Pan Am Flight 103 Bombing Investigation - Timer Fragment

Timer Fragment

Among the mysteries surrounding the timer fragment is how, when, and by whom, it was found. "A lover and his lass" found the fragment while strolling in the forest, according to one police source close to the case. A man found the fragment while walking his dog, according to another version. Or, in yet another story from a former investigator, police found it while combing the ground on their hands and knees. The latter became the accepted version when evidence was given at the trial. Testimony indicated that on January 13, 1989, three weeks after the bombing, two Scottish detectives engaged in a line search in woods near Lockerbie came upon a piece of charred material, later identified as the neckband of a grey Slalom-brand shirt. Because of the charring, it was sent for analysis to the DERA forensic explosives laboratory at Fort Halstead in Kent. It was not until May 12, 1989, that Dr Thomas Hayes examined the charred material. He teased out the cloth and found within it fragments of white paper, fragments of black plastic, a fragment of metal and a fragment of wire mesh—all subsequently found to be fragments of a Toshiba RT-SF 16 and its manual. Dr Hayes testified that he also found embedded a half-inch fragment of green circuit board.

The next reference to this circuit board fragment was on September 15, 1989, when Alan Feraday of DERA sent a Polaroid photograph of it to the police officer leading the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector William Williamson, asking for help in identification and with a covering note saying this was "the best that I can do in such a short time". In June 1990, Feraday and DCI Williamson were said to have visited FBI headquarters in Washington and, together with Thomas Thurman, an FBI explosives expert, identified the fragment as coming from a type of timer circuit board similar to the one in the timer that had been seized from a Libyan intelligence agent, Mohammad al-Marzouk, who had been arrested in Dakar airport, Senegal ten months before PA 103 (The Independent, December 19, 1990). Marzouk was found to be carrying 9.5 pounds (4.3 kg) of Semtex, several packets of TNT, 10 detonators, and an electronic timer—a so-called MST-13 timer—with the word Mebo printed on it. DERA's timer fragment, which was subsequently designated as PT/35(b), would eventually lead detectives via its Swiss manufacturer to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Thurman's involvement in identifying the fragment later proved controversial because of a 1997 report on the FBI Laboratory, unrelated to the PA 103 investigation, written by U.S. Inspector-General Michael Bromwich, which concluded that Thurman had altered lab reports in ways that had rendered them inaccurate, and that he ought to be transferred to a position outside the FBI lab (The Wall Street Journal, September 26, 1997). Thurman was not called to testify. Potentially also damaging to the Crown's case as presented at the trial, the testimony of Thurman's UK counterpart, DERA's Alan Feraday, has now been called into question. In three separate cases where Feraday had been the expert witness, men against whom he gave evidence have had their convictions overturned. And, thirdly, Dr Thomas Hayes was castigated for his failure to test the timer fragment for explosives residue, even though at the trial he maintained that the fragment was too small to test. Defence counsel contrasted Hayes' testimony with that of two of his colleagues (Elliott and Higgs) at DERA's forensic laboratory who, as revealed in the notorious Maguire Seven trial, had tested minute samples from underneath the fingernails of the suspects for explosives residue. In another important development, a retired senior Scottish police chief added fuel to the timer fragment fire by claiming that the CIA planted this crucial piece of evidence.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) considered all these issues and decided in June 2007 to refer Megrahi's case back for a fresh appeal. The second appeal will be heard by five judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal. A procedural hearing at the Appeal Court in Edinburgh took place on October 11, 2007 when prosecution and defence lawyers discussed legal issues with a panel of three judges. One of the issues concerns a number of documents from an undisclosed source country that were shown to the prosecution but were not disclosed to the defence. The documents are understood to relate to the Mebo MST-13 timer that allegedly detonated the PA103 bomb.

In January 2009, it was reported that although Megrahi's second appeal against conviction is scheduled to begin on 27 April 2009 the hearing could last as long as 12 months because of the complexity of the case and volume of material to be examined.