Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Sometimes the real 'conspiracy theory' is the official version of history

Apologies for returning yet again to the subject of Lockerbie, but there's an article in the Christian Science Monitor relating to the "conspiracy theories" that Libya may not have been responsible, and it includes a truly extraordinary quote from Richard Marquise, who led the FBI investigation into the bombing. Referring to Megrahi, he says - "There's nobody else that I'm aware of anywhere in the world that has such evidence pointing to their guilt."

I mean...what? As far as I can see, now that Tony Gauci's identification has been discredited, the 'evidence' against Megrahi consists of the following :

a) Libya were known to be in possession of the correct kind of timers (although others may have been as well).
b) An unaccompanied bag may have been transferred on to Pan Am 103 at Frankfurt from a flight originating in Malta (although this has not been proved definitively, and in any case there is no hard evidence that the bag in question contained the bomb).
c) Megrahi was in Malta at the relevant time.
d) Megrahi was a member of the Libyan Intelligence service.

And that's it. In contrast, there have been people caught committing murder by CCTV cameras, with scores of corroborating eyewitness testimony, and DNA evidence to boot. And Marquise would have us believe the case against Megrahi is superior to all that? When someone starts overhyping their rather thin pickings to such an absurd degree, you begin to suspect that deep down they know perfectly well they're in some difficulty.

2 comments:

  1. I read:

    "There's nobody else that I'm aware of anywhere in the world that has such evidence pointing to their guilt."

    as being in this one particular case, not all criminal cases.

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  2. That's possible, although the quote's context within the article leads me to the opposite view - ie. Marquise has just been quoted as saying that "in his 31 years in the FBI, he's rarely seen a stronger circumstantial case than the one against Megrahi".

    But even if you're right, cynics might point out that the main reason there's less evidence that any other individual carried out the Lockerbie bombing than the little there is against Megrahi is quite simply that the investigators were so hellbent for political reasons on pursuing the Libyan line of inquiry at the expense of all others.

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