Improvised.

Inside an antique copper ( or brown ) coloured
suitcase, made by Samsonite.

within a radio cassette recorder, made by Toshiba.

Was packed nearly half a kilo of Semtex explosive.

It might have looked like this

Below is a study in how the suitcase may have been packed.

Why's it in it's box Al?

( It never occurred to me at all that the terrorist,
having modified the cassette player,
would neatly package it all up again,
but then I've never tried to smuggle anything )

It's because the investigators found an exceptional clue as to which make and model
of cassette player was used to carry the semtex.

Nothing less than Page 1 from the user manual.


On the morning of 22nd Dec, found in a field 60 miles( ish ) from the main crash site.




.pk/689 is the evidence
PT/1 (page 1) is a control sample
( sorry, it's not to scale )

At the trial the witness recalls handing items found to the police a couple of times.
The page was definitely for something electrical
and was placed in a carrier bag with other items
It was in better condition than when presented at the trial.


I'm not convinced that the evidence presented is the page the witness found.
Apparrently, this page survived the explosion and lay overnight
in a field in one piece.
It reached it's condition as presented in court
 due to rigorous forensic testing and analysis.
Pretty shoddy treatment for the only bit of evidence that fits a
Toshiba Radio Cassette player of the right make and model to PA103.
Why is this make and model so important?
It was sold mostly in Libya.
The accused are Libyans.
Haha! Gottem!!

The original suspects of the PFLP-GC were nicked red-handed in Germany
with IEDs in Toshiba cassette players a couple of months before Lockerbie.
( Operation Autumn Leaves )
The main bombmaker was freed by the German police and headed off to Jordan.
Not all of the known-about devices were recovered.
Those devices that were discovered used a different model of Toshiba's range.
Well, that's him off-the-hook, clearly.




You think I'm joking as to how the judges seemed to have formed their opinions.
I wish I was.
On evidence this flimsy and suspect Mr Megrahi was convicted.
Is there other, more substantial, physical evidence?
Well, there's other fragments and plenty of conjecture,
but it really doesn't stack up to anything concrete.
I'll be posting about that some other time.



So far I'm keeping it light on names.
As you can imagine, an investigation of Lockerbie's magnitude pulled in the testimony of hundreds.
I'll be introducing the 'players' later.
I'll also be introducing others who were deemed not so important
and some who were completely overlooked.

I'm relying on 2nd hand sources
( newstitle webpages and other blogs )
to find out who said what at the trial.


The Zeist transcripts are out there and one day I'm sure
to browse my way to a copy.

For a more in-depth look at this strand I'll point you here.