci brothers reckon they sold the clothes (I think Rolfe outlines the fiasco of the football matches and the missing rain elsewhere. Indeed, it was here ). However, the whole Gauci testimony and the conclusions drawn from it have more holes than a collander.
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12th September 2009, 12:19 AM | #234 |
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Especially considering the bomb may well have been placed on board in London, where al Megrahi was not at the time. Thanks, Glenn. Great post at that link, helps to set one aside and look it over. Rolfe, you know by starting that one "I think it's overstating the case to label me as "a student of the subject"" you've passively-aggressively forced me to say "you misspelled understating."
So the second date he was in Malta is the second possibility for the one day of the fateful purchase by the shape-shifting stranger.It's also the less likely of the two, as 11/23 had evidence for rain and 12/7 little reason to also buy an umbrella. He may have been/was there on the bad fit day and has a solid alibi for the better fit. And this is their BEST evidence? Travesty indeed. |
12th September 2009, 02:31 PM | #235 |
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The best evidence was actually Giaka's evidence. The little snagette there was that Giaka was a lying toad willing to say anything he thought would persuade the CIA to keep him on their payroll and their comfortable witness protection programme.
It was Giaka who first named Megrahi and Fhimah as possible perpetrators, with a load of stuff about Fhimah keeping explosives in the drawer of his office desk at Libyan Arab airlines (yeah, right....). The CIA knew he knew virtually nothing, and that he was actually a mechanic not an operative, and was basically making it up as he went along. But they didn't have anything else. So they kept asking him for information, and pressurising him for more, and he gave it to them. Giaka was to be the star witness at the trial, with a load of rubbish about seeing Megrahi carrying a brown Samsonite suitcase at Luqa airport and more where that came from. However, the CIA cables produced in evidence had a lot of stuff blacked out. The defence applied to have the cables admitted in full. The prosecution swore there was nothing in the redacted sections that would cast any doubt on Giaka's reliability as a witness. However disclosure was ordered, and when the blacked-out parts were visible they proved that the CIA knew Giaka had invented the lot. Read Hans Kochler's opinion on that lot - not so much that the Judges threw out Giaka's evidence at that point, which they had no option but to do (which acquitted Fhimah entirely, as they had no other evidence against him), but that the prosecution weren't subjected to censure for presenting a witness they knew to be lying. This is what makes the current US outrage so nauseating. Oh yes, they're going to boycott Scottish goods and cancel their holidays to our country, and never mind that Scottish soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan beside US soldiers, or that the US had a bloody nuclear submarine base on our soil. But it was the CIA who basically framed Megrahi in the first place! Rolfe. |
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12th September 2009, 11:51 PM | #236 |
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By best evidence I mean best evidence that was actually admitted instead of tossed out as obvious falsehood.
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Looking forward to the timer thread. I do better with something narrow to wrap my brain around. |
13th September 2009, 12:58 PM | #237 |
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I'm still cruising round the Mediterranean, on a slow satellite connection (which died altogether on Friday night out of Naples) at 3 quid (no pounds sign on this Yank keyboard, you'd think they could at least manage a Euro symbol considering where we are....) an hour.
The timer fragment intrigues me greatly, and I'm obviously not the only one. But I don't have any links saved on this computer, so I'll see you on Tuesday or Wednesday. Rolfe. |
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"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012. |
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13th September 2009, 01:15 PM | #238 |
Loggerheaded, earth-vexing fustilarian
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Wales
Posts: 31,398
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13th September 2009, 01:22 PM | #239 |
Loggerheaded, earth-vexing fustilarian
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Wales
Posts: 31,398
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15th September 2009, 01:47 AM | #240 |
Illuminator
Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 4,494
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Perhaps Mike Myers will reprise his old SNL character to remind us all the "if it's Scottish, it's crap." I really wanted a video link for reference, but there isn't one at all.
Two points here. One was to say that. Point 2 is to bump this thread for the many, many, forum members who haven't said anything here yet. C'mon, it's okay to admit you're a little confused. Third point - okany, three then - is to say I've been reading up on this thread and the general discussion about the case and indeed this line of thinking that Rolfe's got here is widely known of enough that it gets mentioned all the time - it's actively throwing an awkward ambiguity into the milieu, at the very least. Some little things I've picked up. Time:
Quote:
I thought his description didn't match? Why would he then pick the right guy when presented with multiples? That's a little complicating. Same article:
Quote:
There were some other points but that's a good spot to leave it at. |
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