The PFLP-GC chimera: Part One

This article was originally posted yesterday (22 February). Without intervention from me, it disappeared overnight. I have therefore posted it again. It had attracted a comment from Aku which pointed out that the Goben Memorandum is in fact available online at https://panam103.wordpress.com/documents/.

[In this article Kevin Bannon poses some pertinent questions about the PFLP-GC and its often-suggested rôle in the Lockerbie bombing. Part One appears today; Part Two will appear tomorrow.]

In November 1988, after an intensive surveillance lasting some weeks (the ‘Autumn Leaves’ or Herbstlaub operation) the West German Federal Police (the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) made a number of arrests of Middle Eastern individuals in and around Frankfurt, suspected of making explosive devices for terrorist purposes. None of the suspects were charged but two of the arrestees, named Dalkamoni and Ghadanfar were eventually jailed for a separate bombing attempt on a military train several months earlier. The Frankfurt plotters escaped conviction despite apparently strong evidence against them. 

After the Lockerbie bombing which happened just weeks later, there were perceived circumstantial resonances between it the Frankfurt plot. Like the Lockerbie bomb, the Frankfurt explosive devices had been housed in Toshiba brand radio-cassette decks and Frankfurt airport happened to be the departure point for the first leg of the Pan Am flight. Suspicions were enhanced with poorly substantiated stories, firstly that one of the bombs from the Frankfurt cache had gone missing, and then there were two separate eyewitness reports of dark brown Samsonite suitcases – like that which contained the Lockerbie bomb – seen in the possession of Frankfurt suspects. 

None of the documents presented at Camp Zeist concerning the BKA’s surveillance of the West German IED factory, nor testimony from BKA officers and other German security personnel, established a Frankfurt link with the Lockerbie bombing beyond rumour or notion. In any event the Lockerbie investigators eventually decided to run with an even wilder plot, which had the Lockerbie bomb beginning its journey in Malta. This strange overlap between a bomb factory in Frankfurt and a completely separate bomb from another conspiracy entirely - transiting through Frankfurt airport between Malta and Heathrow - dogged and obfuscated both the Lockerbie investigation and the trial. 

If this wasn’t perplexing enough, a third phantom entered into the frame: the ‘PFLP-GC.’ At the Camp Zeist trial, the defence sought to suggest that this Middle Eastern terrorist group was associated with the Frankfurt plot and somehow involved in the Lockerbie conspiracy. 

This formed part of a pathetic attempt by the Camp Zeist defence to propose alternative culprits for the bombing - in my view a very weak defence strategy prima facie – all the more so because there was no proof of the existence of the PFLP-GC per se. The PFLP-GC was mentioned up to 200 times at trial, never introduced by witnesses, but led by both prosecution and defence advocates. The deputy chief forensic investigator, Allan Feraday was asked if the Pan Am 103 bomb had come from “the PFLP-GC in Germany?” Feraday vaguely referred to “...hearsay and things going on in the background about groups.” He added “...I'm sure at some stage I knew that there was a suspect about that, but it played no parts in my thoughts at all.” [CZ transcript p3365]. The German investigators at Camp Zeist did not refer to any PFLP-GC-centred aspect of their enquiries; Rainer Holder, a BKA officer in 1988 was involved in Autumn Leaves “right from the very outset” but when asked about the allegations of PFLP-GC involvement with the Frankfurt bomb makers, he only said “That was what we assumed.” [CZ transcript p8673]. Gerwin Friedrich, a German federal government anti-terrorism investigator was asked “...was the Autumn Leaves operation itself an operation into the activities of a group of people suspected to belong to an organisation called the PFLP-GC?.” Friedrich replied “I am not fully aware of that at this moment in time...” [CZ  transcript p8687]. Former BKA officer Anton Van Treek agreed that the Autumn Leaves investigation had targeted a cell that was merely “suspected of belonging to an organisation known as the PFLP-GC”. [CZ  transcript p8705].

The only supposed ‘evidence’ of the PFLP-GC’s existence appeared in the testimony of a BKA officer who referred to an Arabic-language booklet recovered from a Frankfurt apartment ‘The Political Programme of the PFLG-GC’ - apparently misnamed [CZ p8647]. The BKA report on Operation Herbstlaub produced only one conclusion about the PFLP-GC at Camp Zeist, which was read out to the court: “On the basis of a statement by Ghadanfar, the GBA [?] envisaged a partial organisation of the PFLP-GC in the Federal Republic of Germany...” This vague and hardly intelligible item was based on the reported testimony of a terrorist in police custody. [CZ p8723].

A CIA cable cited at Camp Zeist noted a proposal to ask their agent in Malta, Majid Giaka if he had been ‘aware of any Libyan involvement with the activities of the PFLP-GC cell led by Dalkamoni in Frankfurt’ [CZ p6742] – implying that the CIA knew no more than the German investigators. This is the only CIA mention of the PFLP-GC presented at Camp Zeist. If the CIA, with its vast intelligence resources,  has ever had evidence of the PFLP-GC’s existence, then its secret has remained safe with them and they apparently did not want to reveal it to anyone at the Lockerbie trial or to any police force anywhere, either before or since. Therefore the various and substantial criminal investigations based in Germany, the UK and the USA, featuring their combined police, security and intelligence resources, failed to establish PFLP-GC connections to either Lockerbie or to reality. 

Transparently, the objective of the BKA’s Herbstlaub operation was the investigation and apprehension of individuals involved in making explosive devices for a terrorist purpose. It was never established that information about the PFLP-GC was either relevant or useful to this objective. There is no evidence that the PFLP-GC was a focus of such investigations, nor that the mooted references to the PFLP-GC had any bearing on, or were of any benefit to the progress of the BKA investigations into terrorist activity or bombing plots. Throughout the Camp Zeist trial, as during the BKA investigation, the PFLP-GC was not established as anything more than an insignia mentioned in hearsay, and this was based on testimony primarily from terrorist/criminal sources and Western-supported Middle Eastern intelligence agencies. 

The PFLP-GC was not cited in the Camp Zeist indictment and whether it existed or not, it did not impinge on the investigation or trial of those accused of the Lockerbie bombing. The BKA investigation unearthed many incriminating items, including Eastern European hand weapons, terrorist literature, airline timetables, labelled explosives, phone numbers of terrorists and their foreign controllers. Whether it was an evidence trail left by bungling anarchists or one designed by more sophisticated agencies, precisely so that it would be discovered is anyone’s guess. While accrediting the PFLP-GC plot as genuine, the defence at Camp Zeist appeared to be indifferent to the fact that Marwan Khreesat, designer of the cassette-recorder bombs and chief engineer/foreman of the Frankfurt bomb factory, was himself a Western intelligence agent and was the principal informant about the entire Frankfurt bomb-making project and its PFLP-GC associations. 

On 5 November 1988 Marwan Khreesat – aka Omar Marwar - was permitted by his German custodians to make a lengthy phone call to Amman, Jordan during which he spoke with someone of apparently high authority. The BND (the Bundesnachrichtendienst; Germany’s foreign intelligence service) appeared to be fully aware that Khreesat’s detention had been only temporary [John Ashton, 2012, pp33-34]. When he appeared before a Federal High Court judge facing the BKA’s request for a renewal of his arrest warrant the judge freed him; Khreesat obviously knew the right people! Khreesat, had been incriminated in plausible testimony from two accomplices; had all but admitted to involvement in the preparation of bombs and had been monitored coming from an apartment containing improvised, disguised explosive devices and he was apprehended in a car containing such a device. 

It was subsequently revealed at the Camp Zeist trial that Khreesat had throughout been an undercover agent for Jordanian intelligence service, the GID [CZ transcript, pp9271-9277]. John Ashton notes that Jordanian Intelligence is historically ‘very close’ to the CIA and that Khreesat had been ‘reporting back’ to the BND, who officially thanked him for his assistance with their investigations [Ashton 2012 p34]. The Jordanian Intelligence Service had been set up with CIA assistance, and insider Western intelligence sources would later describe Khreesat as having been ‘an asset’ to the CIA, to the German BND and to the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. This explains why he was released and returned immediately to Jordan - he was on our side! (sic).

Despite such distractions, the reiterated, uncorroborated references in court to the PFLP-GC were oddly taken seriously by the Camp Zeist judges:

‘…it was clear from other evidence that we heard, in particular from officers of the German police force, the BKA, that a cell of the PFLP-GC was operating in what was then West Germany at least up until October 1988.’ [Opinion of the Court, para 73].

Their lordships view that the PFLP-GC operation ‘was clear from…evidence’ was a complete delusion on their part and not relevant anyway to the destruction of Pan Am 103, even by their Lordships liberal interpretations of what constituted ‘evidence’.

If the CIA had sought to create the Jordanian GID in its own likeness, they did an excellent job. At Camp Zeist, FBI Special Agent Ed Marshman testified that Khreesat’s status had been confirmed by the GID Director General Samih Battikhi. In 2003 General Battikhi was jailed for 8 years for ‘forgery…and abuse of office’ [The Economist, July 17, 2003]. One of Battikhi’s successors, Mohammed al-Dahabi was similarly convicted for embezzlement and abuse of office [‘Ex-intelligence chief jailed for corruption’ The Guardian, 12 November 2012, p 24]. Chips off the old block! – except that the CIA failed to instruct their protégés how to wriggle out of legal sanction: Former CIA Director Richard Helms received a suspended sentence for perjury in 1977 for misleading a Senate committee by denying CIA funding for the overthrow of Chile’s Allende government. He avoided sanction for previously destroying documents and tape recordings of probable value to the Watergate investigation [‘Richard Helms, Ex-CIA Chief, Dies at 89’ NY Times October 24, 2002]. Helms’s successor William Colby had formerly overseen operation ‘Phoenix’ in which 20,000 Vietnamese non-combatants, mostly community leaders, were murdered to intimidate the people against sympathising with the communists [‘William E. Colby, Head of CIA, a Time of Upheaval’ NY Times May 7, 1996]. 

These are the kind of people which the Scottish police and judiciary were dealing with in preparation for their indictment and prosecution of al-Megrahi. 

Khreesat was too shy to appear at Camp Zeist to explain himself and his phantoms in more detail. Other players in the charade faded away; his obscure assistant Ramzi Diab – AKA Salah Kewkes - scuttled back to Syria (we are told) where Jibril (it was said) had him killed – for obscure reasons. The unseen ‘mastermind’ Abu Elias – if he ever existed – was never seen again. Then there was the enigmatic and almost certainly non-existent ‘Goben memorandum’ believed to be in the possession of the PFLP-GC and the Syrian government, to whom a letter of request had been sent by the Defence at Camp Zeist [CZ p8978]. This document supposedly held ‘a great deal of information’ about the inner workings of the PFLP-GC [CZ p8991]. At Camp Zeist the memorandum was talked-up to the status of a Rosetta Stone which promised to crack the whole case for the defence. The Goben memorandum has never appeared to this day.

Megrahi petition on Justice Committee agenda for 23 February meeting

[The Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament will be resuming consideration of Justice for Megrahi’s petition (PE1370) at its meeting on 23 February 2016 commencing at 10.00 in Holyrood Committee Room 2. The relevant note by the committee’s clerk reads as follows:]

PE1370: Independent inquiry into the Megrahi conviction

Terms of petition

PE1370 (lodged 1 November 2010): The petition on behalf of Justice for Megrahi (JFM), calls for the opening of an inquiry into the 2001 Kamp van Zeist conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988.

Background

Operation Sandwood

17. “Operation Sandwood‟ is the operational name for Police Scotland‟s investigation into JFM‟s nine allegations of criminality levelled at the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, police and forensic officials involved in the investigation and legal processes relating to Megrahi‟s conviction. The allegations range from perverting of the course of justice to perjury. Police Scotland‟s report of this operation is expected to be completed before the end of the year. The Committee has received a number of updates from JFM asking that an “independent prosecutor‟ be appointed to assess the findings of Operation Sandwood.

18. The Committee previously wrote to the Lord Advocate seeking his views on the appointment of an „independent prosecutor‟ as proposed by JFM. His response outlined arrangements made by COPFS to employ independent Crown Counsel not involved in the Lockerbie case to deal with the matter. JFM have rejected the involvement of independent Crown Counsel as they consider it does not represent an “independent, unbiased and constitutionally sound approach”. The Committee sought further information regarding the appointment of an independent prosecutor in September 2015 to which the Lord Advocate reiterated his earlier response.

Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission

19. On 5 November 2015, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) announced that: “it is not in the interests of justice” to continue with a review of the conviction of the late Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi. Consequently, the application has been refused.” In a news release published that day the Commission‟s Chairman, Jean Couper said:

“A great deal of public money and time was expended on the Commission‟s original review of Mr Megrahi‟s case which resulted, in 2007, in him being given the opportunity to challenge his conviction before the High Court by way of a second appeal. In 2009, along with his legal team, Mr Megrahi decided to abandon that appeal. Before agreeing to spend further public money on a fresh review the Commission required to consider the reasons why he chose to do so. It is extremely frustrating that the relevant papers, which the Commission believes are currently with the late Mr Megrahi‟s solicitors, Messrs Taylor and Kelly, and with the Megrahi family, have not been forthcoming despite repeated requests from the Commission. Therefore, and with some regret, we have decided to end the current review. It remains open in the future for the matter to be considered again by the Commission, but it is unlikely that any future application will be accepted for review unless it is accompanied with the appropriate defence papers. This will require the cooperation of the late Mr Megrahi‟s solicitors and his family.”

Latest developments

20. On 5 January 2016, the Committee agreed to write again to the Lord Advocate, asking him to respond to JFM‟s most recent submission to the Committee which questions the Lord Advocate‟s intention to appoint Catherine Dyer, the Crown Agent, as the Crown Office official responsible for co-ordinating matters with the “independent counsel‟. The Committee requested the Lord Advocate‟s response by 5 February. At the time of writing this response has not been received. It will be circulated to members and published on the Committee‟s website as soon as it is received.

21. In the interim, JFM has provided a submission to the Committee outlining their disappointment that a response from the Lord Advocate has not yet been received (Annexe D).

Options for action on petition PE1370

22. The Committee may wish to agree to:

• keep the petition open and recommend that a future justice committee continues to monitor these issues and, in particular, progress with Operation Sandwood, or

• take any other action in relation to the petition that the Committee considers appropriate (including closing the petition).

ANNEXE D

Justice for Megrahi submission for the consideration of PE1370 by the Justice Committee on 23 February 2016

Since the last consideration of PE 1370, on 5 January 2016, nothing of import has emerged from either the Lord Advocate or the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) that clarifies their position re JfM‟s request that a prosecutor entirely independent of COPFS, and who had been appointed independently of said body, receive and consider the final Police Scotland Operation Sandwood report.

On 12th January 2016, the Deputy Convenor of the Justice Committee wrote to the Lord Advocate asking that he address JFM‟s concerns over the manner in which he was dealing with our request for total independence from the Crown Office in the consideration of the Operation Sandwood report.

When this letter was posted on the Parliament website JfM expressed some concern that the terms of the agreement reached at the Justice Committee on 5th January to write to the Lord Advocate appeared not to have been fully met in that the 8 questions we asked the committee to put to the Lord Advocate had not been referred to. We are unaware if this issue had been resolved.

The Deputy Convenor afforded the Lord Advocate a full month in which to respond. At the time of writing, we believe that he is in default as no reply has yet been received by the Justice Committee.

Given that the submission of Police Scotland‟s Operation Sandwood report to the Crown Office is imminent this is a most unsatisfactory position.

It is clearly against the public and a constitutional interest that the Lord Advocate has so far failed to confirm that the police report will be considered by an authority entirely separate from the Crown Office and totally free from its influence or to lay out clearly what his intentions are.

Thus, JFM appeals to the Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament to exercise whatever means it has at its disposal to ensure that before the Operation Sandwood Report is submitted that your committee and JfM are fully briefed on how this report will be considered and who will consider it.

Westminster 'meddling' in Megrahi case

[This is the headline over a report published in The Herald on this date in 2008. It reads as follows:]

The UK Government has been accused of "interference" in the appeal of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

The charge was made yesterday as it was revealed for the first time that Scotland's top prosecutor would be prepared to release a top secret document which could overturn the case, but that UK ministers are blocking the move.

The Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh was told that Elish Angiolini, the Lord Advocate, would be prepared to disclose the document which was uncovered during the three-year investigation of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which resulted in the case being referred back to the courts for a new appeal last summer.

The commission concluded the failure during the original trial to disclose this document, which comes from an un-named foreign country and is thought to contain information about the electronic timer used to detonate the bomb, could constitute a miscarriage of justice.

Although the Crown allowed the commission to see the material they have refused to disclose it to the defence.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is currently serving 27 years in Greenock prison for the 1988 bombing which killed 270 people.

The Libyan's defence team say they need to see the document in order for Megrahi to have a fair appeal.

Maggie Scott, QC, leading Megrahi's defence team, said yesterday that according to the response from the Crown Office, "the Lord Advocate has decided that she should disclose this document for the purposes of the appeal".

She argued the lord advocate ultimately has the jurisdiction in deciding whether to disclose a document in a Scottish criminal appeal.

However, Lord Davidson, QC, the Advocate General, who represents the Westminster government in legal matters north of the border, had said no.

Ms Scott said: "No public interest objection has been taken or raised by the lord advocate. In these circumstances, the only reasonable inference is that ... the lord advocate on reflection does not consider there is a well-founded public interest objection to the disclosure of the document sought."

Ms Scott added: "When one understands this position, it becomes obvious ... the advocate general's intervention is preventing that disclosure.

"But for his intervention the document would be disclosed and when one understands that one sees the intervention by the Advocate General is interference by the UK Government in the pursuit of, the conduct of, a criminal prosecution by the lord advocate."

The advocate general is trying to invoke "public interest immunity" to keep the document secret but Ms Scott said it was incompetent for him to do so.

However, Lord Davidson claimed national security was at stake. He accused Ms Scott of "flawed logic" and said her claim the role of the Advocate General was to interfere in matters which should be left to the Scottish authorities was "wholly erroneous".

He told the court: "This is not a minor squabble. It is one of the most important issues that can ever come before a court. It is a question of national security."

The court heard that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is behind moves for a public interest ruling.

Advocate depute Ronald Clancy, QC, for the Crown, also attacked Ms Scott's arguments, saying the lord advocate had not given up any of her independence.

Scotland's top judge, Lord Hamilton - sitting with Lords Kingarth and Eassie - will issue a decision at a later date about whether Lord Davidson has a right to ask them to keep the disputed document secret.

Megrahi was not in court for yesterday's hearing, but the defence said he would like to attend future appeal hearings, raising questions about where the hearings might be held.

[RB: Eventually, the court ordered that the document should be disclosed, though NOT to Megrahi or his legal team but to a special security-vetted counsel, the first time that such a creature (relatively common in English procedure) had been recognised in Scotland.]

Thatcher banned Lockerbie inquiry

[This is the heading over an item posted yesterday on Lockerbietruth.com, the website of Dr Jim Swire and Peter Biddulph. It reads as follows:]

Today's release of Thatcher cabinet papers from 1988/89 contains a sinister footnote to the Lockerbie story.

Pan Am 103 was blown from the skies over the Scottish town of Lockerbie just after 7 pm on the evening of the 21st December 1988. Within hours US FBI teams arrived in Lockerbie to "assist" the Dumfries and Galloway police force.

Phone lines between the White House, the US embassy in London, and the offices of MI6 were running hot. The US ambassador to the UK had been kept informed. The secret US Navy base at Machrihanish on the Mull of Kintyre had been alerted and at dawn a surveillance helicopter would be scrambled.

At 9.30 on the morning of the 22nd December Thatcher and her cabinet met to decide what to do.  Information about the tragedy had flooded into Downing Street from 8 pm the previous evening. Thatcher and entourage would fly to Scotland later that morning to survey the devastation.

At the cabinet table was head of MI6 Sir Christopher Curwen. He reported that US intelligence had instructed that on no account was there to be any form of public inquiry. His advice was supported by British Secretary of State for Transport Paul Channon.

The tragedy would prove to be the biggest attack on the British mainland since the Second World War, yet no public inquiry must be allowed. If such an inquiry were to happen, the following matters would be open to public scrutiny and questioning:

1. On board Pan Am 103 was a six-man CIA team returning from Beirut. In the suitcase of the team leader Charles McKee were sensitive state papers. The team had been on a praiseworthy mission to attempt to negotiate the release of US hostages at that time held in the Middle East.

2. One of the Pan Am passengers was Khaled Jafaar, a drug courier for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). His job was to take consignments of heroin originating from the Bekaa Valley to the US, to assist with the capture of drug traffickers in Mexico and the USA. UK security authorities cooperated with the drug shipments, known as "controlled deliveries" and sometimes "high risk flights". Passengers and public were unaware of the process.

3. Transport Minister Paul Channon was aware of a telephoned warning - made just days before the bombing - about possible bombs on US aircraft flying to the US. Known as the "Helsinki" warning it was, in the view of Heathrow security chiefs, a hoax. And yet the Department of Transport telexed the warning to Interpol and all airlines. Why would they do that, if the warning was a hoax?

4. Channon was aware also of a second warning from the German authorities in the form of a multi page coloured brochure. This included a photo of a mock-up of a bomb discovered in late October made by a terrorist group funded by Iran and Syria. It was certain that five bombs had been made by the group. Four were retrieved. A fifth bomb was never found.

5. In both warnings the Department of Transport had instructed airline check-in and security staff that if a tape recorder or radio in a passenger's luggage seemed suspicious, it should be "consigned to the hold of the plane". That is, exactly where the terrorist would want it to be.

6. Paul Channon was aware that Heathrow security was known to be in chaos. On the day of the Lockerbie attack 70,000 airside passes were in circulation at Heathrow, distributed to many nationalities and construction workers. The head of Heathrow security believed any country could have planted a bomb. There was no screening of staff, no restrictions on people walking through with bags. A rogue bag could be easily inserted into the baggage chain. [This information would be revealed to journalists in March 2012 by the Head of Heathrow Security following his retirement].

But...  

Important as they were, none of the above were recorded in Cabinet minutes or released under the thirty year rule.

 

Instead, all that is recorded and available to the public is that Thatcher and her ministers agreed that it was "not clear whether any further public inquiry would serve a useful purpose". An independent investigation would "serve no useful purpose". In general "it was important to avoid a plethora of inquiries that caused distress to individuals while unearthing no new facts."

On the contrary, Jim Swire and many bereaved relatives will be happy to undergo further distress caused by an independent inquiry. But will the Americans ever allow it?

Margaret Thatcher sleeps soundly in her grave knowing that her 1993 memoirs The Downing Street Years have consigned 270 murdered Lockerbie souls to the dustbin of history.  In 914 pages of closely remembered events and text she does not mention the word "Lockerbie".

The renowned journalist John Pilger has an appropriate saying for Thatcher's chicanery. When an event is inconvenient a government - aided by its intelligence services - will ensure that it "never happened".

Megrahi release "MacAskill's finest moment"

[What follows is excerpted from an article published on 19 February in Holyrood magazine based on an interview with Professor Alan Miller, outgoing chairman of the Scottish Human Rights Commission:]

Miller’s appointment in November 2007 came at a time when any discussion around human rights seemed to be entangled with criminal justice. The decision to release convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds in 2009 – one that the commission supported very publicly – was perhaps the most emphatic example of that.

“As chair of the European Network [of National Human Rights Institutions] and vice chair of the global network, I am constantly in circulation and Scotland’s stock rose enormously around the world as a result of that decision,” claims Miller.

“Not everywhere in the world, but in a lot of places Scotland’s stock rose considerably – it was a tough but just decision… The debate was extremely undignified. I thought it brought out the best in Scotland and in the Scottish Government, and it resonated very well in the main around the world. I thought some of the opposition to the decision was very demeaning. It was certainly [Kenny] MacAskill’s finest moment.”

Lockerbie appeal raises new questions

[This is the headline over an article by Steve James published on this date in 2002 on the WSWS.org website. It reads as follows:]

Judges have retired in the appeal by Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi against his conviction last year for blowing up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 22, 1988. The judges’ verdict is due in March.

On January 31, 2001, three judges sitting in a specially constructed court in the Netherlands found Al-Megrahi guilty of planting a Semtex-packed cassette player on board the Boeing 747, which destroyed the plane, killing its 259 passengers and crew as well as 11 Lockerbie residents. Al-Megrahi’s co-accused and alleged co-conspirator Amin Khalifa Fhimah was acquitted of the charges in that trial.

The appeal hearing, which began on January 23 this year, was held in Camp Zeist, the Netherlands, the same former US base that hosted the original trial. Under normal legal precedents, the appeal would undoubtedly result in the release of al-Megrahi. Fresh evidence presented during the hearing further undermined the already flimsy circumstantial basis for al-Megrahi’s original conviction in what was a politically motivated verdict primarily designed to retrospectively justify more than a decade of US and UN sanctions against Libya.

In the original verdict, the trial judges ignored the numerous contradictions, and speculative leaps in the case against al-Megrahi and rejected circumstantial evidence pointing to other groups and individuals as having prepared the attack. Such was the political pressure to convict at least one Libyan that the judges rejected the “not proven” verdict, available to them in Scottish law, under which the trial was heard.

During the appeal, defence lawyer William Taylor set about methodically undermining the judges’ published verdict, arguing that it constituted a miscarriage of justice. In particular, Taylor concentrated on the claim made in the original trial that the suitcase containing the bomb was loaded by al-Megrahi onto a feeder flight, KM180, at Luqa airport in Malta and was subsequently transferred on to Pan Am 103.

In concurring with this claim, the judges had rejected any possibility that the bomb could have been loaded at either Frankfurt in Germany, where the feeder flight would have passed on luggage to Pan Am 103, or at London, Heathrow, where the 747 stopped before making its onward transatlantic flight. In their published verdict, however, the judges admitted, “The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 is a major difficulty for the Crown [prosecution] case, and one which has to be considered along with the rest of the circumstantial evidence in the case.”

In the appeal Taylor showed that records of luggage handling at Frankfurt were sufficiently vague for several flights to have contributed luggage to PA103A. Trial judges had also ignored evidence from an experienced worker scanning all luggage loaded into PA103A, who had insisted that no questionable radio items appeared—the bomb is alleged to have been in a Toshiba radio cassette—he said.

The defence focused on evidence of a bag comparable to the one that allegedly contained the bomb being loaded into a PA103 luggage container under confused circumstances at London’s Heathrow airport.

This aspect of the appeal was dramatically underscored by new evidence of security breaches at Heathrow. After hearing written statements, the judges agreed to hear from several Heathrow workers reporting on evidence of a break-in to the luggage storage area in the early morning of December 21, 1988, revealing a route through which a bomb-laden suitcase could be smuggled into the Pan Am luggage area.

Giving evidence, former Heathrow airport security guard, Ray Manly insisted that a padlock on the door between a Heathrow passenger terminal and a secure luggage area within a short walking distance of the building from where PA103 was loaded had been cut the night before the explosion. Manly stated that a senior police official had interviewed him about the broken padlock in January 1989. Police had taken possession of the padlock, but it had subsequently disappeared and was not produced during the original trial, the appeal heard. This had enabled the prosecution to successfully question Manly’s recollection of events, despite other witnesses corroborating his testimony of a break-in.

Evidence of a break-in at Heathrow seriously compromises the Crown’s case as it presents a much stronger, more internally coherent, circumstantial basis for the bomb being loaded in London rather than Malta. No suggestion was made of who might then have bombed PA103, or why.

Media coverage of the appeal has varied wildly. The British press are reporting the appeal relatively even-handedly. The entire proceedings have been viewable on line via the BBC’s website. Across the Atlantic, however, the appeal into the greatest mass killing of US citizens prior to September 11 has been met with near complete silence. Whilst the New York Times has not reported the appeal at all, a brief comment in the Washington Post —the paper’s only coverage of the recent hearing—attacked even the distorted legal processes at Camp Zeit for being unnecessarily lenient in its observance of certain democratic norms.

Even though no jury had sat in on the original trial, the Post complained that the observance of certain features of due process—the right to a public hearing, centred on the weighing up of evidence and including the defendant’s right to appeal—represented an obstacle to the “war against terror”. In a politically loaded comment aimed at justifying the draconian measures introduced by the Bush administration in the wake of the terror attacks on New York and Washington, the Post argued, “Megrahi’s trial and the acquittal of a fellow defendant illustrate the expense and time of securing convictions in terrorism cases where defendants receive full access to Western courts. In the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism, the United States has said it intends to try some foreign suspects before military tribunals.”

For its part, the US government is treating the initial guilty verdict as a platform from which to extract a full admission of guilt from Libya, and is treating the appeal with complete contempt. Simultaneous with the first hearings, on January 23, an unnamed State Department official toldAssociated Press that the US would not consider removing Libya from its list of “terrorist” nations unless it paid compensation and accepted guilt for Lockerbie. The official, describing talks by US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs William Burns, said that even accepting guilt would not remove Libya from the list. “They can’t get off the terrorism list without doing it, but they won’t necessarily get off the list if they do do it...” the same official commented. USA Today suggested that the price for Libya’s removal might be $6 billion.

This ultimatist stand is despite the appeal hearing raising further questions about the original verdict. Shortly before the appeal commenced, presiding judge Lord Cullen rejected a call from Marina de Larracoechea, whose sister was an airhostess on PA103, for the appeal to consider widening the scope of its investigation. Miss de Larracoechea wanted the court to hear further evidence examining why the original trial did not consider evidence on the failure of the intelligence services to prevent the bomb being loaded. She told the judges, “key and central aspects of the case were repeatedly shielded.”

Over the years there have been numerous reports raising allegations that the preparations for the Lockerbie attack were known to the intelligence services of several Western governments or even that the US played a direct part in the explosion. There are a number of alternative scenarios as to who carried out the bombing that have never been fully explored, including the defence’s insistence that the bombing was authored by a Palestinian group.

In May 2001, Hans Koechler, a United Nations observer to the Camp Zeit trial, made a devastating assault on the original verdict, describing it as politically motivated, irrational, and subject to international power politics. Koechler, appointed by Kofi Annan, is a philosophy lecturer and a founder member of the International Progress Organisation think tank. He attacked the failure of the court, including the defence team, to seriously investigate the special defence of incrimination i.e. that other individuals and groups, particularly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), were responsible for the bombing. He noted the reports which emerged late in the trial, from the leading prosecution official that “an unnamed foreign government” had information relating to the defence case, and that this information was never revealed or investigated, nor followed up by the defence itself. Rather, in Koechler’s view, “the strategy of the defence team by suddenly dropping its ‘special defence’ and cancelling the appearance of almost all defence witnesses...is totally incomprehensible; it puts into question the credibility of the defence’s actions and motives.”

The unearthing by Al-Megrahi’s legal team of the Heathrow evidence blows further holes in his original conviction and when judged by the legal norm of proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt, renders it unsound.

Time to come clean on Rouhani and Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article by barrister David Wolchover published in Jewish News Online on 18 February 2016. It reads as follows:]

Not long after Hassan Rouhani became president of Iran, Benjamin Netanyahu grimly described him as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Islamic Republic’s so-called “moderate” president may have gently smiled his way to a milestone deal over his country’s nuclear development programme and a warm welcome in European capitals, but Israel’s premier was spot on.

Under Rouhani’s administration, a staggering 2,000 people have been executed, mainly by the “traditional” method of slow hanging. For all his cherubic twinkling, Rouhani is as bloodthirsty a customer as the very cruellest of his fellow clerics.

Moreover, his career as a purveyor of death goes way back. In 2013, by simply drawing together biographical details in the public domain, I explained why he was probably implicated in the worst atrocity ever perpetrated in the UK – the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.

Now, however, that which was mere supposition has become hard fact, avowed to me by an informant in circumstances lending credence to the individual’s claim to be speaking on behalf of Israeli intelligence. But why do they not come right out with it if they know? Very simply, they are shy of proclaiming officially what they know privately. I’ll come to that.

But first, forget Libya and the two indicted Libyans Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah and Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. The case against them was palpable nonsense, cobbled together unconvincingly for reasons of state still only half understood. However, before the US government changed course and blamed Libya, it had already accurately identified the true culprits. Lockerbie was retaliation for Iran Air 655, a packed Airbus negligently shot down by an American warship in the Gulf on 4 July 1988, in the mistaken belief it was a hostile warplane.

Selected journalists were briefed about a trawl of National Security Agency telecom intercepts, which furnished clear proof that Iran’s powerful interior minister, Hojatislam Mohtashami-Pur, had contracted Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command to blow up an American airliner in revenge for IA 655. The PFLP-GC needed the money and had expertise in planting bombs on passenger planes and it is almost certain the device that destroyed Pan Am 103 was the gang’s own barometric pressure type employed by them repeatedly over many years.

Significantly, the NSA intercepts were corroborated and enlarged upon by parallel Israeli intelligence obtained by secreting agents into the heart of terrorist groups. Citing intelligence from such infiltration, my informant asserted the Iranians had not simply been the paymasters but had lent decisive logistical aid. It is certain, contrary to the Crown’s case, that the Lockerbie bomb was planted inside Heathrow’s “interline” shed in the portable luggage receptacle, which in due course was loaded on board the 747.

Records later showed that during the narrow window of opportunity the terrorists had, an IranAir cargo plane was parked not 200 yards from the shed, and departed for Tehran just minutes after the window closed.

In my online treatise Culprits of Lockerbie, I surmised that a terrorist flew in on the cargo jet with the bomb and, masquerading as a baggage handler, placed it in the receptacle. He then immediately flew out on the same plane.

My informant agreed and added that the “porter” was the PFLP-GC’s expert in airport and airline security, Marwad Bushnaq, Ahmed Jibril’s nephew, nom de guerre Abu A’Ali.

Even before Lockerbie, Israel discovered Heathrow was a likely target and warned MI6, but the warning was spurned because of a major row between British and Israeli intelligence services.

Where does Hassan Rouhani fit into this?

Published details about him show three points of particular interest, the first that Rouhani held senior executive positions in intelligence, security and special operations and was on the Supreme Defence Council. In 1989, he was offered the job of minister of intelligence, though he opted instead to become new supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s plenipotentiary on the Supreme National Security Council and its first secretary.

Point two: Mohtashami-Pur was deeply antagonistic to the genuinely more moderate future president, Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani. In June 1988, mounting opposition to the war with Iraq led the original supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to charge Rafsanjani with bringing hostilities to an end. With Rafsanjani eclipsing the extremist Mohtashami, the destruction of the Airbus on 4 July presented the perfect opportunity to spike his opponent’s rising influence.

Three: Rouhani had a very special motive to conspire with Mohtashami in their shared opposition to Rafsanjani. As so often in political intrigue, the key to understanding alliances often lies rooted in personal vendetta. In 1980, Rouhani had joined the Supervisory Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Authority. Rafsanjani was chief executive and Rouhani was deeply critical of the policy of televising foreign – un-Islamic – content. By 1983, Rouhani was council chair and engineered a revolt against Rafsanjani, triumphantly replacing him at the helm. But Rafsanjani had Khomeini reinstate him, and the egg on Rouhani’s face (for once devoid of smiles) doubtless sowed the seeds of deep and lasting enmity.

We know from informal briefings by US and Israeli intelligence after Lockerbie that the Mohtashami/Jibril deal was sealed in the interior minister’s Tehran office in late August 1988. There was much more. Two senior Iranian officials attended the meeting with Mohtashami. One, Mehdi Karroubi, custodian and treasurer of the Martyr’s Fund, would fund the multimillion-dollar bounty. The other didn’t say much but smiled a lot and was obviously more than a neutral observer. He was none other than our cherubic friend, Supreme Defence Council member Hassan Rouhani.

Why has Israel never breathed a word of this publicly? Since 1989, the United States has turned away from accusing Iran, will hardly do so now and has anyway invested too much in the story of Libyan guilt to relent after all this time. Israel for its part dare not break ranks publicly with its benefactor but, the informant asserted, hoped that a leaked but “plausibly deniable” narrative would do enough damage to the prospect of a nuclear accord without jeopardising relations with US intelligence.

Of course, Bibi could well have ordered the whole thing to be invented to condemn Iran, with your writer as his useful idiot. Who knows?