Lockerbie relatives to appeal Megrahi conviction

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads as follows:]

British relatives of victims of the Lockerbie atrocity are planning another attempt to overturn the conviction of the only person found guilty of the attack after a former Iranian spy went public with his claims that Syrian-based extremists recruited by Iran carried out the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Former Iranian intelligence officer Abolghassem Mesbahi told a TV documentary, screened last night and repeated tonight, that the December 1988 bombing was undertaken by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) on behalf of Tehran.

He claimed it was carried out in revenge for the mistaken shooting down in July 1988 of an Iran Air Airbus by the USS Vincennes, a US Navy cruiser in the Gulf.

Iran's then leader Ayatollah Khomeini had pledged the skies would "rain blood" in revenge.

During Al Jazeera's Lockerbie: what really happened? documentary, Mr Mesbahi said: "Iran decided to retaliate as soon as possible. The decision was made by the whole system in Iran and confirmed by Ayatollah Khomeini.

"The target of the Iranian decision makers was to copy exactly what happened to the Iranian Airbus. Everything exactly same, minimum 290 people dead."

Campaigner Dr Jim Swire said yesterday that UK relatives of the victims, including himself, are preparing to apply to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) for the conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset al Megrahi to be overturned. Megrahi died in 2012 protesting his innocence.

Mr Swire, whose daughter Flora, 23, was on board Flight 103 said: "Some British relatives have decided that enough is enough and we will be applying within weeks for a further appeal against the Megrahi verdict. We have a right to know who killed our families and why the British Government and authorities responsible for the safety of the aircraft failed in their duty. We are not going away."

A successful SCCRC application could start the third appeal into Megrahi's conviction.

The Al Jazeera documentary fingered Ahmed Jibril, secretary-general of the PFLP-GC, as the key figure behind the attack, which was led by Hafez Dalkamoni. The bomb itself is alleged to have been made by Jordanin Marwan Khreesat.

In December 1988, an anonymous man took responsibility for the crash in the name of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and in retaliation for the downing of the Iran Air flight.

Earlier that year, German police raided a PFLP-GC cell and found Toshiba cassette recorder bombs, and arrested Khreesat and Dalkamoni. The bombs were later found to be almost identical to the one used to blow up Flight 103.

But during the Lockerbie investigation, the spotlight turned from Iran to Libya when forensic examination of the suitcase that carried the bomb found it had contained a Maltese-made babygrow. Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci identified Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, as the man who bought the baby clothes and other items found in the suitcase.

In 1991 an indictment for murder was issued against Megrahi and Malta airport manager Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. The pair were handed over to Scottish authorities in 1999. Fhimah was later cleared of any involvement in the bombing.

Egyptian-born Abu Talb had also previously emerged as a key suspect, with his accusers alleging he had smuggled the bomb onto the flight. However, when Megrahi went on trial in 2000, Talb was called as a prosecution witness.

New information about Talb and his activities in Europe was sent to the SCCRC during an earlier investigation. It claimed he was paid millions of dollars by Iran following the bombing. In 1989, a Swedish court convicted Talb of bombing a synagogue in Denmark and gave him a life sentence. He has since been released.

John Ashton, Megrahi's biographer, said: "There is very little that is new here. For about 18 months after the bombing Tehran got the blame, before attention focused on Libya. I am glad [Al Jazeera's] report has put the focus back on Iran."

A Crown Office spokesman said: "Mesbahi's claim that Iran was responsible was first reported in the media in the late 1990s and was available to the defence before the trial but they did not call him as a witness.

"The wider alleged involvement of the PFLP-GC has been repeatedly reported over many years but was addressed in full and rejected at the original trial."

He added that Megrahi was convicted and that the verdict was upheld following an appeal.

[The Scotsman also today runs an article headlined New Lockerbie appeal to be launched ‘within weeks’.

An interesting article appears today in the Maltese newspaper The Times.  It contains the following:]

The latest documentary sheds light on events in Malta months  before the actual bombing. According to documentation gathered for the film, in March 1988, intelligence officers from Iran, Syria and Libya met at the Miska Bakery, in Qormi. The place was used by a cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) that operated in Malta.

Foreign intelligence agencies knew of the cell’s presence on the island and were monitoring the bakery.

However, the information was not accurate enough for action to be taken.

The Iranian, Syrian and Libyan intelligence officers had agreed to a general campaign “against Israeli and American targets” but Pan Am 103 was not yet in the picture. Things changed three months later when, on July 3, the USS Vincennes, a military ship patrolling the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iranian passenger plane killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children.

The ship mistook the airliner for a fighter jet but the US refused to issue an apology even after the tragedy was revealed. Iran wanted revenge and a plan was hatched to destroy an American aircraft. In October 1988, terrorists from the PFLP-GC met in a St Julian’s apartment to discuss the final details of its execution.

Information on this meeting came from a source who was present. The source was tracked down by Jessica de Grazia, a former Manhattan District Attorney working for Mr al Megrahi’s defence. Her findings would have formed the basis of his appeal hearing, which he abandoned on being released in 2009 from Greenock prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds.

One of those present for the Malta meeting was Mohammed Abu Talb, who headed the Swedish cell of PFLP-GC, and would later become one of the prime suspects in the case before the probe shifted to Libya and Mr al Megrahi.

Journalist Joe Mifsud had reported on the meeting in the wake of the Lockerbie attack. Speaking to Times of Malta yesterday, Dr Mifsud was not surprised by the findings of the documentary. “It confirms what I had reported on, even before the Lockerbie trial, that Abu Talb was the prime suspect in the case,” he said.

Dr Mifsud, who was present for Mr Abu Talb’s testimony at the trial, said the Swedish police had found clothes from Malta in the Palestinian’s apartment in Sweden and a calendar with December 21 circled.

In fact, the theory that the Lockerbie bombing was executed by the PFLP-GC on behalf of Iran was in line with the original leads pursued by Scottish and American investigators.

Al Jazeera tracked down the alleged bomb maker, Marwan Khreesat, to Amman in Jordan, where he is kept under surveillance by Jordanian intelligence. He refused to discuss the affair on camera but a source close to him later told Al Jazeera the attack had indeed been commissioned by Iran and the bomb was put on board at Heathrow.

“Megrahi is innocent” is no longer a conspiracy theory – it is official

[What follows is the text of an editorial headlined Evidence at last that Lockerbie was not a Libyan bomb published in today’s edition of The Independent:]

The idea that anybody in authority still believes the Libyans were guilty has become harder to swallow

The evidence that the Lockerbie bomb – which detonated on Flight 103 from London to Washington, killing 270 people – was planted by the Libyans gets thinner and thinner. Soon after the explosion, on 21 December 1988, many assumed that it was a revenge attack for the blowing up of an Iranian commercial flight six months earlier, killing 290 people. Certainly, given the fraught nature of Iranian-US relations in the 1980s, that seemed to make sense. Yet before long there was a screech of brakes in the official investigation and the focus of attention fell on Libya, culminating in the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in the Netherlands in 2001.

Jim Swire, father of Flora, one of the victims, went to the trial expecting to see a bad man get his comeuppance, and came away convinced the Libyan was not guilty. Many others who approached with an open mind saw the gaping holes in the prosecution and went away believing that a hideous wrong was done to Mr Megrahi, who died of cancer in 2012 still proclaiming his innocence. The official version of the chemical make-up of the timer fragment has been entirely discredited, as have claims that the bomb could have been put on board in Malta.

With news that a former Iranian intelligence officer, Abolghassem Mesbahi, has claimed – indeed, confirmed – that the bombing was ordered by Ayatollah Khomeini “to copy exactly what happened to the Iranian airbus”, and that it was planted in London, the idea that anybody in authority still believes the Libyans were guilty becomes harder to swallow. The fact that their leader, Muammar Gaddafi, desperate to lift international sanctions, seemingly accepted responsibility, or that Mr Megrahi’s appeal was unsuccessful, should not let those responsible off the hook. It is hard to look back on the unseemly wrangling over Mr Megrahi’s compassionate return from Scotland to Tripoli in 2009 without thinking that some of those quietly lobbying for it knew that he was less guilty than they were willing to admit publicly, and that the least they could do was let him die at home. Maybe they will find a bit more courage now. “Megrahi is innocent” is no longer a conspiracy theory – it is official.

[The report in The Independent which prompted this editorial can be read here.]

"The UK authorities have known for over 20 years that Megrahi was innocent"

[What follows is an item published today by former UK ambassador and Scottish university rector Craig Murray on his blog:]

The information on Lockerbie published in today’s Daily Mail from an Iranian defector, matches precisely what I was shown in a secret intelligence report in the FCO just around the time of the first Iraq war – that a Syrian terrorist group was responsible acting on behalf of Iran.  It was decided that this would be kept under wraps because the West needed Iran and Syria’s quiescence in the attack on Iraq.

I was at the time Head of Maritime Section in the FCO’s Aviation and Maritime Department. I was shown the report by the Head of the Aviation Section, who was deeply troubled by it.

The UK authorities have known for over 20 years that Megrahi was innocent.  The key witness, a Maltese shopkeeper named Tony Gauci, was paid a total of US $7 million for his evidence by the CIA, and was able to adopt a life of luxury that continues to this day. The initial $2 million payment has become public knowledge but that was only the first instalment.  This was not an over-eagerness to convict the man the CIA believed responsible; this was a deliberate perversion of justice to move the spotlight from Iran and Syria to clear the way diplomatically for war in Iraq.

It will of course be argued, probably correctly, that now Syria and Iran are the western targets, it is in the interests of the CIA for the true story to come out,  (minus of course their involvement in perverting the course of justice).  That is why we now hear it was Syria and Iran.  But it so happens that is in fact the truth.  Even the security services and government can tell the truth, when the moment comes that the truth rather than a deceit happens to be a tactical advantage to them.

CIA believes 'to a man' that Iran carried out attack on Pan Am Flight 103, says former agent

[This is the headline over a report published this morning on the website of the Telegraph newspaper.  It reads as follows:]

Robert Baer, who worked on the original investigation, says there was never any doubt that Iran, not Libya, ordered the attack on Pan Am Flight 103

A former CIA agent who analysed intelligence for the Lockerbie investigation has claimed that “to a man” the CIA believes Iran was responsible for the terrorist attack.

Robert Baer said the CIA worked on the assumption that Iran had ordered the attack as revenge for the downing of an Iranian civilian flight in July 1988 by a US Navy warship.

He also claimed a Syrian-based terrorist group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) built the bomb and put it on board Pan Am Flight 103.

Mr Baer told Al Jazeera his views were “not controversial” in intelligence circles, where Iran’s involvement was accepted. He claims that Libya was made a convenient scapegoat for Lockerbie because it was a pariah state.

He also said the CIA had “grade A” intelligence that two PFLP-GC members suspected of involvement in Lockerbie, Mohammed Abu Talb and Hafez Dalkamoni, were named on an honour roll in Iran for a “great service” they had performed for the country.

Supporters of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan who was the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, believe that the US and Britain agreed not to blame the PFLP-GC because its links to Syria would have put the west’s relationship with Syria at risk.

Syria was a key strategic Middle Eastern power regarded by Britain and the US as a counterbalance to Saddam Hussein’s unstable and unpredictable regime in neighbouring Iraq.

The Washington Post claimed in 1990 that the Lockerbie investigation suddenly switched from Iran and Syria to Libya following a phone call in March 1989 between George H W Bush and Margaret Thatcher, in which Bush advised her to keep Lockerbie “low key” to avoid prejudicing negotiations with Iranian and Syrian-backed groups holding Western hostages in Lebanon.

In 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the policy paid dividends when Syria sent 20,000 soldiers to join the US-led coalition that defeated the Iraqi army.

Lockerbie bombing "commissioned by Iran" - bomb loaded at Heathrow not Malta

[Today’s edition of the Daily Telegraph contains a long article headlined Lockerbie bombing: are these the men who really brought down Pan Am 103? based on the material in Aljazeera’s new documentary.  It reads as follows:]

Evidence gathered for the aborted appeal against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's conviction points finger at Iran and Syrian-based terrorist group

In the 25 years that have passed since Pan Am 103 blew up in the sky over Lockerbie, one of the only facts that has remained uncontested is that a bomb concealed in a Samsonite suitcase exploded at 7.02pm on December 21, 1988, causing the loss of 270 lives.

From the day Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, the UK’s smallest police force, began investigating the country’s worst terrorist atrocity, the truth about who was responsible has been hidden by a fog of political agendas, conspiracy theories and unreliable evidence.

The 2001 conviction of the Libyan suspect Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, (and the acquittal of his co-defendant Khalifah Fhimah) only served to raise more questions than were answered.

Quite apart from a number of problems with the prosecution’s case was the question of who else took part in the plot. All sides agreed that Megrahi had not acted alone, even if he was guilty.

Yet some of the investigators who sifted through the wreckage of the Boeing 747 and studied intelligence dating from the months before the attack have never wavered in their belief that it was Iran, not Libya, that ordered it, and that a Syrian-based terrorist group executed it.

Now, following a three-year investigation by a team of documentary-makers working for Al Jazeera television, a new and compelling narrative has emerged, in which previously troublesome evidence suddenly fits together like the parts of a Swiss clock.

It begins in Malta nine months before the bombing and winds its way through Beirut, Frankfurt and London leaving a trail of evidence that pointed to Iran, before a phone call from George H W Bush to Margaret Thatcher allegedly switched the focus of the investigation to Libya.

In March 1988, intelligence officers from Iran, Syria and Libya met in the back room of a baker’s shop owned by Abdul Salaam, the head of the Malta cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).

They shared a common cause, and agreed to “join together in a campaign against Israeli and American targets”, according a witness who was at the meeting.

Classified US intelligence cables obtained by Al Jazeera suggest America was aware of the meeting. A Defence Intelligence Agency signal said that “Iran, Libya and Syria have signed a co-operation treaty for future terrorist acts”.

At that stage they did not have a specific target in mind, but three months later, on July 3, 1988, Iran’s hatred of America reached a new high after Iran Air flight 655 was shot down by the USS Vincennes, which was protecting merchant shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.

During a skirmish with Iranian gunboats the American warship mistook the Airbus A300 on its radar for a fighter jet, and fired two radar-guided missiles which downed the aircraft in the Strait of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children.

Iran’s leaders were convinced the aircraft had been shot down deliberately, and proclaimed that there would be “a real war against America”.

By the time the Iranian, Syrian and Libyan plotters next met in Malta in October 1988, their target was clear: to blow up an American airliner as payback for Flight 655.

A source who was present at the meetings was tracked down by Jessica de Grazia, a former Manhattan District Attorney who was hired by Megrahi’s defence team to explore alternative theories over the bombing. Her findings would have formed the basis of Megrahi’s appeal hearing, which he abandoned after he was released from Greenock prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds in 2009.

She said that among those present were “hard core terrorist combatants” trained in explosives, guns and military matters”.

One of those present was Mohammed Abu Talb, who headed the Swedish cell of PFLP-GC, and would later become one of the prime suspects in the Lockerbie bombing before the focus shifted to Megrahi.

Robert Baer, a CIA agent who investigated the Lockerbie bombing, told Al Jazeera that the PFLP-GC and Iran quickly became the main suspects.

He claims that six days after Flight 655 was downed by the USS Vincennes, at a meeting in Beirut representatives of the Iranian regime turned to Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian officer and head of the PFLP-GC, and tasked him with bringing down five American jets.

Jibril, who enjoyed the protection of the Syrian regime, had masterminded aircraft bombings in the past, and the DIA was aware of his mission.

According to another cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team: “The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmed Jibril…money was given to Jibril upfront in Damascus for initial expenses – the mission was to blow up a Pan Am flight.”

Jibril placed one of his most trusted deputies, a Palestinian PFLP-GC member called Hafez Dalkamoni, in charge of the terrorist cell, and he travelled to Germany to prepare the attack with Marwan Khreesat, an expert bomb-maker.

While Khreesat busied himself making his devices, Dalkamoni flew to Malta for another meeting in the baker’s shop. Also present was Abu Talb. Their presence in October 1988 was reported by a Maltese newspaper, tipped off that members of the PFLP-GC were in town.

According to the witness spoken to by Miss de Grazia, the meeting was convened to discuss how to get a bomb on board a US passenger jet.

Malta would also become key to the prosecution case against Megrahi, after the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb was found to contain clothes bought in a shop in Malta.

One of the key prosecution witnesses at Megrahi’s trial was Tony Gauchi [sic], owner of Mary’s House boutique, who identified Megrahi as buying clothes from him before the bombing. His evidence was later thrown into doubt after it emerged he had seen a picture of Megrahi in a magazine before he picked him out at an ID parade. He was also paid $2 million by the US Department of Justice.

On his deathbed, Megrahi said: “As God is my witness, I was never in that shop. This is the truth.”

Intriguingly, the papers assembled by Megrahi’s defence team for his aborted appeal show that before Megrahi was ever in the frame, Mr Gauchi identified another of his customers from a list of initial suspects. That man was Abu Talb, who bears a clear resemblance to an artist’s impression of a dark-skinned man with an afro hairstyle which was drawn from Mr Gauchi’s initial recollections.

So was Abu Talb, who Tony Gauchi said had bought clothes in his shop, the man who put the bomb on Pan Am 103?

According to the judges who found Megrahi guilty, the bomb was placed on a flight from Luqa airport in Malta to Frankfurt, and then transferred onto a feeder flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow, where it was finally transferred onto Pan Am 103. But there was another problem for the prosecution: they acknowledged that they had no evidence of Megrahi putting the bomb on board the Air Malta flight at Luqa.

John Bedford, a Heathrow baggage handler, told the Megrahi trial that after he took a tea break on the day of the bombing, he recalled seeing a brown hard-shell case on a cargo trolley that had not been there when he left. He saw the case an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed at Heathrow. There had also been a break-in at Heathrow the night before: security guard Ray Manly told Megrahi's appeal that he found a padlock on a baggage store cut.

Cell leader Dalkamoni and bomb-maker Khreesat had been arrested by the time of the bombing, after German police rounded up terrorist suspects in two cities. But Talb was still at large.

When Talb was arrested until the following year over unrelated terrorist offences police who searched his home found clothing bought in Malta, circuitry and other potential bomb-making materials. For now, his exact role, if any, remains a mystery.

Dalkamoni and Khreesat had been kept under surveillance by German police, who were aware of their terrorist connections, and when the police raided 14 apartments in Frankfurt and Neuss in October 1988 the two men were among 17 suspects who were held.

The police discovered an arsenal of guns, grenades and explosives, and in the back of a Ford Cortina driven by Dalkamoni found a bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player.

The bomb was specifically designed to bring down an aircraft, as it had a barometric switch which would set off a timer when the aircraft reached a certain height. Its design had a striking peculiarity: the plastic explosives had been wrapped in silver foil from a Toblerone chocolate bar.

The German police found four bombs in total, but had reason to believe there had been five.

Was the fifth bomb placed on board Pan Am 103? Bomb fragments recovered from the crash site showed that the bomb had been concealed in a Toshiba radio cassette player identical to the one found in Germany.

Even more strikingly, the bomb fragments included tiny pieces of silver foil from a chocolate bar.

A German forensic officer told the Megrahi trial that the timer on the Lockerbie bomb was not switched on until seven minutes into the flight, suggesting a barometric switch had been used to set it off.

Despite so many pointers to Khreesat being the bomb-maker, he has never been charged over Lockerbie because the judges at the Megrahi trial said that there was “no evidence from which we could infer that [PFLP-GC] was involved in this particular act of terrorism”.

The suggestion of a barometric trigger did not fit the prosecution’s version of events, as they said Megrahi, the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, smuggled the bomb on board an Air Malta flight. But if a barometric switch had been used, the bomb would have detonated on take-off from Malta. Instead, the prosecution said the bomb was triggered at 31,000ft by a straightforward timer switch.

The forensic evidence against Megrahi depended on a tiny fragment of the bomb’s timer recovered from the crash site and said to be identical to a batch of 20 timers known to have been purchased by Libya.

But when Megrahi’s defence team obtained the bomb fragment and sent it to a metallurgist to be tested, he showed it was not one of the timers sold to Libya.

On December 5, 1988, a man with an Arab accent called the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, warning that a bomb would be planted on a Pan Am flight in two weeks time. Despite the warning, the bombers managed to smuggle their device on board Pan Am 103.

Another DIA cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team stated that in early 1989 a cheque from the Iranian Central Bank was written out by an Iranian minister and handed to a middle-man who gave it to Ahmed Jibril. The pay-off was $11 million (£6.5m), according to former CIA agent Robert Baer.

When Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary began its investigation into the bombing, it believed the PFLP-GC was involved. A report written in 1989 by Supt Pat Connor identified 15 members of the organisation he wanted arrested and questioned, and the then Transport Minister Paul Channon invited selected journalists to an off-the-record briefing to set out the case against Iran and the PFLP-GC, adding that arrests were imminent.

But by the middle of 1989 the investigation had suddenly changed tack, reportedly following a phone call between President George H W Bush and Baroness Thatcher in March 1989. The two leaders, it is claimed, were anxious not to antagonize the PFLP-GC’s guardian, Syria - a key strategic power in the Middle East - and decided that Libya, which had taken part in the meetings in Malta, should be the focus of the investigation.

The following year Syria joined forces with the US and Britain to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait during the Gulf War.

Mr Baer said the FBI began investigating Libya “in complete disregard to the intelligence” and suggested Libya’s pariah status made it a convenient scapegoat.

Al Jazeera tracked down alleged bomb-maker Khreesat to Amman in Jordan, where he is kept under surveillance by Jordanian intelligence. He refused to discuss the affair on camera but a source close to him later told Al Jazeera that the attack had indeed been commissioned by Iran and that the bomb was put on board at Heathrow.

Abu Talb now lives in Sweden, having been released from prison four years ago following a 20-year sentence for unrelated terrorist acts. His son said he had “nothing to do with Lockerbie”.

For the families of the Lockerbie victims, the wait for the truth goes on.

Lockerbie: What Really Happened? is on Al Jazeera English at 8pm on Tuesday, March 11, Freeview 83, Sky 514.  

[An accompanying article in the same newspaper is headlined Lockerbie bombing: profiles of the men who were implicated before Libya took the blame; another is headlined Lockerbie bombing 'was work of Iran not Libya', says former [Iranian] spy.

A Press Association news agency report published on the Sunday Post website reads as follows:]

The Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Iran in retaliation for a US strike on an Iranian passenger plane, a documentary has claimed.

Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only person to be convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in which 270 people were killed more than 25 years ago. 

Megrahi, who was released from jail by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, died in 2012 protesting his innocence and h is family plan to appeal against his conviction.

But former Iranian intelligence officer Abolghassem Mesbahi has told an Al Jazeera documentary that the bombing was ordered by Tehran and carried out by the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) in retaliation for a US navy strike on an Iranian commercial jet six months earlier, in which 290 people died.

The US ship apparently mistook the plane for an F-14 fighter jet.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Mr Mesbahi said: "Iran decided to retaliate as soon as possible. The decision was made by the whole system in Iran and confirmed by Ayatollah Khomeini.

"The target of the Iranian decision makers was to copy exactly what's happened to the Iranian Airbus. Everything exactly same, minimum 290 people dead. This was the target of the Iranian decision makers."

US Defence Intelligence Agency cables at the time reported that the leader of the PFLP-GC had been paid to plan the bombing, the broadcaster said.

The Crown Office has previously said the alleged involvement of the PFLP-GC was addressed at the original Lockerbie trial.

A successful application from Megrahi's family to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission could start the third appeal into the conviction.

Megrahi lost his first appeal in 2002, one year after he was found guilty of mass murder and jailed for life.

The SCCRC recommended in 2007 that Megrahi should be granted a second appeal against his conviction. He dropped his appeal two days before being released from prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds.

In December, the Libyan attorney general announced he had appointed two prosecutors to work on the case. For the first time they met Scottish and US investigators who are trying to establish whether there are other individuals in Libya who could be brought to trial for involvement in the attack.

Global premiere of Aljazeera's Lockerbie: what really happened?

[Here is the text of a press release that has just gone out in connection with tomorrow’s premiere of the Aljazeera documentary Lockerbie: What Really Happened?:]

What: Lockerbie: What Really Happened? Global premiere of Al Jazeera's latest investigation into the atrocity

When: Tomorrow, Tuesday 11 March, 1pm

Where: Committee Room 1, Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh EH99 1SP

For three years Al Jazeera has been investigating the prosecution of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.  Two award-winning documentaries, screened on Al Jazeera in 2011 and 2012, demonstrated  that the case against him was deeply flawed and argued that a serious miscarriage of justice may have taken place.

Now, in its third and most disturbing investigation, Al Jazeera English answers the question left hanging at the end of the last programme: if Megrahi was not guilty of the Lockerbie bombing, then who was?

The film will be broadcast worldwide on Tuesday at 8pm.

Available for interview at the premiere will be the film's executive producer Diarmuid Jeffreys. Others featured in the film will also be in attendance.

For more information, to register for entry to the parliament building, and for interview bids, please contact:

Osama Saeed, Head of Media & PR, Al Jazeera -  saeedo@aljazeera.net  

Julia Lee, Edelman - julia.lee@edelman.com

Kayley Rogers, Edelman - Kayley.rogers@edelman.com

Trailer available here

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/lockerbie/2014/02/lockerbie-what-really-happened-20142247550598601.html

[It is devoutly to be hoped that the documentary will concentrate on presenting the now overwhelming evidence that Abdelbaset Megrahi was NOT the Lockerbie bomber rather than trying to set out who was. The available evidence establishes the former beyond reasonable doubt. Attempting to demonstrate the latter is at this stage a distraction.  Once Megrahi’s conviction has been officially recognised as fatally undermined, then is the time for a genuine unblinkered look at whatever evidence exists that may show who actually was responsible.]

Malaysia Airlines 370 and Pan Am 103

[Unsurprisingly, the media today is full of articles comparing the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 with the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie. One interesting example, from the United Arab Emirates newspaper The National, deals with the history of aircraft accident investigation and contains the following:]

The job of the aircraft investigation team is sometimes to confirm the expected cause of a crash, but also sometimes to uncover the unexpected.

One of the most famous examples of the former is the destruction of Pan-Am flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988. The 270 fatalities included 11 people on the ground.

From the start it was clear that the crash had been caused by a mid-air explosion. The question was, who or what was responsible?

The cockpit recorder in the tail was found in less than 24 hours and confirmed there had been no warning.

Parts of the Boeing 747 were shipped to the UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Board headquarters in southern England, where a three dimensional reconstruction of a section of the hull was carried out.

Meticulous examination determined that an explosion had destroyed the aircraft, with other fragments showing that it had been planted in a Samsonite suitcase.

Traces of a circuit board dug out of the Scottish soil showed it had been hidden in a Toshiba cassette player, similar to one that had been used in an earlier attempted terrorist attack in West Germany. Libyan intelligence was blamed for the crime, with an intelligence officer, Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, eventually convicted.

[Frequent commentator on this blog, Rolfe, has recently posted this comment:]

“It looks as if MH370 broke up at 35,000 feet without any distress signal being broadcast, 41 minutes after the wheels left the tarmac. I hope to hell this is just an evil coincidence but does anyone know where Marwan Khreesat is right now?”

Megrahi's freakish conviction just the icing on the cake

[What follows is an item posted yesterday on baz’s blog The Masonic Verses:]

1. There has been considerable and on-going controversy concerning the collapse of the trial of Mr John Downey who was suspected of involvement in the 1982 Hyde Park bombings.   The Judge brought proceedings to a halt when Mr Downey's solicitor Gareth Peirce produced a letter of reassurance issued by the Northern Ireland Police Service informing him that the police did not propose to proceed against him for any crime.

2.    This letter was one of 183 letters known as "On the Run" letters issued to suspected IRA members (it is not known if they were also issued to INLA members)  who were described as being "On the Run" (apparently a polite euphemism for being resident in the Irish Republic - indeed how do you correspond with somebody "on the run" unless of course through an accommodation address).   A speaker on BBC4's Law in Action programme described these as "disguised amnesty" letters.

3.     The letters arose from a perceived anomaly in the Good Friday agreement in which convicted terrorists on both sides of the sectarian divide had been released.  Had these persons described as "On the Run" been convicted they too would have been released. While the Blair Government was unable to carry a general amnesty bill through parliament the "On the Run" letters were used instead.

4.    In setting up a judicial inquiry Prime Minister Cameron described Mr Downey's letter as "a mistake" and declared the object of the inquiry is to ascertain if there were any similar "mistakes".  Apparently the Northern Ireland Police Service were unaware that the Metropolitan Police had applied for a warrant for Mr Downey's arrest!   However as should be blindingly obvious these letters served two purposes.  If an applicant received such a letter he would be in the clear.   However if the applicant did not receive a letter then he or she would be forewarned that it would be unsafe to travel to the UK or a jurisdiction from which they could be extradited.  Perhaps this was the intention.

5.   Mr Downey was arrested at Gatwick apparently while transferring to another plane.  It emerged he had previously travelled to Canada and had made several trips to Ulster.

6. This blog is not about "The Troubles" but primarily the Lockerbie bombing. It is the author's view that the "Libyan solution" to Lockerbie did not arise from real evidence but that evidence was created to implicate the two Libyan suspects (notably the claim the primary suitcase was introduced at Malta not Heathrow and the faking of key exhibits.)  The motivation of the British Government in general and MI5 in particular arose from the Libyans having supplied prodigious quantities of weaponry to the PIRA, a discovery only made from the interception of the Eksund.

7.    The "On the Run" letters demonstrates the quite remarkable lengths the British Government went to in order to make and sustain the Good Friday agreement.   In comments made to Radio 4's World at One former Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain staunchly defended the letters and the policies of the Blair Government arguing that the rule of law did not apply in the Northern Ireland situation as it did in England, Scotland and Wales.   He also alluded to (without going into specifics) extraordinary measures taken by previous British Prime Ministers.  While the Lockerbie indictment supposedly came about as a result of a criminal investigation and a judicial process the involvement of the security services, MI5 and the CIA is almost entirely outside the public domain.  The indictment was the pretext for imposing UN sanctions on Libya, which was in the author's view the primary purpose of the indictment.  Mr Megrahi's eventual (and freakish) conviction was just the icing on the cake.

8.   (An earlier post on this blog The (not so) Secret Rulers of the World (Aug 2009)  notes the curious affair of former Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson's trip to Syria in December 2000 during the recess of the Camp Zeist trial.)