Lockerbie Again

I was one day away from returning from a semester outside of Paris when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded and crashed into Lockerbie, Scotland. I vividly recall talking to my mom on the phone that day about the crash using a phone card equipped with an an electronic chip (the Europeans were way ahead of us in tech at that time).

All of this had been filed away into a dusty corner of my grey matter until the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, the Libyan who was convicted of plotting the attack.

On Thursday I started looking into the case of Pan Am 103 and things are not as nearly cut and dried as they seem.

The Wikipedia entry is a fascinating read...

A circuit board fragment, allegedly found embedded in a piece of charred material, was identified as part of an electronic timer similar to that found on a Libyan intelligence agent who had been arrested 10 months previously, carrying materials for a Semtex bomb. The timer allegedly was traced through its Swiss manufacturer, Mebo, to the Libyan military, and Mebo employee Ulrich Lumpert identified the fragment at al-Megrahi's trial.

Mebo's owner, Edwin Bollier, later revealed that in 1991 he had declined an offer from the FBI of $4 million to testify that the timer fragment was part of a Mebo MST-13 timer supplied to Libya. On 18 July 2007, Ulrich Lumpert admitted he had lied at the trial.

I have no idea where the truth lies but I'm pretty sure the full story has not been told. Either al-Megrahi was framed for a crime he didn't commit or al-Megrahi is responsible, in which case it's highly unlikely that he would have committed such an act without the sign-off of Qadaffi which means Qadaffi got off scot free.
In other words, no matter how you cut it a miscarriage of justice occured.