John Crawford

John Crawford's book, published August 2002

John Crawford was born in Glasgow at the end of World War II, worked as a miner, and then served in the Royal Navy. In 1971, John Crawford joined the Scottish Police and served for over 29 years, most of those as a detective.

Detective Constable Crawford took a leading part in investigating the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and wrote a book about the experience: "The Lockerbie Incident: A Detective's Tale", which was published on 13 August 2002 (six months after Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's appeal against conviction had been rejected).

On pages 88/89, DC Crawford wrote:

"We even went as far as consulting a very helpful lady librarian in Newcastle who contacted us with information she had on Bernt Carlsson. She provided much of the background on the political moves made by Carlsson on behalf of the United Nations. He had survived a previous attack on an aircraft he had been travelling on in Africa. It is unlikely that he was a target as the political scene in Southern Africa was moving inexorably towards its present state. No matter what happened to Carlsson after he had completed his mission in Namibia the political changes were already well in place and his demise would not have altered anything. This would have made a nonsense of any alleged assassination attempt on him as it would not have achieved anything. I discounted the theory as being almost totally beyond the realms of feasibility.

"We eventually produced a report on all fifteen [the 'first fifteen' of the interline passengers] to the SIO Stuart Henderson, each person had their own story and as many antecedents as we could gather. The other teams had also finished their profiles of their group of interline passengers. None of them had found anything which could categorically put any of the interline passengers into any frame as a target, dupe or anything else other than a victim of crime."

Lockerbie 'first fifteen'

On 11 February 2010, George Burgess (Deputy Director of the Scottish Justice Directorate) emailed former diplomat Patrick Haseldine:

"You ask for an extract of the 'first fifteen' report referred to in John Crawford’s book. As I am sure you are aware, the Scottish Government itself is not involved in the conduct of criminal investigations. That responsibility lies with the police, under the direction of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. There is therefore no reason why we would have a copy of the 'first fifteen' report. I suggest that you contact Dumfries & Galloway Constabulary or the Crown Office."

On 8 November 2013, Patrick Haseldine emailed Detective Chief Superintendent Stuart Henderson to request an extract of the 'first fifteen' report (dealing specifically with interline passenger Bernt Carlsson) which WikiSpooks will publish.

Critic of Kenny MacAskill

Following the release on 20 August 2009 from prison in Scotland of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi who was convicted in 2001 of the Lockerbie bombing, John Crawford joined Stuart Henderson in criticising Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill:

"I think the compassion angle was all wrong. It was inevitable that people would use it against the decision he made as it was so obvious that Megrahi did not show one jot of compassion when he cold bloodedly went about his business of killing 270 innocent people."

See also

• Lockerbie Official Narrative
• Cameron's Report on Lockerbie Forensic Evidence
• The Framing of al-Megrahi
• The How, Why and Who of Pan Am Flight 103