Malta airport security explored at Lockerbie trial

[What follows is TheLockerbieTrial.com’s brief report on the proceedings at Camp Zeist on this date in 2000:]

Air Malta Manager Testifies

Wilfred Borg, Crown witness number 708, who was general manager for ground operations at Malta's Luqa Airport admitted that an uncleared suitcase could, theoretically, have been placed on board a flight leaving Malta.

Borg though, denied that records of unidentified luggage produced by the Crown indicated a violation of safety procedures.

The Crown will attempt to prove that the bomb suitcase was inserted in the baggage system at Luqa airport and sent as unaccompanied baggage to Frankfurt.

Borg was questioned by Advocate Depute, Alan Turnbull QC, about safety operations at Malta's Luqa airport.

Turnbull highlighted what he claimed were discrepancies in Air Malta's baggage loading logs on a number of flights in 1988 and asked Borg whether a person familiar with security procedures and access to loading areas could have breached his staff's safety checks.

Turnbull asked: "Would it have been possible in 1988 for someone with that knowledge and that access to deliberately have circumvented the checks you had in place?"

"Anything is possible. Whether it was probable is a different story," said Borg, who added that in every case an aircraft's captain had to make the final call on the safety of the aircraft.

Wilfred Borg is expected to continue his evidence on Monday.

[An accompanying commentary on the same website reads as follows:]

Airport Security Revelations

Luqa Airport became the focus of attention for investigators, much later then the original Maltese connection, which was around clothing found at Lockerbie.

Certain assumptions have been made regarding Malta's Luqa airport. It has been assumed by many that because Malta is a small country then it follows that their airport security would be lax.

The Crown will undoubtedly contend that all was not well with security at Luqa airport and this will assist their assertions that the suitcase containing the bomb was inserted at this point.

However our investigations have uncovered startling new facts which may counter this part of the Crown theory.

The arguments that may be used to counter this claim have come from a source which will surprise many. It comes directly from the US Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA.

In 1987, a year before the bombing of Pan Am 103, Pan Am made it known that they wished to operate a cargo service to and from Malta. In any instances, where an American flag carrier, such as Pan Am, makes it known that they wish to fly into an airport for the first time, the FAA is mandated to carry out inspections and assessments of the airport concerned.

Officials of the FAA carried out such an assessment of Luqa airport and their report will do nothing to further the Crown's case regarding lax security.

Sources from within the FAA, who spoke on condition of anonymity, have informed us that if they [the FAA] scored airports on a point system giving points out of ten, then their assessment of Luqa Airport would be 9 out of 10.

With the exception of some administrative recommendations, the FAA gave Luqa airport, Malta, a clean bill of health.

Hardly the picture of a small third world countries airport with poor security. Anyone familiar with Luqa airport during that period would know that armed soldiers from the Maltese armed forces carried out much of the security at the airport.

These revelations may have come to light earlier (we learned of this 3 months ago) had the FAA been more careful about their archived documentation.

Those same sources within the FAA confirmed to us that during 1993/1994, the FAA destroyed many assessments and inspections of European airports, covering the 1980s, including the report compiled on Luqa airport. Our source has stated that this destruction was done in error and not in any way to thwart the Lockerbie investigation. The Government of Malta was given a copy of the FAA report.

We make no assertions that the FAA, by destroying these reports, acted in any way maliciously and our sources within the FAA have spoken of the quality and level of co-operation extended to those involved in the legal preparations for this trial.

While the issues under examination today are specific to Air Malta and not to Luqa airport, there is undoubtedly a connection with regards to overall security procedures.

Coming hard on the heels of the debacle over Maltese witnesses refusing to testify, these latest revelations will hardly be good news for the Crown.

[The report of the day’s proceedings on the BBC News website can be read here.]

More from Switzerland

Various Swiss news media websites are running a SDA news agency report following up yesterday’s Neue Zürcher Zeitung article about the replacement of the special prosecutor appointed to investigate Edwin Bollier’s complaint about actions of the Swiss Federal Police in relation to the Lockerbie case. Here is a link to the report on the Blick website: Bundesanwaltschaft muss Anzeige zu Lockerbie-Attentat erneut prüfen. A French language version can be found here, and an Italian language version here. And here is a translation of the German version, courtesy of Google Translate: Attorney General must re-examine Lockerbie bombing.

The most spectacular miscarriage of justice in British legal history

[What follows is the text of a report headlined Jack Straw disappoints Lockerbie relatives on inquiry published in The Herald on this date in 2002:]

A full-blown public inquiry into the Lockerbie tragedy has been all but ruled out by Jack Straw.

The foreign secretary told MPs during a Commons debate: ''I explained to the families of the Lockerbie relatives that I did not see a case for a public inquiry into what had happened but I was going to look into whether other arrangements for scrutiny could be established.''

Last night Jim Swire, a spokesman for the victims' relatives, said Mr Straw's remarks ''do not appear to be in line with what he told us before''.

Dr Swire, whose daughter Flora was among the Lockerbie victims, told The Herald: ''It sounds abysmal. It looks as if we are not going to get a comprehensive independent inquiry. This raises all sorts of issues.''

The effective ruling out of a public inquiry is likely to be one of the key issues raised by the relatives when they meet Nelson Mandela in London tomorrow.

Last month the former South African president, who spent 27 years in jail, called for a new appeal after visiting Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the man convicted of the bombing, at Barlinnie jail in Glasgow. He said the Libyan was effectively being kept in solitary confinement and branded his conditions as ''psychological persecution''.

Tam Dalyell MP, the leading Lockerbie campaigner, whose question during the Commons debate prompted Mr Straw's rejection of a public inquiry, said that the questions surrounding Britain's worst terrorist atrocity ''have got to be answered''.

During the debate, the Labour MP for Linlithgow described the conviction and jailing of Megrahi as ''the most spectacular miscarriage of justice in not only Scottish but British legal history''.

He told MPs: ''There ought to be a public inquiry because, in this instance, adversarial court procedures were wholly inappropriate to the objective of finding the truth.''

Last night a Foreign Office source pointed out that it was not Mr Straw's decision alone on whether or not there should be a full public inquiry; it would be a cabinet decision. However, he accepted Mr Straw's remarks all but ruled out the prospect.

''Some form of scrutiny has not been ruled out. He will be saying more about this in due course,'' said the source, who declined to be more specific.

Lockerbie case rolls merrily on in Switzerland

On 19 November 2014, I reported on this blog that a special federal prosecutor, Felix Bänziger, appointed in Switzerland had declined to open a criminal investigation against a former federal police officer in connection with the Lockerbie bombing. The complaint, which had been filed by the Zurich businessman Edwin Bollier, was held by Mr Bänziger to be time-barred. See The MEBO and Bollier saga continues.

Today’s edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports that the appeal division of the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona has ruled that because of his previous involvement in Lockerbie matters while employed in the Swiss Attorney-General’s office, Mr Bänziger could not be regarded as impartial and that the Attorney-General must appoint another special prosecutor to consider Mr Bollier’s complaint afresh. See Fall Lockerbie wird wieder aufgerollt. A scrappy translation of the report, courtesy of Google Translate, can be found here. 

The court's judgement (in German) can be read here.

Lockerbie: Malta allegations were fabricated

[This is the headline over a letter from Dr Jim Swire published on this date in 2009 in Malta Today.  It reads as follows:]

As you probably know, there is a growing body of well informed commentators, who believe that not only was Abdel Baset Al Megrahi not guilty of causing the Lockerbie disaster of 1988, but also that the bomb did not start its journey from Malta after all, but was introduced simply by breaking-in to Heathrow airport.

This break-in occurred in the early hours of the day of the Lockerbie disaster, but was concealed by the UK authorities for 12 years until after the trial at Zeist and after the inquests had been held.

I fear the allegations against Malta, and Air Malta in particular, were fabricated to avoid embarrassment to the UK authorities and the Thatcher government of the day in particular.

During the night of 20/21st December 1988 there was a break-in at Heathrow airport. This allowed access to Terminal 3 and surrounding areas where both PanAm and IranAir had facilities. Neither the intruder nor his motive was identified. Although the break-in was recorded by the security guard (Manly) who found it, the airport continued functioning that day as though nothing had happened. Had it behaved responsibly and suspended flights till the break-in was unravelled, my daughter and 269 others might well have been saved. Instead, on the evening of 21 Dec ‘88 the Lockerbie aircraft baggage containers were loaded up in that very area.

In July 1988 a US warship had destroyed an Iranian airbus killing 290 pilgrims, for which Iran had sworn revenge. In October 1988 the (West) German authorities had issued a warning to the UK and others about a specialised type of IED (improvised explosive device) made by the Syrian terror group, the PFLP-GC. This group were in close association with Iran. Their devices uniquely contained a ‘baroswitch’ which switched ‘on’ when it sensed a drop in air pressure as in an aircraft following take off, it took seven minutes from take off to respond. That response then switched on a timer which would run for around 30 minutes.

These IEDs were specifically designed to be brought into an airport hours or days before use, then if put aboard an aircraft, they would always explode around 40 minutes after take-off. No one needed to touch them nor send any electronic message to them, just put them aboard; this timing could not be changed by a user. 270 people were killed by the PanAm 103 bomb, 38 minutes after take off from Heathrow. Coincidence? Or did the intruder leave his IED with the IranAir facility to load onto PanAm 103 that evening?

No evidence could be led at the Zeist trial concerning the Heathrow break-in, because the break-in evidence was unknown to the court. Yet that Court said of Megrahi’s alleged infiltration of the bomb at Luqa airport Malta, that the absence of any evidence as to how he had done this ‘was a major problem for the prosecution case’.

The discoverer of the break-in, Manly, was interviewed in January 1989 by Scotland Yard’s anti terrorist group. The Scottish police combed Heathrow soon after the disaster, they must have found the record of the break-in too.

Yet until the Heathrow security guard came to ask Megrahi’s defence why they had ignored the break-in during the trial, the entire evidence of the break-in had lain unknown to the relatives, the Lockerbie Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI), the defence and the court for more than 12 years, until after the verdict.

At the Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) Sheriff Principal John Mowat, in ignorance of the Heathrow break-in evidence, advised that court that they should accept that the IED had ‘come from Frankfurt’. A Fatal Accident Inquiry is supposed to have the function of defining all the factors contributing to the deaths. Ours was misdirected by being told to assume the device had come from Frankfurt, thereby obscuring the possible role of Heathrow.

I have now requested Scotland’s Lord Advocate to discover whether the Crown Office was informed about this break-in. They had a duty under Scots law to share any relevant material with the defence, and it would be strange indeed if they did not know about it. The Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) referred this case for a second appeal partly because of incomplete sharing of information by the Crown Office with the defence team. Since our FAI was misdirected in this way, I have also requested the Lord Advocate that it be reconvened or a new one held.

What could have stopped Scotland Yard from passing on what they knew? It was Prime Minster Thatcher who decreed that the investigation should be done by the Scottish police, to the enormous chagrin we are told, of Scotland Yard. Could PM Thatcher have been unaware of Scotland Yard’s involvement in investigating the break-in? The fact that the Met seemed to have been prevented from following up this amazing lead suggests directions from the highest authority.

PM Thatcher refused even to meet us to discuss an inquiry into what had happened. She also published her book The Downing Street Years in 1993 (the break-in evidence was still ‘lost’ then of course), in which she claimed that Reagan’s air raid on Tripoli, which she facilitated in 1986 had prevented any further major terrorist atrocities by Gaddafi’s Libya. The word Lockerbie simply does not appear in her text. If the Lockerbie IED did come in through the Heathrow break-in, her claim would be justified, since there would then be no evidence for a Libyan operation, let alone Maltese involvement. If she knew, why didn’t we and the courts know? Isn’t that perversion of justice? Were there some other guilty secrets of foreknowledge of what was to happen?

Writing in 1989 in The lessons of Lockerbie (RISCT), Professor Paul Wilkinson of St Andrews University wrote “the Department of Transport is singularly ill fitted to play a lead role in aviation security… in the author’s view it is in far too cosy a relationship with vested commercial interests in the transport business for whom all other considerations, including security, must be subordinated to the profit motive”.

Maybe the same applies to British Prime Ministers, for as President Clinton later so succinctly put it: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Where is our inquiry? PM Brown has decided to hold an Iraq war inquiry ‘behind closed doors’, the only door we have seen in searching for truth in an inquiry over the greatest terrorist outrage in the UK has been the one slammed in our faces by PM Thatcher and her successors over 20 years.

Contemporary report of Tony Gauci evidence

[On this date in 2000, Tony Gauci was in the witness box at the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist. What follows is the report on the BBC News website of that day’s proceedings:]

The Lockerbie trial has heard that fragments of a baby romper suit recovered from the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 were traced back to a clothes shop in Malta.

The blue Babygro was said to have been in the suitcase carrying the bomb which blew the plane apart above Lockerbie.

All the items were bought by a Libyan man who went into Tony Gauci's outfitters in the Maltese town of Sliema just days earlier, the trial judges heard.

Mr Gauci picked out one of the accused - Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi - as being someone who "resembled" the man who visited his shop, although he could not positively identify him.

The prosecution says the two Libyan suspects went to the shop in Sliema on 7 December, 1988, and bought clothes and an umbrella.

The charred remains of the items were later recovered from the bomb debris in and around Lockerbie.

Mr Gauci told the Scottish Court in the Netherlands that a Libyan man came into his shop - Mary's House, Tower Road, Sliema - about a fortnight before Christmas 1988.

The man looked around and when Mr Gauci invited him to try on some trousers he said they were for someone else.

The man then bought two pairs of trousers, two shirts, two cardigans, two pairs of pyjamas, a blue romper suit and, because it was raining slightly at the time, an umbrella.

"He left the shop to go to the taxi rank to get a taxi. He came back in the taxi to collect the clothing, which I took out to the taxi," said Mr Gauci.

It was not until September 1989 that Scottish and Maltese police officers went to the shop to confirm that the fragments of clothing linked to the suitcase holding the radio-cassette bomb had been purchased at Mary's House.

The court was shown pictures of the charred clothing, showing tell-tale manufacturing batch numbers and makers' labels.

A fragment of the sky-blue romper suit was displayed on courtroom monitors, burned and blackened apart from a bright red warning label "Keep Away From Fire".

The trial has resumed after a week-long break requested by prosecutors at the end of last month to allow them to examine last-minute defence witness statements.

The trial is now moving into a second stage of evidence, after spending the last two months examining detailed forensic testimony and items collected from crash site debris.

The prosecution aims to prove that the two suspects worked for Libya's secret service and that, posing as Libyan Arab Airlines employees, they placed a suitcase containing a bomb concealed in a radio-recorder on board a plane in Malta.

The suitcase was then allegedly transferred from Frankfurt to London and onto the doomed New York-bound jet in London.

The defence is seeking to raise "reasonable doubt" in the minds of the three Scottish judges to secure a not guilty or not proven verdict, the latter being unique to Scottish law.

The Libyans' legal representatives are trying to incriminate Palestinian extremists operating in Frankfurt.

Pan Am responsible for lax baggage screening in Lockerbie incident

[This is the headline over a transcript of a segment from NBC Nightly News on this date in 1992. It reads as follows:]

TOM BROKAW, anchor:

Finally, there is some justice. That was the reaction today from a family member in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, when a federal jury found the airline guilty of willful misconduct. That decision is expected to force the insurance companies now to pay millions of dollars in claims. NBC's John Miller is following the case.

JOHN MILLER reporting:

It was four days before Christmas. The plane was blasted out of the sky at 39,000 feet. The tiny village of Lockerbie, Scotland, shook under a torrent of wreckage and corpses. 259 passengers were killed, 186 of them were Americans. Eleven more people were killed in the village below. For almost four years, the families of those killed have fought to get Pan Am to admit some responsibility. For five months in this New York courthouse, lawyers for Pan Am have been trying to claim to a jury they're not responsible. Today, that jury ruled that Pan Am was negligent by allowing the suitcase that contained the bomb to be loaded onto Flight 103. The suitcase was not inspected by Pan Am employees, even though records would have told them it wasn't connected to any of the passengers on that flight. A federal judge issued a gag order so lawyers and family members couldn't comment today. But Paul Hudson, who represents a group of the families, said this before he learned of the gag order:

PAUL HUDSON: Well it's, it's a matter of great relief that at least this phase is now over, and the, the issue of Pan Am's poor security has been formally determined.

MILLER: In London, British family members said the suit, which demands $300 million, wasn't about money. It was about forcing airlines to tighten security.

PETER WATSON: There's a warning to the airline industry that if their security is as lax and as poor and as haphazard as Pan Am's security was in this occasion, then they face fearful damages.

A fair re-examination of all the evidence is exactly what we have been calling for all along

[What follows is the text of a letter from Dr Jim Swire published in The Times today (but which, as far as I can see, does not appear on the newspaper’s website):]

Magnus Linklater has a long record of articles defending the story presented at the Zeist court in 2000-01, which claimed that a Libyan (Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi) sent the Lockerbie bomb by air from the island of Malta.

In his Opinion article (July 8), however, he claims that most lawyers up to and including several lord advocates would relish seeing the case back in court.

A fair re-examination of all the evidence is exactly what we UK relatives have been calling for all along.  Welcome, Magnus, to the ranks of those who seek such a resolution. May I sit by you in the court's public gallery please?

US agents pursue Lockerbie claim

[This is the headline over a report published in The Herald on this date in 1994. It reads as follows:]

United States investigators are still keen to establish the veracity of the claim by a Palestinian revolutionary that he, and not two Libyans, carried out the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing.

Yesterday, the US State Department said it would pursue the confession although, privately, Washington sources say the confession is not to be trusted. However, their position varies from that of the Foreign Office in London and the prosecuting authorities in Scotland, who have indicated that the Western allies' policy of prosecuting the two Libyans is still the only one they wish to pursue.

Three weeks ago, Youssef Shaaban, a member of the Abu Nidal Revolutionary Council Faction, who is on trial for the murder of a Jordanian diplomat, was reported to have confessed to the bombing of PanAm flight 103 which killed all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground.

Almost immediately, the situation was confused, first with claims that Shaaban had been misquoted and then with a subsequent claim that he had ''confessed'' only under ''coercion and torture''.

In November, 1991, the US and Britain accused Libyans Abdel Basset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi and al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah of having carried out the Lockerbie atrocity.

The indictments against the pair, who are alleged to be members of the Libyan secret service, were issued by the Crown Office in Scotland. The US and British governments, backed by the United Nations, have made repeated, unsuccessful, demands for their extradition to stand trial in Scotland.

[RB: More on this intriguing story can be found in the following articles:  

I planted Lockerbie bomb, says Palestinian;

Palestinian claims he placed bomb on Pan Am 103; and
Abu Nidal sows chaos from the grave.]

An untested appeal is a disservice to justice

[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater in today’s edition of The Times (behind the paywall). It reads as follows:]

Families of the 7/7 victims at least have resolution but in the case of Lockerbie the truth may now be buried for ever

For the victims of the 7/7 attacks in London, the memorials yesterday may have helped to draw a line under an atrocity that robbed families of those they loved and tore apart their lives. By now they have gathered most of the detail of what happened on that day. They know who did it; they have pieced together the last moments of those who died; the gaps in their knowledge have been steadily filled.

For the families of the Lockerbie victims, 26 years have passed without the same resolution. For some, such as Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing, there is the visceral conviction that the wrong man was targeted and that the trail to Libya was a false one. Others, like the redoubtable Tam Dalyell, share that belief. It will stay with them for ever; nothing will convince them otherwise. For others — equally certain that the right man was convicted — there is the frustration of not knowing who ordered the attack. Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, found guilty on the evidence of placing the bomb on board a feeder flight from Luqa airport in Malta, could not, they believe, have acted alone. Who gave the orders remains an unanswered question.

Last week, three appeal judges rejected the final route open to those who wished to bring the Lockerbie case back before the courts. Only the family of a dead man can appeal his conviction, they ruled; campaigners for relatives of the victims have no such legal standing. Since al-Megrahi’s family in Libya were unwilling or unable to back the appeal, that marked the end of a long narrative of rumour, doubts, suspicions and accusations that reach back almost as far as the attack itself.

The story will not, of course, end here. Already campaigners have announced that they intend to pursue their quest “for justice”. Within hours of the decision, Robert Black, QC, a Lockerbie man who was partly responsible for the original trial being held in the Netherlands, criticised the Scottish legal system for being “too rigid” in refusing the appeal and said it was predictable that the judges had rejected it. They “bristled with discomfort”, he wrote, at the prospect of the case being brought back, in case the conviction fell apart. [RB: I have said or written no such thing. What I did do is post on this blog a letter from Thomas Crooks in The Scotsman where such comments are made.]

Actually, the reverse is true. Most lawyers, up to and including several lord advocates who have been involved in the prosecution case or have studied it in detail, would relish seeing it back in court — if only to subject the conspiracy theories to forensic cross-examination and to see them fall apart. Investigators have been labelled corrupt, stupid or simply blinkered for failing to challenge the prosecution case. They would welcome the chance to contest that view.

For all the heated controversy that has surrounded police and lawyers involved in putting together the case against al-Megrahi, none of the counter-theories have stood up to scrutiny. They have been paraded in books, TV programmes and articles, but they have always foundered on an absence of hard evidence. Suggestions, for instance, that the bomb was loaded at Heathrow rather than in Malta remain in the domain of speculation rather than of sustainable proof. The idea that the critical fragment of a timer linking the bomb to the Libyans was planted, altered, or swapped requires a leap that would be thrown out in any serious court of law. The explanations offered as to what al-Megrahi was doing in Malta at precisely the time that the bomb was loaded, and how it came to be wrapped in clothes bought in a local shop, have been as unconvincing as they have been varied.

The case that exonerates the Libyans, while at the same time attempting to explain away the hard forensic and circumstantial evidence that links them to the bombing, is almost as tortuous as the negotiations that persuaded Colonel Gaddafi to surrender the two men accused of the bombing to face a Scottish trial.

The Justice for Megrahi campaign relies ultimately on the lengthy report of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which spent three years on the most detailed examination of the evidence ever carried out; which had the right — and exercised it — to summon every witness cited by those who argued that the conviction was unsafe; and which dismissed each and every counter-theory that came before it.

It did, however, produce six grounds for appeal, and it is on those that al-Megrahi’s defenders rely in arguing that the case was a miscarriage of justice. They centre, largely, on delays by the Crown in producing key pieces of evidence and on details of how the evidence of Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold the clothes used to wrap the bomb, was handled. The campaigners claim that this evidence would have blown the prosecution case out of the water. That is unlikely. Most independent experts who have examined all, rather than part, of the evidence, say that none of the six grounds for appeal would have been sufficient to overturn the prosecution case.

The sad fact is that we will never know. The gulf that separates the sides in the story is too wide to be bridged. The proof may be out there in the turmoil that is Libya today. But even were it now to emerge, who would believe it? Time, in a case like this, does little to heal — it merely cements deep-seated suspicions. If nature abhors a vacuum, then an untested appeal is a disservice to justice. Without that final process, the truth is buried for ever.

[RB: Yet more misrepresentation by Magnus Linklater of the evidential flaws in the Megrahi conviction. His blinkered stance has been exposed time and again by John Ashton, amongst others.  Here is a link to one of Mr Ashton’s pieces demolishing the Linklater arguments: Lockerbie, and the mangled logic of Magnus Linklater.]

Finger of blame for Lockerbie pointed at American citizen

[This is the headline over an article by Derek Lambie published in the Sunday Express on this date in 2007.  It reads as follows:]

In a sensational twist, Abu Elias, currently living near Washington DC, will be named with others believed to be in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) as part of a terror cell behind the Pan Am disaster.

Lawyers claim the radical Palestinian organisation was hired for $10million to avenge the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the US five months earlier.

Two weeks ago Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, 55, was given the right to appeal his conviction.  Elias - who has a new identity the Sunday Express cannot divulge - is the nephew of the terror group's leader, Ahmed Jibril, the man believed to be the mastermind of the bombing.

The Sunday Express understands new documents - likely to form the basis for al-Megrahi's appeal - show the American was described as "the primary target" early in the investigation.  They also state he conspired with Mohammed Abu Talb, an Egyptian named by Dumfries and Galloway Police as the initial chief suspect.

Lockerbie relatives last night said they are more convinced than ever that the PFLP-GC are the perpetrators of the atrocity. Dr Jim Swire, who lost daughter Flora in the disaster, said: "My view has always been that Abu Talb was involved but that he was not the actual bomber. This development is encouraging and opens new avenues."

Pan Am Flight 103 was just 38 minutes into its journey from London to New York when it was blown up.  Investigators concluded a Semtex bomb was in a cassette player rigged with a Swiss electronic timing device.  Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2002 following a £75million trial at a Scottish Court, at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, although his co-accused Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima was cleared.

But the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) has identified six grounds where it believes a miscarriage of justice may have occurred, with its main focus on the evidence from Tony Gauci, who said  al-Megrahi had come into his shop in Malta and bought clothes found at the scene of the disaster.

With the decision, the finger of blame is once again being pointed at the PFLP-GC. Jibril was suspected of organising the bombing on behalf of Iran as revenge on the US for shooting down Iran Air 655 over the Persian Gulf in 1988.

Evidence submitted to the SCCRC named Jibril, now 79, as the mastermind, with his nephew working with Abu Talb, a member of a splinter group and later jailed for life in Sweden for a bomb attack that left one person dead.

The defence case included a US Defence Intelligence Agency cable from September 24, 1989, which states: "The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar (Mohtashemi-Pur), the former Iranian Minister of Interior.

"The operation was contracted to Ahmad Jabril (sic)... for $1million. The remainder was to be paid after successful completion of the mission."

Documents viewed by the Sunday Express allege the plot began when a man named Mobdi Goben supplied material for the bomb to Hafez Dalkamoni, the leader of the PFLP-GC's European cell. He was then introduced to the alleged bomb maker Marwan Khreesat, by Elias, who has both Syrian and American passports.

Very little is known about Elias, but the defence insists he was paid in travellers' cheques by terror leader Dalkamoni in Cyprus, before he took delivery of the bomb in Frankfurt.  Elias was identified as the key suspect although it was never explored in court, even after documents about his role suddenly emerged during the trial.

The Goben Memorandum, said to have been written by a dying member of the PFLP-GC, was handed to the Lord Advocate detailing the group's activities and a confession about Elias. Elias was concerning the FBI before the bombing and was quizzed about cheques deposited in his bank. In August 1988 he met with agents, who knew he was Jibril's nephew. While the SCCRC said there is dubiety over whether Gauci had correctly identified al-Megrahi, documents show the shopkeeper had no such problems identifying Abu Talb.

Despite the evidence, the investigation took an unexpected twist and the Syrian terror group's suspected role in the disaster was dropped. Meanwhile, it emerged Talb could be brought to trial in Scotland because he does not have lifetime immunity from prosecution as had been believed. During al-Megrahi's trial there was a widespread belief he had been given Crown protection for giving evidence. However, the Crown Office yesterday confirmed he does not have immunity.