The Truth about Lockerbie - MartinFrost.ws

A tale of three atrocities
Third, the testimonies of the forensic experts who identified the circuit board have been questioned. A
1997 report on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s laboratory, unrelated to Lockerbie,
accused FBI explosives expert Thomas Thurman of altering laboratory reports to make them
favourable to the prosecution. Thurman's UK counterpart, Alan Feraday from the former UK Royal
Armament Research and Development Establishment (RARDE), was an expert witness on three
separate cases where the verdict was subsequently overturned on appeal.
lThe Giaka story
A former colleague of Fhimah, Abdul Majid Giaka, testified that he had seen Megrahi construct the
bomb. He claimed he saw Megrahi load it in a Samsonite suitcase onto Air Malta Flight 180 from Malta
to Frankfurt. Giaka's evidence was rejected by Lord Sutherland at the Zeist court who described him as
a fantasist, saying:
“We are unable to accept Abdul Majid as a credible and reliable witness on any matter except his
description of the organisation of the JSO [Libyan intelligence agency] and the personnel involved
there.”
The purchase of clothes from Gauci's shop
According to evidence given at Megrahi's trial, fragments of a maroon Samsonite suitcase with
extensive, close-range blast damage were found among the debris of the plane. Items of clothing were
also discovered that forensics claimed to have been close to or inside the suitcase when it exploded.
The clothing included a blue Babygro, a black nylon umbrella, and a pair of Yorkie brand tartan
trousers. Trapped within the Babygro material was a label reading “Made in Malta”. Yorkie trousers
were manufactured in Malta with most sold at a shop called "Mary's House" in Sliema run by Tony
Gauci.
Gauci testified that, about two weeks before the bombing, he had sold some Yorkie trousers to a man
with a Libyan accent. He said that the man also bought a blue Babygro and, because it was raining, a
black umbrella.
Doubts have been cast on Gauci's reliability as a witness. He failed positively to identify Megrahi in
almost 20 separate pre-trial police reports, according to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review
Commission. In police statements, he identified the customer as more than 6' tall and more than 50
years old. Megrahi was 5'8" and 36 years old in 1988. In BBC Two's “The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie”,
it was claimed that Megrahi was appealing his conviction on the grounds that Gauci had seen a
magazine photograph of him four days before picking Megrahi out of a line-up. Furthermore, former
Lord Advocate Lord Fraser described Gauci publicly as “an apple short of a picnic”. 5
The defence argued during his trial that Megrahi was only in Malta on 7 th December 1988 and it was not
raining on that day according to meteorological records. Therefore, Megrahi would not have needed to
buy an umbrella.
lLoading the plane
When the Samsonite suitcase Megrahi supposedly loaded at Malta reached Frankfurt, it would have
been automatically loaded onto a feeder flight - Pan Am Flight 103A. When this flight reached London,
the suitcase would have been put onto Pan Am Flight 103.
The prosecution at Megrahi's trial claimed Fhimah, as Megrahi's accomplice, arranged for the suitcase
to get onto the Air Malta flight. However, Fhimah was acquitted because there was no firm evidence
that he was at the airport. Subsequently, the charge of conspiracy to murder levelled against Megrahi
was dropped. According to the verdict from Megrahi's original trial:
5 The Sunday Times, 23 rd October 2005 'Lord Fraser was the Lord Advocate who initiated the case against
the Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, but he was quoted in a Sunday newspaper last week
describing the vital witness as “an apple short of a picnic.”'
9