The Lockerbie secret doc: Khreesat and the Swiss

[This is the headline over an article published today on Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer’s PT35B website. It reads in part:]

“Marwan Khreesat is still wanted in connection with the bomb on the El Al flight. There can be little doubt that Khreesat is the bomb-maker for the PFLP-GC, that he was brought to West Germany for that purpose and there is a possibility that he prepared the IED which destroyed PA 103. As such he should not be at liberty but should be closely questioned regarding his activities with a view to tracking his associates in the attack.”                                                Supt Connor Report — June 1989

Swiss investigative journalist Otto Hostettler has uncovered a very interesting piece of information.

According to his research:

Khreesat Marwan Abdel-Razzaq Mufdi applied on 6.9.1988 at the Swiss Embassy in Amman for a visa to travel to Switzerland.

Despite being a “person of interest” in Switzerland [unexplained Swissair-Crash from 1970 (Würenlingen)] and being wanted in Italy (El Al Flight August 1972), he was indeed granted a 15 days visa from Switzerland on 12.9.1988. (...)

We know that the secret doc alleges that MST-13 timers had been provided to the PFLP-GC organization.

Nothing more is known at this point. But this trip – if it indeed occurred — could very well be the source of the story covered in the secret doc sent from the King of Jordan to John Major in 1996.

A particularly interesting aspect of this visa is the fact that the paperwork at the Federal Police was handled by Inspector Fluckiger.

Does that name ring a bell?

Inspector Fluckiger met with a MEBO employee (Lumpert) on June 22 1989.

On June 6, 2008, Lumpert told me that he gave a MST-13 timer prototype to Swiss Commissioner Peter Fluckiger

According to Lumpert, Fluckiger requested this device and other material at the demand of a “friendly Intelligence Agency.”

Last night, George Thomson wrote the following comment on this blog:

“During a recent investigation in Switzerland our team managed to get our hands on an official government document which confirms that in June 1989 Swiss Police did receive from a MEBO–source documents and materials in relation to MST timers. THE DOCUMENT GOES ON TO CONFIRM THAT THIS MATERIAL WAS THEN HANDED OVER TO THE AMERICANS.”

REMEMBER: This is one full year BEFORE super FBI genius Tom Thurman identified the link between PT/35(b) and MEBO (June 15 1990). Things are looking up!

The hidden scandal of Lockerbie

[What follows is the text of a review by Steve James of John Ashton and Ian Ferguson’s Cover-up of Convenience—the Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie that was published on the WSWS.org website on this date in 2002:]

John Ashton’s and Ian Ferguson’s work on the circumstances surrounding the destruction on December 21, 1988, of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland is worthy of careful study. It raises serious doubts, not only regarding the recent conviction of the Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, now incarcerated in Barlinnie jail, Glasgow, but over the entire official presentation of events before and after the crash, from 1988 to the present day. They give indicators as to how the full facts regarding the atrocity which killed 270, perhaps 271, people might be uncovered and conclude with a series of searching questions which any genuinely independent inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster should direct toward various governments, intelligence services, and individuals.

Ashton and Ferguson have followed Lockerbie for years. Ashton worked as the deputy to the late British film maker Allan Francovich, whose film The Maltese Double-Cross, examined various alternative scenarios that have been advanced as an explanation for the Lockerbie disaster, favouring that the bombing was a consequence of a CIA controlled drug running operation utilised to spy on Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian armed political groupings and factions.

Ferguson is a journalist, who has written many articles on Lockerbie, and along with Scottish lawyer Robert Black, architect of the Camp Zeist trial, maintains the www.thelockerbietrial.com website.

Writing in the immediate aftermath of the special Criminal Court verdict at Camp Zeist convicting al-Megrahi, Ashton and Ferguson have drawn together the fruits of long research and interviews with a large number of people involved in the disaster, including a number of current and former spies.

The authors do not proclaim that al-Megrahi is innocent. Rather, they review a large body of circumstantial evidence suggesting that responsibility for Lockerbie may lie primarily with the intelligence services of several Western governments, particularly the United States. They are highly critical of the role played by the media in parroting the twists and turns of the official line and note that no major British or US newspaper, radio, or TV channel has had the journalistic independence to undertake a sustained investigation of this most murky aspect of the disaster.

Ashton and Ferguson note that there were many general indications of a possible attack on an American flight in late 1988. After the 1988 American attack by the USS Vincennes on an Iranian Airbus, in which 255 pilgrims were murdered, Iranian broadcasts warned that the skies would “rain blood” in consequence. A Syrian backed Palestinian group with a history of attacks on passenger aircraft was known to be operating in Germany. Many staff at the US Embassy in Moscow altered flight plans to avoid Pan Am over the Christmas period.

More specifically, the authors suggest there may have been prior warnings of an attack on flight PA103. They imply that both the US ambassador to Lebanon, John McCarthy, and the South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha had their travel plans altered at the last minute in order to avoid PA103.

Others, including Charles McKee, a US Army Special Forces Major, and Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s Beirut deputy station chief, uniquely amongst US officials, allegedly changed their plans at the last minute to fly on PA103. McKee had been leading a hostage rescue team in Beirut. One suggestion, and it is no more than that, is that these individuals were the target of a successful assassination attempt in which intelligence agencies themselves played a role.

According to the authors, from as little as two hours after the crash, US intelligence officers were at the southern Scottish site. Over the next days many more arrived. They were not looking for survivors or explanations as to the cause of the crash. They did not cooperate with local rescue services. Instead, they were searching for particular pieces of debris, luggage and particular corpses. Ashton and Ferguson cite finds of large quantities of cash, cannabis and heroin on the flight, as well as intelligence papers owned by McKee, whose luggage was removed and replaced. A report noting the location of hostages held in Beirut was apparently found on the ground. There were reports of helicopter-borne armed groups guarding and then removing a large box, and an unidentified body.

A police surgeon from Bradford, David Fieldhouse, insists that one body was moved, after it had been tagged and its location noted, while another disappeared entirely. Fieldhouse was subsequently victimised. Other concerns were raised by local police officers, some of which phoned Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who then began to take an active interest in the case.

Ashton and Ferguson detail the main alternative theory—that the bombing was carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PLFP-GC). This was also largely the official position until 1991. Ahmed Jibril formed the PFLP-GC in 1968, when he broke away from the PFLP. The authors assert, on the basis of discussions with a number of spies, that the PFLP-GC were recruited by the Iraqi, Iranian, or Syrian governments to attack a US plane. When considering the motivation for such a terror operation, whether on the part of the PFLP-GC or any of their possible sponsors, the book is at its weakest. It gives very little insight into the politics of these governments or of the PFLP-GC, other than to make such observations as support for the PFLP-GC allowing the regime of Hafez Al Assad in Syria to appear to be supporting the Palestinian struggle against Israel.

The authors instead draw attention to the bombing by the PFLP-GC 18 years earlier, in 1970, of two aircraft destined for Israel—one survived with a two foot hole in the fuselage, the other, Swissair 330 to Zurich crashed killing 147 people—and another bombing 16 years earlier, in 1972. The PFLP-GC in 1988 certainly appears to have had a European operation based in Nuess in the Ruhr, Germany, intent on attacking US and Israeli targets. The group eventually blew up some railway lines used by US troop trains, planned an attack on an Israeli sports team, and became the target of a huge surveillance operation by German state security, the BKA. Their operation was hopelessly compromised. Raids by the BKA eventually discovered timers, guns, along with various electrical goods altered to contain explosives. Two PFLP-GC members were eventually jailed in 1991 for the train attacks.

Astonishingly, however, bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat was released on a legal technicality and left Germany. According to Ashton and Ferguson, Khreesat, who built the bombs used in the attacks during the 1970s, had by this time become a Jordanian spy in the PFLP-GC. Jordanian intelligence apparently has a close relationship with the Israeli Mossad and the CIA. Khreesat is still living in Amman, the Jordanian capital, under protection.

Ashton and Ferguson note an interview with Khreesat by the FBI, which was cited at the Camp Zeist trial but never reported in the world’s press, in which Khreesat alleges that one of his bombs went missing after the BKA raid. On this basis, the authors speculate as to whether the CIA had, with the cooperation of other intelligence agencies, played a more active role in allowing the destruction of the plane. They restate the suggestion that this might have been to prevent exposure of the CIA’s drug running operations from the Bekaa Valley, or for other reasons associated with US policy in the Middle East, particularly the aftermath of the Iran-Contra machinations. They suggest that a CIA approved suitcase, loaded with heroin from the Bekaa Valley, might have been swapped for one loaded instead with a bomb intended to kill McKee.

McKee and others had reportedly developed serious reservations about the drug-running operation; it having recently endangered their own lives through an aborted hostage rescue operation. The authors note that PA103 was brought down shortly after the election of ex-CIA chief George Bush, father of the current US president, when exposure of CIA drug running would have been highly embarrassing.

Those who have made allegations of possible CIA involvement include an ex-Mossad spy, Juval Aviv, hired by Pan Am to investigate the destruction of its aircraft, an erratic ex-US spy Lester Coleman, who at one point sought political asylum in Sweden, William Chasey, a Washington DC lobbyist, and Time journalist Roy Rowan.

Ashton and Ferguson trace the development of the official position of blaming Libya for the bombing. Bush called Margaret Thatcher in early 1989 asking for the inquiry to be “toned down”, at a time when Syria and the PFLP-GC were favoured suspects. Just over two years later, on November 14, 1991, simultaneous indictments were brought by the Scottish Crown Office and the US State Department against Libyan airline staff al-Megrahi and Lamen Fhimah. Days later, Bush announced that Syria, which had acquiesced in the 1991 US attack on Iraq, had taken a “bum rap”. The State Department put out a fact sheet to justify the change of position, claiming that previous pointers to the PFLP-GC and Syria had been cunning ruses by the Libyan government. UK Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said that no other countries besides Libya were targets for investigation. Four days later, the last Western hostages, including the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy, Terry Waite, were released from Beirut.

The authors thereafter recount the official line that the bomb, equipped with an MST-13 timer from MeBo of Zurich, was loaded in a Samsonite suitcase packed with clothes, which was inserted by Libyan agents onto flight KM180 from Luqa airport in Malta, transferred at Frankfurt to a feeder flight for PA103, and then shuttled to Heathrow, where it was loaded on the fated Boeing 747. This was the case presented in the Camp Zeist trial.

Ashton and Ferguson carefully summarise the numerous problematic aspects of all the prosecution evidence at the trial; the dubious visual identification of al-Megrahi by Maltese shop owner Tony Gauci; the contradictory and bizarre ramblings of CIA spy Abdul Majid Giacka, the so-called “star witness” at Luqa airport whose evidence collapsed in court; the contested luggage records at Frankfurt airport; and the claim by MeBo owner Edwin Bollier that he had been approached by the CIA and encouraged to frame Libya, and that the CIA had had an MST-13 type timer in their possession before 1988.

At Camp Zeist, the trial was in danger of disintegrating. By November 2000 few observers, including the book’s authors, expected anything other than an acquittal, or a not proven verdict which is available under Scottish law. But the verdict delivered on January 2001, which admitted that the prosecution case was full of holes and based on circumstantial inferences, nevertheless found al-Megrahi guilty, while his only alleged accomplice Fhimah, was acquitted.

Ashton and Ferguson by no means completely exonerate Libya or al-Megrahi. They note that his refusal to account for his activities on 20 December 1988 and his visit to Malta using a false passport cannot be dismissed. Trial evidence suggests that al-Megrahi indeed worked for Libyan intelligence and he has, so far, offered no explanation as to why he chose not to take the stand to defend himself. Many aspects of the whole business remain to be uncovered.

What the authors do is to cite 25 questions to which any genuinely independent inquiry must seek answers. These include:

* the circumstances of the warnings given prior to the disaster.

* the circumstances of the booking changes for Pik Botha’s entourage, and McKee and Gannon.

* the drug and cash finds at Lockerbie.

* the possibility of an extra body, the circumstances under which bodies were moved, and the circumstances of wrong police evidence given against David Fieldhouse at the 1989 Fatal Accident Inquiry.

* why Transport Secretary Paul Channon was able to announce that arrests were imminent and why Margaret Thatcher blocked a full judicial enquiry?

* the relationship of the British MI6 to the Iran Contra deals and why was the Foreign office official in charge of liaising with the US on Iran-Contra, Andrew Green, was put in charge of the Lockerbie investigation.

* the role of the CIA and MI6 in hostage deals made after the exposure of Iran Contra in 1986 and 1991.

* why Juval Aviv and others were never interviewed by the investigation authorities about the bombing. What were the circumstances of legal cases brought against Aviv and others?

* why did it take a year for the MeBo circuit board to be discovered, what were the circumstances of its discovery, and what were the connections between MeBo’s Edwin Bollier and the CIA?

* why did the CIA and the Scottish Lord Advocate seek to block access to CIA cables that were helpful to the defence?

Under conditions where the US government is refusing to investigate its own intelligence failures leading up to the September 11 terror attacks, any exposure of a possible CIA role in aircraft terrorism clearly assumes great significance. Earlier this year, al-Megrahi’s appeal against his conviction was thrown out, despite defence evidence that made a strong circumstantial case for the bomb having been loaded at Heathrow airport in London.

Following Tam Dalyell’s question in parliament, on March 26, there is a suggestion that police evidence relating to Lockerbie is being destroyed, and that yet another suitcase owned by another Special Forces member, Joseph Patrick Murphy, was at one point early in the investigation thought to contain the bomb.

Without making wild or unsustainable accusations, and despite serious political limitations, Ashton and Ferguson have provided an essential reference for anyone seeking to understand why a Boeing 747 should explode in mid-air killing hundreds of ordinary air travellers, and yet, more than 13 years later, there is still no generally accepted explanation of why it happened and who was responsible.

Megrahi: eight key pieces of evidence

[This is the headline over the second batch of material derived from Megrahi: You are my Jury published today on the heraldscotland.com website.  It reads in part:]

Megrahi: You are my Jury, The Lockerbie Evidence is a detailed book, spanning 460 pages, 15 chapters, four appendices, and a six-page glossary. It explores a number of key areas which campaigners will regard as crucial to the case, including eight which relate to previously unseen evidence. Here, chief reporter LUCY ADAMS present extracts from the book and explain why they matter.

1.Why Megrahi dropped the appeal

CONTEXT: Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi had two possible routes out of Greenock jail in August 2009: a prisoner transfer application for which he first had to drop his appeal, or compassionate release because of his prostate cancer. The latter route did not demand that he drop his appeal, in contrast to the former. In the event, he ended his appeal, yet the PTA was turned down, and Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill instead granted compassionate release. The chain of actions has always been a mystery, leaving those who believe in Megrahi’s guilt to see his decision as confirmation of their views. Why would an innocent man not pursue an appeal against conviction that he had waited years to begin? Now, for the first time, Megrahi claims that he was pressured to drop the appeal by Mr MacAskill personally through diplomatic channels.

EXTRACT: "On 10 August MacAskill and his senior civil servants met a delegation of Libyan officials, including Minister [Abdel Ali] Al-Obeidi. By this time I was desperate. The 90-day time limit for considering the prisoner transfer application had passed and, although I had some vocal public supporters, MacAskill was coming under considerable pressure to reject both applications. After the meeting the Libyan delegation came to the prison to visit me. Obeidi said that, towards the end of the meeting, MacAskill had asked to speak to him in private. Once the others had withdrawn, MacAskill told him it would be easier for him to grant compassionate release if I dropped my appeal. He [MacAskill] said he was not demanding that I do so, but the message seemed to me to be clear. I was legally entitled to continue the appeal, but I could not risk doing so. It meant abandoning my quest for justice."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT:  Mr MacAskill, who was not contacted in advance of today's book publication, has always said he could not interfere in the judicial process. If Megrahi's version of events is true, it will prove very damaging to the minister, who has repeatedly distanced himself from any appeal which, if it had gone ahead, could have been a massive embarrassment to the Scottish legal system. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission had already found six grounds on which Megrahi’s conviction was potentially unsafe.

2. The timer fragment

CONTEXT: At Megrahi's trial at Camp Zeist, it was agreed that the fragment of electrical circuit board found at the Lockerbie crash site [and referred to as PT/35b] came from an MST-13 board manufactured by the Swiss company Mebo and Thuring, its supplier. Mebo revealed that it had sold 20 such timers to the Libyans, and this became a hugely significant part of the case against Megrahi. However, the book claims that new evidence shows the fragment of circuit board found at Lockerbie, which was 100% covered in tin, did not match those in the timers sent to Libya and alleges that the Crown's forensic expert at trial, Allen Feraday, was aware of the disparity but failed to disclose it.

EXTRACT: "On 23 October 2008, at just after 7pm, a member of [Tony] Kelly's [defence] team finally put the crucial question to Bonfadelli [Urs Bonfadelli was responsible for the manufacture of Mebo’s MST-13 boards]: was the circuitry of the MST-13 boards coated with pure tin or a tin/lead alloy? His answer was clear and devastating: all were coated with an alloy of 70% tin and 30% lead. There could be no mistaking this, he said. It was imminently apparent what this meant: if PT/35b’s coating had not been changed by the explosion, then it could not have been made by Thuring and therefore could not have been one of the 20 timers supplied to Libya."

Mr Kelly subsequently instructed two independent experts to see if the heat of the explosion could have turned the fragment’s tin/lead alloy to tin – Dr Chris McArdle, who had 25 years experience in the electronics industry, and Dr Jess Cawley, a metallurgist with over 35 years experience. The book adds: "..McArdle pointed out there was no way that it would have been hot enough for the lead to have evaporated away… Cawley agreed, pointing out that, although plastic explosives of the type used in the Lockerbie bomb produce a flash of intense heat, lead, like most metals, requires a far longer exposure to high temperatures before it would melt, let alone evaporate."

Documents from the Ministry of Defence Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment, disclosed by the Crown just before Megrahi's appeal was dropped, revealed contradictory notes from Mr Feraday saying the coating was pure tin and then "70/30 SN/Pb" (70% tin and 30% lead). The book states: "Had these documents been disclosed to the defence team, they would have provided the basis for a vigorous cross-examination of Feraday."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: This was one of the most important components of the prosecution case against Megrahi. As the book admits, this was the "golden thread". However, shortly before Megrahi dropped his appeal, his defence team found proof that the timer was not one of those supplied by Mebo to the Libyans. If anything author John Ashton suggests – based on expert opinion – that the circuit board was likely to have been "DIY" rather than commercially manufactured. With this information, the golden thread falls.

3. The Iranian connection

CONTEXT: In the book's preface, Megrahi says he does not want to "point the finger of blame at anyone else", but much of the material drawn together will lead readers to believe that Iran funded the PFLP-GC [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command] to carry out the bombing, in retaliation for the American warship the USS Vincennes shooting down an Iranian passenger jet and killing all 300 people on board in 1988. The US apparently mistook it for an F-14 fighter.

EXTRACT: "The most difficult witness [for the defence team] to get to was the PFLP-GC bomb-maker and double agent Marwen Khreesat. Asked about the aim of his October 1988 mission to West Germany, Khreesat was unambiguous: 'It was made very clear to us by Ahmed Jibril [leader of the PFLPC-GC] that he wanted to blow up an aeroplane. This was the whole purpose of being there. Dalkamoni and I travelled to Frankfurt in order to go to the offices of Pan Am to get information about their flight schedules. We did this. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Jibril wanted a Pan Am flight out of Frankfurt blown up.' Although Khreesat remained adamant that his bombs were not of the twin-speaker type used for the Lockerbie bomb, he revealed that Dalkamoni had at least one other radio cassette bomb. If Khreesat was right, here at last was confirmation that the PFLP-GC had at least one twin speaker device in West Germany."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: The initial investigation into Lockerbie in 1989 all pointed towards the culpability of a German cell of the PFLP-GC. There is much within the book, including the above statement by bomb-maker Marwen Khreesat which appears to confirm this view. There are also notes showing that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher blocked a public inquiry in the bombing and an explanation that politically it was not expedient to fall out with Iran – whose oil was relied upon - in the run-up to the Gulf War against Iraq. A great deal of the evidence incriminating the PFLPC-GC was not disclosed at the original trial or appeal. The heavily referenced allegations in the book make it seem more likely that they were behind the Lockerbie bombing than Libya. To have dismissed the evidence against them at the time raises questions about the role and potential bias of some of the security agencies involved, and the murkiness of the international politics which has always shrouded the Lockerbie case.

4. Reward money and the reliability of witnesses

CONTEXT: In the UK witnesses cannot be paid for their information. However, the book describes in detail how both Tony and Paul Gauci were offered reward money by the American Justice Department. And, we learn for the first time, that this was discussed even before Tony Gauci's first statement. The book also reveals that Edwin Bollier, who ran Mebo and testified against Megrahi, was very interested in "the reward money".

EXTRACT: "The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) concluded 'In referring the case on this ground the Commission is conscious of the potential impact of its decision on Mr Gauci who may well have given entirely credible evidence notwithstanding an alleged interest in financial payment. On the other hand there are sound reasons to believe that the information in question would have been used by the defence as a means of challenging its credibility. Such a challenge may well have been justified, and in the Commission’s view was capable of affecting the course of the evidence and the eventual outcome of the trial.'"

The book also reveals that several other witnesses had the possibility of reward money dangled before them: "Lamin [Fhimah's – Megrahi's co-accused, cleared at Camp Zeist] former business partner Vincent Vassalo whom Abdelbaset and Lamin had visited the evening before the bombing. He confirmed that it was his first meeting with Abdelbaset, who had introduced himself by his real name, rather than the one on his coded passport. He described Lamin's shock on learning of the police investigation and his willingness to allow them to search the Medtours office and take his diary. Once the search was finished he said DCI [Harry] Bell [who was in charge of the police investigation in Malta] reminded him that a 'big reward' was on offer for any helpful information he could provide."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: The fact that Tony Gauci, the Crown's key witness who testified that he saw Megrahi buy specific clothes in his shop which were later identified as having been near the bomb, was even offered a reward raised the concerns of the SCCRC. It undermines his witness statements, which we now know were far more inconsistent and numerous than previously disclosed. The revelation that Bollier and others were offered the possibility of reward money also goes some way towards discrediting the integrity of the investigation itself.

5.Undisclosed evidence

CONTEXT: The SCCRC unearthed numerous statements, police reports and other documents which had never been shared with the defence team. Part of the reason the case was referred back for a fresh appeal was the non-disclosure of evidence. A fascinating part of the book talks about the James Bond-like tales of attempted coups, spying and double agents going on across the world. In particular, it makes reference to an attempted coup in Togo in which timers matching those thought to have been used in the Lockerbie bombing were discovered, and hints at subterfuge and espionage by the American security services and others and details the confusion caused. The prosecution had claimed that there were only 20 Mebo MST-13 timers and that they were sold only to the Libyans.

EXTRACT: "The Commission unearthed potentially significant information about the MST-13 timers found in West Africa. Two timers were recovered from Togo in 1986. Among the documents disclosed to the Commission was a previously confidential memo, produced by [Senior Investigating Officer] Stuart Henderson the month after the interview of Jean Baptiste Collin [the official in charge in Togo], which provided a lengthy overview of the investigation. As the following passage made clear, the West Africa investigations were causing considerable concern. [SIO Henderson wrote]: 'After the recent interview of Collin, it is now more clear than ever that the circumstances surrounding the recovery of the 'boxed MST-13 timer' in Senegal must be clarified beyond doubt. The whole essence of the 'MST-13 timers' is the sole manufacture by the Mebo company in world terms and the explicit distribution to the Libyan ESO. Unless we can consolidate the precise number of MST-13 timers circuit boards manufactured to fit the ‘boxed timers’ and confirm the fact they were distributed, solely to the Libyans, then we have serious problems with our direct evidence. [Collin] inferred that the Americans knew the whole story... Crucially the notes [by DI William Williamson] went on to record that Collin said the timer had been given to an 'intelligence agency'."

To date, at least two documents not disclosed to the defence still remain a secret because the UK Government claims publicising them would be a threat to national security. The book states: "The last of the Commission's Statement of Reasons... was certainly the strangest of the six. It concerned two secret documents, supplied by another country, which members of the Commission’s team had been allowed to view at Dumfries police station in September 2006. They were forbidden from copying them. On 27 April 2007, the Crown Office confirmed to the Commission that they had carefully considered whether or not the documents required to be disclosed to the defence and had concluded they did not. The Statement of Reasons gave only two clues to the documents' contents. The first was an extract from the Crown's 27 April 2007 letter which read 'it has never been the Crown's position in this case that the MST-13 timers were not supplied by the Libyan intelligence services to any other party or that only Libyan intelligence services were in possession of the timers'. The second came in paragraph 25.6 of the Statement which read 'In the Commission's view the Crown's decision not to disclose one of the documents to the defence indicates that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred.'"

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: Since the trial at Zeist, Scots law has been challenged at the Supreme Court and the policy of non-disclosure has had to be changed. A number of appeals have been won on the grounds that important evidence was not shared with defence lawyers. We now know that numerous documents were not disclosed to the Lockerbie defence team. Some were sent to them after the second appeal was dropped. Others may never be shared. Advocates in the past have described the unfairness of partial disclosure as "playing with a stacked deck". This alone could have seen Megrahi acquitted if his appeal had proceeded.

6. Forensics anomalies

CONTEXT The forensics case against Megrahi was critical. The book reveals anomalies, contradictions, and arguments between police, the forensics team, the CIA, and the FBI. It also claims that information was withheld by the CIA and says anomalies later found in the forensic evidence from the Ministry of Defence Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment "cast doubt on the overall reliability" of some of the forensic reports.

EXTRACT: "Six years after [Dr Thomas] Hayes [of RARDE] testified, a previously secret police memo came to light that contradicted his evidence and stated that a residue test had, in fact, been conducted...Most of the contradictory accounts about how PT/35b was linked to the MST-13 timer were only revealed seven years later, when the Crown’s precognition statements of Feraday, Williamson, Thurman and Orkin were released by the SCCRC. Had the defence known about them at trial, they would have provided the basis for vigorous cross-examinations of the relevant witnesses...

"Viewed in isolation, the individual anomalies surrounding the fragment may have appeared trivial, but together they formed a shroud of suspicion that could not be dislodged. Had they concerned a less important item, they could, perhaps, have been overlooked, but the fragment was easily the most crucial physical evidence in the entire case – the golden thread that linked Abdelbaset to the bomb."

Other items were not contained within the forensic reports – including a small piece of circuit board from the radio cassette bomb found in Dalkamoni's [of the Palestinian PFLPC-GC] car in Germany – something the defence team only learned about years later. The book states: "Whatever lay behind the multiple anomalies, inconsistencies, and omissions, their cumulative effect was to erode the façade of forensic certainty that surrounded the Crown case."

There were other pieces of forensic information not disclosed by the Crown which pointed – again – at the potential involvement of the PFLPC-GC. "Further important forensic information was contained in a Crown precognition statement by Hayes's RARDE colleague Allen Feraday. He revealed that he had been unable to rule out one of the debris items, PI/1588, as being part of a barometric trigger. Given that the PFLP-GC bombs found in Neuss [in the German raid on the PFLPC-GC] were barometric, this was potentially significant."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT This is one of the densest and most complex sections of the book. The details of different dates, reports, and contradictions is confusing but the overall impression is that the scientists and forensics experts involved were working under enormous pressure in very difficult circumstances. There is a sense that the American security services often failed to disclose or delayed disclosure of information to the Scottish police investigating. The overall picture is that non-disclosure of certain forensic information at the trial and the inconsistencies in the forensic reports subsequently seen by the defence team, raise serious questions about aspects of the prosecution's forensic case.

7. The Bedford suitcase

CONTEXT: Ascertaining which suitcase contained the bomb was critical in the initial stages of the police investigation and subsequent forensic work. Much of the investigation focused on where the suitcase was "ingested" – whether it was through the airport at Malta, Frankfurt or Heathrow. Who put it on to the plane and how? According to the Crown, forensic analysis of the fuselage indicated the suitcase containing the bomb was in the second layer of suitcases – indicating it had come from a feeder flight, rather than Heathrow. However, the book reveals that Tony Kelly's review of the evidence focused on a brown hard-sided suitcase seen by baggage loader John Bedford before the Frankfurt feeder flight arrived. At trial, the judges described Bedford as a "clear and impressive witness" but said there were many items of luggage not dealt with in detail in the evidence of the case.

EXTRACT: "Kelly’s team uncovered evidence that, had it been heard at trial, might have denied the judges these get-outs. If the Bedford bag were not the primary suitcase then, since he [Bedford] saw it before the arrival of PA103A [from Frankfurt], it must have been legitimate. By checking the surviving bags and descriptions provided by the victims’ relatives, [Detective Constable Derek] Henderson established the colour and type of all the legitimate Heathrow interline bags. None were brown, hard-sided suitcases...which meant it was almost certainly the primary case."

That information from DC Henderson was not in the list of productions for the original trial. The book states: "Abdelbaset’s draft grounds of appeal claimed that the absence of the Henderson schedules from the trial constituted a 'material irregularity'...'that material evidence supporting the defence was not properly presented and the appellant was denied a fair trial'."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT Subsequent to the trial and appeal, evidence emerged of a break-in at Heathrow the night before the bombing. Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the tragedy, has consistently drawn attention to this break-in and campaigned for a full inquiry into what happened. The Crown case was, in part, based on the assertion that Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah, his co-accused, ensured the primary suitcase containing the bomb was on the feeder flight from Malta. The fact the break-in at Heathrow the night before the tragedy only came to light after the trial seems shocking. The fact that UK Governments have refused since 1988 to hold a full public inquiry into the case, even more so.

8.  Why Megrahi used a coded passport when in Malta

CONTEXT: At the trial, the original appeal and indeed in a press release last week, the Crown has always made much of Megrahi’s use in Malta of a false passport under the name Abdusamad.

EXTRACT: "My numerous absences created difficulties at home. Like most Libyan marriages at the time ours was very traditional... she was understandably unhappy about my frequent foreign trips, and would often become upset on learning that one was imminent. I therefore fell into the habit, on shorter trips, of telling her I was visiting people elsewhere in Libya...The Libyan Government had by then introduced a policy of issuing those involved in the importation of embargoed goods with so-called coded passports which concealed their real names and their connections to state bodies. These passports were in no sense forgeries, but were rather official documents issued by the Secretary of Transport and tightly regulated. A further advantage was that it enabled me to leave my normal passport at home, which made it easier to travel abroad without Aisha knowing."

LUCY ADAMS VERDICT: Chapter 2 of the book, entitled Before the Nightmare, explains Megrahi’s work importing embargoed cars, soap and cigarettes lighters, and aviation parts. Much of the chapter is in the first person, explaining in detail his course in marine engineering at Cardiff, his first job as a flight dispatcher for Libyan Arab Airlines and his subsequent promotion to controller of operations at Tripoli Airport. It provides a fascinating insight into his life before the indictment but I found it difficult to understand some of his justifications for lying to his wife as he suggest above. It might seem easier to believe if he said he had been having an affair. However, it may be difficult to understand because it is hard to relate to what it must have been like to live in a country under such strict trade sanctions as Libya had at the time.

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.