Lockerbie: A
Cover-Up of Convenience
In a special People & Power report, John
Coates investigates the Lockerbie bombing.
Lockerbie today
seems a world away from the hellish scenes here 18 years ago.
In December 1988,
just four days before Christmas, a terrorist bomb exploded on a Pan American
Jumbo jet flying between
The world was
deeply shocked by the tragedy here at Lockerbie. It soon became clear that a
bomb had gone off in a suitcase in the aircraft baggage hold. The blast blew a
gaping hole in the fuselage, condemning everybody on board to death.
The Lockerbie
bombing became the biggest mass murder in British criminal history. But while
Al-Megrahi is behind bars, many believe he was
wrongly convicted.
Jim…it
appears that political convenience strode into the field and demolished the
search for the truth and converted it into a political charade…
Tam
Kochler
Megrahi is not guilty as charged and for that
reason I consider that the verdicts of the trial and the appeal courts as a
miscarriage of justice.
Former Scottish
MP Tam Dalyell has asked countless parliamentary
questions and secured no fewer than 17 debates
in the British House of Commons about the Lockerbie bombing.
Tam
Q: Do you think there has been
a cover up in this?
A: Yes, a
huge cover up.
Q: Why do you
think that?
A: Because
it is too embarrassing for the Governments of the United States and then
Dr Jim Swire is leader of a campaign which has been fighting for
the truth about what really happened at Lockerbie. He heard all the evidence at
the nine month trial. He lost his eldest
daughter, Flora.
There was only one item of forensic material that was key to defining the device that might have triggered the
bomb that blew up the plane, and that was a small piece of circuit board.
The prosecution
claimed this tiny fragment came from a digital timer used by the Libyans to set
off the bomb. Swire and Dalyell
suspect this evidence was planted, in the remains of clothing.
Jim
The fragment was originally found in very early ’89
and it was then put in a police evidence bag, and the bag was labelled “charred
cloth”. This was in January 89 and it doesn’t seem to have been until May 89
that this bag came to the attention of the forensic guys and by the time they
got it the label seemed to have been changed and it now read “charred debris”
which is a convenient way of making it appropriate for if you’re going to find
something other than just cloth inside the bag when you come to opening it up.
And nobody would admit to having changed the label.
Voice over
This wasn’t the only change. The court heard how an
extra page of forensic notes relating to this fragment had been inserted into a
set of notes, with subsequent pages renumbered. The senior forensic officer who wrote them, Dr Thomas Hayes, was asked to
explain why by defence barrister Richard Keen:
Keen: Now, when
was that change in pagination carried out, Dr. Hayes ?
Hayes:
I'm sorry, I have no idea.
Keen:
Why was it carried out, Dr. Hayes?
Hayes:
I agree, it's a very good question. I'm sure
there is a quite innocent explanation, which I have no idea of.
Tam
Q: How do you
think that circuit board was found?
A: I
think it was planted.
Q: Why do
you think that? And by whom?
A: By,
frankly, American authorities. It was planted in order to support a case
against
Jim
I did not believe that any circuit board would survive
in any recognisable shape whatever from being that close to that charge of Semtex exploding and yet, here we had a fragment which was
alleged to have done so and which conveniently retained sufficient
characteristics to identify what kind of commercial timer it had been derived
from.
Furthermore, during the court hearings it was
established that nobody had done the basic forensic tests for explosive
residues in relation to that fragment, absolutely extraordinary because the
fragment was the only thing that pointed to the nature of the timer, so the
court never knew whether in fact the fragment it was being shown had actually
been anywhere near an explosive because it had never been tested. And
these sort of things congregate only round this
fragment. There are other things that are deeply worrying about the associated
clothing and so on and the suitcase. But this, I think, is the key item that
really swung me round to thinking God this has been fabricated, this thing’s a
set up.
Voice Over
For the first 18
months of the Lockerbie investigation, the authorities considered the bombing
to be a joint operation between the Syrian-backed Palestinian Front for the
Liberation of Palestine – General Command – the PFLP-GC - and its paymasters
for the attack, the Iranian government.
The bomb was
allegedly hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette recorder, a means of
concealment known to have been adopted by this terrorist group before.
Just two months
before the bombing, in a security operation called Autumn Leaves, West German
police had arrested one of its cells with a bomb concealed inside a similar
Toshiba model. This bomb had a pressure-sensitive barometric trigger for use in
an aircraft attack. Remarkably, some members of this cell were quickly
released, including the bomb maker.
The American
State Department later reported that early intelligence had indicated the
PFLP-GC and elements of the Iranian government had planned to attack a
290 people died
in this incident, the Iranians had promised revenge and the Lockerbie bombing
came five months later.
Tam
It was vengeance for the shooting down of that Iranian
airliner by the USS Vincennes in the Gulf. The airliner that was carrying
pilgrims to
Voice Over
The recent Holywood film Syriana is
based on a book by former CIA officer Robert Baer, much of it about his
exploits in the
Baer
Western
intelligence had indisputable evidence that the Iranians were planning to
attack aircraft in July 1988.
We were aware of
an Iranian from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps went to a camp outside
Beirut, a Palestinian camp, where he met Dalkamoni, a
Palestinian who later became in charge of an operation called Autumn Leaves which
was to shoot down five airplanes. This Iranian from the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps went to Dalkamoni, the Palestinian, and
said we are going to pay you money and give you support to blow up five
aircraft in revenge for the Americans shooting down the Airbus.
Q: How good was
that intelligence ?
A: It was Grade A intelligence. It doesn’t get any better.
Two days after
Lockerbie, there was a transfer payment from
Q: How much money ?
A: It was an 11
million dollar transfer.
Q: So how come
the Libyans were suddenly identified as the culprits ?
A: Well
look at
Baer 5
The Libyans
were identified as the culprits because they were indictable. They were
somebody you could bring to justice. Additionally, they had fragments of
evidence, forensics in this chip that was found at Lockerbie, which pointed to
the Libyans. It was enough evidence to implicate to a trial. But what happened
was neither the prosecution nor the defence was given
this exculpatory information about
Voice Over
There are also many who speculate that there were pressing political
reasons as well - the build-up to and aftermath of the first Gulf War.
Jim
This tragedy
for our families was set in the context of pretty extreme international
political pressures and if we talk about 1990, when suddenly the criminal
investigation seemed to switch to accusing
It was alleged
that the two Libyans had conspired together to plant the Lockerbie bomb at the
main airport in
At
And once here at
Voice Over
Eight years went
by before the two Libyans were handed over and put on trial at a specially
arranged Scottish court convened in
The prosecution
struggled to convince the judges that the Libyans were guilty beyond reasonable
doubt. Most of the evidence against them was circumstantial.
Despite this,
after a trial lasting 9 months they convicted Al-Megrahi
of murder, a verdict later upheld by an
Kochler
The verdict was basically inconsistent and
the formulation of the verdict, the opinion of the court
which has been issued after the trial and after the appeal, according to
my own evaluation, was not logically consistent and was not convincing. I mean
the splitting in the sense of declaring one person guilty and the other one not
guilty was not logical. No one with reason, will
believe that a lone person would have been able to organize such a terrorist attack.
Voice
Over
Serious doubts
have remained about many other discrepancies that emerged during the
trial. Particularly the evidence of a Maltese shopkeeper,Tony Gauci. He
allegedly sold Al- Megrahi clothes found at Lockerbie
and linked to the bomb.
Gauci described the customer as six feet tall
and about 50 years old. Al-Megrahi is 5 foot 8 and
was 36 at the time.
Tam
He got Megrahi’s height
completely wrong, which is odd for a man who was a tailor and then there was
this whole business as to the date on which it supposedly happened.
Voice
Over
Gauci said it was definitely raining when the
clothes were bought, because he sold the man an umbrella as well.
His shop
assistant was also away watching football that day. This left two possible
dates.
A weather expert
gave evidence there was a 90% chance that it was not raining on this
December date and if it was, not enough to wet the ground.
Despite this, the
trial judges concluded he had bought the clothes, on the December
date
Jim
Q: What did you make of that?
A: Well it gave the impression that everything had to
fit with a preconceived outcome I’m afraid and that is a concept that seems to
run through all the events between the disaster and the start of the trial.
There seem to have been a concept that had to be fitted.
Voice Over
Dennis
Phipps is an aviation security expert and a former head of security at British
Airways. In 1990, in a separate civil court case, he was hired by Air
Phipps:
Q: How tight was security generally
at
A: It was good in accordance with the standards
of the time.
Q: Now you
checked the paperwork and you interviewed baggage loaders from Air
A: I felt quite satisfied that they had carried out a physical
count, they knew exactly the number of bags they had put onto an aircraft.
Furthermore,
there is no record that any passenger who travelled
on that flight reported that their hold baggage had not out-turned, which
would, to my mind, preclude the possibility of a bag being substituted for a
bag checked in by a passenger.
There was no
direct evidence of an unaccompanied bag on the flight.
Baer
Look, I used
to teach explosives. The last thing you want to do is
put a bomb in place like
Voice Over
The prosecution asserted that a
Phipps
Q: How reliable is this worksheet that was
produced by the prosecution?
A: There is one
obvious error referring to bags coming from a particular Lufthansa flight which
we know did not happen.
There is no
accounting for individual bags and the bags that came in during the period that
the worksheet covers, could come from various flights including odd individual
bags from all round the airport.
Q: …what about
A: At the
time the general aviation security standards did not provide for everybody,
including pass-holders going air-side, being searched, for every item being
taken air-side to be searched, and for every vehicle going air-side to be
searched. So it is possible that a suitcase containing a device could
have been taken into Heathrow at the time of the Lockerbie incident.
Baer
Q: So you
think it’s unlikely it was planted in
A I who is
someone who’s been involved in this, involved in investigating terrorism for 30
years,
Jim
What the prosecution were asking the court to believe
was that a Libyan in Malta had used a digital timer which he could have set to
run for any number of hours that he wanted, he happened to set it, according to
the prosecution, in such a way that it exploded exactly in the middle of the
time window that would have been occupied by one of these PFLP-GC Syrian-based
devices had one of those been used.
That is a very, very difficult co-incidence to explain
away !
Voice Over
There have long
been doubts about much of the evidence used to convict Al-Megrahi.
But the question remains: why would the Libyan government agree to pay $2.7
billion in compensation to the families of the Lockerbie victims if
LIBYAN MINISTER
We thought that
it was easier for us to buy peace. And this is why we agreed on compensation.
Therefore, we said let us buy peace, let us put the whole case behind us and
let us look forward.
Voice Over
There are others,
meanwhile, who still want some answers.
Bill Cadman
was another victim of the Lockerbie bombing. His parents, Martin and Rita
Cadman, are also members of the
Martin Cadman
We saw Tony Blair a couple of years ago now – we got a
report on it. When I read the report on it, I wasn’t sure that we were at the
same meeting even, because he seemed to have reneged on pretty well everything
that we thought we might be getting, so it was a very unsatisfactory outcome.
It’s the second time we had a meeting with Blair.
Q: And what did he say?
A: Well, we haven’t had an inquiry. We don’t want an inquiry for its own sake.
We only want an inquiry if it leads to the truth and the truth is what we want.
The truth is much more important than the detail.
Tam
Q: The relatives also got an undertaking from the
Labour opposition that there would be an enquiry if the Labour party got into
power, but no such enquiry has happened. Why is that?
A: I think because the Americans took Blair aside and
said don’t pursue this and he does what
Jim
What we’ve always looked for from the start is the
truth. We want to know why our loved ones’ lives were not protected and there
were warnings that were ignored and all this kind of thing. But also we want to
know who actually murdered them.
Tam
Q: Do you think you’ll ever get the truth behind
the Lockerbie bombing?
A: I am hopeful. There may be a death bed
repentance of somebody, or it may gradually come out. If the Scottish
Criminal Review Body puts it back into the Court, there is going to be such
huge pressure that I think somehow or another the truth will eek out.
Professor Robert Black, Professor of Law at
1. I was astonished at the verdict.
The evidence in the case was wholly circumstantial and it was capable of
entirely innocent and neutral interpretations. At the time before the verdict
was in, but after all the evidence had been heard, I expressed the view rashly
that for there to be a conviction then the situation would have to be such that
the judges were adopting the posture of the 'White Queen' in 'Alice Through the
Looking Glass' – namely 'why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible
things before breakfast'. That's precisely what the judges did in convicting Megrahi.
2. The appeal court rejected his
appeal because … Under Scottish criminal procedure an appeal court can only
address questions that the appellant chooses to lay before it. Megrahi's then legal team asked the court the wrong
questions and it's not surprising therefore that the court gave the wrong
answers.
3. In my view that is virtually
inevitable. The result reached in the original trial which was not overturned
on appeal because of defects and the way the appeal was presented is such that
the conviction is simply contrary to the weight of the evidence. And I think it
is quite clear that if the correct questions are asked – namely, on this
evidence, 'Could any reasonable tribunal find Mr Megrahi
guilty?' The answer has to be no. And I would be amazed if the Scottish
Criminal Cases Review Commission reached any other conclusion.