Did Abdelbaset al-Megrahi blow up Pan Am 103?

[Rolfe]

In general, I place most reliance on the statements Tony gave during September, before it all turned into such a big deal and he started feeling pressurised. I know the Golfer has said that Tony's first statement was altered by the investigating officers, but he hasn't said how or how significantly, and until this guy is prepared to stand up and be counted I'm not inclined to take much heed of what he's saying.

The description given verbally was quite clearly not of Megrahi. Tony seems to have remembered the buyer's height, build and so on pretty well - or thought he did, because these were the features he described in detail. And it makes sense, because he was sizing the man up for the fit of clothes, which was his job after all. In these respects, he described someone completely different.

He said almost nothing about the face, but a couple of weeks later they sat him down with an artist and a photofit compiler and tried to get a facial image out of him. The interesting part of that is that the photofit really does look quite like Megrahi's passport photo, sufficiently so that it would make anyone stop and think about this guy's guilt. However, there are a few problems with that.

First, trials on photofit images have been quite unconvincing over the years. People asked to compile a photofit of someone well-known seldom manage to produce something recognisable by other people - I saw a demonstration in the 1980s when people were asked to produce a likeness of Maggie Thatcher, and the results really weren't something you'd have easily recognised as Maggie at all.

Second, Tony produced two images, the photofit and an artist's impression. They look like two different people. Tony said it was the artist's impression which looked more like the purchaser, of the two.

Third, both images are essentially generic. Pretty much anybody clean shaven, with the same hairstyle and approximate shape of face, is going to look a bit like one or the other. The artist's impression is actually a reasonable likeness of Abu Talb. Tony also picked out a picture of a guy called Mohamed Salam as resembling the purchaser, and again his photo is a decent likeness for the artist's impression.

And fourth, the age. Mohamad Salem was in his early 30s. Tony agreed a likeness, but said the purchaser was "older by about 20 years". He also repeatedly said that Megrahi's picture was younger than the purchaser.

So although I agree that taking the photofit and that passport photo of Megrahi together, it's quite striking, I don't think it's as significant as it might seem at first sight.

The problem is that the cops did two things very very wrong. One was that they completely ignored Tony's description of the purchaser's height and build and showed him photo after photo of faces. He could have identified a skinny midget with the right general facial appearance under those circumstances.

Second, they ignored his repeated statements about age. His initial assessment of the purchaser's age was "about fifty". Tony Gauci himself was 44 at the time. Megrahi was 36, and until he developed cancer has never seemed to look "old for his age". The likelihood of someone misidentifying a stranger who is eght years younger than himself as being six years older is not high.

Despite Tony's statement, the police persistently showed him photographs of men much younger than the stated 50 years. His initial response to the photospread which included Megrahi's picture was to say that all the men were too young. So far as I can tell, they never showed him pictures of men of fifty or in their fifties.

By the time they got to Zeist, Megrahi was 47. However, the purchaser should by then have been around 62! So what did they do? Even after the defence had objected to stand-ins as young as 25(!), the line-up was significantly skewed. Four of the seven stand-ins were in their thirties. The others were in their forties. The oldest was only 49, and Megrahi was the second-oldest. There were numerous other problems with that line-up identification, which have been documented elsewhere. The overwhelming likelihood is that Tony knew which person in the lineup was Megrahi, and was merely trying to decide whether he should agree that he was the purchaser. Then he said, "Not [exactly] the man I saw in my shop...."

I don't see how it's possible to accept that as a positive identification, even if you ignore the evidence about the date.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Buncrana mentioned Tony's opinion that the purchaser was Libyan. I think this weighed with the court. However, Tony seems to have had two classes of "Arab" in his mind - Libyans and Tunisians. His opinion that the purchaser was Libyan was mainly based on the fact that he didn't think he was Tunisian, and that was mainly based on the fact that the man didn't try to speak French to him!

Subsequent claims about being able to recognise a Libyan accent were pretty much shot down, when it was revealed that Tony didn't speak or understand Arabic at all. I don't think he was ever asked if he would have been able to distinguish a Libyan from, say, a Syrian or a Jordanian.

Arab and not Tunisian was the real strength of this "Libyan" assessment.

Another thing the court seemed to weigh heavily was that Tony at one point (early I think) said the sale occurred about two weeks before Christmas - which would of course fit 7th December better than 23rd November. However he was always vague about the date, only saying in his first statement that it was "in the winter". To put so much weight on "about two weeks before Christmas" in the context of all the conflicting things Tony said about the date, assuming that such a statement couldn't possibly be consistent with four weeks before Christmas, even though Tony never said 23rd November was too early, and the evidence of the rain and the football match pointed overwhelmingly to that date, is completely unjustifiable.

Which is what the SCCRC report said. "No basis in evidence for the conclusion that the sale occurred on 7th December."

I haven't heard Bunntamas say she still believes Megrahi bought the clothes though. I'd welcome her opinion on that.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Over the Atlantic?

OK, I'm one sick puppy. I'm not very good at this, but here's my best shot.

The flight began at Heathrow, which is just west of London. We know it flew over Lockerbie. We also know it was cleared to exit Scottish airspace at co-ordinates 59N 10W.

The flight path should describe a shallow curve linking these points, but I'm not that smart with the graphics stuff so I've just done two lines - London to Lockerbie and Lockerbie to 59N 10W.

We know it took 38 minutes to do the first part of that route. Even if it had been cleared for a very fast departure, say wheels up at 6.10, it couldn't possibly have cleared land. It just might have hit a sea loch.

The entire flight path would be a Great Circle route, obviously. I don't know enough to draw the whole thing and show the hours of ocean to the north and west. It might have crossed a bit of Greenland also.

It's true there are more southerly Great Circle routes which may leave land behind sooner - though you have to remember Ireland is in the way too. However, frequent travellers on the route have remarked that the one PA103A was on that day was common, and might be described as standard.

Setting a timer for 7pm, as Megrahi was alleged to have done, makes no sense at all to me.

Rolfe.

 

[Bunntamas]

Wow, Rolfe, you're burning the midnight oil! Nice work on the flight path graphic.
You probably are aware of this, but Here is a link to the Aviation Safety Network site. Scroll down to near the bottom for a graphic of the flight path.
Also, the full "official accident investigation report and appedices have a ton of info. The latter includes some very detailed illustrations of the baggage hold & containers.
~B.

 

[Bunntamas]

Oops... just noticed the commentary above the flight path graphic that says it does not display the exact flight path. But I think it's a good addition to your graphic. Plus you can zoom in on the map.

 

[Bunntamas]

So, after looking at that map I posted, it makes no sense. The flight path doesn't even go over Lockerbie. Weird. Tried to delete the post, but I can't figure out how to do it. Sorry for the confusion. Still very weird (if not stupid) that that flight path would be noted in the investigation report.

 

[Rolfe]

They stopped the facility for deleting posts here a few years ago, because too many people were deleting their contributions to threads, leaving the remainder unintelligible.

The 2-hour window on edits is for a similar reason. One poster in particular, if he made an error, would go back and change the post retrospectively - leaving the two pages intervening, where others had pointed out his error and patiently explained where he'd gone wrong, looking completely inexplicable.

During the two-hour edit window, although you can't delete the entire post, you can of course replace the text with anything you want - even just a couple of full stops, or the word "deleted". You can write a complete new post saying what you now think you should have said in the first place, if you want. It's just bad form to do that if someone has already replied - if you do that, you should include some acknowledgement of the reply to the now-vanished text.

If you notice a terrible howler in a post you've made after the 2 hours is up, you can ask a mod to edit it for you - the easy way to do that is to report your own post, and make the edit request in the dialogue box. Mods aren't too charmed to be asked to fix ordinary typos this way, but I had one of mine fixed a few days ago when I noticed I'd typed "Khreesat" instead of "Talb", thus making a nonsense of an entire paragraph.

The forum format is really quite versatile, and the restrictions not really onerous once you know how to get round them.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Wow, Rolfe, you're burning the midnight oil! Nice work on the flight path graphic.
You probably are aware of this, but Here is a link to the Aviation Safety Network site. Scroll down to near the bottom for a graphic of the flight path.
Also, the full "official accident investigation report and appedices have a ton of info. The latter includes some very detailed illustrations of the baggage hold & containers.
~B.

So, after looking at that map I posted, it makes no sense. The flight path doesn't even go over Lockerbie. Weird. Tried to delete the post, but I can't figure out how to do it. Sorry for the confusion. Still very weird (if not stupid) that that flight path would be noted in the investigation report.

The Aviation Safety Network site looks like a private site, and it seems just to be providing summaries and statistics. They've just drawn a straight line between London and New York, which I agree is a bit pointless.

I'm sure there must be a proper representation of the actual flight plan somewhere, but I've never seen one. It seems to be almost an article of faith that the aircraft was "near the coast" and would have been "way out over the Atlantic" by the time of the explosion if it hadn't been "late". This is so much horse-feathers.

I heard some woman on the radio several months ago dementing on that Scotland had no right to claim jurisdiction anyway, because it was only a fluke the explosion happened over Scotland. Certainly the plane was only a few minutes over the Scottish border when the disaster happened, but the other half of her complaint was that "in another ten minutes" it would have "crossed the Scottish coastline at Girvan".

Er, no madam, transatlantic airliners don't normally make 80-degree turns in mid-flightpath.

It's obvious when you see the line from London to Heathrow that it was going to go on towards Glasgow, but all I knew after that was that one solitary poster had said it would have crossed the Long Island heading north-west. It was only when I saw "Benbecula" and "59N 10W" in the court transcript that I could see the whole thing.

There's absolutely no possibility the plane could have cleared land by 7.03pm, even if it had departed from Heathrow at the earliest possible moment. And that wasn't an unusual flightpath. It wasn't the only one possible, but it was a normal, regular route. I think you can also see from my diagram that if it had happened to be on a more southerly route, it would still probably have been over Ireland at 7.03.

Why were we thinking the terrorists set that timer for 7.03pm, again? And buying brand new, easily-traceable clothes to scatter across the landscape, that could lead straight back to a conspicuous, memorable purchase in a shop only three miles from the airport where the miraculously-concealed introduction of the bomb was planned?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Anyway, Bunntamas, you said you were good with graphics applications. I don't think it would be hard to do a much better job than I did, with the right tools (I was only using the image editor that came with my camera). And chance you could give it a shot?

If you have three points, then surely it is possible to draw the shallow curve that intersects all three. And to do it with a finer line than the magic-marker thing that seems to be all Digimax can offer. It would be great to have a decent-looking image. You just need to pinpoint London, Lockerbie and 59N 10W. I used this page to find the latitude/longitude point.

We can't extrapolate beyond the third point because that map is a Mercator projection and it's away with the fairies in far north latitudes. The whole flightpath would probably be some sort of Great Circle route, but I'm not familiar enough with the geometry/geography to know how to plot it. (It would be obvious on a globe though.) I think the latter part of the flight would have been over land for longer than I realised, as it would have come in over Canada. (I remember coming in over Labrador or Newfoundland or somewhere on a flight from Paris to Detroit last year, too.) However, I'm sure we can agree that there would have been several hours of cold salt water in the middle.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Still on the subject of when the plane blew up.

I've found a map of the Great Circle route from Heathrow to JFK. That's the shortest route between the two points. I note that it passes over Ireland, not Scotland. It's possible the terrorists thought the plane would take that route, but even if they did, it still illustrates the insanity of the 7.03 explosion.

I can't find a full map of the actual route, but it's not very hard to extrapolate it from the Great Circle route - it's just a wider curve, above the marked route. It might just clip Greenland. By my estimates of the timing, the furthest PA103 could possibly have got on its actual heading before 7.03 was about Fort William. That, of course, would not have taken it over water at any stage.

If we then look at the Great Circle route, and extrapolate the same distance along it - the plane crashes on Ireland, still on land.

It's true that on that route the plane does pass over a stretch of water, the Irish Sea. However, given the vagaries of departure times and headwinds, it would have been impossible to have guaranteed hitting that section with the explosion - it looks to be only about a ten-minute window.

Now look at all those miles and miles of water to the west.

Bunntamas says Megrahi was just "a really dumb guy". Well, he studied at Cardiff university, unusual for a Libyan. He himself said "I finished the Air Transportation course in New York and obtained the American FAA licence when I was below the permitted age," though I'm conscious that lying to journalists isn't hard. But then he had a couple of pretty responsible jobs, not the sort usually given to someone demonstrably deficient in the IQ department, even in Libya.

He worked in the aviation industry. The normal routes of aircraft flying from Heathrow to JFK are not hard to discover. And even the merest schoolboy knows that the Atlantic Ocean is pretty wide.

I could almost understand the bomb being set too late, by someone allowing for delays and not realising just how much of Canada the route crosses before it reaches its destination. Although even at that, we're talking about someone actually in the aviation industry, who should have had no difficulty accessing a route map. Hell, there were probably schematic maps in the in-flight magazines!

My earlier estimate of midnight for the optimum detonation time was probably a bit late. The plane was scheduled to leave at 6pm and arrive at 01.40am. Look at the map. You want it to drop into the blue bit. 10pm maybe? 11?

Somebody, please tell me why Megrahi stuffed that case with clothes that could be easily traced to his otherwise fiendishy-concealed place of introduction, then set the timer so that when the plane blew up, it was a racing certainty it would have been over land?

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

Obviously flight routes vary, up to a point, when taking into consideration possible traffic congestion or weather conditions and high altitude winds (which will have significant bearing on fuel consumption).

The Great Circle Mapper can be a little deceiving. It will show you the shortest distance between the points on the sphere, but I find Flight Aware to provide a more accurate result and the various routes and flight 'corridors' that are assigned by controllers to a particular flight.

The map that Rolfe linked is the nominal route, however if you look at this route, via Prestwick, it shows a quite different route, but only 1 mile shorter than the 'direct' Great Circle route.

Another couple of examples from flights departing Heathrow today.

Here is the flightpath for today's BA flight 193 - http://flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW193

and, for today's BA flight 209, just approaching offshore as I type - http://flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW209

 

[Rolfe]

The Great Circle Mapper can be a little deceiving. It will show you the shortest distance between the points on the sphere, but I find Flight Aware to provide a more accurate result and the various routes and flight 'corridors' that are assigned by controllers to a particular flight.

The map that Rolfe linked is the nominal route, however if you look at this route, via Prestwick, it shows a quite different route, but only 1 mile shorter than the 'direct' Great Circle route.

Another couple of examples from flights departing Heathrow today.

Here is the flightpath for today's BA flight 193 - http://flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW193

and, for today's BA flight 209, just approaching offshore as I type - http://flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW209

That's really interesting, Buncrana. The first one you linked to is seems to do an 80 degree turn over Ayrshire, but having said that I think it actually lands at Prestwick so it isn't really comparable.

The BA 193 flight path looks exactly the PA103 route on the fatal day. Of course it deviates later, because it's going to Dallas not JFK, but the part in UK airspace seems spot on. It goes over Lockerbie, and seems to cross the Long Island just about where the co-ordinates indicated. (I see it actually passed just south of Skye.) Bingo.

The Florida one isn't terribly relevant as it's heading so much further south.

I think we've established a few facts here.

• The flight path the plane actually took is not at all unusual for planes on that route.
• On this flight path, it couldn't possibly have cleared land by 7.03pm, even if it had departed extraordinarily promptly.
• The same is true for the more southerly route over Ireland, which some commentators have suggested it might have been expected to take, unless it had fortuitously ditched in the ten minutes or so it would have been over the Irish Sea.

Some posters elsewhere suggested that perhaps the terrorists wanted the plane to go down over land, but that doesn't fly well at all, if you'll pardon the pun.

• It appears the terrorists did not want to be detected after the event. In that case, the amount of evidence a crash over land would generate is a problem.
• In particular, these very conspicuous, traceable clothes!
• Presumably, the terrorists wanted to succeed in downing the plane. However, setting the timer as early as 7pm introduced a serious risk the explosion would have happened on the tarmac, if the plane had missed its slot (for Basuta or any other reason).
• Having regard to that last point, anyone wanting to cause a crash on land would almost certainly go for the arrival end of the journey - and hopefully hit the USA while it was at it.

So, once more, someone please tell me why Megrahi allegedly set that timer for 7pm?

Bunntamas says, well he was a really dumb guy.

• His CV, so far as we know it and even allowing for its having been sexed up a bit, is not compatible with "really dumb guy".
• He had worked in the airline industry, and should have had little trouble getting hold of the details of the usual routes planes take from Heathrow to JFK.
• "Really dumb" isn't enough to explain that timing. "Really dumb" would reckon the plane was crossing the Atlantic, that's a big lot of water, I need to aim for the middle, more or less, so - 7hr 40min flight, leaves at six, let's call it ten o'clock. And that's without looking at any maps at all. You'd have to be comatose to set it any earlier than that.

SO WHY DID THE PLANE CRASH AT THREE MINUTES PAST SEVEN?

(Sorry, I'll go and lie down now.)

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

As quick clarification that the route taken by Maid of the Seas is not unusual, here is one of today's Continental flight 113 from Heathrow to Newark -

and the same flight route slightly closer...

 

[Rolfe]

That's interesting too, I see that one goes north of Skye! I can't really tell which one is closer to the 59N 10W heading of PA103. Of course the map projection is different from the one I was able to plot that point on. I suspect somewhere between the two but closer to the BA one. It doesn't make any difference from the point of view of the discussion really. The plane was a long way from leaving land behind, any way you slice it.

That tracking site illustrates very well how the flight paths vary from day to day, too. I see today's BA193 took a left and went directly over the Isle of Man. The lower picture you post above is particularly interesting because it seems to illustrate the two extremes - the green line looks like the Great Circle route, which I think is probably about as south as these routes would tend to go, and the dotted blue line is the furthest north I've seen.

Even if PA103 had left the stand very promptly and been cleared for immediate take-off, it couldn't possibly have been airborne for longer than about 50 minutes by 7.03pm. No matter which route it had been assigned, it couldn't possibly have cleared land by then.

On a more southerly route it might have dropped into the Irish Sea, but we can see from the map how chancy that would have been, given the impossibility of predicting exactly when the plane would actually take off even if you could be sure that was going to be the route. Some commentators, apparently noticing that the mantra of "it would have been out over the Atlantic if it hadn't been late" is wrong, have declared that actually, PA103 was supposed to take the route over Ireland, and the explosion was intentionally timed to drop the plane in the Irish Sea. Although the 6.25pm take-off might indeed have been over the Irish Sea at 7.03, you can see from the map what a narrow window there is when that route would be over water - if it had taken off at 6.15, it would have been over Ireland.

The received wisdom that "the plane was late, and if it had been up to time it would have exploded far out over the Atlantic" is so ingrained I've seldom seen it challenged. Even Bunntamas, who has had uncommonly close exposure to the case, thought that was the case. But it's not.

I simply cannot see a single possible reason for setting a timer so early in the flight. And to do that while taking no care at all to ensure there's nothing in that suitcase that can be used to trace the bomber (indeed quite the opposite!) is completely bizarre. "Really dumb guy" doesn't begin to explain it, even if there was evidence that Megrahi was a really dumb guy. And that Gadaffi didn't have access to any agents with functioning neurones between their ears....

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

So, why did the plane crash at three minutes past seven?

At Zeist, the allegation was that Megrahi had deliberately set the timer for that time. In fact, I think one of Giaka's fairly-stories was of actually seeing him setting the timer for seven o'clock (I need to check that). Insane or not, no other explanation was proffered for the timing.

Other suggestions have been put forward, theories never advanced at Zeist. However, they all seem to me simply to be attempts to force the narrative into the pre-determined "Megrahi did it" mould, whether it fits or not.

The more I look at this, the more convinced I become that the detonation of that bomb had nothing to do with any MST-13 timer set to go off at a pre-determined time. The entire scenario is so consistent with one of the barometric devices Khreesat was caught with. Devices that would have been safe indefinitely at ground level, but would have exploded about 30 to 50 minultes after take-off irrespective of when take-off actually was.

The disadvantage of such devices was that the time couldn't be set by the operator, so they couldn't arrange for a mid-Atlantic explosion. The advantage was, of course, that it wouldn't have mattered if the plane had been delayed or missed its slot entirely.

In fact, from the maps, if the plane had taken the more southerly route that evening, it could well have dropped into the Irish Sea, if the 38-minutes-after-takeoff was a fixed functionality of the device. However, the minute the northerly route was decided on, Lockerbie's fate was sealed no matter when the wheels actually left the tarmac.

I consider, how would the world appear, if in fact this bomb was a Khreesat device loaded at Heathrow?

• There would be no trace of the bomb or the suitcase on the island of Malta. Check.
• There would be no evidence of a security breach at Luqa airport. Check.
• There would be evidence of the bomb or the suitcase at Heathrow airport. Check.
• There would be evidence of a security breach at Heathrow airport. Check.
• The explosion would occur at 30 to 50 minutes after take-off from Heathrow. Check.

That's how the jigsaw fits, as far as I can see it. The whole "Megrahi did it" narrative seems to be an attempt to force the jigsaw pieces into a picture they simply don't support, leaving a few lying at the side, and dragging in other pieces that are actually part of a different jigsaw altogether.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

In some ways this whole thing seems to me to have some parallels with the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Jean Charles was a Brazilian electrician whose immigration papers weren't entirely in order, though it's possible he didn't even realise that. He was going about his ordinary business, heading from his home to the house in north London where he was in the middle of a job.

The police had traced a gym membership card belonging to one of the 7/7 terrorists to an address in the same block of flats where Jean Charles lived. A surveillance officer saw Jean Charles leaving his home that morning, and became suspicious. Various innocent happenings (such as Jean Charles getting off the bus then getting back on again, because the first underground station he went to was closed) served to convince the police even more that he was indeed one of the bombers.

An entire, fictitious scenario was built up around this completely innocent young man, to the point where the anti-terror squad became convinced he was actually on his way to blow himself up on an underground train right there and then. Evidence contrary to this belief (that Jean Charles had been identified as "Caucasian", that he quite clearly wasn't wearing a suicide belt and so on) were ignored. Another example of "scenario fulfillment", in fact.

It culminated in police officers jumping on him as he sat on the train reading his newspaper, and pumping seven bullets into his head.

OK, a lot different in many ways, not least because it became very very clear within a very short time that the police were completely mistaken. (Though bear in mind that for the first few hours they nevertheless tried to continue the narrative that Jean Charles was "behaving suspiciously" and the killing "was linked to the attacks of 7th July".) Also, Megrahi's actions on 21st December 1988 were probably not as innocent as Jean Charles going to work with a dodgy passport.

It is similar though. Megrahi was going about his business in Malta that morning, whatever it was, without a thought in his head of exploding airliners. But one or two mis-read pieces of information got the attention of the investigators, and it all just snowballed from there. Evidence pointing to this being the wrong scenario was ignored, and irrelevant and peripheral information used to build up the case for the fantasy.

It's hardly the first time this sort of thing has happened in a criminal investigation. It's probably one of the most blatant. Outrage over the appalling nature of the atrocity shouldn't be allowed to blind us to the very real possibility that the police latched on to and went after the wrong guy, though.

Rolfe.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

In some ways this whole thing seems to me to have some parallels with the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes...(snipped details of post)

Hmm... are the things you cited not just parallels with (nearly) all miscarriages of justice?
The police over valuing anything which confirms their hypothesis and ignoring anything which contradicts it, until they end up convicting the wrong person.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, yes, really. That was just a high-profile example - and one discussed in other threads with a lot of heat, at the time.

• He was dark-haired and looked a bit foreign
• His passport had a forged stamp on it
• A gym membership card with his address on it was found among the property of one of the 7/7 terrorists
• He got off the bus then back on the same bus - a classic trick if you're trying to shake off a tail
• He was wearing a bulky jacket on a hot day
• He vaulted over the ticket barrier at the tube station
• There were wires trailing out of the collar of his jacket
• He ran away when the pursuing police identified themselves

Hey, how could he not be a suicide bomber, with all that mountain of evidence?

Except he wasn't. Some of these things were true, but had nothing to do with the 7/7 bombings. Some of them were simply false, but were insisted to be true by eyewitnesses in the early stages of the investigation. So this blameless electrician simply travelling to work became an imagined terrorist, and had his brains blown out.

I just get the feeling that all this "evidence" that's being put forward against Megrahi is of the same nature as the evidence that led the police to think Jean Charles de Menezes was a suicide bomber. The same sense of someone getting on with his own business while police are constructing an elaborate fantasy around him that has no bearing on reality.

Rolfe.

 

[Bunntamas]

Not sure if this is helpful, as you've probably already read it, but following is testimony from day 2 of the Zeist trial on flight path.
(beginning at pg. 53 of Rolfe's trial .PDF - thanks again for that!)
~B.

Q And then, "upper alfa 2 Pole Hill UB for [156] Margo direct Glasgow."
A That's the route that the aircraft would continue to take. After Trent, it would proceed via Upper Humber 2, via Pole Hill, upper Bravo 4 to Margo, flight direct from Margo to Glasgow, and then follows the upper air route 590 to 59 north and 10 west.
Q And then we see, "/ mach No. 0.84." What does that refer to?
A As it crosses the oceanic boundary and comes under oceanic control, the separation on the ocean is made by reference to a mach number rather than a physical speed and knot. And therefore the aircraft had planned to fly at mach decimal 84.
Q Mach being the speed of sound?
A Mach being the speed of sound.
Q And then "estimated elapsed times," what does that refer to?
A The estimated elapsed time in number 5 are -- it takes him one hour 24 minutes to get to 10 degrees west. To 20 west is two hour nine minutes. To 30 west is two hour 47 minutes. So it's cumulative times as it proceeds across the north Atlantic.
Q Thank you very much.
Now, could we then go back, please, to production number 1, and to the chart. If we could
[157] just go in once more to that. We see other markings other than the solid green line
on that. And the first one, if you are looking from the foot of the screen, is a green cross; is
that correct?
A That's correct.
Q Did you make that?
A I did.
Q And could you just scroll to the right, please. Thank you very much.
What does that green mark then refer to?
A That was the position that I computed to be where the aircraft was at the time it made its
48
initial call to Scottish Air Traffic Control Centre.
Q And that would be at 1856?
A At 1856.
Q And then the next one is "PAA 103 EST Margo 1900." What is Margo?
A Margo is the reporting point that the aircraft was making between Pole Hill and Glasgow, and it is the transfer of control point or it is the position for which the transfer of control message between London and Scottish is based on. And the estimate of control or the control message from London indicated that the Clipper 103 was estimating Margo at time
19.00. [158]
Q Then if we follow this line up. I think at Margo it takes a turn to the west; is that correct?
A That's correct.
Q And we then follow -- you've marked, I think, Carlisle. Is that your marking on it?
A That is. That's the town of Carlisle, as distinct from the airfield of Carlisle.
Q Right. And then the position of a shuttle at 19.05. Is that right?
A That's right.
Q And then in red, a red cross, you have marked a computed position of last radar,
1902-40. Is that correct?
A That's correct.
Q Now, when you say that the last radar, what exactly do you mean by that?
A That is the position taken from the radar screen of the last recorded position, the distance always measured on the radar screen and transposed then onto this map.

This is Crown Production 9 and is headed "National Air Traffic Services Recorded Speech
Transcript Cover Sheet." The reason for extract is recorded as "Accident Involving Aircraft
PAA 103 (N739PA)".
The ground station is recorded as: SC & OATCC Atlantic House.
The call sign recorded as Shanwick, the frequency or telephone recorded as 123.95
megahertz, the facility recorded as Shanwick Oceanic Area Control clearance delivery
officer, and the period covered by extract, from 18.57 to 19.10 on 21st December 1988.
If we look at page 3 of that production, please.
Reading from line 5, the following [181] communication is recorded at 18.57 from Pan Am
103 to Shanwick, "Eh Shanwick good evening it's the Clipper 103." The response recorded
from Shanwick to Pan Am 103 is "Clipper 103 Shanwick."
At 18.58 there is is a communication from Shanwick to Pan Am 103 reading "Clipper 103
Shanwick."
There is then a communication from Pan Am 103 to Shanwick recorded as, "Roger 103 is
estimating 5, 9 north 10 west at eh -- make it eh 19 eh 47. We are requesting a random
track 310.84."
There is a reply from Shanwick to Pan Am 103, "Clipper 103 Shanwick copied stand by."
Could we look at page 4 of that production, please.
Reading from line 42, at a time of 19.02 and 36 seconds, there is a communication from
Shanwick to Pan Am 103, "Clipper 103 Shanwick your clearance." At a time of 19.02 and
56
40 seconds, there is a communication from Pan Am 103 to Shanwick, "Ah this is Clipper
103 go ahead."
At 19.02 and 44 seconds there is a communication from Shanwick to Pan Am 103,
"Shanwick clears the Clipper 103 to Kennedy from 59 north 10 west 62 north 20 west 63
north 30 west 62 north 40 west 60 north 50 west Hopedale to maintain flight level 310 [182]
mach decimal 84 from 59 north 10 west cross 59 north 10 west not before 1947."
It is recorded that that communication ceased at 19.03 and ten seconds.
Thereafter there was a further communication at 19.03 and 31 seconds from Shanwick to
Pan Am 103,"Clipper 103 Shanwick did you copy."
At line 68 there is a further communication at 1904 from Shanwick to Pan Am 103, "Clipper
103 Shanwick."
That production can be closed now.

 

[Rolfe]

I hadn't noticed the section about estimating the time of arrival at various points over the Atlantic, or that the flight path was quoted in ten-degree increments as the plane progressed to the west. With that information you could plot the entire planned flightpath in real time, if you had the right application.

It's clear that the "solid green line" mentioned in the transcript is in fact the flight path shown on a production before the court. The odd thing is that I've never seen a copy of this, and we're having to plot it ourselves from the text references.

Nevertheless, I think we've got a pretty fair idea now, and it was somewhere between those shown in posts 232 and 233. Not going to be over clear water for well over an hour past take-off. (One hour 25 minutes to 59N 10W, which is out beyond Harris.) The more southerly routes are much the same. Although there's water in the middle on these, it would be a very chancy enterprise indeed to hit that with a detonation primed to go off at a certain time by the clock, and clear water isn't reached until the flight is beyond Ireland.

So why did Megrahi set that timer for seven o'clock, again?

Rolfe.