Douglas Boyd - Lockerbie: The Truth

Also by Douglas Boyd

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Agente: Female Spies in World Wars, Cold Wars and Civil Wars

The Solitary Spy: A Political Prisoner in Cold War Berlin

Red October: The Revolution That Changed the World

Novels:

The Eagle and the Snake

The Honour and the Glory

The Truth and the Lies

The Virgin and the Fool

The Fiddler and the Ferret

The Spirit and the Flesh

DOUGLAS BOYD

This book is dedicated to the memory of 270 people of all ages who died in an act of mass murder on 21 December 1988 above and in the town of Lockerbie and in homage to the individuals and families who lost their loved ones on that night but were denied justice and closure by government agencies in the USA and the United Kingdom.

First published 2018

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Douglas Boyd, 2018

The right of Douglas Boyd to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-7509-8965-7

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

This is a real-life whodunnit, without the final scene where the master detective calls all the suspects together and reveals who committed the crime which, in this case, is mass murder.

It is a scandal that, thirty years after the worst civil aviation accident in British history, we do not officially know for certain who blew up the Pan American Boeing 747-121 Clipper, registration N739PA, named Maid of the Seas above a small Scottish town on 21 December 1988, causing 259 deaths in an awful night when bodies and body parts of passengers and crew rained down from the sky onto Lockerbie. Amazingly, only eleven other people were killed on the ground although large parts of the Boeing jumbo jet fell on or just outside the town, causing a fireball 300ft high.

In the following days and months, thousands of police, military personnel and specialised investigators of the Ministry of Transport Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) scoured southern Scotland, finding debris over an area of 1,500 square miles. Investigators from the US Federal Aviation Authority took part and representatives of the FBI and CIA were present for reasons not divulged. Three years of the joint British/US investigation involved 15,000 statements being taken, producing as many questions as answers.

An improvised explosive device inside a modified Toshiba radio cassette player similar to the one that brought down the Pan American flight which crashed on Lockerbie had recently been seized from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) terror group by West German anti-terrorist police, but the Palestinian and Syrian terrorists and bomb-makers concerned were then released by a German judge for lack of evidence connecting them with a substantial cache of weaponry and bomb-making equipment in their possession.