Lockerbie bombing trial open
03/5/2000
At
0945BST Scottish High Court judge, Lord Ranald Sutherland opened the proceedings
against defendants Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah
today, who surrendered for trial last year following nearly a decade of
sanctions against Libya.
Members of the court rose when the
judges, wearing white wigs and dressed in flowing ivory robes with embroidered
red crosses, were led into the chamber by a sentry bearing a silver mace.
They took their seats on the bench underneath a Scottish royal crest bearing
the Latin words: "Nemo me impune lacessit," which means "None dare meddle
with me". The accused have waited almost a decade to have their day in
court.
Flanked by Scottish police officers,
the two suspects put on headphones to hear an Arabic interpretation of
the English-speaking proceedings. Their facial expressions gave little
away. Mr Fhimah sat virtually motionless, Mr Megrahi fiddled with his headphones
and adjusted his glasses knowing that these new surroundings would become
a kind of home over the next 12 months.
Not guilty:
The suspects, clad in Libyan national
dress of black cap, white robe and waistcoat, then pleaded not guilty to
carrying out the bombing of New York-bound Pan Am flight 103 on the night
of December 21, 1988. The clerk to the specially-convened Scottish court
read a list of Arabic names of people he said the defence would allege
were the real Lockerbie bombers.
It included members of the Palestinian
Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General and members of another group
called the PPSF. The indictment against the accused - who sat impassively
throughout - took 20 minutes to read, after which the clerk of the court
announced that both men were pleading not guilty to all charges. The defense
statement named Mohammed Abu Talb, a Palestinian serving a life sentence
in Sweden for earlier bombings in Denmark and the Netherlands, as one of
10 other alleged conspirators:
"Mohamed Abo Talb, Tala Chabaan,
Mohammed Ghaloom Khalil Hassan, Hashem Salem also known as Hashem Abu Nada,
Madieha Mohamed Abu Faja, Abd El Salam Arif Abu Nada, Magdy Moussa, Jamal
Haider, all formerly directors of the Miska Balkery), Malta, and Imad Adel
Hazzouri, Gawrha, 42 Triq Patri, Guzi Delia Street, Balzan".
Samir Ghosheh, founder of the PPSF
and now a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation
Organization, denied any link to the Lockerbie bombing. Speaking by telephone
from Ramallah to a journalist from Reuters today, he confirmed that Talb
was once a PPSF member but had left well before Lockerbie. ``I think they
based their accusations on that,'' Ghosheh said. ``But after the (1982)
Israeli invasion of Lebanon, he was no longer a member and we did not have
any contact with him.''
The
defense had initially entered an innocent plea at a pretrial hearing Feb.
2, but had not publicly indicated its line of defense. If it successfully
implicates other suspects, it could raise enough doubt about Libyans' involvement
to win an acquittal.
In the document the accused are correctly
referred to as the "Panel". The Special Defence states:
"DUFF,
for the Panel, Abdelbaser Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi, states that the Panel
pleads not guilty and further, specially and without prejudice to said
plea, gives notice that at his trial the Panel may lead evidence calculated
to exculpate himself, which evidence may tend to incriminate the persons
listed in the Schedule attached to this Notice in the commission of the
drimes libelled in the indictment, either singly or in concert with others
in the Schedule or in concert with others unknown."
Special coverage:
CNN transcripts from coverage of trial 03/05/00
Featuring interviews with relatives,
legal and political analysis and news coverage of trial
First witnesses:
The first witness to be called was
an air traffic controller based at London's Heathrow airport. His name
was Richard Dawson, 52, from Taplow, Bucks. The packed public section of
the courtroom watched through a bullet-proof screen as Mr Dawson, in a
grey suit and white shirt, was questioned by Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC,
who is heading the prosecution team. Dawson described routine procedures
for departures from Heathrow and radar control technology allowing controllers
to track the aircraft. He has said that after it took off the pilot
radioed that he was airborne and he replied "Goodnight". He has told
the court: "I had no further contact with Pan Am 103."
Civil
Aviation Authority officials, police officers and Lockerbie residents will
be among the first witnesses giving evidence. This will initially centre
on the flight path of the Boeing 747 and how it disappeared from radar
screens on 21 December 1988, just 38 minutes after taking off from Heathrow.
Other evidence is likely to include the story of the retrieval of the debris
from the aircraft, which was scattered across 845 square miles.
In the middle of the day the court
was ajourned a few hours time in order to repair the sound and microphone
system for the public gallery and the press rooms.
The afternoon's evidence had been
taken from a Mr. Topp who was an Air Traffic Controller monitoring the
progress of Pan Am 103 as she crossed the Scottish Border. He stated in
response to questioning from the Lord Advocate that he had watched a strong
clear radar spot on his screen break up into at least four smaller echos
moments after the altitude reading had disappeared from the screen.
Reactions
from relatives:
More than 30 American victims' relatives
were getting front-row seats in the public gallery, separated from the
court by bulletproof glass. Relatives of the defendants sat on the other
side, dressed in white robes like the accused, among them their daughters
and Mr Fhimah's 15-year-old son, uncle and father.The two groups made obvious
efforts to avoid each. Megrahi's 15-year-old son Khalid, dressed in a black
bomber jacket and beige canvas trousers, sat just a couple of meters away
from his father -- separated by bullet-proof glass and a Scottish police
officer.
Victims' relatives shifted from seat
to seat to find the best vantage point. ``I like aisles. Aisles are good
if I want to get away,'' said one American woman. ``We believe in faith.
Whatever is written cannot be changed. We are not upset because we know
they will get a fair trial and we know they are innocent,'' said Ali Fahima,
Fahima's cousin, speaking to reporters with the Libyan journalist interpreting.
Al-Megrahi's
brother, Mohammed Ali Megrahi, said he is convinced his brother is innocent.
"We are looking for the truth and we believe he didn't do it," he said
outside the courtroom. "If we believed he did it, we wouldn't be here,
and he wouldn't have come voluntarily."
``I was like this,'' said an angry
Betty Thomas of Carmarthen in Wales, clenching her fists. ``They came in
so cocky and brazen -- they looked as if they didn't have a care in the
world.'' Thomas's daughter Yvonne Owen would have celebrated her 41st birthday
Wednesday. Granddaughter Bryony, just 20 months old when the plane went
down, would have just turned 13. For others, getting the first part of
the trial out the way marked the crossing of a major hurdle. ``I think
I've just breathed for the first time in the last hour,'' one woman said.
"I
feel sick," said Susan Cohen, of Cape May Courthouse, N.J., whose daughter
Theodora died in the crash. "I saw the Libyans come in, and I'm trying
not to look at them." Her husband Daniel Cohen shares a sentiment common
to many victims’ family members. “I’m angry and you know I have absolutely
no trouble with the word ‘revenge.’ None. I am just that angry.”
Visitors
and participants at the trial in Camp Zeist had met Dan Cohen in front
of the entrance, handing out pictures of his daughter to by-passers and
press. Dan and Susan Cohen have written a book Pan
Am 103: The Bombing, the Betrayals and a Bereaved Family’s Search for Justice,
to be published in June. They have turned their grief for Theodora, their
only daughter, into an activism that has made them noisy advocates.
In Washington, official eyes are
apt to roll at the mention of the couple, who have harried and harassed
everybody from the UN secretary general to the procurator-fiscals office.
"It’s what we wanted," said Mr Cohen. "I hope their eyes roll right back
through their heads."
Many other family members could watch
via closed-circuit television linkups to sites in Washington, New York,
London and Dumfries, Scotland. For the relatives, the long-awaited start
of the trial elicited mixed emotions. It marked a milestone in their crusade
for justice for the deaths of their loved ones. But it also raised doubts
whether those truly responsible for the crime will be punished.
``I feel a sense of relief and a
sense of accomplishment that we pursued it long enough and hard enough,''
said Maddy Shapiro, of Stamford, Conn., whose daughter Amy was on Flight
103. Nevertheless, she expressed concern that even if the men are found
guilty, ``whatever higher-ups gave the orders ... won't be pursued.'' She
went on mocking the traditional robes of the two Libyan suspects and their
families: ''It was well staged, them in their religious garb,'' said Maddy
Shapiro. ''They've been dressed up to look like priests,'' agreed relative
Philipps, adding in a sarcastic voice, ''They look so pious in their beautiful
robes. How could people who look like that buy the electronic timers needed
to blow up an airplane?''
``The
people who are really responsible are who we are after,'' said Kathleen
Flynn of Montville, N.J., whose son, John Patrick Flynn, was among the
victims. "We will attend every day, either here or in New York," said Kathleen
Flynn, of Morristown, N.J. "This is the trial of the people who murdered
our son, John Patrick Flynn. It will be terrible to sit in a courtroom
with the murderers, but a parent has to do that." “I don’t think
Fhimah and Megrahi were sitting around a cafe in Malta and deciding, ‘Let’s
blow up an American plane today.’ So I think obviously the culpability
has to go up the chain of command and we want to know who did it and why.”
"I feel a sense of relief and a sense
of accomplishment that we pursued it long enough and hard enough,"
said Maddy Shapiro, of Stamford, Conn., whose daughter Amy was on Flight
103. Nevertheless, she expressed concern that even if the men are found
guilty, "whatever higher-ups gave the orders" won't be pursued.
Relatives believe the bombing plot
involved senior figures in the Libyan government as well as other terrorist
organizations.They have also voiced worry over reports that the prosecution
case suffered setbacks as a result of contradictory witness statements
and inconsistencies in the evidence against the Libyans.
Among
others in attendance was American Bruce Smith, who lost his English wife
Ingrid in the terrorist attack. He thinks the big fish will never get caught.
"It was the Libyan government and not these two little agents who are responsible,"
he told reporters. "These two Libyan agents are the least of the Libyans
involved. They're at the bottom of the chain of command, they should be
at the start of the process, not the end."
For Rosemary Wolfe of Alexandria,
it's a day she has been awaiting for the past 11 years. And how will she
feel when she walks into court for the trial of the men accused of killing
her stepdaughter? "It's going to be horrible," Wolfe said today. "There's
the feeling of sadness, the memories. But there's also a sense of betrayal
that does not go away." Wolfe and her husband, Jim, are among 25 Americans
who have made the trip to the Netherlands to watch the beginning of the
proceedings against the alleged Libyan intelligence agents charged with
planting the bomb that blew up the New York-bound plane over Lockerbie,
Scotland. The explosion killed all 259 people on board--including 20-year-old
Miriam Wolfe, a student who was heading home for Christmas--and another
11 on the ground.
“There
is a great deal of satisfaction to be in the court on the first day. No
one ever thought we would have a trial,including myself.” A high
school teacher from New Jersey, Ammerman was at the forefront of efforts
to make this unprecedented trial, which begins Wednesday, a reality. "For
me, just starting this trial brings closure," said Ben Ammerman of Riverdale,
N.J., whose brother Tom was killed on the plane, leaving behind a wife
and two young daughters. "The verdict is secondary. The key point is to
show terrorists anywhere that they will be pursued and tried, even if it
takes 11 1/2 years."
Elizabeth Philipps finally came face
to face yesterday with the two men who allegedly planted the bomb that
did it. From her seat in the spectators' gallery, Philipps, a former publishing
executive who used to live in Newton, Mass., shot laser-like stares through
the bulletproof glass that separated her from the alleged terrorists on
the opening day of their trial here. Twenty-five feet away, Abdelbaset
Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah waved to their families
across the aisle from Philipps but took no notice of her.
Sarah Susannah Buchanan Philipps
and her family lived in Newtonville at the time. She was a 20-year-old
student at Syracuse University and one of 13 Massachusetts residents and
23 New Englanders on board Pan Am Flight 103 when it exploded 31,000 feet
above Lockerbie, Scotland, on the night of Dec. 21, 1988. Elizabeth Philipps
intends to make eye contact with the suspects, and says she won't give
up until she does. They took her middle child, she said, her sweet, smart,
beautiful Sarah, and in doing so they took a piece of her she can never
replace.
''I've got a certain voodoo thing
working, so I'm going to keep staring at them,'' Philipps said, smiling
sadly on a day when prosecutors called the first of more than 1,000 expected
witnesses in a trial that will last at least a year.
Like the other few dozen relatives
of victims who attended today, Elizabeth Philipps said it is imperative
that she bear witness. She plans to spend the next three weeks here. She
is telephoning back reports to her husband, Ervin, and elder son, Andrew,
in Chapel Hill, N.C., where the family moved in 1992, and to her younger
son, Fritz, a doctor at Boston University Medical Center who lives in Watertown.
''When your child is murdered, you go to the murder trial,'' she said.
''There aren't any graduations, no birthdays, no weddings, no grandchildren.
All I have is this trial.'' Elizabeth Philipps choked up but quickly regained
her composure.
Read the diary of Dr.
Jim Swire on the first week of trial !
Court closed at 1705 MET
The
Court rose at 17:05 this afternoon having received testimony from Mr. Adrian
Hadley Ford who was first to investigate the crash of Pan AM 103 from an
Air Traffic Control point of view. Prior to Mr. Ford's evidence Mr. Hood
had been questioned with regard to his role as Air Traffic Controller on
the night of the disaster.
Mr. Ford was cross-examined by defence
lawyer Mr. William Taylor who questioned him regarding his evidence given
to the police shortly after the incident took place. In particular Mr.
Taylor was interested in Mr. Ford's perception of the radar returns which
followed the incident. The radar returns continued for a period of 50mins
to an hour after the incident. Mr. Taylor was interested as to how debris
from a break up of the plane would fall and how some pieces could be seen
on radar to disperse in the wind.
Additionally Mr. Taylor questioned
where this debris would have fallen. Mr. Ford stated that radar returns
remained until some time after the incident and had dispersed into a 20
mile wide area reaching towards the North Sea in the area of Newcastle.
Mr. Keen additionally cross-examined the witness as to the degree of reliability
of the altitude of the plane as reported by the on-board transponder.
Today's evidence appears to have
several repeating themes. These include the position of the aircraft at
the point of the incident starting. This may be related to some question
of jurisdiction which may be outstanding.
No relatives turn up at Dumfries
tv-link room in Scotland
It was business as usual at Dumfries
Sheriff Court on Wednesday morning, with little evidence that the venue
was electronically linked to Scotland's biggest ever murder trial. The
legal proceedings at Camp Zeist, where two Libyan men stand accused of
the murder of 270 people in the Lockerbie bombing, were relayed live to
two screens in a small courtroom. The court was one of a number of venues
in Britain and the United States chosen to televise the proceedings for
the benefit of relatives and those directly affected by the disaster.
However, no-one had turned up at
Courtroom Number Four by 1600BST on Wednesday. Accredited relatives had
been invited to use the facility but so far no-one has asked to do so.
This could change, as the trial progresses though, according to Bert Houston,
who was one of the first journalists on the scene of the disaster in the
nearby town of Lockerbie on the night of 21 December 1988.
He said: "The point is that relatives
do visit Lockerbie constantly throughout the summer and they may want to
see some of the proceedings. "The idea is that they come across here,
spend a couple of hours or spend all day if they want, watching the proceedings.
"It's only 12 miles form Lockerbie and I'm quite sure relatives will take
advantage of the situation later in the year."
Because it was recognised that not
all of the victims' relatives would be able to attend the trial in the
Netherlands, it was agreed that special centres should be set up where
they could watch a television feed of the proceedings.
Pictures of mourning and rage
on May 3, 2000 at Camp Zeist: Dan and Susan Cohen
International press comments:
As the Lockerbie trial got under
way in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, reaction in the Arab world, including
Libya itself, was muted.
Libyan TV and
radio carried brief reports in their bulletins simply saying the
trial had begun and that the charges had been read out. In a commentary
on the first day of the trial, Libya highlighted US involvement in the
indictment of the suspects.
The international affairs editor
of the state-controlled Libyan news agency Jana - thought by some commentators
to speak directly for Libyan leader Col Gaddafi - said "the intensive American
attempts to indict the two Libyan suspects force us and the world to wonder
... is the internationally agreed-on court the Scottish court or is it
the American State Department?" The USA's actions were "a flagrant violation
of justice and an explicit interference in the competency of the court",
the commentary said.
The Iran Daily
echoed
the theme of US involvement and pointed out that the CIA initially blamed
Palestinian groups. It said the CIA blamed the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine for carrying out the attack with Syrian backing "in revenge
for the US shooting down of an Iranian Airbus in the Persian Gulf five
months earlier". "Other claims about the suppression of evidence by the
US have led to suspicions of Washington's involvement in a cover-up", it
added.
The French
Le Monde said the investigations carried out since the extradition
of the two suspects were "not conclusive as to a Libyan connection". "On
the contrary, witnesses who accused the two men have since retracted their
statements," it adds. "The trial... will certainly not clear up all the
mysteries of the case. Tasked exceptionally with ruling on the culpability
of the two presumed perpetrators, will the three Scottish judges ever be
able to name the true mastermind behind the attack?" the paper wondered.
Luxembourg's
Tageblatt reflected that the families of the victims were afraid
that the trial "may spare possible accomplices within the Libyan regime."
"There are many flaws in this eminently
complex case involving depositions from some 15,000 witnesses, informers
and experts from around the world," said the Belgian
Le Soir. "Did not the Scottish judicial authorities say they
also suspected a Palestinian extremist ... on the very day that charges
were brought against the two Libyan suspects?"
The Italian
La Stampa said a guilty verdict was "far from a foregone conclusion",
but already discerned a winner. "Whatever the outcome of the trial,
there's already an assured winner, and it's not the victims' relatives,"
the paper said. "The winner is Colonel Gaddafi, who on agreeing to
the extradition of the two defendants saw the lifting of the sanctions
imposed by the United Nations for the past seven years." Pointing
out that Gaddafi "seems convinced that the trial poses little risk to him",
the paper said the contents of a letter from United Nations Secretary General
Kofi Annan asking him to agree to the men's extraditions "have remained
secret to this day".
"Some of the victims' relatives are
convinced that the letter contains a promise that the verdict to be reached
at Camp Zeist will not involve the Libyan leader," the paper said.
The International
Herald Tribune described the "rich mixture of contrasting cultural
traditions" in the high-security courtroom in Camp Zeist. "The defendants,
wearing ceremonial Libyan robes and prayer caps, took their seats before
the panel of judges, who wore curly grey wigs and flowing ivory robes emblazoned
with red crosses", the paper said. "The Western spectators rose to their
feet as a sign of respect when the judges entered the courtroom. The Libyan
spectators rose to their feet when the two accused terrorists walked in."
The New York
Times said the trial marked a first in many ways, one of them being
the wide attention - "usually associated with the American courts" - that
the trial is attracting in Britain.
DAY 2, May
4, 2000
Gruesome
accounts from Lockerbie residents
Graphic accounts
of the carnage inflicted when a terrorist bomb ripped apart a jumbo jet
and sent it plunging into a Scottish town dominated the second day of the
Lockerbie trial on Thursday. relatives of the victims attending the trial
held hands as witnesses recounted the grisly scene of flaming houses and
screaming. Defense lawyers did not question the five eye-witnesses who
testified on the second morning of the trial to a grim court.
The two defendants,
today dressed in jackets and ties, chatted and laughed on entering
the court and looked relaxed as they followed the testimony through headphones
in Arabic translation. Prosecutor Colin Boyd, who intends to call 1,100
witnesses, had to apologize twice on the second day of proceedings
for running out of witnesses who flew in specially from Britain.
Boyd said the trial had got off to an unexpectedly speedy start on the
first day and his team was caught unprepared for the fast follow-on.
Testimonies
of destruction:
Witnesses
to the Lockerbie bombing have relived the horror of the night Pan Am flight
103 was blown up. They described how they fled for their lives as
flames and debris fell over the tiny Scottish town and of the stricken
plane falling from the sky in a burning arc towards the ground.
Social worker
Jasmine Bell, 53, relived how she had evaded flames and burning objects
as she arrived in the Scottish town to deliver Christmas food parcels.
She told the specially convened court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands
how she called at her brother's home in Sherwood Park - close to Sherwood
Crescent where the Lockerbie residents lost their lives. She looked up
into the sky as her brother yelled: "It's a plane, get down."
Mrs Bell, from
Dumfries, told the court: "I looked up and saw what I imagined was a small
plane just going over my head. I ducked down and covered my head.
"There was fire all around me, there were burning objects and the fire
was falling down from the sky and as it landed on the ground I was stepping
backwards to avoid the fire and I stepped back and back until my back was
against the wall of the house and I couldn't go any further." Then her
brother, who had entered his home through the garage, pulled her into the
house, Mrs Bell said.
"Everything
was burning, the driveway, the lawn, the hedges, the rooftops, it just
looked like everything was burning."
William Pattie,
who watched as one of the aircraft's engines landed 20ft from him, lost
his 56-year old sister-in-law Dora Henry and her husband, Maurice.
They were in their house in Sherwood Crescent and their bodies were never
found.
Businessman
Steven Teagle, 51, told how he was driving on an upland road in Cumbria
on the night of 21 December, 1988, with clear views towards southern Scotland.
To one side, he saw a white and orange flash in the sky and a short time
later an orange, glowing object fell, creating an arc in the sky before
it hit the ground, sending up two prongs of flame in a V shape.
Stewart Kilpatrick,
who found the body of a young girl a few feet from his front door, said
it took years for the town to return to normal. "I do my best just not
think about it. It's the easiest way to get through," he said.
Robert Peacock,
a 63-year-old lorry driver from Hightae, near Lockerbie, told how his son's
girlfriend came into their house and said: "Listen to that thunder."
He told the court: "I said `That's not thunder' - the noise was continuous.
I went outside and saw an aircraft." The plane was flying at between
8,000 and 12,000ft. "I knew it was quite a large aircraft and one engine
was on fire, with burning fuel spewing out. He added: "It went straight
for Lockerbie. I heard an explosion, you could see the flames, the sky
was lit up."
Kevin Anderson,
35, a plasterer from Tundergarth, three miles from Lockerbie, saw the cockpit
of the plane, one of the few recognisable sections to fall to earth. He
said: "It was like an atomic bomb that you see on the telly. It was up
in the air and then came down." Then, he said, debris began falling
and the cockpit landed in the field, about 100yds away from him.
"I fetched the wife and we went up to look. I couldn't believe what I was
seeing.
"There were
bodies lying around the cockpit. I went to get my father-in-law from his
house about 100yds up the road. We went over to the cockpit to see if anyone
was alive. I had a torch. We looked inside the cockpit. I could see the
pilot."
Car mechanic
William Wilson said his colleague left work half an hour before tragedy
struck and was never seen again. When Wilson went to check the next
day, he found only the man's car next to a hole where the house once
stood.
Roland Stevenson
described the "thunderous black mass" which fell from the sky. The retired
Dumfries maintenance engineer said he shouted to people to run for
cover as debris - including an entire wing - rained down as he collected
his daughter from Lockerbie railway station. Mr Stevenson, 65, said: "The
whole of the wing was descending vertically straight down. I could see
it wing tip to wing tip, a clean wing, silhouetted against the clouds from
the town lights." He went on: "A rolling ball of fire was descending rapidly
from the sky."
The only laughter
of the session came when Stevenson concluded his testimony with a report
of official disbelief.``I went to the police and told them all that I had
seen. The policeman listened to my story and decided to write it down.
That was the last I heard of that,'' he said.
After a recess,
the second part of today´s trial took place.
First
police witness:
The most senior
police officer in Lockerbie on the night of the Pan Am 103 disaster has
said he fears the town may never get back to normal. Retired superintendent
Geoffrey Carpenter was giving evidence after the recess. He was among the
first officers to reach the scene and became a key figure in organising
the rescue services and coping with the aftermath of the disaster. Mr Carpenter
told the trial he hoped the case would mark the last chapter in the tragedy.
Mr Carpenter,
who retired seven years ago and still lives in Lockerbie, was asked by
prosecuting counsel Colin Boyd QC whether the community would ever get
over what happened. He said: "It's difficult to say. It affects people
in different ways. You get people who don't want to know, and people who
want to talk about it. "It's unfortunate that you've got this court
sitting now which brings it all home. "I would like to think that,
at the end of this, we get back to normality, if we ever do.
"It is something we have to live with for the rest of our lives."
Mr Carpenter
praised the way in which the people of Lockerbie reacted to the disaster.
He told the court: "They baked, made food for search teams and many volunteered
help in the enquiry centre. They did a tremendous job." Mr Carpenter, the
first police witness to be called to describe the scene, told how he organised
evacuations of residents on the night of the tragedy. He was off duty on
21 December, 1988 and first realised something was wrong when he heard
a noise outside.
He said: "My
first impression was that it was a low-flying military aircraft, but as
the house shook I realised it was something more. Then there was an almighty
explosion." He rushed outside and saw a glow in the sky and debris falling.
Mr Carpenter said: "I saw a metal object in the sky. It appeared suspended.
I believe it was one of the engines." The former police officer tried the
telephone but it was dead, so he drove towards the scene.
He said: "I
was faced with debris, pools of flames in the roadway and in gardens. There
was a stench of fuel and acrid smoke. "I utilised off-duty police officers
to evacuate the areas in case of another explosion," he said. He described
how the Rosebank area of Lockerbie was in complete darkness with debris
everywhere. "At Tundergarth the nose cone was sitting on a hill. There
was evidence of bodies among the debris," he said.
Cross-examined
by defence lawyer William Taylor QC, Mr Carpenter agreed it was "extremely
difficult" in the aftermath of what Mr Taylor called the "cataclysm" to
secure the disaster area for the purposes of evidence gathering, particularly
as the debris area ran east from Lockerbie to the North Sea.
Background
info: Lockerbie 1988-1998
Reactions:
Some of the
relatives have asked why they had to go through all of the stories of death
and destruction, especially when there was no cross-examination from the
defence.
Daniel Cohen,
whose daughter was on board the plane, said: "These were good people. Ordinary
people, I guess. "The very ordinary types of people, leading ordinary lives,
and suddenly this stuff comes out the sky at them. It's terrible, it's
terrible what happened to them."
Dr Jim Swire,
whose daughter was also killed, said: "The Lockerbie community suffered
as a community as well as individuals and it was so clear today it was
not just the victims' relatives who suffered, but the whole community suffered."
Betty Thomas,
mother of one of the victims, said: "There are so many harrowing
stories, it's just difficult to know which is the worst. "It's really
horrendous."
Reverend John
Mosey, whose daughter died on the plane, said: "I know that many of the
relatives found it harrowing and distressing. "Yesterday, seeing the flight
path of the last minutes and seconds of the people on board moved me a
little bit, I must say. "Fortunately they on board knew nothing about it."
Asked about
feelings for the people of Lockerbie, the Rev Mosey said: "Yes, 11 out
of the 270 people were killed on the ground in Lockerbie and it has been
a reminder that the town was traumatised and people suffered. "But,
as we were told today there, the community is working through it and very
much back to normal again. We're glad about that. "This is the main
reason why we omitted the word Lockerbie from the title of our support
group.
"We call
it UK Families Flight 103 because we appreciated the Lockerbie residents'
desire not to be part of an organisation representing this disaster."
The father
of an American passenger who died in the crash said the scenes described
were reminiscent of a war zone. "It brings home the horror of how
this hit Scotland, the Scottish people. These people were literally bombed,"
said Jim Wolfe, who lost his daughter Miriam, 20. "When you
hear the description it sounds like a world war."
More
reactions:
Also
among the spectators today was New York lawyer James Kreindler, who is
preparing a civil suit against Libya on behalf of 105 victims' families.
"We probably have 90 percent of the evidence we need," he told The Associated
Press, though aid he lacked testimony that the bomb was planted at the
behest of the government. American attorney Jim Kreindler said: "There
is evidence we need to show that Libya was responsible for the bombing
and that evidence has been kept confidential until it is brought forward
in the criminal trial.
"Whether the
two men are criminally convicted is not essential for us. We do not need
criminal convictions to move forward against the Libyans."
Suspect Fhimah's cousin Ali Fhimah
said to the press today: "We met him yesterday and his spirits are very
high and he is confident he (will be proved) innocent." The Saudi-owned
daily Asharq al-Awsat also quoted al-Megrahi's brother, Mohammad, as saying:
"He is in high spirits."
"This
is the first time I've seen my dad in the courtroom. I feel sad but
hopeful he will prove his innocence," Megrahi's daughter Ghada Megrahi
told reporters at the court. Wearing a kerchief on her head in keeping
with Muslim tradition, she said, ''It hurts, but I know my father is innocent,''
before a burly Libyan man, who would not identify himself, shepherded them
away.
Early ajournment:
The Lord Advocate was forced to
admit that due to the efficiency with which the court was taking the testimony
from the witnesses he had no more witnesses scheduled or available for
this morning. Thus, at 11:50, the court was adjourned. Lord Sutherland
assured Colin Boyd QC that he was certain the prosecution would work to
ensure this would not occur again and accepted the Lord Advocates assurances
it would not.
Pictures of 15-year old
Khalid el Megrahi and 17-year old Ghada el Megrahi at Camp Zeist, skipping
spring exams to attend their fathers trial in Europe
DAY 3, May 5, 2000
Solemn silence for Lockerbie
names
The
trial of two Libyan men accused of the Lockerbie bombing was hushed to
solemn silence on Friday as the list of all the victims' names was read
out. The grim formality came on the third day of the trial in Holland of
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah.
Senior counsel Alistair Campbell
QC recited the names and addresses of the 259 passengers and the 11 Lockerbie
residents in alphabetical order. The court sat in silence and relatives
of the victims looked on from the public gallery as Mr Campbell slowly
went through the list.
First, he read from Schedule 1, the
names and addresses of the 259 passengers and crew in alphabetical order.
Then, Schedule 2, the details of the 11 people who died on the ground in
Lockerbie - all of them close neighbours in Sherwood Crescent. In-keeping
with Scottish legal practice, the women were given their maiden as well
as married names, while the ages were also read out in cases where the
victims were under 21 years old.
Officially it was called a "list
of uncontroversial evidence" and ran to 11 pages. The first six pages alone
took 35 minutes to recite as the judges, lawyers and court officials quietly
sat, some with their heads bowed. For the moment, the court bustle had
stopped. The television screens had earlier displayed vivid prosecution
pictures of the destroyed Lockerbie houses and the wreckage and debris
which was scattered for miles beyond the town.
Now they flickered blankly as Mr
Campbell read the long list of names and with them the addresses
- from New Jersey, Ohio and Redondo Beach, Los Angeles, to Sheffield, South
Kensington and Burnt Oak, Middlesex. And then came the 11 names of those
who perished in numbers 11, 13, 14, 15 and 16 Sherwood Crescent.
Two older women sobbed when the prosecutor
reached the Owens family, killed with their daughters, and a young woman
employed by the Scottish government slipped down the aisle with a box of
tissues, patting their arms. Others reached across the seats to comfort
one another.
"Many of the relatives have become
close friends," Jim Swire, a Briton who lost a daughter on the flight,
said afterward. "And all I can say is that that's one of the few good things
that have come out of this."
Below a link to a copy of the
full charges/entire indiction incl. names as read in court:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/newsid_493000/493242.stm
The names, background info:
Passenger list of victims
Crew list of victims
Lockerbie list of victims
Prosecutor Alan Turnbull also showed
the court pictures of flattened houses surrounded by debris, a bombed-out
crater drenched with jet fuel and the Boeing 747's nose cone in a field
– the aircraft name, "Maid of the Seas," still legible on the side.
Police cross-examined by defence:
Re-examined
by Alan Turnbull QC, prosecuting, Mr Ferrie agreed that there were sufficient
"pieces of evidence" in the cases to interest the Lockerbie investigators.
But he added that these came a stage when the inquiry led officers in a
direction other than the PFLP-GC. Ferrie said it took 10 days for detectives,
forensic scientists, crime scene analysts, doctors and others to sift through
the rubble scattered over the countryside.
In the first testimony touching directly
on who may have been responsible, Megrahi's advocate Bill Taylor had senior
police officers confirm that they first suspected the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). Police witnesses
said they were aware PFLP-GC members had been arrested in Germany in possession
of a radio-cassette bomb a few months earlier and that they included convicted
bomber Marwan Khreesat, who attacked an Israeli airliner in 1972.
Keen questioned Scottish police officer
Alexander McLean about the activities of U.S. agents from the FBI and CIA
who arrived quickly in Lockerbie and were involved in gathering and assessing
evidence. Taylor noted that small pieces of personal belongings and plane
wreckage were gathered in open plastic bags and asked if U.S. personnel
or civilians had been allowed near them. Questioned by Mr Keen for Fhimah,
Mr McLean insisted that, although FBI and CIA agents from America
were swiftly on the scene of the disaster, all evidence found was "religiously
and meticulously" logged, including items recovered by the CIA. The defense
line of questioning clearly was aimed at suggesting evidence may have been
removed, tampered with or even introduced in the disorderly aftermath of
the jumbo crash, which scattered 4 million bits of wreckage over a huge
area.
The defense does not have to prove
the PFLP-GC was the real bombers whereas the prosecution must convince
the three judges beyond reasonable doubt that Megrahi and Fahima are guilty.
Keen, cross-questioning retired police officer Stephen Comerford, asked
Friday if he knew of a ``joint intelligence group'' of British and foreign
intelligence agencies that helped recover some material from the crash
scene.
Comerford agreed that there was ``concern
about sensitive material and its recovery'' from the wreckage of the aircraft,
which was carrying a number of U.S. intelligence agents among its passengers.
``I was present when material was recovered and handed over to these agencies,''
Comerford replied. But on re-examination by the prosecution, he acknowledged
he had not in fact seen such a handover himself.
Reactions:
``I think both sides will be fairly
satisfied with the past three days,'' said Andrew Fulton, visiting professor
at Glasgow University, who is following the trial. ``The prosecution completed
its first chapter showing the extent of the tragedy and the other side
launched its Palestinian defense.''
American Bert Ammerman, who
lost his brother Thomas, said Friday was ``the most powerful day'' of the
trial so far.
Jim Swire, the most highprofile campaigner
among the bereaved Lockerbie families, plans to visit Libya after the trial.
Swire said he wanted to meet Libyans who lost relatives during the American
bombing raids on Tripoli in 1986.
The court was adjourned for the
weekend and will continue Monday 8/5 at 0900 h MET.
Weekend analysis and
reactions:
Media rage over sloppy Camp
Zeist administration
07/05/00 BZ et al. Representatives
of the world media are not pleased with the way the Scottish Court is running
the adiministration of the current trial. Many journalists and photographers
from minor news agencies have not even been accredited for press coverage
and have filed numerous complaints to the administration over the refusal
of accredition.
The start of the trial in its first
week was also chaotic: malfunction of electricity, sloppy sound and microphone
systems and computerplugs who didn´t function are just few of the
irritations that journalists have encountered in Camp Zeist. In addition
journalists have complained over the way and means the court chose to inform
the media regariding the full text of the special defence notion.
The media in the Press Centre at
Camp Zeist was first promised to have the special defence notion read aloud
by the press speaker, but when the media later requested a written copy
of the same defence notion for their press pack, the Court refused and
asked the media to approach the defence lawyers for such a request. Only
after hour-long heavy argumentation by journalists from Newsweek and Berliner
Zeitung, the Court finally gave in and presented the media with a written
copy. At that time many European journalists had already surpassed their
deadlines and could not include the special defence notion. Other journalists
called the Court´s press conferences for "unprofessional" and "lacking".
The media has now requested the Court
to provide a pinboard for each of the parties in the case (i.e. the defence,
the prosecution, the families and lawyers etc.) but expectations for the
request are low. Heavy criticism was also presented against the defence
team that had had virtually no public contact with the media in the press
centre during the first week of trial.
07/05/00
SUNDAY HERALD: Megrahi to testify
THE man accused of blowing up Pan
Am flight 103 will take the stand in the Lockerbie trial to accuse Palestinian
terrorists of planting the bomb aboard the doomed aircraft. Abdelbaset
Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, one of the two Lybians in the dock at Camp Zeist
in the Netherlands, will incriminate a number of Palestinian terror groups
in an attempt to beat the charges against him.
In an exclusive interview with the
Sunday Herald, Megrahi's brother, Mohamed Ali, revealed for the first time
that Megrahi is to take the stand and told how the alleged crime has brought
shame to the Megrahi family. Megrahi and his co-accused, Al Amin
Khalifa Fhimah, who were held in custody for 450 days before their trial
began at the Dutch airbase last week, are using the Scottish defence of
incrimination in a bid to prove their innocence.
Last night, Megrahi's brother said:
"My brother is going to walk proudly into the witness box and tell the
truth. He wants the truth revealed. He feels for the victims of the Lockerbie
bombing. He said to me, 'If there's something I can do to help them then
I will.' He wants to take the shame away from our family." Mohamed
said there was never any pressure put on his brother by the Libyan government
to give himself up to the Dutch authorities. "He took the decision himself.
I remember he said to me he was going to give himself up because that would
help the Libyan people; it would stop the sanctions. He sacrificed himself
for his country."
Megrahi's two children, his
16-year-old daughter Ghada and his son Khalid, 15, were in court every
day last week with their uncle and a dozen other relatives. Mohamed portrayed
his brother as a quiet, intelligent and religious man. "He swore to me
and to God that he didn't carry out this crime and I believe him. "Baset
has sworn to me that he was never a Libyan intelligence agent. He was very
angry at that accusation. That is why he will take the stand. "My
brother will only be found guilty if the court goes against God's wishes."
Many victims' relatives were
disgusted when the accused entered the dock wearing their national dress
of Arab robes. But Megrahi's brother said this was meant as a mark of respect
to the court. The trial reconvenes tomorrow morning when police and civilian
witnesses for the prosecution will begin giving evidence relating to the
operation that was launched to recover the bodies of the dead and the wreckage
of the aircraft.
Lockerbie trial 'nightmare'
over Arab witness
07/05/00 THE SUNDAY TIMES
PROSECUTION lawyers in the Lockerbie
trial are agonising over whether to call into the witness box an Arab named
in court last week as one of the perpetrators of the bombing. Mohammed
Abu Talb, an alleged member of a Palestinian terrorist group implicated
in bombing campaigns in Europe in the 1980s, is No 963 on the prosecution
witness list. Under Scottish law he would be given lifetime immunity from
standing trial for the bombing if he was called to give evidence.
For the prosecution team led by Colin
Boyd, the lord advocate, the consequences of making the wrong decision
are daunting. The nightmare scenario for Boyd is that he calls Talb, regarded
as a key witness, but then fails to secure convictions against the two
Libyans who went on trial last week at the special Scottish court in Camp
Zeist, Holland.
A senior lawyer said: "Should that
happen,
a few careers would be in freefall and Scottish justice would be a worldwide
laughing stock. It is potentially a no-win situation. If the crown believes
Talb's evidence is powerful, can they afford to do without him?"
Robert Black, professor of Scots law at Edinburgh University and an expert
on the case, said: "This is a dilemma for the crown. They could risk humiliation
by calling him, but they have to weigh up just how central he is to their
case.
"If the defence presents compelling
evidence against Talb, it will damage the crown case. If, on top of that,
the prosecution has ensured Talb cannot be tried by a Scottish court in
the future, the repercussions for those who take the decision could resonate
for some time." Senior legal sources said last week that the pressure on
the prosecution in the biggest mass-murder trial in British criminal history
was intense.
DAY 4, May 8, 2000
Missing evidence in
Lockerbie investigation ?
The
Lockerbie trial heard references Monday to a circuit board, part of a suitcase
and charred clothing found among debris after a bomb destroyed Pan AM flight
103 over Scotland in December 1988. A spokesman for the prosecution declined
to say if the items were the same pieces of key evidence expected to be
introduced later as alleged remnants of the timer, case and clothes used
to pack and detonate a bomb.
A Scottish
police officer testifying in the trial of two Libyans said today that he
raised concerns about the possibility of missing evidence early on in the
bombing investigation of Pan Am Flight 103. Douglas Roxburgh testified
about evidence-tracking procedures during the fourth day of the proceedings
against alleged Libyan intelligence agents Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi
and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah.
Roxburgh, 63,
was the acting deputy chief constable of a police unit that catalogued
debris brought in from around Lockerbie and identified pieces that might
be of interest to investigators. He told prosecutor Alan Turnbull that
``tens of thousands'' of items were brought to a collection point near
Lockerbie, where they were catalogued and stored.
Mr
Roxburgh said he set up the storage centre at Dexstar. It was guarded 24
hours a day and split into sectors which corresponded to the sectors of
Lockerbie and the surrounding areas being searched by teams of officers.
Any suitcases brought in would be examined by sniffer dogs for explosives
as police feared there could be secondary devices. He told the court:
"It would be put through an x-ray machine like at an airport for the detection
of explosives. "It would then be booked in and given priority examination
in case it was going to be required for further forensic examination."
If there were
any explosive marks, for example, the item would be logged and taken to
a special area where AAIB staff or explosive experts could examine it,
he said. Mr Roxburgh said: "We started off by ensuring that items were
not required in the legal process and we started releasing stuff back to
the relatives sometimes via consulates but it was mainly personal possessions
like rings, jewellery and wallets." He told how a laundry was set up at
Dexstar to clean clothing before it was returned to the victims' families.
The
policeman described extra tight security measures as his staff carried
out a ``very detailed examination of every piece that came in, from handkerchiefs
to socks.'' Anythin with marks of an explosion was logged as evidence and
sent to experts. Under cross-examination, Fhimah lawyer Richard Keen talked
about worries that agencies other than police were dealing with items and
that some property was removed by those agencies.
Roxburgh admitted
he raised such concerns at a meeting with superiors in the days following
the tragedy after ``someone had taken off property where there had been
traces of explosion.'' But he later said he had ascertained that the ``someone''
had been from a legitimate investigating authority in Britain, suggesting
it did not constitute a security breach. He also refused to answer Keen's
question about whether British and foreign intelligence agencies were involved
in the collection of evidence.
Taylor also
questioned the identity of one American, who was said to wear hearing aids
in both ears and told police at the scene he was an explosives expert working
for the Pan Am airline
Also today,
mangled aluminum objects with sharp edges were hauled into the courtroom
and police logbooks were displayed on video monitors as witnesses told
how they labeled, bagged and X-rayed evidence they found as they scoured
the Scottish countryside.
Two
police officers were asked to describe the discovery of a piece of charred
circuit board and a mangled remnant of an aluminum baggage container. The
special attention given these two pieces of evidence suggested they would
figure as significant items later in the trial, when prosecutors seek to
link the two suspects to the bombing.
The prosecution
also introduced as evidence part of a brown suitcase and referred to pieces
of charred clothing, but again did not specify whether these were the Samsonsite
case and tweed jacket allegedly used by the accused to pack the bomb. The
evidence was wrapped in plastic and not clearly visible to reporters watching
the proceedings on closed-circuit television. Some items were referred
to only by coded numbers or the labels police gave them at the time.
Additionally today, police witnesses
said they feared stumbling across a second bomb as they painstakingly gathered
"tens of thousands" of pieces of debris from Pan Am Flight 103, the Lockerbie
trial heard Monday as it began its second week. "One of the problems we
had was the possibility of secondary devices," testified Douglas Roxburgh,
63, and sniffer dogs screened any suspected bomb-related debris, after
which officers in protective suits would examine items that might give
clues as to the bomb that destroyed the London-New York flight, Roxburgh
said.
Alexander Arnott, 57, a former detective
constable, said he had been part of a team given a remit to check metal
debris for signs of damage by an explosion. He had been assisted by an
American, Walter Cosguard, an expert in explosive substances. "He said
he was from Pan Am’s investigation branch and had been involved with explosives
all his life, so much so he had to wear two hearing aids because he was
almost deaf," said Mr Arnott.
The expert had indicated that a piece
of container frame found in the countryside around Lockerbie appeared to
have been marked and pitted by an explosion.
Relatives´reactions:
"The Scots are very methodical.
I was amazed to hear there were tens of thousands of items," said Rosemary
Wolfe, head of the US relatives' group Justice for Pan Am 103, whose stepdaughter
Miriam Williams, 20, was on Flight 103.
relatives angry over sloppy
prosecution info:
Relatives of victims of the Lockerbie
disaster are locked in a dispute with lawyers prosecuting the two Libyans
accused of the bombing after they turned down requests for advance notice
of when key witnesses will be giving evidence. Three days into Scotland's
biggest ever murder trial some relatives have accused prosecutors of ignoring
their needs with a decision effectively denying them the opportunity to
hear crucial testimony.
Relatives, spread around 16 countries,
have repeatedly asked family liaison officials for advance notice of witnesses
to allow them time to get to the court or to one of four remote sites set
up in the US and Britain to offer them closed circuit viewing. They have
been told two days notice is required before they can attend the remote
sites.
The Crown Office, the prosecuting
authority, insists that advance notice of the witness schedule would be
a security risk. British relatives have not become involved in the dispute,
but Rosemary Wolfe, an American whose 20-year-old daughter Miriam was a
victim, told The Observer : 'We are seriously concerned about this and
have repeatedly asked for more information but it is just another one of
those issues left hanging in the ether.'
Marina de Larracoechea, a Basque
whose sister Nieves was a stewardess on Pan Am 103 said: 'It is ridiculous
that we will not be told when witnesses are going to appear. I have a right
to be here to hear the important witnesses.'
Officials are working on a compromise
that will allow the relatives to be given general information on which
broad areas of evidence are coming up. There is also a secure website and
a telephone hotline for families providing updates from the prosecution,
the court service and the police.
DAY 5, May 9, 2000
Lockerbie Defense Attacks Mislabeled Evidence
Exactly where and when some pieces
of the Pan Am jumbo jet blown up over Lockerbie were found may never be
known, a prosecution witness admitted on Tuesday. Scottish police officer
Duncan McInnes acknowledged under defense questioning that the sheer volume
of wreckage, plus erratic police labeling, meant expert guesswork was sometimes
used to locate evidence and date its discovery retroactively.
Prosecutor Alastair Campbell asked
McInnes to identify a number of exhibits including fragments of a suitcase
that had apparently been blown apart in an explosion and carried traces
of bomb blast damage. Holding the fragments in plastic bags in front of
him, the detective told the court he found them during eight-man line searches
through difficult terrain in Newcastleton Forest in southern Scotland a
few miles from Lockerbie between March and May 1989. One piece was identified
on the police label the witness had written as coming from ``a brown suitcase,
possibly Samsonite'' - the type of suitcase prosecutors say concealed the
bomb.
The witness was also handed a length
of a copper-colored rubber trim with a police label, ``on which I have
written at the time: possibly from the bomb case.''
In the most intensive cross-examinations
so far in the five-day-old trial of two Libyans accused of the 1988 bombing,
defense counsel forced police witnesses to admit evidence was sometimes
mis-labelled and implied it might have been open to manipulation. They
were apparently seeking to cast doubt on where in the jumbo jet an explosion
may have occurred, and therefore at which airport the luggage containing
a bomb might have come aboard.
McInnes told defense counsel Bill
Taylor that in the weeks following the disaster, truckloads filled with
wreckage arrived at a warehouse where an initial reconstruction of the
plane was made. Not every individual piece was labelled by waves of police
conducting fingertip ``line searches'' over vast stretches of open country,
forest and farmland, and some paper labels were washed out or dissolved
by rain, McInnes testified.
Prosecutor Alastair Campbell appeared
unfazed by admitted lapses in evidence gathering. As prosecution witness
Thomas Gilchrist told the court, there were ``countless bags and it was
not practical to fill out a label for everything. ``It was a mammoth task,''
policeman Gilchrist said, admitting that some pieces he himself had logged
were not dated.
Some bits of a 40,000-piece jigsaw
built up by investigators who sifted through piles of debris for blast-scorched
or damaged material were labelled retroactively by experts making educated
guesses about the probability of where they fell to earth. McInnes agreed
with Taylor that it was now ``utterly impossible'' to reconstruct where,
when and by whom individual pieces were found and admitted a description
of another piece was written over type-correcting fluid covering words
no longer legible. One piece of air frame, he said, ``was an item of wreckage
that had no history. It had no label on it when it came in.''
Police officer Thomas Gilchrist,
cross-examined by defense advocate Richard Keen, admitted that a description
on one label which was shown magnified on a courtroom imager might possibly
have been changed from 'clothes' to 'debris'. Prosecutor Alastair Campbell
appeared unfazed by admitted lapses in evidence gathering, concentrating
on the charred and torn remnants of a brown Samsonite suitcase which the
Crown alleges hid a radio-cassette bomb set to explode in mid-air.
Campbell, dry and impersonal, bored
on relentlessly with a build-up of scorched pieces of the case, burnt bits
of the clothing it may have contained and mangled sections of aircraft
metal warped and blackened by the bomb explosion. He asked the same series
of questions at least 20 times. ''Did the item have a police label? Who
signed it? Who completed it? What was written on it? What date and place
did it bear? What did this signify? What sort of item was it? What color?''
The prosecution may be relying on
forensic evidence to prove to the court that the explosive device was contained
in the case which it can also prove was launched at Malta, rather than
put aboard in Frankfurt by members of an extremist Palestinian group, as
the defense may later argue. But the prosecution has the burden of proof,
and the defense need prove nothing so long as it is able to create sufficient
doubt about the validity of the prosecution case.
Palestinian reaction to special
defence:
The radical Palestinian Abu Nidal
group said in Beirut that it was ready to provide a witness and evidence
showing that Libya was behind the Lockerbie bombing. In a statement, the
former ally of Libya said Tripoli was accusing Palestinian groups to escape
responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing.
``The group will present one of
its members to be a witness with precise evidence,'' said the statement
faxed to Reuters in Beirut Tuesday.
DAY 6, May
10, 2000
Crown seeks trial time
out
Fragments of
suitcases, clothing and instructions for a cassette player were brought
out on Wednesday as prosecutors built their case against two Libyans charged
with the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing. The six-day-old trial kept its
focus on the painstaking recovery of debris after Pan Am Flight 103 exploded
over Scotland and crashed, killing 270 people. The debris included a blast-damaged
brown suitcase, a tweed-type material and what witnesses said appeared
to be part of an instruction book for a cassette recorder.
Todays witness
Gwendoline Horton, a witness, described how she helped gather debris in
the fields near her home in Northumberland. Among her finds was what
looked to be "a document relating to a radio cassette player", she told
the court. Gwendoline Horton, of Morpeth, 60 miles east of Lockerbie, described
the scene around town the day after the explosion. Air currents had carried
a considerable amount of light debris into northern England and deposited
it in the Morpeth area. ``All the local farmers were collecting it in the
fields,'' she said. ``We went out to collect what we could ... I remember
coming upon a document of some sort that made reference to a radio cassette
player.''
Ex-police constable
Brian Walton, to whom Ms Horton handed in the item, identified it as "pieces
of an instruction handbook". Asked what had struck him about the object,
Mr Walton said: "It had tiny bits of singe on some of the edges of the
pieces." Today when Horton was handed a plastic bag with fragments of the
manual, she did not recognize it. ``I'm sure when I handed it in, it was
in one piece,'' she testified.
Robert Ingram,
a civilian search and rescue worker, identified an item as "a piece of
material of a Harris Tweed type". The accused are said to have bought clothing
including a Harris Tweed-type jacket at a Malta shop and used it to pad
out the suitcase. Police detective Nigel Grey was grilled by Taylor about
when exactly he had signed labels identifying recovered debris, hammering
on despite Grey's repeated reply of ``I don't recall.''
Witnesses mentioned
having handled part of a brown case. One detective said he had labelled
an item found in a forest as "a piece of brown-coloured suitcase, blast-damaged".
But Mr Ingram admitted that police visited him months after he helped recover
debris and told him to sign for items he did not recall finding.
Trial
delay coming up ?
Presiding
judge Lord Sutherland adjourned the morning session early after lawyers
requested time to try and agree on some of the copious amounts of evidence.
That could save the trial a great deal of time. It has reached the same
stage in a week that it was thought might take two months.
The attorneys
said they wanted to discuss out-of-court agreements that might save time-consuming
testimony on uncontroversial evidence.``I take it that without agreement
we would have days of this sort of evidence?'' Sutherland asked dryly.
``More than
days,'' said prosecutor Alastair Campbell. Thus the Crown seems to be seeking
an adjournment to give it time to interview witnesses notified to it a
short time before the trial started last week. The prosecution team also
said the trial is weeks ahead of schedule and it needs time to prepare
the next chapter involving technical and forensic evidence.
DAY 7, May 11, 2000
Judges on Thursday
agreed to adjourn the Lockerbie trial until May 23 after prosecutors and
defense lawyers hammered out an agreement on certain evidence from the
crash of the Pan Am jumbo jet in 1988. The pact will allow prosecutors
to cancel a number of witnesses, but extra time is needed so they can jump
to the next stage of their case relating to technical and forensic evidence.
Prosecutor
Alastair Campbell requested the adjournment yesterday saying more time
was needed to interview expert defense witnesses. Relatives of crash victims,
who had waited through more than a decade of delays and diplomatic wrangling
for the trial to begin on May 3, said they understood the reasons for the
adjournment.
"After initial
disappointment, we realized it makes a whole lot of sense," said Peter
Lowenstein, of Morristown, N.J., whose 21-year-old son Alexander, died
in the explosion. Thirty-eight victims in the fireball were from New Jersey.
Court adjourned
until May 23 !
...See you then with better daily news update.....
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and join the discussion: Is the world really going to know the truth at
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