Beware of the leopard
Just a quick one, as we’re obviously very busy today putting out our Union Jack bunting and preparing our street party. Kenneth Roy of the Scottish Review, along with Peter “Moridura” Curran, is one of the Cranky Old Men of the nationalist movement, and we have to admit we often find his work rather hard going, for all its worthiness – not least because of the abominable, near-unreadable layout of the SR website.
It’s currently running a series (comprising an unknown number of parts) about the Lockerbie bombing, and the first piece was a bizarre, crotchety attack on the grammar of the Scottish Government’s official statement about the death of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The second, however, which we link to in its slightly less eye-mangling reproduction on Newsnet Scotland, is unmissable.
If you’ve got Lockerbie fatigue, don’t worry – it’s only passingly about the events of that grim night in 1988. Instead, it sends out a powerful and damning message about democracy, and in particular the public accountability of governments to the people. The message could be summed up as “use it or lose it”, but if you read nothing else today we urge you to read Roy’s rather more evocative illustration.
Here’s the comment I left on this on Robert Black’s blog, when he blogged it a couple of days ago.
Ah yes. The FAI. The sheriff’s findings are published and freely available online. It is extremely clear that evidence was withheld from him and that he produced findings that suited the Crown case. He virtually admits it.
The FAI took place from October 1990 to February 1991. Everybody and his dog had known for at least year that the cops were swarming all over Malta. Granada TV broadcast their documentary “Why Malta?” in late 1989.
The word “Malta” does not appear in the findings. The sheriff admits frankly that evidence has been withheld from the FAI in order not to jeopardise the ongoing criminal inquiry, and he seems quite relaxed about that. Clearly, Bogomira Erac’s printout and Tony Gauci’s clothes were in that category. More surprisingly, Kurt Maier’s x-ray evidence also seems to have been withheld.
What was not withheld was Bedford’s evidence – thank goodness, because this appearance under oath enabled his evidence to get into the Zeist transcript. So the FAI got to hear all about the mysterious brown-ish Samsonite, in almost the exact position of the bomb. Also not withheld was Henderson’s evidence, detailing that no passenger had checked in a brown Samsonite. Ergo, the bomb was in an unaccompanied suitcase.
What did Sheriff Mowatt think Bedford saw? He had everything he needed to realise that was probably the bomb suitcase – more than Zeist had, in fact. On the other hand he had an absolute fairy-story presented him in an effort to show the bomb had come off an interline flight at Frankfurt, all without revealing Erac, Gauci or Maier. It was tenuous beyond belief, some candy-floss about the interline luggage all being together and most of the damaged items being interline (that last bit probably wasn’t even true).
But the Crown had indicated that it would not object to a finding that the bomb suitcase flew into Frankfurt on an interline flight. Mowatt helpfully says so. So he ignored Bedford and Henderson, and obligingly found just what the Crown indicated it wanted him to find.
It’s blindingly obvious the police were telling him they had definite evidence they couldn’t present to the FAI at that time to show the bomb had come in as interline luggage from Frankfurt. And to confirm that, all the newspapers were telling their readers about the ongoing investigation on Malta. Mowatt surely knew about that – everybody else did. So he was please to ignore Bedford’s evidence, however interesting it might seem, because we KNOW it’s just a red herring, and please don’t embarrass anyone by making a finding that doesn’t fit with the direction the live inquiry is working on.
So John Mowatt obliged. And the very next day, Tony Gauci picked Megrahi’s blurry, unrecognisable photo out of the photospread, helpfully prompted by John Crawford.
And in 1992 the US hearings on the disaster referred to the FAI findings and the November 1991 indictments to justify their findings that the bomb originated at Malta. And so on.
And it all began in an empty hall in Dumfries, where a sheriff paid more attention to what the cops wanted him to say, than to the evidence that was presented to his court.
I came quite late to the FAI findings, as they’re difficult to find online and somebody had to lead me by the hand. I was already quite familiar with the evidence in the case, and very familiar with the judgement of the Zeist court. I was absolutely astounded by what I read.
When you read the judgement of the Zeist court, there is one thing that leaps out immediately – or at least it did for me. What was the “maroony-brown hardshell, the kind Samsonite make” that John Bedford said he saw in the baggage container at Heathrow, almost exactly in the position of the explosion, an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed? Bear in mind that Bedford, who was responsible for loading that container, hadn’t put it there (it mysteriously appeared while he was on a tea break), and that the bomb suitcase was subsequently discovered to be a bronze-coloured Samsonite hardshell.
We know that only one brown-ish Samsonite was recovered at Lockerbie – the one blown to bits by the bomb inside it. Pretty much everything else that was in that luggage container was recovered, including a second suitcase also blown to bits that had been lying directly alongside the bomb suitcase (a navy blue canvas case belonging to Patricia Coyle). But this “other” brown Samsonite Bedford saw wasn’t recovered.
The prosecution and the judges refused to countenance the idea Bedford’s mysterious suitcase and the bomb suitcase were one and the same, because they were utterly focussed on the theory that the bomb suitcase had come in on the flight from Frankfurt. Essentially they decided that Bedford’s case, originally a couple of inches away from the place the explosion later occurred, had been lifted out of the container when the Frankfurt luggage was being added, and Patricia’s suitcase put in its place. The bomb suitcase (virtually identical to the case Bedford described) had then been put directly on top of Patricia’s case, while Bedford’s case was replaced somewhere else. Subsequently to vanish over Lockerbie.
The huge question left hanging was, so whose was the case Bedford saw?
There were only a few passengers whose luggage was or might have been in that container before the Frankfurt flight landed, and it was known who they were. The FAI correctly noted there were “six or seven” pieces of luggage in the container when it was sent to collect the Frankfurt items, whereas the Zeist court was allowed to infer that there were somewhat more. In fact (and this was only revealed this year in Ashton’s book) only six pieces of luggage were identified as being legitimately destined for that container, while the baggage handlers who saw it mostly thought there had been seven cases in it at that time.
So, only six items of luggage, and we know whose they were. Which one of them was the brown Samsonite Bedford saw? This question screams out from the findings at Zeist, and remains unanswered. There is absolutely nothing in the evidence at Zeist to indicate that the police even asked the question. The only items discussed in detail were 25 items which were recovered blast-damaged as having been near the explosion, and none of these was the second brown Samsonite. One feels like shaking the defence advocate by the throat and screaming, “ask them whose that suitcase was, if it was indeed legitimate luggage!” Nobody asked.
This was bugging me for months, and then I read the findings of the FAI. It’s right there. “Detective Constable Henderson … analysed the baggage which was recovered and those pieces which were not recovered and where possible linked each piece with the person accompanying it. He gave evidence to the effect that none of the descriptions given by relatives of the baggage which they expected the victims to have been carrying fitted this suitcase.” That is, the brown Samsonite which exploded. The point of this was to show that the bomb had been in an unaccompanied item of luggage. However, quite obviously, this also demonstrates that the suitcase Bedford saw wasn’t legitimate passenger luggage.
Henderson wasn’t called at Zeist. No baggage reconciliation was presented. The question of whether there should have been another brown Samsonite among those six pieces of luggage in that container, loaded at Heathrow, was left entirely up in the air. The judges chose to accept the inference that there was, and it simply vanished in the crash.
There is in fact NO evidence to indicate that there was ever more than one brown Samsonite, the one blown to pieces by the bomb inside it, the one that was recovered in that condition at Lockerbie. On the contrary, everything that has been revealed suggests there was only one such suitcase. But that means it was in the container before the flight from Frankfurt landed.
All this was clear from the evidence presented to the FAI, more so than from the evidence presented to the Zeist court as it happens (I wonder why). But Sheriff Mowatt chose to accept what the Crown were telling him about evidence from the continent they couldn’t disclose to him. This set a precedent that became more and more impossible to overturn, and there you go.
Yes, it’s a shame more people didn’t brave the unlit basement staircase and look in the locked filing cabinet, but it’s an even bigger shame Mowatt acceded to pressure from the Crown in the first place, and that instead of re-examining his findings, subsequent inquiries accepted them as gospel.
Scotsman poll bot all wrong again, with 90%, and almost a remarkable 22k now suddenly all against a minimum alcohol price. I would have thought 60% in favour or so, not 10%?
Are they stupid or just manipulative, I give up now. Certainly the editorial bears no relation to reality either.
Editorial ‘beers’ perhaps? 🙂
I cant see how the Scotsman got so many to look at their poll ! do they have that much of a readership?