"So who are they going to investigate - obviously not any Libyans since his co-defendant was cleared."

I was wrong, the D&G coppers have announced they are solely investigating eight more Libyans. This is unbelievably bad for many reasons, but the worst thing about it is that the same officer, Chief Superintendent Henderson, will be in charge, as before.

The UK Families of Flight 103 have condemned this move as a spoiling tactic designed to distract from their call for a full inquiry, but they are planning on circumventing the Scottish, British and American legal systems by appealing directly to the UN General Assembly. [1]


Thanks to an FOI request from Christine Grahame MSP two weeks ago we now know that the extremely dubious timer, the key evidence, went to the States and to Germany. Ms Grahame said: "The Crown Office have confirmed to me that the fragment, PT-35, the piece of evidence that it was claimed linked Libya to the attack, was also sent to Germany in April 1990, as well as the US. On 22 June, 1990, it was then taken to the FBI lab in Washington for examination by FBI officials there." [2]

Watch the Dutch documentary though and you'll see a lot of the testimony in it is about whether the timer circuit ever left the UK. Richard Maquise of the FBI and Chief Superintendent Henderson blatantly lie about this. The lead judge, Lord Frasier, denies it did and says he would have been aware if it had.

The film maker Gideon levy attends a memorial in the US for the victims and speaks to Tom Thurman, the unqualified FBI 'expert' who was later forced to leave the FBI for tampering with evidence. Levy then speaks to Richard Marquise, the lead FBI investigator - who just happened to be accompanied by the senior Scottish policeman in the investigation, Chief Superintendent Stuart Henderson.

Gideon Levy - You did the identification on a photo, right? But is that a real scientific way to identify things? Or should you do it with the real stuff?
Tom Thurman - I did it the real thing.
GL- Yes?
TT- I had the real piece of evidence...
GL -..that pointed to Libya...
TT - Absolutely, absolutely. The photograph was the first thing and then the real piece of evidence was brought over
GL- It was on your finger that the chip was on ?
TT- Yes. At that point then there was a one to one identification made, the real piece of evidence to the timer, the MST-13 timer was made in the FBI laboratory. It wasn't just the photograph, the photograph started it and then the authorities from England brought over the real piece of evidence. That piece of evidence was examined in the FBI laboratory along with the MST-13. That examination was verified at the forensic science laboratory in England, so it wasn't only my examination, it was verified by other peoples examination as well.
It wasn't just the photograph,


GL- Mr Marquise, can I ask you one more question?
Richard Marquise - One, I have to go after one question. We have somewhere we have to go.
GL - Cold - can I walk you to your car?
...
RM - What is your question?
GL - When I asked Lord Frasier about the circuit board, he said something that contradicted what you said, he said that it had never been to the United States, and if it was in the United States then he would've known
RM - I don't know that I told you the circuit board was in the United States.
Stuart Henderson - The circuit board was never in the United States.
RM - Back up, he's talking about two seperate things. There was a circuit board of an MST-13 timer in the United States, but the fragment of the PT-35 was never in the United States.
GL - It was never in the United States?
RM - It was never in the United States - photographs of it were in the United States.
GL- Oh I thought it was...
RM - No, the fragment was never in the United States, but the circuit board was in the United States because we had the MST-13 timer which we turned over to the police in Scotland.
GL - Ah, but Tom Thurman, who was here today also said it was in the United States.
RM - No, he never said that.
GL- No?
RM - No. The fragment was not in the United States.
GL- It was in England but it came...
RM - It never came to the United States.
GL- It never came to the United States?
RM - It never came to the United States, eh, I don't believe so. I'm 100% sure it wasn't here.
GL- Oh, it has never been here?
RM- No.
SH - It was never released out of the evidence control of ourselves. We couldn't afford to let something like that go missing.
GL- I thought it was in the possession of Alan Faraday?
RM - Faraday is over in RARDE, he's in England, it was in his possession.
GL- Yes, but I thought you told me it came in his possession to the United States?
RM- I don't know that I...
SH - No, no. It was in his possession and my possession but it was never released for anyone to hold it, just to see it.
GL - And who are you?
SH - Detective Chief Superintendent Henderson who conducted the investigation
GL- Oh okay, my name is Gideon Levy, and I'm from Dutch television
SH - I see.
GL - So it has never been in the United States.
SH - Control.
GL - At all?
SH - At all. It couldn't be because it was such an important point of evidence that it wasn't possible to release it. It had to be contained to be produced to the court you couldn't afford to have it waved around for everyone to see it because it could have got interfered with. So it was far too valuable to be made available, it couldn't be. Very valuable piece of evidence.
GL - You didn't say it was in the possession of Alan Faraday in the United States?
RM - You have to talk to Alan Faraday about what he brought. I don't remember...
SH - Alan Faraday had it in his possession with me but he did not release it to anybody
RM - No, he said 'Bring it with HIM'. Did he bring it to the States, I don't remember.
SH - He never brought it with him. They came to us to see it.
RM - I saw it in London.
GL - You saw it in London?
SH - Yes, they came to where we had it to see it because it wasn't possible to remove any evidence out of the jurisdiction of Scottish control.
GL- So you were the FBI investigator and you were the Scottish investigator?
...
SH- And by the way there is no hidden holes to find because the culprit is in custody. Take my word for it.




[1] Cynicism and doubt over latest Crown Office “spoiler”
 http://www.firmmagazine.com/news/1759/Exclusive%3A_Cynicism_and_doubt_over_latest_Crown_Office_%E2%80%9Cspoiler%E2%80%9D_.html

[2] Lockerbie evidence 'move' claims
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8315748.stm

I obviously pissed a few people off by calling the Kamp Zeist trial the biggest trial in history, bigger than Nuremberg. I was told that years ago by a senior legal academic involved in the trial and I checked it with a law journal because it didn't seem plausible. It is true in most regards, but that in no way means it was as important as the various Nuremberg trials and I didn't mean to suggest that. However, it is pretty irrelevant to the fact this Lockerbie is the biggest trial in British legal history for the biggest terrorist attack in British jurisdiction. The fact it was an obvious mistrial is the important point. I'm hardly 'jumping on a bandwagon', my own interest in the trial was because I happened by chance to be living in a hotel used by many of the lawyers and witnesses at the time and every day I would hear their opinion of the trial at the time - and none of them thought the trial would lead to a conviction.

I can see why my statement may seem like hyperbole though. The Nuremberg trials gave us the Nuremberg principles which have become a cornerstone of international law, and many of those principles are extremely important to protestors - especially the duty of everyone to oppose unjust national laws by whatever means necessary - including the assassination of heads of state.

However, it should be recognised that the Nuremberg trials were deeply flawed to the point of being 'victors justice'.

The tribunals ignored existing International and national law, and the fact that treaties that partly formed that law didn't apply to non-signatories.

No Luftwaffe officers were charged for the indiscrimate slaughter of civilians in bombing raids - this was to avoid British and American officers facing the same charges for the same crimes.

Germans were charged with invading Poland but no Soviets faced charges for their complicity in the same crime.

The defendants were not allowed to appeal or affect the selection of judges.

Prisoners were often given to 'displaced persons' to be tortured and killed, and evidence was taken under the extreme duress of being told they would be shot dead on the spot if they lied.

This all adds up to a pretence of legality, but it is arguable whether this illegality was unjust given the nature of the crimes.

There is an interesting article in the Times that suggests the key witness could have misremebered his evidence. It is interesting reading but it ignores two rather more important facts.

1) Gauci was described by Lord Fraser at the time as being insane.
2) Gauci and his brother both were paid $2 million each, and furnished with new identities in Australia by the FBI (despite Lord Fraser still saying any witness payments were forbidden).

So maybe David Canter is correct, that Gauci was subconciously misled by the cops. That is pretty irrelevant when he changed his evidence repeatedly and only identified Al Megrahi when he was conciously given four million reasons to lie.

Lockerbie: was Anthony Gauci's memory reliable?
 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6889766.ece
"
There is a considerable psychological research to show that people can be influenced in their judgments by subtle cues from others around them. So it seems very likely that inadvertently Mr Gauci could have been influenced to choose the photograph the police wanted.

We tested this possibility by running an experiment with two interviewers. Both were told to ask a random selection of people which of the people in the 12 photographs the police had used was likely to be the Lockerbie bomber. They were told to be careful not to indicate who they thought the culprit might be. Interviewer A was told that picture 8 was the culprit and interviewer B was not told anything. Of the 20 people interviewed by B none selected picture 8. Of the 36 interviewed by A, 15 chose picture 8. This small study, with the actual material used by the police, accords with many other explorations of these issues and many cases in which confident eyewitness identification has later proven false.
"