Lockerbie documents: genuine or created to focus blame on Gaddafi?

[What follows is excerpted from a report by Jack Dennison-Thompson published today on the Maghrebi.org website:]

Fresh allegations accusing Libya, once again, to be the architect of the Lockerbie bombing in 1998 have arisen, with the US quick to endorse their validity.

According to the BBC, Samir Shegwara, a Libyan writer and politician, has published documents in his new book Murderer Who Must Be Saved, which contains classified documents that he claims he took from the archives of Libya’s former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi after the collapse of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime in 2011. No one, so far, not least the Americans nor the Libyans, have validated the documents and so question marks arise over whether they are genuine or have been created by those with vested interests in keeping the blame for Lockerbie firmly with Colonel Gadaffi.

The classified documents are claimed to have been dated October 4th 1988 with the handwritten report labelled as “top secret” alongside one of the files containing the subject matter “Experiments on the use of the suitcase and testing its effectiveness.”

The report later explains that the tests were effective in avoiding X-ray scanners ideal considering the Pan Am flight did not hand check the bags on the flight but rather just X-rayed them.

The report also details an agent by the name of Aboujila Kheir – believed to be Abu Agila Masud Kheir Al-Marimi – who was involved in the tests. More details are believed to involve the “expenses” of an agent who traveled to Malta days before the attack on Pan Am 103, despite the island effectively being the international base for all of Libya’s foreign intelligence operatives.

The documents reportedly implicate Abdullah Senussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, in planning both the Lockerbie bombing and UTA Flight 772 attack. Senussi was convicted in absentia for the UTA bombing in 1999 but never served his sentence. Scottish and American prosecutors later named him as a Lockerbie suspect in 2015.

Sami Shegwara was arrested on the 20th of March after the documents he released were seen as a national security risk. His publishers have come out and stated that Mr Shegwara is facing legal proceedings over the “alleged possession of classified security documents, without legal justification.”

The strange case around this arrest is that Shegwara who is the mayor of Hay al Andalous in Tripoli has openly shown his possession of these documents since 2018.

Some believe this shows that the document must be real for the arrest to take place yet it also calls into question why it would take seven years for such documents to become of such importance.

The documents have now been described by a former FBI agent as “dynamite” and will be used to prosecute Abu Agila Mas’id Kheir Al-Marimi, known as Masud, who is accused of building the bomb for his trial in Washington.

While these new documents have surfaced and become “dynamite” evidence in the past month, the case of Lockerbie has been a whirlwind of truth and lies.

This is so much so that Nelson Mandela himself was sceptical to blame Libya.

Documents in the National Archive of the UK have shown that Nelson Mandela told the UK that it was wrong to hold Libya responsible for the Lockerbie bombing.

Mandela was acting as the intermediary for Libya and in a conversation with Tony Blair on April 30th 2001 “Mandela argued it was wrong to hold Libya legally responsible for the bombing,” the cables revealed.

Mandela believed that the UN was wrong to impose economic sanctions on Libya after Al Megrahis’s extraction to the Netherlands for trial where he was convicted controversially. (...)

The unusual actions in this case echo a familiar pattern, as the US faces accusations of violating international laws to abduct a Libyan national, fuellng suspicions regarding Libyan involvement in the Pan Am attack.

This occurred in November of 2022 Libyan militiamen captured Abu Agila Mas’ud, accused of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. US agents took custody of the suspect in a controversial midnight raid in Tripoli. The operation highlights ongoing tensions surrounding the Lockerbie terrorist attack.

After decades of silence, the Lockerbie victims’ families have erupted in a rare public challenge, casting doubt on the US justice system’s ability to deliver a truly impartial trial.

Dr Swire who leads representations for the families who have lost loved ones in the attack and who lost his daughter himself believes the US has blurred the lines of this situation even more, with a UN trial being the more just prosecution.

“There are so many loose ends that hang from this dreadful case, largely emanating from America, that I think we should remember what (former president of South Africa Nelson) Mandela said to the world and to us then, and seek a court that is free of being beholden to any nation directly involved in the atrocity itself,” Swire told BBC Radio Scotland.

Their unprecedented call for a UN-led prosecution speaks volumes about the deep-seated suspicions surrounding America’s long-standing narrative of the terrorist attack.

Whilst Libya has been at the forefront for blame over the Lockerbie bombing, there are alternative theories which suggest Libya was not at the forefront for the bombing.

Many journalists support the opposing argument, suggesting that a bomb was planted on the plane at Heathrow Airport by a Syrian terrorist cell that was paid for by Iran.

Whether this theory of the attack is true or whether Libya is involved it appears that the bombardment of blame onto Libya which has been carried for 37 years feels unjust and excessive, to say the least.

The current investigations have begun with the new documents as the Scottish detectives have now been examining the new files to verify Libyans involvement, alongside the US trials still taking place.

After three decades, the case for Lockerbie seems to have a new lease of life rather, it appears it never really lost it as it has constantly been dug up by countless finger-pointing to Libya by the US and the West with no tangible evidence sticking.

These new documents could potentially reshape the understanding of the case. However, a lingering question remains: why are files that have existed for seven years now being presented as urgent and pivotal evidence?

Lockerbie bombing’s lasting impact on a ‘normal little town’

[What follows is excerpted from a report by Libby Brooks published in today's edition of The Guardian:]

Eleven of the street’s residents died when the wing section of Pan Am 103 crashed into Sherwood Crescent with the force of a meteorite on 21 December 1988, gouging a 30ft crater on this spot. The impact was such that some bodies were never recovered.

This once anonymous street was recreated in meticulous detail for the filming of the Sky Atlantic series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, which was first screened last month and stars the Oscar winner Colin Firth as Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed when a bomb exploded on the Pan Am flight from London bound for New York.

Although the drama has been widely praised, some relatives of the 270 people who lost their lives in what remains the UK’s deadliest terrorist atrocity have questioned the need for such graphic depictions of the immediate aftermath. A spokesperson for the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 group described it as “tragedy porn” to the Hollywood news site Deadline, while closer to home a Lockerbie resident who lost her sister and brother-in-law wrote in the Annandale Herald: “I don’t need to be reminded about the terrible scene that night.”

But for a generation born after 1988, this series may be their first exposure to the tangle of legal proceedings, conspiracy theories and international controversy that has become synonymous with the name of one small town in the south of Scotland.

With a second dramatisation airing on BBC One and Netflix later this year, a new BBC Scotland documentary, and the trial of the alleged bomb-maker starting in the US in May, Lockerbie is likely to remain in the spotlight this year, willingly or otherwise.

“It’s the most normal little town in the world, with a strong community, and people are just living their lives,” says the Rev Frances Henderson, a minister at Lochmaben and Lockerbie Churches. “You don’t see the trauma until suddenly you do. It’s there, being carried and dealt with, a trauma that is part of their lives and has shaped the last decades.”

Henderson has not watched the Colin Firth series herself, “not because I object to it but because I feel I’d have to psyche myself up to it,” she says.

“I think most people feel it’s been done respectfully but neither have I heard of many watching it because it’s too real. For those who weren’t there, who may be too young to remember, it’s perhaps useful, but not for those who were there.”

The series was based on Swire’s investigations into the bombing. He and many supporters have argued consistently for the innocence of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence officer who was convicted in 2001 at a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands of 270 counts of murder.

Swire believes that Megrahi, who was released on compassionate grounds by the Scottish government in 2009 after a diagnosis of terminal cancer and died in 2011 in Tripoli, was framed to deflect attention from Iranian and Syrian responsibility. This is rejected as a conspiracy theory by US victims’ relatives, who felt the series misrepresented the trial and portrayed Megrahi as “an innocent man that should be empathised with”.

Swire and other UK relatives continue to demand a public inquiry into the failure to take seriously or make public warnings that an attack on a Pan Am flight was imminent, while in May another Libyan, 72-year-old Abu Agila Masud, will go on trial in Washington accused of building the bomb that brought down the flight. He denies all charges.

Colin Smyth, the Scottish Labour MSP for the region, said: “There has been so much written about the trial and various conspiracy theories, but no one has ever spoken to me about any of that as a constituent.

“People of Lockerbie didn’t choose for their town to be known for this, but they took their responsibility to the victims very seriously from the first night – like the couple who found a young man in their field and didn’t want to leave him so stood vigil until dawn, or the man who scooped up the body of a toddler and drove them into town so they weren’t left in the cold and wet.”

“For decades they have welcomed people with open arms as the families of the victims continue to visit their loved ones’ last resting place. Those relationships have sustained – you hear of relatives staying at family homes in Lockerbie even now.”

Those relationships are woven through the generations, thanks to the enduring scholarship programme between Lockerbie Academy and Syracuse University, New York, which lost 35 students in the disaster.

The official version ... is absolute nonsense

[What follows is excerpted from a report published in The Sunday Times today:]

The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie remains the deadliest terrorist attack to have taken place in Britain. (...)

In all 270 people were murdered, among them Flora, the 23-year-old daughter of Dr Jim and Jane Swire. For Jim it was the start of a 35-year quest to find out who had killed her and why — a story that is being told in a five-part Sky drama starring Colin Firth as Swire.

A three-year investigation by the FBI and Scottish police led to the arrest of two Libyan men, one of whom, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was convicted of the attack in 2001. But after his trial it was revealed that the US government had paid millions to two central witnesses and some forensic evidence was discredited. Megrahi maintained his innocence until his death in 2012.

“An awful lot has been written about the Pan Am 103 Lockerbie disaster,” says Gareth Neame, Lockerbie’s executive producer. “But sometimes when you dramatise a story you bring a new perspective. We saw that, obviously, with the Post Office drama [Mr Bates vs the Post Office] — a story that had been bubbling under the headlines for years, a miscarriage of justice. Suddenly it captured people’s attention.”

Initially Swire accepted the American claim of Libyan responsibility for the bombing, but during the trial he began to have doubts. When Megrahi’s guilty verdict was read out, the doctor collapsed in disbelief, and went on to campaign for the Libyan’s retrial and release. He believes Megrahi was framed and that the bomb was planted by Iranians at Heathrow. (The US and UK governments maintain that the bomb originated in Malta, and was flown to Heathrow as part of a Libyan plot.)

Swire has been called a conspiracy theorist by some, but the drama supports his misgivings. Based on his book, Lockerbie: A Father’s Search for Justice, it has already been criticised by the American-based campaign group Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, who contend that the series will promote a “false narrative”. But its makers hope his story might become the Mr Bates vs the Post Office of 2025, generating enough public anger to prompt a closer examination of the many unanswered questions surrounding the attack.

Firth met Jim and Jane Swire a few weeks before the drama began shooting. “Jim Swire had not previously been someone with an innate distrust in institutions,” he tells me when I meet him on the courtroom set in Scotland where Megrahi’s trial is being restaged. “I’m not even sure he has that now. He simply wants to know what happened and why. He’s a rational man responding to facts as he sees them. I believe he would still be happy to be proved wrong if it meant knowing the truth.”

Firth tells me that Swire is plainly no crank. “This isn’t someone who has the kind of zealotry that makes them cling to a position no matter what. He has changed his position according to new information. He’s very, very alive to new facts, to new evidence. I think it takes quite a lot of courage to keep that up for nearly four decades, particularly when feelings are so strong. And I think a man like that is worth listening to.”

Jim Swire is 88. When we speak and I ask him how he is this morning he replies: “I’m ancient.” He peppers his conversation with references to his age and how little time he must have left. Yet when it comes to the details of the Lockerbie disaster, its ramifications and implications, he is tack-sharp.

He was, he says, “elated” on hearing that there was to be a dramatisation of his story. “Because it’s always seemed to me, throughout the past 36 years, that there is a yawning gap between the little bits that we could do as individual relatives of those who were slaughtered, and where the establishments of our country and America are on this issue. That gap is so horrendous that I know full well we have failed to bridge it. And now we need to bring it to the attention of other people who can make up their own minds about what happened.”

So what does he think happened? “The thing becomes simpler and simpler the more you know about it,” he says. “In July 1988 Iran had an Airbus with 290 innocent people on board shot down by a US missile cruiser in the Gulf. After that awful incident, instead of immediately saying, ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry,’ America decided to award a medal to the captain of the ship and ribbons to the crew, and for a long time failed to pay any compensation to the poor families.”

Swire’s theory is that the Lockerbie bombing, which targeted a flight that was supposed to be full of Americans, was meant to be revenge (a warning had been issued to US diplomats not to book tickets home for Christmas on PanAm Flight 103, allowing Flora Swire, for one, to grab a late seat). (...)

Swire is a man steeped in British institutions. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers who ran the British garrison in Bermuda on the outbreak of the First World War. “He was a man of principle of whom I was deeply in awe,” Swire says. He was sent from the family home on Skye to board at Eton from the age of seven. He learnt esprit de corps during national service as a second lieutenant in Cyprus and Port Said, then read geology at Cambridge before retraining as a doctor and becoming a family GP.

But trying to get straight answers as to why his daughter died changed him. In 1991, in an early bid to get the Libyan suspects Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah handed over to face charges, he took matters into his own hands and travelled to Libya to meet Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in person.

This, Swire concedes, was reckless in the extreme. “Looking back, I can only blush at my own naivety. But by that stage I had had enough time to discover that what I was being told by the authorities in my own country was not true, essentially, and I was determined.”

His determination led him to make his own conclusions, based on scrupulous examination of the evidence, including fragments of a circuit board that linked the Libyans to the bombing, which Swire believes were planted by the FBI.

“What I discovered was horrendous, and I’ve been able to discover enough about the truth to know that the official version that you and I are being solemnly told, to this day, particularly by the Americans, but also by the UK authorities, is absolute nonsense.” Another alleged Libyan terrorist, Abu Agila Masud, was arrested in 2022 and is due to face trial in the US over the Lockerbie bombing next May.

Swire is very aware that not everyone agrees with his version of events. The drama shows how the American families in particular think he has been gulled by the Libyans, or vanished into a Bermuda Triangle of his own theorising. “In a post-truth situation people like me are branded by the authorities as conspiracy theorists, or whatever phrase you like to use — and the establishment is always assumed to be the upright, honest broker of truth. The American relatives, many of them, think I’m absolutely bananas.”

When I spoke to Firth, who had been given Swire’s shock of grey hair and wore his “The truth must be known” badge, he was at pains to point out that Lockerbie: A Search for Truth is not just a father’s story. It begins with the brutal actuality of what Swire calls “the slaughter”, and also follows Jane (a superb Catherine McCormack) and the rest of their family. “It’s very much about the cost to them as a couple and as a family. This isn’t just about the search for judicial truth — it’s not just a legal drama,” Firth says.

Does Firth think we will ever learn the truth about Lockerbie? “I don’t know,” he says. “But I am in awe of this man’s determination to pursue it.”

Lockerbie: A Search for Truth is on Sky from Jan 2

Why haven't all the Lockerbie documents been published?

[This is the headline over a letter published today on the website of The Herald. It reads as follows:]

Regarding your recent coverage of the transfer of Lockerbie debris to the US for the Abu Agila Mas'ud trial next year, such activities will no doubt attract greater interest to the trial if that trial does occur in May 2025. 

The debris may remind some people of the horrors of the night of December 21, 1988 in the unsuspecting town, when that preventable disaster occurred in those dark and wind-rent skies high above the borders. Others will never forget.

Might it not have at least been more economical to transfer all UK Government written materials relating to their past handling of the origins of the disaster to the internet, so that the younger generation could form its own opinion about how the UK and US governments have behaved over this terrible tragedy over the past 36 years? Perhaps there would then be a little honest openness.

Your great paper sailed as close to the wind as anyone dared many years ago to try to expose some of the contents of some files concerning the Jordanian based bomb-maker Marwan Kreesat and his bomb-making prowesses, as he worked in Damascus and Neuss for the PFLP-GC terrorist group, even as that group’s funding (by Iran) was renewed: you dared to come under immediate threat of closure, did you not, in attempting to expose truth?

In our group’s 36th year in our search for the truth we believe that only the truth will still suffice for you at The Herald.

We could perhaps press for a complete disclosure of all Lockerbie-related files still held at Kew and elsewhere now that 36 years have passed. 

Which politicians would now have to blush at the audacity with which all that material was kept clear of Freedom of Information requests from the media, the public and from our group? Most are dead or disabled now. Alas that the redoubtable, loveable Scottish MP for Linlithgow, Tam Dalyell, was taken from us so many years ago.

Can significant material about terrorist groups and their links really have remained a genuine reason for secrecy all this time?

Dr Jim Swire, spokesman UK Families – Flight 103, Gloucestershire.

Fuselage of Lockerbie plane transferred to US as evidence for trial

[This is the heading over a statement issued today by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (the body responsible for the Scottish public prosecution system). It reads as follows:]

A section of the aircraft from the Lockerbie bombing is being transported to the US ahead of a Libyan suspect’s trial in Washington DC.

The transfer forms part of an evidence sharing agreement between Scottish law enforcement authorities and American counterparts. 

Families and next of kin have been informed of the development in the approach to the 36th anniversary of the terrorist attack on 21 December. Abu Agila Mas’ud is scheduled to go on trial in May next year for several charges, including destruction of an aircraft resulting in death.  

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of the murders of 270 people by the introduction of an explosive device onto a civilian aircraft. It has always been the Crown’s contention that Megrahi acted with others in the commission of his crime. 

The Lord Advocate, Dorothy Bain KC, said: 

“The trial court held that this act of state-sponsored terrorism was orchestrated by the Libyan government and that Megrahi was involved with others. That verdict has been subject of intense scrutiny and has been upheld twice in the appeal court.  

“The transfer of evidence for the trial in the US is a strong expression of the commitment that Scottish prosecutors and officers of Police Scotland have to bringing all those responsible for this terrible act to justice.” 

Chief Constable Jo Farrell said:

“My thoughts remain with the families and friends of those who lost loved ones in 1988 and who continue to show incredible dignity and strength.

“Police Scotland remains committed to working with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and our law enforcement colleagues in the United States to support the investigation and bring those responsible for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 to justice, no matter the passage of time.”

Laura Buchan, who is head of a team of prosecutors from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service working on the case, said: 

“Since Mas’ud was taken into custody by the US in 2022, Scottish prosecutors and police have been engaged in a formal evidence sharing process with the US Department of Justice.  

“The transfer of physical items of evidence from Scotland into US custody is beginning. The transfer includes parts of the fuselage of Pan Am 103 which are a production in the criminal investigation. We understand that the fuselage will hold significance for many of the families of those who lost their lives and they have been informed of the transfer plans.” 

The bombing of Pan Am 103 is the deadliest terrorist attack on UK soil and the largest homicide case Scotland’s prosecutors have ever encountered, both in terms of scale and of complexity. The Crown case at the Scottish court in the Netherlands in spanned 72 days and evidence from 227 witnesses. 

This was far from solely a Scottish disaster – 243 passengers, 16 crew members as well as 11 residents of Lockerbie were killed. In total the victims came from 21 different countries.

[A BBC News report about this development can be read here.]

His view of the world is left forever changed.

[What follows is excerpted from an article published today on the website of Hello! magazine:]

Colin Firth is starring in Sky's upcoming drama, Lockerbie: A Search for Truth – and it looks gripping.

The Bridget Jones star leads the cast as Dr Jim Swire, a father driven by loss in the wake of the 1988 Lockerbie disaster. The story, which is inspired by true events, follows Dr Jim and his wife Jane's fight for justice after their daughter Flora tragically died in the devastating terrorist attack. (...)

In new images [from the trailer], Colin is worlds away from his usual look as he dons snow-white locks and 80s-style glasses, while his co-star Catherine McCormack, who plays Jane, appears solemn as she gazes into the distance. 

So, what is the show about? 

The limited five-part series is based on the real 1988 Lockerbie disaster, which saw 259 passengers and crew killed when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie 38 minutes after take-off, with a further 11 residents losing their lives as the plane came crashing down.

After his daughter Flora dies in the disaster, Dr Jim Swire is nominated spokesperson for the UK victims' families, who have united to demand truth and justice. What follows is a relentless journey that sees Jim travel across continents and political divides. In doing so, he not only jeopardises his stability, family and life but completely overturns his trust in the justice system. 

The synopsis continues: "As the truth shifts under Jim’s feet, his view of the world is left forever changed.

"Exploring events from the disaster and its aftermath, Lockerbie: A Search for Truth provides an intimate account of a man, a husband, and a father who risks everything in memory of his daughter and the unflinching pursuit of truth and justice."

Starring alongside Colin and Catherine are Shetland star Mark Bonnar as Roderick McGill and Litvinenko's Sam Troughton as Murray Guthrie.

Other cast members include Ardalan Esmaili (Grey Zone, Deliver Me) as Abdulbaset al-Megrahi, Mudar Abbara (The Swimmers, In Another Life) as Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, Guy Henry (Holby City, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) as Paul Channon and Nabil Al Raee (The Teacher, 200 Meters) as Colonel Gaddafi.

Rounding out the cast as the Swire children are Jemma Carlton (Maxine, A Thousand Blows) as Cathy, Harry Redding (Red Rose) as William and Rosanna Adams as Flora. [RB: I am played in the series by John Wark (Outlander, Queen of the Desert, The Fitzroy.]

Lockerbie: A Search for Truth will air on Sky and NOW in the UK and Ireland on 2 January, 2025.

[A further report, also published today and headlined What To Expect From Lockerbie: A Search For Truth, can be found on the Country and Town House website.]

Lockerbie TV series "reminder of importance of justice, truth and resilience"

[What follows is excerpted from a long article just published on the Asap Land website:]

The tragic events of December 21, 1988, forever changed the small Scottish town of Lockerbie and the lives of hundreds of families worldwide. On that fateful day, Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb just 38 minutes after takeoff from London Heathrow, killing all 259 passengers and crew on board, as well as 11 residents of Lockerbie, when debris crashed into the town. This horrific act of terrorism, which remains the deadliest in UK history, is now the subject of a highly anticipated drama series simply titled “Lockerbie.”

Set to premiere on Sky Television in the UK and Peacock in the US, Lockerbie (...) promises to be a powerful and emotional exploration of one of the most devastating events in modern aviation history.

The series will delve into the aftermath of the bombing, focusing on the relentless pursuit of justice by those affected, particularly Dr Jim Swire and his wife Jane, who lost their daughter Flora in the attack.

With a star-studded cast led by Academy Award winner Colin Firth, Lockerbie is poised to be a gripping and thought-provoking examination of tragedy, resilience, and the unwavering search for truth.

Release Date:

As of now, an official release date for Lockerbie (...) has not been announced. However, given the recent production updates and casting news, the series will likely premiere in late 2024 or early 2025.

Filming began in Scotland in February 2024, with scenes shot in the Friars Brae area of Linlithgow. This suggests that production is well underway, but post-production work, including editing and visual effects, must be completed before the series is ready for broadcast.

The release strategy for Lockerbie may involve a simultaneous premiere on Sky Television and Now TV in the United Kingdom and Ireland, with a same-day or next-day release on Peacock in the United States. (...)

Expected Storyline:

Lockerbie (...) is set to be a five-part series that will chronicle the devastating bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 and its far-reaching consequences. The story will primarily focus on Dr. Jim Swire, portrayed by Colin Firth, and his wife Jane, played by Catherine McCormack.

The Swires lost their daughter Flora in the attack, and the series will follow their tireless quest for justice and truth in the aftermath of the tragedy.

Based on the book The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father’s Search for Justice by Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph, the series promises to offer an intimate and personal perspective on the events surrounding the bombing.

Viewers can expect a narrative that spans several decades, from the crash’s immediate aftermath to the protracted investigation, diplomatic negotiations, and eventual trial of suspects at Camp Zeist in 2000.

The storyline will likely explore the complex web of international politics and intelligence surrounding the case, including the involvement of Libya and its leader, Colonel Gaddafi.

The series may also delve into the controversies and theories that have persisted over the years, including questions about the actual perpetrators of the attack and the reliability of the evidence presented at trial.

Through it all, the personal journey of the Swire family will serve as an emotional anchor, highlighting the human cost of this tragedy and the enduring impact it has had on the lives of those affected.

Cast Members:

Lockerbie boasts an impressive ensemble cast, bringing together some of Britain’s finest acting talent to bring this complex and emotional story to life. The confirmed cast members include:

Colin Firth as Dr Jim Swire

Catherine McCormack as Jane Swire

Sam Troughton as Murray Guthrie

Mark Bonnar as Roderick McGill

Ardalan Esmaili as Abdelbaset al-Megrahi

Mudar Abbara as Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah

Guy Henry as Paul Channon

Nabil Al Raee as Colonel Gaddafi

Jemma Carlton as Cathy Swire

Harry Redding as William Swire

Rosanna Adams as Flora Swire (...)

List of Episodes:

As Lockerbie (...) is still in production, an official list of episode titles has not been released. However, we do know that the series will consist of five episodes. Based on the known storyline and historical events, we can speculate on potential focus areas for each episode:

Episode 1: “The Day the Sky Fell” – Likely covering the day of the bombing and its immediate aftermath.

Episode 2: “A Father’s Promise” – Could focus on Dr Jim Swire’s decision to seek justice for his daughter and the other victims.

Episode 3: “The Investigation Begins” – Might detail the early stages of the international investigation into the bombing.

Episode 4: “Diplomatic Deadlock” – Could explore the challenges in bringing the suspects to trial and negotiations with Libya.

Episode 5: “The Trial at Camp Zeist” – Likely to cover the trial of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and its controversial outcome.

Creators Team:

The creative team behind Lockerbie brings together a group of highly experienced and talented individuals from British television drama. Their collective expertise promises to deliver a historically accurate and emotionally resonant series.

The series’ executive producers include Gareth Neame and Nigel Marchant from Carnival Films, known for their work on acclaimed series such as Downton Abbey. Sam Hoyle represents Sky Studios as an executive producer, bringing valuable insight from the broadcasting perspective.

The writing team is led by David Harrower, a renowned Scottish playwright, who has adapted the story from Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph’s book. Maryam Hamidi joins as a guest writer for one of the episodes, adding her unique voice to the series.

Otto Bathurst and Jim Loach share directing duties for Lockerbie. Bathurst has previously directed episodes of Peaky Blinders and Black Mirror, while Loach brings experience from working on shows like Orange Is the New Black and The Crown. (...)

Where to Watch:

Lockerbie (...) will be available on multiple platforms, ensuring viewers across regions can access this critical series. Here’s a breakdown of where you can watch Lockerbie:

Lockerbie will be broadcast on Sky Television in the United Kingdom and Ireland. This means it will be available to Sky TV subscribers as part of their regular package. Additionally, the series will be available to stream on Now TV, Sky’s on-demand platform, allowing viewers to watch it at their convenience.

For audiences in the United States, Lockerbie will be exclusive to Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service. This platform offers free and premium tiers, though given its high-profile nature, Lockerbie is likely to be part of the premium content offering.

Australian viewers can watch Lockerbie on Channel 7, one of the country’s major free-to-air networks. 

Trailer Release Date:

A trailer for Lockerbie (...) has not been released, nor has an official date for the trailer’s premiere been announced. However, based on typical promotional schedules for high-profile television series, we can make some educated guesses about when to expect the first glimpse of the show.

Trailers for prestige drama series are often released 2-3 months before the show’s premiere date. Since Lockerbie will likely debut in late 2024 or early 2025, we might see the first trailer sometime in the fall of 2024. This timing would allow the promotional campaign to build momentum leading to the series premiere.

Final Word:

Lockerbie (...) stands poised to be a landmark television event, offering viewers a deeply personal and emotionally charged exploration of one of the most tragic incidents in modern history.

By focusing on the story of Dr Jim Swire and his family, the series promises to humanize the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing, reminding us of the enduring impact of such events on those left behind.

As we await the series premiere, it’s clear that Lockerbie will not only serve as a dramatic retelling of historical events but also as a poignant reminder of the importance of justice, truth, and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable loss.

With its stellar cast, experienced creative team, and the weight of its subject matter, Lockerbie (...) is set to be a thought-provoking and emotionally resonant addition to the landscape of prestige television drama.

Lockerbie families fight for trial access

[This is the headline over a report published today on the DnG24 website.  It reads as follows:]

Relatives of the UK Lockerbie victims are being urged to register their interest for access to the US trial next year of alleged bomb maker Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi.

It is due to take place in Washington, from May 12 2025.

And all the ‘living victims’ of the 1988 terrorist attack have until July 31 to contact America’s Department of Justice requesting remote access to the proceedings.

As there were 52 UK victims, it’s expected there will be hundreds of people who qualify.

The Pan Am 103 Lockerbie Legacy Foundation are trying to contact those affected to inform them of their rights and to offer support.

They said: “Our Foundation recently learned that Pan American flight 103 Living Crime Victims are legally defined as: those with the following relationships to someone killed in the attack: aunt, cousin, daughter, fiancé/fiancée, grandparent, niece/nephew, parent, partner, sibling, sibling-in-law, son, spouse, step-parent, step-child, uncle, next-of-kin, guardian.

“If one of these categories applies to you, you are entitled to specific rights, including case investigation and criminal trial information, court access, and restitution. These rights are supposed to be made without regard for your global geographical location.”

The Foundation is battling to ensure everyone affected can view the trial.

Last year they pressed the US Congress to pass legislation that provides individualised, direct, remote trial access to Pan Am 103 family members.

And on January 26 this year, President Biden signed a public law to guarantees such access.

However, Mas’ud’s defence team is arguing that access should be limited to live feeds at US Federal Courthouses, embassies and consulates.

But the Foundation are against this and said: “To view the trial at one of these designated sites, hundreds of us would have to travel great distances, some crossing oceans and continents, at our own expense and endure, more publicly than if we log in through Zoom, a trial that is expected to last months.

“The defence’s position is an outrage and a clear denial of our rights.”

It’s now “a critical moment” and they need to demonstrate to the court the extent of living crime victims globally.

Anyone who believes they are affected is thus asked to enroll in the Department of Justice’s Victim Notification System by email at usadc.panam103@usdoj.gov.

The Foundation team added: “Even if you do not plan to view the trial, declaring your interest could help all family members receive direct, virtual trial access.

“We implore you to give voice to your murdered loved ones and bear witness to justice.”

The conspiracies are as plausible as the official explanation

[What follows is a review published in yesterday's edition of the London Evening Standard:]

For a disaster that happened 35 years ago, the story of Pan Am Flight 103’s destruction over Lockerbie has a very 21st-Century feel.

This bombing, which caused the deaths of 270 people over a quiet Scottish town, has a confused and controversial epilogue. Moving from the attack itself and the immediate aftermath, this four-part Sky documentary traces the hunt for the bombers and the personal and public struggles of the victims’ families. 

This sense of protracted tragedy is entangled with espionage and geopolitics of the most amoral and conflicted kind, where concepts of national interest supersede individual human lives, so it was inevitable that the bombing has become a focus for conspiracy theories. That the conspiracies are as plausible as the official explanation only makes it murkier. 

At 7.03pm on 21 December 1988, residents of Lockerbie in Dumfries and Galloway heard the explosion. Those out in the fields would have seen a fireball falling to earth. Those unlucky enough to have been in its path were vaporised by exploding aviation fuel.

The Boeing 747 crashed through the edge of the town spraying debris and the dead over many miles. All 259 on board died that night along with 11 on the ground. Even given the sensitivity of the producers, the cumulative grief is hard to watch and harder to forget.

Viewers have no reference point for a golf course strewn with a hundred corpses or bodies rained on to the roofs of terraced houses. The image of a red suitcase embedded in Scottish mud and the sound of screaming families at JFK airport conveys the unimaginable.

The intimate stories begin with the families and Lockerbie residents, traumatised yet finding an odd comfort in communal loss. Among them is the English doctor Jim Swire, who has spent his life since the crash in pursuit of the truth about those responsible for the death of his 23-year-old daughter Flora.

Swire’s grief evolves into obsession (in 1990 he smuggled a fake bomb on to a flight to New York to prove the inadequacy of Heathrow security) and his testimony, including how his interpretation of events changed over time, provides the moral frame of the film and a necessary touchstone of human dignity and love amid realpolitik at its most cynical. 

The film talks to FBI agents who began their investigation at the end of a decade of state-sponsored terrorism linked to anti-American regimes in the Middle East. The agents are led away from the prime suspects, Iranian proxies the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Council (PFLP-GC), towards Libyans via Malta and Frankfurt.

It had been suggested that Iran used this Palestinian group based in Lebanon (where US and UK hostages had been taken) to exact revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane by an American warship a year before, but evidence from the crime scene lead the FBI to two Libyan intelligence agents, including the man eventually convicted of mass murder by Scottish judges in a Netherlands court, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. 

For eight years the Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi (“Mad Dog”, as Ronald Reagan called him), refused to hand over the two suspects. Swire went to see him in an extraordinary act of recklessness. “I was pretty crazy because of the freshness of the bereavement and I’d have done anything I could.”

In Tripoli, surrounded by Gaddafi’s female bodyguards with AK47s, he showed the dictator a briefcase full of pictures of his daughter and he asked him to allow the two men to go on trial, before pinning a badge that said “Lockerbie, The Truth Must be Known” on Gaddafi’s lapel.

By the time of the trial in 2000, the consensus about who was guilty had collapsed. The CIA and the FBI operated in suspicion and sometimes outright contempt for each other, a Libyan supergrass was discredited, the shopkeeper who sold clothes in which the bomb was wrapped was paid $2m by the FBI and the Swiss manufacturer of timers allegedly used in the bomb changed his testimony at the trial.

That Gaddafi’s son Saif stated Libya accepted responsibility but didn’t admit to actually doing it does lend credence to the view that they paid $2.86bn in compensation as the price of readmittance to the global oil trade after years of crippling US sanctions. 

What is left behind are two starkly defined camps who believe either justice was served or there was a cover-up – and between them are families in a state of purgatorial uncertainty. Among the politics, the film shows one of the recurring visits to Scotland of the Ciulla family from New York, who come to remember Frank Ciulla and to be reunited with the Lockerbie couple Hugh and Margaret Connell who discovered Frank’s body still strapped to his seat. 

Many of these families, predominantly American, mix their anger with suspicion about the conduct of their own government. Swire says he believes the al-Megrahi trial was a sham and the PFLP-GC were responsible. Rev John Mosey from Birmingham, whose 19-year-old daughter Helga died, says he is 99.9% certain al-Megrahi was innocent. The FBI insist they got their man. An ex-CIA operative says they were wrong all along. 

The moral authority of Swire is so powerful it is almost overwhelming – he is only really challenged once to which he reacts with the anger of a man who has spent more than 30 years fighting for something not yet realised. Lockerbie plays to the idea that government agencies are incapable of telling the truth, something corroding trust in institutions in the US and increasingly in Britain. 

This is a poised and sensitive documentary. It’s moving in so many ways that at times it’s hard to ready yourself for the blows, even when you know they’re coming. What is left are open wounds: grief that does not rest and no sense of an ending.

Lockerbie is available to watch on Sky Documentaries and Now from 25 November

Dismayed by a 35-year-long miscarriage of justice

[What follows is excerpted from a report published yesterday evening on the website of The Telegraph:]

Ever since Flora was killed on Pan Am Flight 103, Dr Jim Swire has been searching for answers – and says the FBI has the wrong man

Flora Swire is everywhere in her parents’ home. There are sketches and photos of her pinned to a board in the kitchen, on the mantelpiece, on the cover of a book; her portrait fills the wall across from their bed. There remains too a lock of her hair – a heartbreaking keepsake taken when the Swires saw her last, almost 35 years ago, after a bomb exploded beneath her feet in the Lockerbie disaster.

It was on 21 December 1988, the eve of her 24th birthday, that Flora, a promising neurology student who had just been accepted to do a PhD at Cambridge, took her seat on a plane bound for New York. She had hoped to spend Christmas with her boyfriend, but would never make it.

Thirty-eight minutes after taking off at Heathrow, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded in the sky over the town of Lockerbie in Dumfries and Galloway, with such force on a windy night that the debris landed across an 845-square-mile radius from southwest Scotland to the east coast of England. The fairylights on Christmas trees all over Lockerbie blew their fuses, along with the rest of the grid; smoking orange flames illuminated the town, which quickly filled with the stench of jet fuel. (...)

The investigation has remained open ever since, with one man, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a Libyan national, the only person ever to be convicted of the atrocity. He was convicted in 2001 and given a life sentence, and died in 2012. But in February this year, the case returned to the courts for the first time in more than two decades.

Another Libyan national, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi (known as Mas’ud) has been accused of making the Lockerbie bomb, and is now awaiting trial (he has pleaded not guilty). The development should offer some shred of hope for the families whose lives irreparably changed that night. Yet Dr Jim Swire, Flora’s father, ‘has no interest’ in the prospect of Mas’ud’s conviction.

‘I know he didn’t make the bomb,’ Jim tells me. ‘I know who made the bomb.’

As such, the official criminal verdict on events to date – upcoming trial included – is, in his view at least, nothing more than ‘twaddle’.

Jim, now 87, had been writing Christmas cards on that December night in 1988 when his wife Jane told him that a plane had just come down over Scotland. He tried calling Heathrow, where Flora had been dropped off by her younger sister, Cathy, a few hours earlier – he spent five hours on hold to Pan Am as news coverage blared, showing body parts hanging from a roof, the 30ft hole a chunk of the 747 had left in a Lockerbie street, and relatives howling in anguish at JFK Airport. When he finally got through, staff confirmed the worst possible news: Flora had been on the flight. (...)

Jim, an old Etonian who went to Cambridge, is still spry in his late 80s – part-raconteur, part activist, wearing a sharp grey suit and trainers. Today, Jim, who became a GP but ultimately left the profession after his daughter’s death, and Jane, 84, take turns bustling between the kitchen and back garden of their home in the Cotswolds town of Chipping Camden with offers of cheese sandwiches and cups of tea. It is a cosy idyll that conceals the sea of names and dates and evidence-tag numbers still etched on their minds.

Some 35 years on, the Swires’ agony remains barely beneath the surface, the memories of their eldest child both a precious gift and cruel reminder of what they have lost. ‘To lose a close family member gives you a life sentence immediately,’ Jim says. ‘Your whole life is altered. And you have to start asking yourself how, how can you go on living, or how can Jane go on living, with a loss so terrible as this?’

Their experiences are documented in Lockerbie, a new four-part documentary that airs on Sky next week. It is a panoptic watch, following the lives of the residents in the town that was, until that day, just a fish ’n’ chip pitstop, 75 miles from Glasgow, before it was completely upturned. The documentary follows the families of UK and US victims, and officials from across the town’s police force, the FBI and the CIA, too. But it also lays bare how devastation led to remarkable acts of humanity, as residents mounted a volunteer effort to wash the clothes and teddies scattered thousands of miles from where they should have ended up, and sent them back to passengers’ loved ones; some of which resulted in relationships with grief-stricken families an ocean away that remain strong. Their lives are, now, forever intertwined.

But underlying the heartfelt stories is a darker thread – for decades on, opinions about who was to blame for the disaster are more divided than ever.

Jim remains dismayed by what he sees as a 35-year-long miscarriage of justice. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, he became the spokesperson for the UK Families Flight 103 group and in the intervening decades, he has met numerous experts and officials, and had independent reviews of evidence undertaken. All of which has convinced him that justice has not been served – and that the wrong man was imprisoned, just as another ‘wrong man’ is now about to be tried.

His theory – that Libya wasn’t responsible for the bombing – runs counter to al-Megrahi’s conviction and Mas’ud’s arrest, and has been dismissed by many. But there are others in his corner, too. ‘Enough honest, reliable and knowledgeable people have discovered the awful truth behind this to know that the truth will now be able to look after itself,’ Jim says. ‘If I die tomorrow, I know the truth will eventually come out.’

Among those people is former CIA investigator John Holt, the long-time handler for the principal US government witness at al-Megrahi’s trial, Libyan agent Abdul Majid Giaka. Holt said at the time that Giaka never provided ‘any evidence pointing to Libya or any indication of knowing anything about that nation’s involvement in the two years after the bombing’ – despite later testifying. But when accused of lying under cross-examination, Giaka replied: ‘I had no interest in telling anybody any lies.’

Others who have been vocal about what they view as Libya’s wrongful implication include solicitor Clare Connelly, director of the Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit, an independent project established by the School of Law of the University of Glasgow, and other UK relatives, including John Moseley [sic], whose 19-year-old daughter Helga was killed on Flight 103.

Al-Megrahi’s trial took place 22 years ago at Camp Zeist, a Scottish law court set up in the Netherlands (deemed a neutral territory), where judges heard that he had placed a bomb in a Samsonite suitcase. Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, his co-accused, was acquitted.

There was no smoking gun for the prosecution, but al-Megrahi was found guilty based on a series of links they felt couldn’t otherwise be explained: including that he had an office in Switzerland down the hall from a clockmaker whose device was used to make the bomb; and that clothing fragments found alongside remains of the bomb were traced back to a Maltese shop that its owner, Tony Gauci, said al-Megrahi had visited.

At the same time, there were escalating tensions between the West and Libyan premier Colonel Gaddafi, who was suspected to have ordered the bombing of a nightclub frequented by US personnel in West Berlin in 1986. Judges in al-Megrahi’s trial conceded the case included ‘a number of uncertainties and qualifications’; yet he was sentenced to life. (Libya later paid $2.7 billion to families of Lockerbie bombing victims, though this was considered a political move rather than an admission of guilt.) (...)

Time has only bolstered his defence of ‘poor’ al-Megrahi, having formed personal relationships with both him and Gaddafi before they died. They would exchange Christmas cards, and when al-Megrahi was given compassionate release in 2009 following a diagnosis of prostate cancer – returning to a hero’s welcome on the tarmac at Tripoli airport – Jim travelled to Libya to see him on his deathbed. At the time, Jim recalled al-Megrahi’s words to him: ‘I am going to a place where I hope soon to see Flora. I will tell her that her father is my friend.’

He was, in Jim’s eyes, only ever an unwitting pawn in geopolitically motivated ‘deception’ that he says is even now preventing justice for Flora and the other victims from being served. He also took a handful of clandestine trips to Gaddafi’s compound (he did not tell any authorities, and only informed Jane imminently beforehand), in which he would hear that the regime had not been to blame. On leaving their first meeting, Jim pinned a UK Families Flight 103 badge to Gaddafi’s lapel as a show of solidarity for the truth. He believes other UK families are onside, although many have never spoken publicly. But there are certainly others, particularly those in the US, who see this affinity with Gaddafi as a grave error.

For Jim, there are two pieces of evidence that point to al-Megrahi’s wrongful conviction. The 2001 case heard that the explosive had first travelled from Malta to Frankfurt, where Flight 103 began its journey to New York. (The London Heathrow stop was a layover.) But Jim believes the bomb was planted at Heathrow. At al-Megrahi’s appeal in 2002, a baggage handler told lawyers that the baggage build-up area at Terminal 3 had been broken into the night before the bombing.

The other piece of evidence relates to the bomb fragments. According to John Ashton, a researcher on al-Megrahi’s legal team, documents not disclosed during the original trial found differences between the metals of the timers being supplied to the Libyans at the time and those within the fragments police recovered from the Lockerbie site. The circuit-board patterns, however, did align, deemed to be the more important evidence.

Clare Connelly of the Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit also questions the veracity of shopkeeper Tony Gauci’s evidence, as there have been claims that he was paid in connection with his participation in the inquiry, which she says would be ‘totally contrary to the interests of justice’. But in November 2013 the Crown Office said: ‘No witness was offered any inducement by the Crown or the Scottish police before and during the trial and there is no evidence that any other law ­enforcement agency offered such an inducement.’

As for who was actually responsible, Jim argues it was Iran, not Libya. He goes on to suggest that it might have been a retaliatory attack for the US shooting down an Iranian passenger plane, thought to have been incorrectly identified as a fighter jet in July 1988, which killed 290 innocent civilians. In his view, with American hostages held in Iran at the time and an upcoming election, the finger had to be pointed elsewhere. ‘What we’re being told is absolute nonsense from beginning to end. It was designed to protect the relationship between Britain and America and to help in getting home American hostages held by Iranian interests back in ’88.’

Jim insists that the bombmaker was not Mas’ud, as the US alleges, but ‘a Jordanian who was a double agent, or even a triple agent’ – feeding intelligence both to his own country and the CIA, while making explosives for a militant group active in Palestine at the time, called the PFLP-GC. Others have theories of their own around Iran’s involvement: Holt has also said ‘there was a concerted effort, for unexplained reasons, to switch the original investigations away from Iran and the PFLP-GC’ – backing Jim’s belief that the focus on Libya was politically motivated.

For the officials who spent years putting together their case, however, Jim’s theory is not credible enough to upend ‘the biggest case the FBI ever had… I don’t believe, in the history of law enforcement, there was a crime quite like Pan Am 103.’ So says Richard Marquise, who led the FBI investigation. ‘I will never attack [Jim], I will never tell him he’s a liar or wrong. I will never say a negative thing, because I cannot feel his pain; I am sure it’s enormous. But I disagree with his assessment of the evidence.’ (...)

For Jim, his ‘obsession’ has been an outlet for the pain of losing Flora. As he puts it: ‘It has provided me with a way of coping with my grief.’

As for Jane, she has had little choice but to accept her husband’s dogged pursuit of answers; something Jim is painfully aware of. ‘[I often think] what is it doing to Jane, that I’m still doing this?’ he admits. (...)

There is another source of anguish for the Swires – a series of missteps without which Flora may never have boarded Flight 103 in the first place.

In late October 1988, West German police found a bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player in an apartment in Neuss, believed to have been manufactured to detonate mid-air. The British Department of Transport (DoT) went on to warn airports and airlines of its existence via telex the next month.

Then, on 5 December, an anonymous threat was phoned in to the US embassy in Helsinki, stipulating that within two weeks, someone would carry a bomb on to a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to the US. Notices were put up on embassy walls, and US officials were told they could rebook on another flight home for Christmas if they so wished; Interpol informed 147 countries, Britain included – yet the ‘Helsinki warning’ was never made public.

Two days before Lockerbie, a circular featuring images of the explosives authorities feared had been designed to blow up planes was signed by the DoT’s principal aviation security advisor, but never sent out. (...)

Jim would like there to be an examination of the evidence in the International Criminal Court. He sees this as the only possible route to justice now – but each passing year makes it less likely.

‘Our numbers are dropping all the time from people dying off from old age,’ he says of the families’ group, ‘and I’m amazed that I haven’t long ago because the stress all this has been over the last 35 years – why I haven’t died of a heart attack, I don’t know… But I would love it if [the truth] were to come out while we were still around.’

John Dower, director of the new documentary, says that his main hope is that those involved in it will ‘get some resolution, some peace, because that’s what struck us most making this, the ongoing trauma. It’s 35 years later, but that trauma is still there.’

Lockerbie will be on Sky Documentaries and Now from 25 November

Trial of kidnapped Libyan could unravel entire US Lockerbie bombing narrative

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Mustafa Fetouri published in the current issue of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It reads in part:]

Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, 74, a Libyan national, appeared in a federal court in Washington, DC, on Dec 12, 2022, charged in connection with the bombing that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland while flying from London to New York.

 According to US prosecutors, Mas’ud made the bomb that blew up the plane on Dec 21, 1988, killing 270, including 11 people on the ground. Two other Libyans have been tried for the same crime: Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted while his co-accused Lamin Fahima was acquitted in 2001. Al-Meghrahi protested his innocence until his 2012 death from prostate cancer in his Tripoli home. In fact, his conviction was widely criticized by the legal community and by United Nations observer Hans Kochler, who cited “foreign governmental and intelligence interference in the presentation of evidence.” 

Mas’ud’s kidnapping and subsequent “extradition” to the US started in the poor suburb of Abu Salim, south of the Libyan capital Tripoli, where armed militias roam freely. 

On the night of Nov 16, 2022, Mas’ud was getting ready for bed when half a dozen unmarked cars pulled up in front of his home. Four masked and armed men forced their way into his bedroom, dragged him out in his pajamas, shoved him into one of the cars and drove away. One of the masked men told the small crowd that quickly formed in the street that Mas’ud would be back soon. Abdel Moneim Al-Maryami, the family’s spokesman and Ma’sud’s nephew, described the shock for onlookers who “watched helplessly.” 

That evening Mas’ud had just returned from his third visit to the hospital in a week. The septuagenarian suffers from a host of illnesses made worse during his decade-long incarceration in the notorious Al-Hadba prison in Tripoli, accused of preparing car bombs in Libya’s 2011 civil war. The US Justice Department alleges that Mas’ud first confessed to making the Lockerbie bomb in Al-Hadba prison, but the former director of that prison, Khalid Sharif, denies that Mas’ud ever made such a confession while he was there. Sharif, now living in exile in Turkey, was one of the top leaders of the organization known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. In 2004 the US listed this Afghanistan-based group as terrorists but unlisted it in 2015 after it participated in the 2011 US-NATO supported armed revolt that toppled former leader Muammar Qaddafi’s government.

The following morning the family started searching for Mas’ud, a daunting task because different militias have different detention centers. After a week and multiple visits to the headquarters of different militias, the offices of the prime minister and the prosecutor general, and different detention centers around Tripoli, Abdel Moneim was told where he was and allowed to visit him. 

In detention Mas’ud told his visitors that nobody “interrogated him,” let alone explained why he was detained or by whom. Family members continued visiting until one day his son, Essam, went for a visit but was told his father had been taken to Misrata, some 186 miles (300 km) east of Tripoli. “He was handed over” to Joint Force, a notorious and powerful militia, Essam said. 

No one mentioned the idea of handing him over to the US. In fact, Essam said, “they assured us that he was being kept there for his own safety.” Other family members had filed a kidnapping report with the police. Government officials denied knowing anything about the kidnapping. The prosecutor general denied issuing an arrest warrant and promised to investigate the matter. 

Mas’ud made headlines on Dec 21, 2020, the 32nd anniversary of the bombing, when then-US Attorney General William Barr accused him of assembling the bomb and handing it over to Al-Megrahi in Malta. 

Libyan laws do not permit the extradition of its citizens to stand trial abroad, and it has no extradition treaty with the US. In a BBC interview in 2021, Libya’s US-educated foreign minister, Najla El-Mangoush, said her government was “open” to the idea of extraditing suspect Mas’ud but “within the law.” Faced with a huge public outcry, El-Mangoush denied that she ever said she was open to Mas’ud’s extradition, forcing the BBC to release the video clip of the interview in which she made that claim.

The US and Libyan governments knew that Mas’ud could not legally be transferred to the US so they colluded with Joint Force, a militia loyal to Tripoli’s government, to grab him.

Just before midday on Dec 11, 2022, some Pan Am Flight 103 victims’ families received an “urgent update” email from the Scottish authorities updating them on their efforts to prosecute Mas’ud. The message’s closing line said the US “has obtained custody” of him. 

I was in Paris, waiting for news because a friend had already alerted me to expect some. His family first heard the news from me after I spoke to their spokesman Abdel Moneim that morning.

On Dec 12, Mas’ud limped into Judge Robin Meriweather’s DC courtroom where he told the judge that he “cannot talk” before meeting his attorney. A day later, a Libyan businessman told me that he was ready to fund a defense team. But appointing the right defense team thousands of miles away is not an easy task for his family who are still in shock and confused by the conflicting advice they are getting from friends and volunteers trying to help them. 

The fact that he was kidnapped should be reason enough to halt any further legal proceedings against him. But the US has a history of kidnapping suspects and sending them for interrogation to countries that use torture liberally. 

On two previous occasions, US commandos kidnapped suspects from Libya to try them in the US. Ahmed Abu Khatallah,  was kidnapped in 2014, and tried and convicted in the US for participating in the 2012 attack on the US compound in Benghazi, which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. In 2013 Abu Anas al-Libi was snatched and taken to US for trial accused of planning the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. He died of cancer in custody days before his trial. For this third kidnapping the US outsourced the dirty work to a local militia.

The news that Mas’ud had been kidnapped was condemned by Libya’s parliament, High Council of State (a consultative body), the national security adviser and the minister of justice. They also warned that handing him over to the US would be illegal and an infringement of Libyan sovereignty. However, none of them knew exactly what happened, and Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Debeibeh kept silent. The uproar was repeated when Mas’ud was reported to have been sent to the US.

The public reaction has been supportive of Mas’ud and critical of the government in Tripoli. In a clumsy televised speech, Debeibeh attempted some damage control but instead made things worse. He said that “this man [Mas’ud] killed 270 innocent souls in cold blood,” but did not provide any evidence. Most Libyans mocked him and asked whether more Libyans would be sent to the US for Lockerbie bombing trials. 

Rumors of more extraditions of Libyans intensified in the wake of a Jan. 12, 2023 unannounced visit of CIA Director William Burns. (...)

A second Lockerbie bombing trial is very unlikely. US prosecutors will try to avoid such a scenario because it could lead to re-examining the whole Lockerbie trial evidence of 2001, as well as evidence that has emerged since Al-Megrahi’s conviction. Doing so could unravel the entire case and cast serious doubts about the evidence used to convict Al-Megrahi 22 years ago and raise questions about Libya’s responsibility for the bombing.

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the bombing and now represents UK victims’ families, argues that the United Nations, not the US, should try Mas’ud. He said “no one country can be the plaintiff, the prosecutor and the judge” in this case. His compatriot, law professor Robert Black, thinks Mas’ud can still “get a fair trial” in a US court. The professor believes that US prosecutors must prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Mas’ud made the device that destroyed the jumbo jet on that cold December night in 1988, that his bomb, and no other, caused the disaster and that Mas’ud knew that his bomb would be used for that purpose.

Professor Black, the primary figure behind the previous Lockerbie bombing trial in Camp Zeist under Scots law in The Netherlands, thinks it is not “essential” for US prosecutors to show how the bomb got on the plane in order to get a conviction. In such a scenario the evidence to convict Mas’ud will rest, heavily, on the analysis of the fragment of circuit board that the US claims was part of the timer that set the bomb off in midair. That tiny fragment, US investigators claim, was found in a Scottish field where debris from the plane was scattered. However, since that first Lockerbie trial, evidence has emerged demonstrating that the fragment was actually planted to frame Libya.

George Thompson, a former Scottish police officer turned private investigator, who has worked extensively on the case, claims to have the evidence to show exactly that. Thompson told me that he is ready to be a witness in the upcoming US trial, whenever that might be.

If convicted, Mas’ud is certain to face life imprisonment. In his first court appearance on Dec 12, prosecutors told him that they will not be seeking the death penalty. US former Attorney General Barr, in a BBC interview published the next day, said Mas’ud should receive the death penalty. Barr also said that Mas’ud’s alleged confession, should be admissible in court, despite concerns by others that it may have been coerced. 

Mas’ud’s trial could take months to start and weeks to end. Regardless of the outcome, most Libyans believe it will not bring us any closer to the truth about Lockerbie.

Will Libya extradite ex-spy chief to US over Lockerbie?

[This is the headline over a report published yesterday on Voice of America's VOA Africa website. It reads in part:]

The recent handover of a former Libyan intelligence officer by the Tripoli-based government to the US for his alleged involvement in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing has sparked speculation that an ex-Libyan spy chief could be next.

Questions about the potential extradition of former Libyan spy chief Abdullah al-Senussi have been circulating after US authorities earlier this month announced Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, accused of making a bomb that killed 259 people aboard a Pan Am flight and 11 on the ground in Scotland, was in their custody.

The potential extradition of al-Senussi, currently serving time in Tripoli for his involvement in crimes committed under the Gaddafi regime, could lead to a trial for his alleged involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. This would mark a significant turning point in the long-standing investigation into the 1988 terrorist attack.

Al-Senussi's family has appealed to Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah to release him.

"This is the final warning to the Libyan government: If Abdullah al-Senussi and his comrades are not freed, all viable resources in the south will be put to a halt," al-Senussi's son told local news on Monday.

Al-Senussi, who is also the brother-in-law of late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, hails from al-Magarha, a tribe renowned for its ties with the former regime and its influence in southern Libya.

During a recent interview with Al Arabiya, a pan-Arab news channel, Dbeibah denied any intention of extraditing al-Senussi to the US.

"All of these are fabrications and media exaggeration," he said.

Political analyst Ibrahim Belgasem told VOA said that “Libyan law does not allow the extradition of Libyan citizens for trial in a foreign country,” adding that Libyan citizens “feel very sensitive about this case as they suffered years of sanctions and were isolated from the world.” (...)

In 1992, after Libya refused to extradite suspects al-Megrahi and Fhimah, the United Nations imposed an air travel and arms embargo on the country. This embargo was later broadened to include an asset freeze and a ban on the export of certain goods to Libya. (...)

In 1999, the Libyan government agreed to transfer the two suspects to the Netherlands for trial, following negotiations led by Nelson Mandela and the Saudi government with the US and UK.

In 2001, al-Megrahi was found guilty while Fhimah was acquitted and returned home.

In 2008, Libya reached an agreement with the US to establish a process for resolving claims by American citizens and companies against the Libyan government, thanks in part to the Libyan Claims Resolution Act (LCRA), a bill sponsored by then-Senator Joe Biden.

The LCRA was passed following the settlement reached between the Libyan government and the families of the victims, which included a payment of $2.7 billion.

Al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, was the sole individual to be convicted in connection with the Lockerbie bombing. Despite maintaining his innocence, he was sentenced to 27 years in prison and ultimately served only seven before being released on compassionate grounds due to terminal illness. He died in Libya in 2012.

In 2020, US Attorney General William Barr announced new charges against a former Libyan intelligence operative, Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, for his role in building the bomb that killed 270 people.

Earlier this month, US law enforcement officials confirmed Al-Marimi was in custody for his alleged role in Pan Am Flight 103.

"The United States lawfully took custody of Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi and brought him to the United States where he faces charges for his alleged involvement in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103," the White House said in a statement on Dec 14.

Libya has no extradition agreement with the US and details about the handover remain unknown. (...)

It took the Libyan government three days to admit its role in the extradtion, causing hundreds of Libyans, including Al-Marimi's family, to protest condemning the prime minister.

Abdulmonem Al-Marimi, nephew and spokesperson of Masud’s family told The Associated Press that "everyone knows that this thing must be done according to Libyan laws, but unfortunately the government handed him over, bypassing all Libyan laws.”

"Our demand is from the Attorney General that we hope that he will take measures regarding the Prime Minister [Abdul Hamid Dbeibah], who admitted and said that he's the ones who extradited him,”Al-Marimi added.

If the possibility of extraditing al-Senussi to Washington arises, "there is concern that his supporters, who hold significant sway in sensitive areas of Libya such as the oil fields and water resources in the south, could cause unrest in the country," Belgasem said.

This concern is supported by the fact that al-Senussi's family has twice disrupted the water supply for over 2 million people in the city of Tripoli, once over the kidnapping of al-Senussi's daughter and the other when the family attempted to secure his release.

Political analyst Salah Al-Bakoush, however, told VOA that might not happen this time around and if it did, "General Khalifa Haftar controls the south, so the US could push him not to allow al-Sanussi's family to create any trouble in that region."

Al-Bakoush also said al-Senussi's extradition to Washington is "highly unlikely" at least until the public outrage over the extradition of Al-Marimi subsides.

Masud "confession" states he was Malta clothes purchaser not Megrahi

[What follows is excerpted from a report published today in the Daily Record headlined Lawyer of only man convicted of Lockerbie bombing 'concerned' by arrest of suspect in US:]

The lawyer for the family of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, expressed concern over Masud’s arrest. (...)

Aamer Anwar said the arrest of Masud raises important questions over Megrahi’s conviction. Several victims’ families – but not all – believe it to be unsafe.

He said: “The United States claim that Masud’s confession to being involved in the conspiracy with Al-Megrahi to blow up Pan Am Flight 103, was ‘extracted’ by a ‘Libyan law enforcement agent’ in 2012, whilst in custody in a Libyan prison. What the US should have said was that Masud was actually in the custody of a war lord, widely condemned for human rights abuses and the circumstances in which such a confession was extracted would be strongly opposed in any US/Scottish court.

"The US criminal complaint against Masud states that he bought the clothes to put into the Samsonite suitcase that is claimed went on to blow up Pan Am Flight 103. The problem for the US department of justice is that the case against Megrahi is still based on the eyewitness testimony of Toni Gauci, stating that Megrahi bought the clothes.

“How can both Megrahi and Masud now be held responsible? In July this year, the UK Supreme Court rejected our leave to appeal seeking to overturn the conviction of the Scottish High Court which maintained Al-Megrahi was the bomber.

“Our legal team is in touch with the Libyan authorities but will also now consider what this means for the potential of any further miscarriage of justice appeal for Al-Megrahi. For the Megrahi family this is another piece in the jigsaw of lies, built on the back of the Libyan people, the victims of Lockerbie and the incarceration of an innocent man.”