“All but one of the DNA components which make up that profile are present in [RARDE Forensic Expert] Allen Feraday’s DNA profile. (…) This component is unsuitable for interpretation purposes since a large number of individuals from any population might be expected to match it.”
SCCRC
Report on Lockerbie
July 1, 2025 — Some so-called “Lockerbie experts” — including former FBI officials — have hailed the recent DNA evidence as a major forensic breakthrough. In reality, it is nothing of the sort. In CIA parlance, this case has just gone from SNAFU to full-blown FUBAR — and fast. Follow us on Twitter: @Intel_Today
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“The single, handwritten sheet began with an order that Mr Al-Marimi confess to the Lockerbie incident, as well as another terrorist attack.”
Masud’s lawyers
UPDATE (September 19, 2025) — Masud’s lawyers have asked a federal court in Washington to rule the alleged confession inadmissible in advance of his trial in April next year.
They argued that – when presented with similar evidence of coercion – American courts have found custodial statements involuntary and inadmissible under the fifth amendment of the US constitution, whether they were made in the United States or abroad.
Prosecutors from the US Department of Justice have not yet responded to the claims made on Mas’ud’s behalf. [BBC — Lockerbie bombing accused says he was forced into false confession]
END of UPDATE
“Judge Jeanine Ferris Pirro, US Attorney for the District of Columbia, said: ‘If you believe you have been personally or approximately harmed by the bombing of Pan Am 103 you can qualify for remote access to Masud’s trial.'”
BBC, Lockerbie relatives urged to sign up to view bombing trial
UPDATE (September 11, 2025) — US DoJ Heading Toward Approximate Truth
In the decades-long saga of Lockerbie, clarity is a rare commodity. But this week, the U.S. Department of Justice gave us an unusual gift.
What Judge Pirro actually said — and you can hear it clearly on the official U.S. Attorney’s Office video — was: “Proximately harmed.”
A quick note on the meaning: “Proximately harmed” is a legal term from the U.S. Crime Victims’ Rights Act (18 U.S.C. § 3771). It refers to people whose injury — physical, emotional, or financial — is directly and closely linked to the crime, rather than being incidental or remote.
Yet a tiny auto-caption error transformed the perfectly precise legal term “proximately harmed” into the hilariously vague “approximately harmed.”
For a brief moment, I wondered whether anyone who felt sort of harmed by Pan Am 103 might qualify as a victim.
And without missing a beat, the BBC printed the false and absurd quote — just as it has swallowed hook, line, and sinker almost every official narrative about Lockerbie from the CIA, FBI, and DoJ for nearly four decades.
For once, Lockerbie gives us a reason to smile. The case has always been wrapped in tragedy, politics, and controversy. But this slip is almost comical… and, dare I say, Freudian.
At the end of the day, this isn’t just a funny subtitle glitch. It’s a reminder that in the decades-long Lockerbie saga, precision matters.
Words can mislead, distort, or even erase legal reality. We need the truth, not an approximation.
Stay tuned!
END of UPDATE
“Allen Feraday should not be allowed to present himself as an expert.”
Lord Chief Justice
July 2005
This so-called forensic “breakthrough” is legally unreliable, as outlined in my previous post. Scientifically, it only reinforces a long-standing and deeply troubling truth:
Allen Feraday, the RARDE forensic examiner at the heart of the original Lockerbie investigation, was entirely unqualified for the role and should never have been allowed to testify as a forensic expert.
Feraday had no formal training or qualifications in forensic science — a fact that continues to cast a long shadow over the integrity of the entire case.
Touted as one of the most important terrorism trials of our time, the case is already unraveling into farce.
One piece of contested evidence is an umbrella allegedly sold in Malta by shopkeeper Anthony Gauci to a man said to resemble Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
In June 2006, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) obtained a preliminary opinion from the Forensic Science Service (FSS) on whether two fragments of the recovered umbrella — PI/449 and PK/206 — could yield identifiable fingerprints.
The Crown Office arranged for those fragments, along with related items (including PT/57(a)–(d) and PT/23), to be submitted for forensic analysis.
In a letter dated 3 July 2006, the Crown Office advised that FSS scientists had raised the possibility of analyzing these items for DNA.
On 21 November 2006, the Crown Office provided the Commission with five FSS reports. No identifiable fingerprints were recovered from any of the fragments.
However, an incomplete low copy number (LCN) DNA profile was obtained from two pieces of plastic comprising PT/57(a).
The partial DNA profile appeared to be from a male, but did not match the applicant and could not have come from him.
One FSS report concluded that the larger section of PT/57(a) likely came from the closing mechanism of an umbrella similar to a control sample (DC/45) obtained by police from Mary’s House in 1989.
The Crown Office then arranged for DNA samples to be taken from individuals known to have been involved in the recovery of PI/449.
None of those individuals matched the profile. Subsequently, on 6 April 2007, DNA samples were requested from Allen Feraday OBE, Dr. Thomas Hayes, and Anthony Gauci.
On 13 June 2007, the Crown Office sent the Commission an FSS report suggesting that Mr. Feraday could have contributed to the DNA profile obtained from PT/57(a).
According to the report, all but one of the DNA components in the profile were present in Mr. Feraday’s DNA. There was no evidence that Dr. Hayes contributed to the DNA profile.
While one additional component was also detected, it was deemed unsuitable for interpretation — as it could match a large number of people in any population.
What was once heralded as one of the most serious terrorism trials in modern history is now veering dangerously close to parody — a legal and forensic tragedy decades in the making.
Curious Incident
Interestingly — and highly unusually — Dr. Thomas Hayes completed Allen Feraday’s laboratory note, picking up mid-sentence where Feraday had left off. This raises immediate questions about procedural integrity and chain of custody.
Even more striking: it was Hayes, not Feraday, who went on to examine and sketch the release button — the very item from which the partial DNA profile was later obtained.
What exactly is going on here?
Bad Scientists
Both Thomas Hayes and Allen Feraday worked at the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) — a military weapons lab, not an independent forensic institution. In 1995, RARDE was absorbed into the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), and later became part of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) in 2001.
At just 43 years old, Dr. Hayes abruptly resigned — notably, just months after the discovery of the so-called ‘Lockerbie timer fragment.’ He then made a dramatic career pivot and retrained as a chiropractor. Seriously?
But Lockerbie wasn’t Hayes’s first forensic scandal.
His earlier lab work had already helped wrongfully convict an entire family — the Maguire Seven — in 1976. They spent years in prison before being exonerated in 1992. A government-appointed review led by Sir John May found:
“The whole scientific basis on which the prosecution [in the Maguire case] was founded was in truth so vitiated that on this basis alone, the Court of Appeal should be invited to set aside the conviction.”
Feraday’s track record was no better. In at least three separate cases, convictions based on his forensic “expertise” were later overturned on appeal.
In the 1993 Berry appeal, a senior judge explicitly stated that Feraday should never again be allowed to present himself as an expert witness.
That was seven years before the Lockerbie trial.
And yet — despite their discredited pasts — both men were brought forward as key expert witnesses at the infamous Zeist kangaroo court.
Q: Do you remember what the weather was like when the man came to the shop?A: When he came by… It wasn’t raining. But then it started dripping, not very much. It was not raining heavily. It was simply — it was simply dripping, but as a matter of fact, he did take an umbrella…
Q: Did he?
A: He bought an umbrella.
The Lockerbie Trial Transcripts — Page 4741
On November 18, 1991, the US Dept. of State issued a “fact sheet” regarding the indictment of Libyan citizens Megrahi and Fimah for their alleged role in the bombing of Pan Am 103 on December 21, 1988.
The sheet reads: In February 1991, Megrahi was described “resembling the Libyan who purchased the clothing items… most likely on December 7, 1988.”
Regarding the day of the purchase, Tony Gauci remembered that his brother Paul had gone home earlier to watch an evening football game (Rome vs. Dresden), that the man came just before closing time, around 7 p.m., and that there was some very light raining. (The man returned to the shop to buy an umbrella.)
The game allows for only two dates: November 23 or December 7, 1988.
The game Rome-Dresden on December 7 was played at 1 p.m., not in the evening. As a result, Paul Gauci thought that the purchases had occurred on November 23, 1988. [There is no evidence Megrahi was in Malta on that day.]
In March 2009, Mark Vella, the managing director of METEO MALTA, told Intel Today that their records “unambiguously indicate” that it did not rain in Sliema on December 7, 1988. Vella added that it was dripping during the evening of November 23, 1988.
“I can confirm there was light rainfall from 6 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. on Nov. 23, 1988 as can be seen from our official weather log book of Balzan, Vella told me.
“There was definitely no rain on Dec. 7 and although I cannot be 100 percent sure it most likely did not rain in Sliema either on that day as they are only a few kilometers apart.
I have proof of this from the weather log book and also satellite images.”
Tony Gauci claimed the Christmas lights were not lit in the Maltese city of Sliema when Megrahi allegedly bought clothes from his shop.
When asked to try to assess the most likely day of the purchase by DCI Bell, Tony Gauci stated:
“I’ve been asked to again try and pinpoint the day and date that I sold the man the clothing. I can only say it was a weekday.
There were no Christmas decorations up, as I have already said, and I believe it was at the end of November.”
Michael Refalo, a former tourism minister in Malta and a former high commissioner in London, said he had lit them on December 6 1988 and an entry in his diary confirms that he did so at 5:30 pm. Again, this obviously rules out the December 7 date.
However, at the trial, Tony Gauci stated the Christmas lights were lit when Megrahi allegedly bought clothes from his shop.
The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission concluded:
“There is no reasonable basis in the trial court’s judgment for its conclusion that the purchase of the items [clothes and umbrella that were found in the wreckage of the plane] from Mary’s House [in Malta] took place on 7 December 1988.”
Sources
Evidence that casts doubt on who brought down Flight 103 — The Guardian (June 17, 2007)
On This Day — Lockerbie Judges Under the Weather (Malta – December 7 1988) [2020]
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Lockerbie DNA Evidence Turns Upcoming Trial into a Soap Opera
What shocked me most was that I thought that all that had been gone through on Guildford and Birmingham, the one thing that had been achieved was that nobody would be convicted again on bad science. But yet in the Lockerbie case, it isn’t just the same bad science, it is the same bad scientists.”
Gareth Peirce
Solicitor for the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six
Intel Today 