Detectives investigating the Lockerbie bombing indicated yesterday
that they want to question the former Libyan intelligence chief arrested at the
weekend in Mauritania.
Abdullah
al-Senussi, who served for more than 30 years as Colonel Gaddafi’s right-hand
man, has long been suspected of masterminding the destruction of Pan Am Flight
103. He was detained at the airport in the capital, Nouakchott, while
travelling on a fake Malian passport from Casablanca and was with a man
believed to be his son. Prosecutors believe al-Senussi could be key to
unlocking the truth behind the terrorist outrage, which killed 270 people in
December 1988.
The
Crown Office in Edinburgh said: “The investigation into the involvement of
others with [Abdel Baset Ali] al-Megrahi in the Lockerbie bombing remains open
and the Crown will work with Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary and US authorities
to pursue available lines of inquiry.”
Al-Senussi
is Gadaffi’s brother-in-law and was his most senior spy chief and is thought to
have been privy to the regime’s darkest secrets. He is said to have chaired a
key meeting in 1988 which ultimately led to the downing of Pan Am 103. He is
also said to have recruited al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence officer
convicted of the Lockerbie attack in 2001 but released by the Scottish
government on compassionate grounds in 2009. (…)
Al-Senussi belongs to Libya’s Magarha tribe. Al-Megrahi, released
because he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and was said to have had
only around three months to live, belongs to the same tribe.
[One suspects that the Scottish detectives, if ever allowed access
to Senussi, will get precisely as much information about Lockerbie as they got from
Moussa Koussa.]
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