[I am grateful to a reader of this blog for drawing my attention to an article by Robert F Worth in The New York Times of 30 January 2013. It is a long profile of French novelist, journalist and editor Gérard de Villiers. The relevant paragraph, on page 5, reads as follows:]
I asked de Villiers about his next novel, and his eyes lighted up. “It goes back to an old story,” he said. “Lockerbie.” The book is based on the premise that it was Iran — not Libya — that carried out the notorious 1988 airliner bombing. The Iranians went to great lengths to persuade Muammar el-Qaddafi to take the fall for the attack, which was carried out in revenge for the downing of an Iranian passenger plane by American missiles six months earlier, de Villiers said. This has long been an unverified conspiracy theory, but when I returned to the United States, I learned that de Villiers was onto something. I spoke to a former CIA operative who told me that “the best intelligence” on the Lockerbie bombing points to an Iranian role. It is a subject of intense controversy at the CIA and the FBI, he said, in part because the evidence against Iran is classified and cannot be used in court, but many at the agency believe Iran directed the bombing.
Initially the CIA pointed the finger at a ‘Syrian backed Palestinian group funded by Iran’.
ReplyDeleteA good catch all that would go uncontested by the neo-con media and those who think Arabs and Muslims all look the same.
But this line was not officially pursued because this ‘group’ was too big to scapegoat because they had the backing of Russia and China at the UN.
Whereas Libya was a defenceless country that could be easily scapegoated and then destroyed on a whim.
Only 15 Westminster MPs opposed the destruction of Libya and both Russia and China stood aside, which admittedly they now regret.
And now the ‘Syrian backed Palestinian group funded by Iran’ conspiracy theory for Lockerbie has resurfaced, partly because the Megrahi conviction is so discredited, but also because it is now likely to be used as a justification for the destruction of Syria?