"Some of the British public may remember signing a petition to the European Parliament in 1995, requesting the involvement of the EU in examining matters relating to the Lockerbie disaster.

"10,000 people had signed it, and we, the UK relatives, were led to Strasbourg by David Martin, then MEP for the Lothians, to whom we remain most grateful.

"Three UK relatives attended the hearings on behalf of 'UK Families-Flight 103', they were Martin Cadman, Revd John Mosey, and Dr Jim Swire. Between them they had lost a son and two daughters.

"Europe’s ‘Petitions Committee’ told them that it had no power to initiate an inquiry. The petitioners described this response as totally unacceptable, and an insult to the memory of those who had died.  A subsequent debate by MEPs agreed vehemently with the relatives’ reaction. 

"The President of the European Petitions Committee later wrote to me to say that:

“Given [ the European] Parliament’s very limited powers......further examination would only be possible if fresh evidence was provided that would allow its Committee on Petitions....to usefully intervene in this matter.”

"On 6th January on BBC2, Newsnight looked at the work of the UN’s adviser on explosives and blast incidents, John Wyatt. He told viewers that he has conducted controlled explosions, simulating that proposed by the Lockerbie prosecution team. He has on occasion also given advice to European officials.

"In none of the 20 explosions he conducted was any recognisable piece of bomb timer circuit board found, let alone a piece similar to ‘PT35B’, (the fragment produced at Zeist), despite a full search with scrupulous recovery of all explosion debris, from the sealed facility in which the explosions were conducted.

"As Wyatt pointed out these were the results of a ‘mere’ 20 meticulously monitored tests, of which not one left any recognisable timer fragments. This doesn’t ‘prove’ that the Lockerbie fragment must be an introduced fabrication. However criminal justice is supposed to establish its findings following the elimination of ‘reasonable doubt’. Wyatt’s work surely introduces yet more ‘reasonable doubt’ as to whether the fragment allegedly found could be genuine.

"If it did not originate from the Lockerbie Semtex exploding timer, then where did it come from?

"To answer that question we need the full inquiry for which we constantly press. Some readers and watchers of Newsnight will remember that the dubious fragment was later found inside a police evidence bag where the label had uniquely been altered and no satisfactory explanation was given for that. The inquiry then needs to include the investigating Scottish police, who had responsibility for the sanctity of the evidential material. Meanwhile it is known that the CIA were in possession of similar timers before the investigation had started, as Thomas Thurman of the FBI has now confirmed again on camera.

"That is a matter which might give President Obama pause for thought, as he castigates his intelligence services for their failures over the Detroit fiasco.

"Dr John Wyatt MBE MIExpE PhD, whose PhD is in explosives engineering, seems to have been ignored by the Crown Office Lockerbie prosecution team. In the Zeist case, the production of this tiny fragment(‘PT35B’) from a digital timer was uniquely crucial to the prosecution case, and they know it. Without it there was no valid proof that carriage of the bomb from Malta would have been possible. It was the prosecution who provided photographs of such a digital timer packed into the cassette recorder allegedly used.
"That photograph, prepared by the prosecution itself, defines how close to the Semtex charge the circuit boards would have had to be. What Mr Wyatt told viewers was that in not one of his carefully monitored explosions was any recognisable fragment of timer circuit board found. Thus while the prosecution do not seem to have asked his opinion, inadvertently their photographs must have helped to define for Mr Wyatt, just how close the timer had to be to the Semtex.

"Newsnight also showed the incredulous reaction of an FBI explosives scientist called Tobin, when he learned from Newsnight’s reporter that PT35B had not even been tested for explosives residues by the prosecution forensic officer Alan Feraday

"I have now forwarded this letter with a covering note to the Chairperson of the European Parliament’s committee on petitions, to ask that the petitioners’ request for a full inquiry by the Europeans now at last be set up.

"I have pointed out that there is also the matter of the suppression for 12 years of information showing that Europe’s busiest airport, Heathrow, was broken into in the early morning of the Lockerbie disaster, by unidentified intruder(s) and that that may well have been how the Lockerbie device was really introduced, now that it seems so unlikely to have originated from Malta.

"Surely Europe should be concerned about these issues now that the official prosecution case appears to have been corrupted. The refusal so far of Mr Brown to allow a full inquiry is justification in itself for referring the matter back to Europe.

"However it would be infinitely preferable if those involved in this fiasco in England, Scotland and the USA would set up an inquiry of sufficient power and impartiality to resolve these issues. That seems a route much more in line with President Obama’s attitude to terrorism.

"In a recent open letter to him, I have tried to make him aware of the following:-

“In a recent 'YouGov' poll in the Muslim world in October 2009, following a debate on Lockerbie held under the auspices of the Qatar foundation, Over half the 1047 respondents thought Megrahi (the alleged Lockerbie bomber) innocent, and in a grim reminder of how the US is perceived in the Arab World, whereas 12% thought that Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, 21% thought that the US was 'directly or indirectly responsible'.”

"Deliberate deception in a Criminal Court is not compatible with the new President’s powerful rhetoric and integrity. It diminishes neither terrorism, nor the reputation of his country.  President Obama is the man uniquely positioned to clarify this dreadful business, and he must do so if trust in US intelligence and the use to which it is put is to be restored.

Dr Jim Swire, 8th Jan 2010