Jim Swire meets Lockerbie bomber Megrahi in Libya

[dipsydoodle]

Source: BBC News

The father of a victim of the Lockerbie bombing has been to Libya to visit the only man convicted of the atrocity.

Dr Jim Swire spent about an hour with Abdelbasset al-Megrahi in a Tripoli hospital last week. He believes Megrahi is innocent and wants a full inquiry.

>

He was given a fresh chance to clear his name after the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) said there were six grounds where it believed a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.

Megrahi dropped his second appeal against his conviction shortly before he was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds after he was given three months to live.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-11368387

[JohnyCanuck]

1. Script was written to incriminate Libya, says ex-CIA agent

Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed

By John Pilger

snip

The American satirist Larry David once addressed a voluble crony as "a babbling brook of bullsh*t." Such eloquence summarizes the circus of Megrahi’s release.

No one in authority has had the guts to state the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish village of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 in which 270 people were killed. The governments in England and Scotland in effect blackmailed Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. Of course there were oil and arms deals under way with Libya; but had Megrahi proceeded with his appeal, some 600 pages of new and deliberately suppressed evidence would have set the seal on his innocence and given us more than a glimpse of how and why he was stitched up for the benefit of "strategic interests."

"The endgame came down to damage limitation," said the former CIA officer Robert Baer, who took part in the original investigation, "because the evidence amassed by appeal is explosive and extremely damning to the system of justice." New witnesses would show that it was impossible for Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am aircraft – he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopowner who claimed to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19 separate statements and even failed to recognize him in the courtroom.

The new evidence would have shown that a fragment of a circuit board and bomb timer, "discovered" in the Scottish countryside and said to have been in Megrahi’s suitcase, was probably a plant. A forensic scientist found no trace of an explosion on it. The new evidence would demonstrate the impossibility of the bomb beginning its journey in Malta before it was "transferred" through two airports undetected to Flight 103.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23425.htm


Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked

Published Date: 28 August 2005
By MARCELLO MEGA

A FORMER Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated. The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.

The police chief, whose identity has not yet been revealed, gave the statement to lawyers representing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, currently serving a life sentence in Greenock Prison.

The evidence will form a crucial part of Megrahi's attempt to have a retrial ordered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC). The claims pose a potentially devastating threat to the reputation of the entire Scottish legal system.

The officer, who was a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland, is supporting earlier claims by a former CIA agent that his bosses "wrote the script" to incriminate Libya.

http://news.scotsman.com/lockerbie/Police-chief-Lockerbie-evidence-was.2656485.jp

[mikelgb]

2. this is going to the dungeon isn't it?

[dipsydoodle]

5. Read the first sentence in the 2nd link above

"A FORMER Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated."

This isn't conspiracy theory : its fact.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. Explosives analysis concludes semtex theory "scientifically implausible" in Pan Am 103 explosion

Explosives analysis concludes semtex theory "scientifically implausible" in Pan Am 103 explosion

A scientific analysis of the Crown's discredited theory that approximately 1 lb of semtex contained in a Toshiba radio caused the destruction of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, has concluded that the notion is "scientifically implausible."

The report, by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer agrees with the findings of John H Parkes, a former MOD contractor and explosives engineer who assisted in the rescue operations in Lockerbie, and subsequently submitted a report of his findings to the then Scottish Secretary Malcolm Rifkind. Parkes was never called as a witness to the trial.

Dr de Braeckeleer's findings reiterate the initial findings from US sources, that the Crown theory does not stand up to forensic scrutiny.

"In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, researchers at the Centre of Explosives Technology Research in Socorro, New Mexico, estimated that up to thirty pounds of explosive was needed to destroy a Boeing 747, if the explosion had occured in the container. We agree with that estimate," the report says.

"As the explosion of one pound of Semtex H inside the luggage container does not generate a blast wave sufficiently powerful to fracture the skin of the fuselage, we have little choice but to conclude that the verdict appears scientifically very implausible."

snip

Evidence of fragmentation observed on victims at the site and on the wreckage - which was not heard at the trial- indicate an explosives "signature" that was not consistent with a semtex blast close to the skin of the fuselage. Unbroadcast footage of the wreckage, and contemporaneous photographs of the crashed plane, shows puncture damage to parts of the plane far away from the claimed site of a semtex blast, and of a character indicating far more powerful explosives events on board.

http://www.firmmagazine.com/features/501/Explosives_analysis_concludes_semtex_theory.html

[smiley]

3. wouldn't that be shocking!!!!

... not

[Nihil]

4. Just to repeat for the benefit of those who are only after vengeance ...

> The father of a victim of the Lockerbie bombing has been to Libya
> to visit the only man convicted of the atrocity.
> Dr Jim Swire spent about an hour with Abdelbasset al-Megrahi in a Tripoli
> hospital last week. He believes Megrahi is innocent and wants a full inquiry.

Full marks to Dr. Swire for his bravery & honesty.

[hugo_from_TN]

8. Sounds like he is after vengeance.

If he doesn't believe Magrahi is guilty and wants an inquiry to find the real guilty party, isn't he after vengeance also? I'm not sure if you are saying vengeance is bad or not...

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. Perhaps he's after justice?

Justice and vengeance aren't the same thing, strictly speaking (and convicting an innocent man for a crime he didn't commit certainly isn't justice, either).

[Nihil]

10. Thank you.

That is precisely what I mean.
:toast:

[Kringle]

11. more likely he is after money .nt

[Nihil]

12. Take a hike Razzleberry. NT

[JohnyCanuck]

6. kick n/t