Alan Feraday

Alan Feraday is a former employee of the Royal Armament Research Development Establishment (RARDE) at Fort Halstead in Kent.

RARDE was, after re-organisation, subsumed into the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) in 1995, part of which became the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) in 2001.

Forensic evidence

Feraday's forensic evidence was crucial in the January 31, 2001 conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi at the end of the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist, Netherlands. His evidence mainly concerned the Toshiba BomBeat radio cassette that was alleged to have contained semtex, and a printed circuit board fragment from a Mebo MST-13 timing device which was alleged to have triggered the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103. The court was told that although the timer fragment had initially been examined in May 1989 by Feraday's colleague at RARDE, Dr Thomas Hayes, it was not until September 1989 that Feraday sent a polaroid photograph of it to the Scottish police with a note saying it was the best he could do in the "short time available". His extensive travels to the United States, Germany and Japan, precluded the necessity for prosecution witnesses from those countries (especially Thomas Thurman of the FBI forensics laboratory) from testifying at the trial.

Grave misgivings

In October 2005, Dr Hans Köchler, international observer at the Lockerbie trial, reported grave misgivings about Feraday:

"The credibility of a key forensic expert in the trial, Mr Alan Feraday, has been shattered. It was revealed that 'in three separate cases, men against whom Mr Feraday gave evidence have now had their convictions overturned' (BBC, August 19, 2005). Mr Feraday had told the Lockerbie court that a circuit board fragment found after the disaster was part of the detonator used in the bomb on board Pan Am Flight 103. In the first case where Mr Feraday's credibility had been questioned the Lord Chief Justice had stated that Mr Feraday should not be allowed to present himself as an expert in electronics.

Case reviewed

Following a three-year review of the case, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) announced on June 28, [[2007] that it was granting Megrahi leave for a second appeal against conviction. The SCCRC said that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred because of the unreliability of prosecution witness, Tony Gauci.

In a statement dated June 29, 2007 Köchler expressed his surprise at the SCCRC's narrow focus and apparent bias towards the judicial establishment:

"In giving exoneration to the police, prosecutors and forensic staff, I think they show their lack of independence. No officials to be blamed, simply a Maltese shopkeeper."

Second appeal

New information casting fresh doubts about Megrahi's conviction was examined by three judges at a preliminary hearing in the Appeal Court in Edinburgh on October 11, 2007:

  1. His lawyers claim that vital documents, which emanate from the CIA and relate to the Mebo timer that allegedly detonated the Lockerbie bomb, were withheld from the trial defence team.
  2. Tony Gauci, chief prosecution witness at the trial, is alleged to have been paid $2 million for testifying against Megrahi.
  3. Mebo's owner, Edwin Bollier, has revealed that in 1991 the FBI offered him $4 million to testify that the timer fragment found near the scene of the crash was part of a Mebo MST-13 timer supplied to Libya.
  4. Former employee of Mebo Ulrich Lumpert swore an affidavit in July 2007 saying that he had given false evidence at the trial concerning the MST-13 timer

The second appeal will be heard by five judges in the Court of Criminal Appeal in 2008.

Qualifications

According to forensic scientist, Dr Michael Scott, who was interviewed in The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie, Feraday has no formal qualifications as a scientist apart from the technician-level Higher National Certificate (HNC).

See also

  • Alternative theories into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
  • Investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
  • Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial
  • Hans Köchler's Lockerbie trial observer mission

See Also

Thomas Hayes (scientist)

Thomas Hayes is a former forensic scientist at the Royal Armament Research Development...