- Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP for the Scottish constituency
of Linlithgow, used his parliamentary privileges to effectively accuse
the British government of destroying evidence relating to the criminal
investigation of the 1988 attack on PanAm flight 103, which killed 270
people.
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- Dalyell is the longest serving MP in Westminster - the
so-called 'father of the house'. Something of a maverick figure, he has
a long record of raising awkward questions for successive British administrations.
Dalyell harried Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for years
over the circumstances surrounding the sinking of an elderly Argentine
warship, General Belgrano, off the Malvinas/Falklands Islands, by a British
nuclear submarine during the 1982 war with Argentina.
-
- Speaking on March 26, in an adjournment debate in which
MPs can raise whatever they like, Dalyell insisted that Libyan Abdel Basset
al-Megrahi, currently jailed for life in Barlinnie prison in Glasgow for
the Lockerbie attack, was innocent. Dalyell, who has long followed developments
around the Lockerbie disaster, asked what was being done to preserve evidence
collected during police enquiries. He went on to ask, ìCan an assurance
be given that they will not be destroyed in the same way as certain police
notebooks have apparently been destroyed?î
-
- Dalyell quoted a statement given by a retired policewoman,
Mary Boylan, who had been based at Lockerbie in 1988. In 1999 Boylan was
asked to give a statement at Livingston Police Station, presumably relating
to the upcoming trial of al-Megrahi and his then co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa
Fhimah. She asked for her notebooks from 1988 to refresh her memory. She
was told they could not be found and later read in the Scottish press that
Lothian and Borders Police had destroyed the notebooks.
-
- Dalyell asked, ìWho gave the instruction for the
destruction of notebooks? After all, this was the biggest unresolved murder
trial in Scottish legal history. The answer to that question is likely
to be found not in Edinburgh, but in London.î
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- Dalyell said he had worked closely with five heads of
the policeís ìF Divisionî which covers West Lothian,
as well as successive chief constables of Lothian and Borders Police: ìI
simply do not believe that any one of them, off their own bat, would have
allowed, for reasons of routine and storage space, the destruction of notebooks
relating to the biggest murder trial in Scottish history.î
-
- Dalyell quoted a subsequent statement from Boylan in
which she described how, in 1999, she attended Dumfries police station
and was asked to describe a suitcase rim, with a handle attached. Boylan
asked the Procurator Fiscal, a local Scottish legal official, about the
significance of the case. He would not say, but, ìWhat he did say
was that the owner of said suitcase was a Joseph Patrick Curry and that
I would be hearing and reading a lot about him at the time of the trial.î
Boylan later found out that Curry was a US Army Special Forces Captain.
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- According to Dalyell, Boylan claims a colleague informed
her that Curryís suitcase contained the bomb that blew up the aircraft.
Dalyell said, ìI want to know who will verify the statement and
show whether it is true or false. If the bomb was in Curryís suitcase,
Mr. Megrahi is hardly likely to be guilty.î
-
- He concluded by asking for 'these extremely serious matters
[to] be taken on board by the government in London'.
-
- Speaking after the debate Dalyell reiterated his suggestion
that ìsomething highly irregular has taken place, apparently with
consent.'
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- Joseph Patrick Curry was one of several members of a
US Special Forces team on PanAm 103, whose luggage, and remains at the
crash site were the subject of a great deal of well documented US CIA and
FBI activity in the hours and days after the disaster. A special forces
major, Charles McKee, and the CIAís Beirut station deputy chief,
Matthew Gannon, also died on the plane.
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- [Click here for Dalyell's statement as recorded in Hansard,
the House of Parliamentís official record.]
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- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/apr2002/loc-a01.shtml
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