‘Flaws’ in key Lockerbie evidence
“I do find it quite it extraordinary and I think highly improbable and most unlikely that you would find a fragment like that – it is unbelievable”
– UN European consultant on explosives, John Wyatt
BBC | January 6, 2010
An investigation by BBC’s Newsnight has cast doubts on the key piece of evidence which convicted the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
Tests aimed at reproducing the blast appear to undermine the case’s central forensic link, based on a tiny fragment identified as part of a bomb timer.
The tests suggest the fragment, which linked the attack to Megrahi, would not have survived the mid-air explosion.
Two hundred and seventy people died in the 1988 attack on Pan Am flight 103.
Megrahi was jailed for the attack in 2001, but he was controversially released from prison in Scotland by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill in August 2009 on compassionate grounds.
Megrahi is said to be dying from terminal cancer and, according to reports from Libya, his condition continues to deteriorate.
But his release also scuppered Megrahi’s planned appeal and any hopes of challenging the evidence on which he had been jailed.
Newsnight has been reviewing that evidence, and has exposed serious doubts about the forensics used to identify the fragment as being part of a trigger circuit board.
The fragment was found three weeks after the attack. For months it remained unnoticed and unremarked, but eventually it was to shape the entire investigation.
Malta link
The fragment was embedded in a charred piece of clothing, which was marked with a label saying it was made in Malta.
So the focus turned to Malta and the question of who had bought the clothes.
A shopkeeper on the island identified Megrahi, but this came only years later after he saw him pictured in a magazine as a Lockerbie suspect.
Newsnight has discovered that the fragment – crucial to the conviction – was never subjected to chemical analysis or swabbing to establish whether it had in fact been involved in any explosion.
And the UN’s European consultant on explosives, John Wyatt, has told Newsnight that there are further doubts over the whether the fragment could have come from the trigger of the Lockerbie bomb.
Obliterated
He has recreated the suitcase bomb which it is said destroyed Pan Am 103, using the type of radio in which the explosive and the timer circuit board were supposedly placed, and the same kind of clothes on which the fragment was found.
In each test the timer and its circuit board were obliterated, prompting Mr Wyatt to question whether such a fragment could have survived the mid-air explosion.
He told Newsnight: “I do find it quite it extraordinary and I think highly improbable and most unlikely that you would find a fragment like that – it is unbelievable.
“We carried out 20 tests, we didn’t carry out 100 or 1,000, but in those 20 tests we found absolutely nothing at all – so I found it highly improbable that you would find anything like that, particularly at 10,000 feet when bits are dropping into long wet grass over hundreds of miles.
Background –
The Lockerbie Bombing Seen as an Expression of a “Strenuous Disagreement”
Related
Explosive reached Ireland after failed test
RTE News | January 5, 2010 20:50
A quantity of explosive, found in a flat on Dorset Street in Dublin this morning, was brought into the country following a failed security operation in Slovakia.
The explosive was one of eight pieces of contraband planted by the authorities in the luggage of unsuspecting passengers at Bratislava Airport in Slovakia last weekend as part of a test of security procedures.
Seven were detected by airport security, but the eighth – 90g of research development explosive or RDX – was put in the luggage of a Slovakian electrician who lives and works in Dublin.
The 49-year-old unwittingly brought the material to Dublin when he returned from Christmas holidays.
Gardaí were eventually alerted this morning following a call from police in Bratislava and the flat on Dorset Street was sealed off.
During the operation, the adjoining homes and businesses were evacuated as the Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit removed the explosive for further analysis.
Both Gardiner Street and Lower Dorset street were closed off for about an hour.
The Slovakian man was arrested at the scene, but gardaí are now satisfied that he is innocent and he was released from custody this afternoon. He will not face charges.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said the Slovakian Minister for the Interior has conveyed his Government’s profound regret for this incident to the Justice Minister Dermot Ahern.
Minister Ahern said he was very concerned about the fact that the gardaí were not alerted for three days and has asked for a full report.
Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy has appointed Detective Chief Superintendent Martin McLaughlin to establish the full background to this incident.
9/11 Commission Chairman: Plane Bomber “Did Us A Favor”
Thomas Kean celebrates justification to expand war into Yemen
By Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet | January 4, 2010
9/11 Commission whitewash chief Thomas Kean told CNN yesterday that the Christmas Day plane bomber “did us a favor,” by allowing Obama to expand the so-called war on terror into Yemen, a startling reminder that the highly suspicious Flight 253 attack served to fulfil pre-determined U.S. geopolitical objectives.
“This guy in some respects looking at it in retrospective probably did us a favor,” Kean told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday talk show, adding that the attempted attack shifted the Obama administration’s attention away from health care and global warming and back to the war on terror.
“We weren’t really focused on Yemen and the terrible things that are happening there. Now we are and that’s a good thing,” said Kean.
“The GOP chairman’s quote raised eyebrows; by his logic, the Sept. 11, 2001 attackers may also have “done us a favor” by drawing US attention to extremism in Afghanistan,” writes Raw Story’s John Byrne.
However, Kean’s implication that Yemen was not a subject of U.S. geopolitical interest before the attempted attack drew attention to the country is completely at odds with the facts.
A December 24 BBC News report entitled Yemen: New frontier in US ‘war on terror’ revealed how the U.S. had already invested $70 million dollars over the last year on expanding the war on terror into Yemen and that “US intelligence agencies are keeping a closer and closer watch in this newly-emerging theatre in the “war on terror”.”
A week after the incident, President Obama pinned the blame for the attack on terrorists based in Yemen despite the fact that no formal investigation into the bombing had been concluded.
Obama’s statement came one day after Britain’s PM Gordon Brown called an “emergency summit” on “extremism” in Yemen. “Gordon Brown has invited key international partners to a high-level meeting in order to discuss how best to counter radicalization in Yemen,” a statement issued by Downing Street announced. “The prime minister will host the event on 28 January in London.”
The fact that the aborted plane bombing attack provided the perfect justification to expand U.S. military operations into Arabian Peninsula in the name of fighting Al-Qaeda makes the suspicious circumstances surrounding the December 25 incident all the more alarming.
As we have documented, The FBI has repeatedly changed its story in a haphazard effort to accommodate eyewitness testimony from passengers that conflicts with the official version of events.
At first the FBI denied that a second man was arrested in connection with the incident but later admitted a second man was handcuffed after Flight 253 passenger and eyewitness Kurt Haskell said he saw an Indian man being led away by authorities after sniffer dogs had found something in his luggage.
Officials then claimed that the man had not been on Flight 253 at all and was not connected with the incident, but had to reverse their statement again just days later when other eyewitnesses emerged, admitting that the man had been on the plane.
The fact that the FBI is apparently protecting accomplices involved with the bombing attempt, and thereby keeping the official story within the script necessary to pin the attack on a lone man from Yemen who was inspired by Al-Qaeda, blatantly suggests that the facts are being manipulated to fit a pre-conceived geopolitical agenda.
Obama Vows ‘Accelerated Offensive’ in Yemen
Will Use ‘Every Element of National Power’
By Jason Ditz, December 28, 2009
Taking time out from his Hawaii vacation to comment on last Friday’s lap bombing on a Detroit bound airliner, President Barack Obama vowed an “accelerated offensive” against militants in Yemen.
The president said he would not rest and would commit “every element of national power” to the new mission of attacking those speculatively accused of some vague complicity in the failed bombing.
Several Congressmen are already chomping at the bit to use the lap bomber as a justification for a war in Yemen, and the Yemeni government, which would presumably be further aided in its assorted civil wars by the US, eagerly declared that the attacker had been to Yemen.
With the scent of terrorism in the air, President Obama will likely be able to parlay the lap bomber into a justification for anything and everything he might want. Officials are already talking of scrapping plans to close Guantanamo Bay over it, and America’s role in the attempted assassination of US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki last week can now readily be justified on speculation that the bomber’s alleged al-Qaeda links can be combined with Awlaki’s alleged al-Qaeda links to form alleged links between the two.
Of course, the Awlaki assassination bid and the US attacks on Yemen have been going on since before a Nigerian set his lap on fire on an airplane, and we’re only now starting to get the full extent of the war in Yemen the Obama Administration is already covertly fighting. The failed bombing is just a nice Christmas present for the president, giving him easy cover for the assorted wars he is already fighting and further wars he might plan to start in the future.
Explosion leaves 3 dead in Beirut on Ashura eve
Press TV – December 26, 2009 – 23:22:41 GMT
Preliminary reports say that at least three people have been killed and five others injured as an explosion hits the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, where the Shia Hezbollah movement has its headquarters.
The explosion occurred as Hezbollah was organizing a mourning ceremony to commemorate the martyrdom anniversary of the third holiest figure of Shia Islam, Imam Hussein.
Those killed in the blast were the members of the security services. They were reportedly trying to defuse an explosive device planted in a car belonging to a high-ranking Hamas official based in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s security forces have cordoned off the entire area, and the Lebanese army has been deployed to the scene, a Press TV correspondent reported.
The incident came after Hezbollah Secretary-General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah delivered a televised speech on the eve of Ashura, calling on Lebanon’s Shias to take part massively in Sunday’s ceremony which will include a huge march across the southern suburbs.
Rocked since 2005 by assassinations and an Israeli attack, Lebanon has enjoyed greater stability recently and formed a unity government last month.
US behind attacks on Pakistani civilians: Ex-ISI chief
Press TV | December 25, 2009
Former ISI chief Asad Durrani says private US contractors such as Xe (formerly known as Blackwater) and other intelligence agents may be behind the assassination of civilians across Pakistan.
In an exclusive interview with Press TV, Durrani said on Friday that the local militants led by Hakimullah Mehsud primarily target the government and military instillations.
Arguing against the local militants involvements in civilian assassinations, Durrani added that the militants consider Islamabad as a close ally of the US in the so-called ‘war on terror’ and that they have been launching retaliatory attacks against the government targets, particularly since the Pakistani army launched a major offensive against their stronghold in South Waziristan.
Durrani said that he doubted the notorious militants groups were behind a recent surge in attacks on civilian targets across the country.
The former head of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) claimed that certain theories were circulating among Pakistani intellectuals suggesting that the foreign agents or private US contractors could have been orchestrating assassinations on the civilian targets in the nuclear-armed country.
According to Durrani, these attacks were being carried out to encourage Islamabad to be more involved in war against the militants.
Pakistan has experienced a wave of violence over the past two years. Nearly 3,000 people have been killed in bomb attacks and other terrorist operations across the country.
Welcome to Pashtunistan: the aim of America’s secret war?
By Shaukat Qadir | December 21, 2009
Few people by now can be unaware of Blackwater, later known as Blackwater Worldwide and now as Xe. The private security agency formed in 1997 and based in North Carolina is owned by Erik Prince, a former member of the US Navy Seal special forces, and has long-standing links with both the CIA and the FBI.
Its presence in Pakistan has been an open secret for some years. The investigative journalist and writer Jeremy Scahill, an authority on Blackwater and author of the bestselling Blackwater: the Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, revealed last month that it has been there since 2006. He says Blackwater is being employed for covert ops, essentially intended to target high-value al Qa’eda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, but it has also assisted in providing information for drone attacks and has kidnapped suspects and transported them covertly to the US for interrogation.
In other words, it is an American agency with a licence to kill or kidnap, thus exonerating official American agencies that might one day be held accountable. (Although personally I doubt if the CIA will ever be held accountable. I continue to aver that it is the only real rogue intelligence agency in the world. Mossad might enjoy liberty of action for any operation, but it cannot undertake one without the approval of the Israeli prime minister: no such restriction applies to the CIA.)
Mr Scahill does not engage in speculation, and is not to be taken lightly. So when he states that Xe is sitting in Karachi, he is not likely to be wrong. He has added that the operation is so secret that many senior people in the Obama administration were unaware of it.
However, he seems to have erred in one respect: Xe is not only in Karachi. It also has a massive presence in Islamabad and Peshawar, where I understand the organisation has rented up to seven adjacent houses. Neighbours who heard muffled explosions soon after the houses were occupied suspect that they are linked by underground tunnels.
That the former president Pervez Musharraf permitted Blackwater entry to Pakistan does not surprise me in the least; he would have been ready to bark if George Bush wanted him to, not that Asif Ali Zardari is much different; both have been acceding to every US demand at every opportunity.
There is no doubt that for the past year or so US drone attacks have been far more successful in targeting militants than before, although, with the exception of Baitullah Mehsud, only in taking out low-level soldiers. My information is that the CIA/Xe have improved their human intelligence, and with its presence in Peshawar it is possible that Xe might have contributed to this improved performance of drone attacks.
But what else is it doing there? If its purpose is to kidnap suspected terrorists and convey them to the US, then clearly no one can know how many they have managed to extract since the operations would be covert; but, equally clearly, none has been high profile, or their disappearance would have been noted. All major non-Pashtun names on the US list of terrorists still roam at large in Karachi and Punjab.
If Xe is meant to target al Qa’eda, again they don’t seem to have had much success. The US secretary of state Hillary Clinton continues to assert that Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan, without offering concrete evidence; and if he is, why has the professional and highly paid Xe failed to kill or capture him? For such an expensive operation, Xe seems to have little to show to justify its continued presence in Pakistan.
The latest twist is that the organisation’s founder and owner, Mr Prince, has given an interview to the American magazine Vanity Fair, apparently in a fit of pique, in which he claims to have been a CIA asset since 2004 with a mission to hunt down and kill al Qa’eda militants for the US government. Describing the backlash after his employees shot dead 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in 2007, Mr Prince said: “When it became politically expedient to do so, someone threw me under a bus.”
He now says he is severing all ties with Xe, and after the interview the CIA said it was cancelling all contracts with the organisation. Nevertheless, there appears to be no evidence of its impending departure from Pakistan. This is a security agency that is available to anyone who can afford it. If its contract has indeed been terminated by the CIA, what is it still doing in Pakistan? Either the “termination” was a farce for public consumption, or Xe has found other paymasters.
I am not a subscriber to conspiracy theories. However, sometimes there seems to be no alternative logical explanation, and/or the conspiracy theory appears logical in itself. When this happens, one is forced to become a believer. This seems to be one such instance.
Pakistan’s conspiracy theorists have long held that the real object of Xe, acting on behalf of the CIA, is to destabilise Pakistan so as to have an excuse to take over or destroy its nuclear assets, because Israel and the US remain uncomfortable with a nuclear Pakistan. I have long disputed this theory, but am finding it increasingly difficult to continue doing so.
The Brazilian journalist Pepe Escobar has suggested that the US wants to leave behind a united Pashtunistan, consisting of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province and Afghanistan, an independent Balochistan and a weak, truncated Pakistan. The argument is a clever mix of fact and fiction; Jeremy Scahill he is not.
But then, what is Xe doing in Pakistan? All official statements from the US, Pakistan and Xe itself have denied its presence; but we all know it is there and, if my conclusions are correct, apparently serving no visibly useful purpose. All the denials can only give credence to one conspiracy theory or another: take your pick.
Brig Gen Shaukat Qadir is a retired Pakistani infantry officer
HEADLEY, THE CIA, NARIMAN HOUSE, FALSE FLAG OPS
Aangirfan – December 21, 2009
It could be argued that the Mumbai attacks of 2008 were carried out by the CIA and its friends. Attacks of this kind are normally the work of the security services. (False flag operations from Amman to Zambia)
1. On 20 December 2009, in the Hindustan Times, Vir Sanghvi wrote the following about the American called David Headley, who is suspected of planning the Mumbai attacks of 2008 (Did America keep mum on 26/11?):
“The only explanation that fits is this: he was an American agent all along.
“The US arrested him only when it seemed that Indian investigators were on his trail.
“He will be sentenced to jail, will vanish into the US jail system for a while and will then be sprung again — as he was the last time.”
2. Headley is reported to have visited Nariman House – a Jewish residential complex in Mumbai run by the Chabad-Lubavitch ultra-orthodox movement.
3. Some reports say that the ‘terrorists’ stayed at a guest house there for up to 15 days before the attacks.
It is unlikely that the ultra-orthodox Jews would have taken in Moslem fanatics.
The ‘terrorists’ inside the Nariman House Building were reported to have stocked up on supplies of alcohol.
This would suggest that the terrorists were not Moslems.
According to a witness interviewed by DNA INDIA “They had purchased around two crates of chicken and liquor worth Rs25,000 from two shops in Colaba.”
4. According to the Guardian:
“One police officer who encountered the gunmen as they entered the Jewish centre told the Guardian the attackers were “white.”
“I went into the building late last night,” he said. “I got a shock because they were white. I was expecting them to look like us.”
The BBC also reported witnesses as saying the Mumbai attackers were white:
Then, the “foreign looking, fair skinned” men, as Mr Mishra remembers them, simply carried on killing.
“They did not look Indian, they looked foreign. One of them, I thought, had blonde hair. The other had a punkish hairstyle. They were neatly dressed,” says Mr Amir.
5. What really happened at Nariman House may never be known. From: The India Telegraph:
“Israel has requested India not to conduct post-mortems on its nationals killed in the Nariman House siege, citing what it said were ‘privacy and religious reasons’.”
6. Do government spooks attack their own people?
In 1946, Jews bombed King David hotel in Israel, and blamed the atrocity on Arabs. Jews were killed in the hotel bombing. (aangirfan: THE REAL TERRORISTS)
The Jewish terrorist groups Irgun and the Stern Gang (known as Lehi in Hebrew) were active in Britain throughout the late 1940s. (BBC – Radio 4 Document – A Laudable Invasion aangirfan: An attempt to bomb the House of Commons)
The Jewish terrorists planned to bomb the House of Commons, and to murder members of the British armed forces. (BBC – Radio 4 Document – A Laudable Invasion)
The British Embassy in Rome was bombed.
In November 1944 Lord Moyne was murdered by members of the Stern gang in Cairo and there are reliable reports of the existence of plans to assassinate Government Ministers, including the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevan.
In 1946 a female agent of Irgun planted a bomb at the Colonial Office in London.
Let us not forget that the US government tried to sink the USS Liberty
In 2002, it was reported that ‘al Qaeda’ had bombed the Israeli Paradise Hotel at Kikambala Beach near Mombasa. 13 Kenyans died. It looked like an Israeli false flag operation. (before bombings …)
In 2005, bombs went off in the Radisson hotel in Jordan. A number of Israelis staying at the Radisson were evacuated before the bombing by Jordanian security forces, apparently due to a specific security alert. (Israelis evacuated from Amman hotel hours before bombings …)
Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen. (Odigo says workers were warned of attack)
It is suspected that the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which became the justification for US missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan, may have been the work of Mossad and the CIA. (Questions mount in Kenya, Tanzania bombings – US government …)
A documentary broadcast by German public television presented compelling evidence that some of the main suspects in the 1986 Berlin disco bombing, the event that provided the pretext for a US air assault on Libya, worked for American and Israeli intelligence. (German TV exposes CIA, Mossad links to 1986 Berlin disco bombing)
In 1954, Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon organized a terrorist attack on the U.S. Information Service library in Cairo.The idea was to give the USA an excuse for its policy of trying to undermine the Egyptian government of Gamal Abdel Nasser. (aangirfan: Dahab, King David, Lavon…)
Nuoviso: “9/11 False Flag”
Purchase DVD: http://www.nuoviso.com
The world has changed after September 11th. Its changed because were no longer safe.
These words were used by the George W. Bush, elected President of the United States in 2000, to dictate the political direction for the 21st Century.
Whereas Americans launch attacks relatively quickly, first on Afghanistan and later on Iraq, using falsified evidence, doubts about the official version of the events of September 11th grows.
The speculations that surfaced on the internet directly after the attacks were considered to be just wild conspiracy theories until this now. Yet the circumstantial evidence and even the substantial evidence itself paints a clear picture. The responsibility for the terrible attacks seems to lie not with Islamic Terrorists but with several high-ranking members of the military and administration of the U.S. Government.
This documentary focuses on the inconsistencies in the official version of the events as well as on the evidence which has been suppressed regarding September 11th. In addition, it answers the questions of why we still know nothing about it to this day and why we are being deceived also in european countries.
911-War Promises
Millions of people believe that evidence proves that Western intelligence services organized the hideous attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. Even the mainstream media have stopped defending the official version and now prefer to ignore the issue altogether.
Distrust in Western governments grows as the wars of aggression waged by the USA and NATO continue to be justified with these “false flag” operations. Ever harsher domestic laws are being passed to crush all outrage and resistance in Western populations; at the end of the day they aim to unleash the German military on German civilians, instead of allowing morality and ethics to flow into day-by-day policy-making.
That morality and ethics long ago stopped playing a part in political decision-making is shown by the use of internationally outlawed weapons in all the wars NATO has started. At best, one has heard of “depleted uranium” after seeing the film “Deadly Dust” by award-winning Frieder Wagner. But even that film is systemically blocked out and banished, although, or perhaps because, it shows the horrific consequences of the use of these uranium weapons.
Among those aghast at the actions of NATO and the complicity of Germany in such internationally illegal wars of aggression is Christoph Hörstel, for many years foreign correspondent and editorial head of the German public broadcasting network ARD. Of like mind is Giullietto Chiesa, a Member of the European Parliament, who slams the ignorance and disinterest of most of his fellow Members.
What they don’t know is explained in the film “War promises” by insiders and whistleblowers. Annie Machon was a spy with the British MI5 and reports on false flag operations, as do Andreas von Bülow and Jürgen Elsässer, who possess enormous insider knowledge from their membership of the parliamentary committee supervising the secret services, and want to bring it to the public.
Eight years after 9/11 millions of people have linked up through the Internet to jointly rebel against this criminal system. What was still dismissed as a wild conspiracy theory until just a few month ago is now regarded as proven, raising the question how we, the people, handle this situation, in which those who govern us have on their minds anything but our well-being.
Pakistan arrests 3 US embassy employees
Pakistani security forces have arrested another three US citizens working at the American Consulate for filming sensitive installations in the eastern city of Lahore.
Police arrested three American nationals including a woman in the Sherpao bridge area of Lahore as they were filming sensitive government buildings, a Press TV correspondent reported.
According to Pakistani police all three were employees of the US embassy.
The US citizens were taken to a police station and later released after a three-hour inquiry.
Police have impounded their vehicle for legal action as it was bearing false license plates.
The woman, identified as Morgan, works for the press department at the American Consulate in Lahore. She was arrested while actually taking pictures of a check-post near the Sherpao Bridge.
The Pakistani daily The Nation reported that after a thorough search of the woman, the security personnel recovered 11 pictures in her possession, which included photos of different police check-posts in the area.
The Pakistani foreign affairs ministry was not available for comment when contacted by Press TV.
The move came just days after authorities arrested five US nationals from the eastern city of Sargodha, believed to have gone missing in Washington D.C. last month.
The US nationals, with alleged links to al-Qaeda, were arrested on suspicion of plotting a terror attack.
