[What follows is excerpted from an article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer published today on his Intel Today website, where full supporting citations can be found:]
On January 6 2020, President Hassan Rouhani tweeted the following message:
“Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR655. Never threaten the Iranian nation.”
This tweet was a response to President Donald Trump’s threat to target 52 sites in Iran should it retaliate against the US drone strike that killed top Iranian military figure General Qassem Soleimani on January 3 2020.
Not surprisingly, Rouhani’s message was quickly commented on by Middle East and Lockerbie experts as well as by imbeciles and hypocrites.
Real experts —
Middle East analyst Fatima Alasrar, from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, was one of the first to indicate the link between Rouhani’s tweet and Lockerbie.
“Rouhani is basically reminding @realDonaldTrump of the #Iranian Air Flight 655 carrying 290 passengers which was downed by a US navy warship the Vincennes in 1988.
Though it was deemed a human error, Tehran worked covertly to exact its revenge.
How? Lockerbie.”
Robert Black — Professor Emeritus of Scots Law in the University of Edinburgh and best known as the architect of the Lockerbie Trial– concurs.
Speaking to The National as Iran continued to mourn Soleimani, Black said:
“I think Rouhani’s tweet does refer to Pan Am 103 … The 290 clearly refers to those killed on Iran Air 655 and with ‘Never threaten the Iranian nation’ it seems to me that he’s saying that Iran responded to those Iranian deaths caused by US action.
The only response that I can think of was the bombing of Pan Am 103 six months later.”
Imbeciles and hypocrites —
Given half a chance, idiots will never miss the opportunity to share with you their “deep knowledge” on sensitive issues. The current Iran Crisis is a case in point.
Describing himself as an expert on terrorism strategy with 36 years of services in the US Intel Community, Malcolm Nance tweeted:
“PANAM 103 was DEFINATELY Qaddafi Libya. We found the same Swiss digital detonators were purchased by Libyan intelligence and were also used on the UTA 772 in flight bombing. No question. Iran had nothing to do with it.”
Here is a quick primer for this “expert”. Firstly, no detonators were recovered, let alone identified, among the debris of PA 103 and UTA 772.
Secondly, the timer that allegedly triggered the bomb on UTA 772 was produced in Taiwan, not Switzerland.
Thirdly, we know now that PT/35(b) — a fragment of an PCB allegedly found at Lockerbie — does NOT match the metallurgy of the Swiss timers — MST13 — delivered to Libya. Full stop. (...)
Intel Today analysis —
There is no doubt whatsoever that Rouhani makes a direct reference to the 290 victims of Iranian Air Flight 655.
His warning “Never threaten the Iranian nation” appears to be a veiled threat suggesting that Iran will retaliate for Soleimani’s assassination just like they did in the case of Iranian Air Flight 655.
Assuming that this is indeed what Rouhani means, then it seems logical to conclude that he is claiming Iran’s responsibility for the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.
Actually, it is not the first time that a high level Iranian cleric claims responsibility for Lockerbie.
Indeed, when I spoke to Bani Sadr — who served as the first president of the Republic of Iran — he told me that ayatollah Motashemi-pur had immediately taken credit for the Lockerbie bombing which he regarded as a “just revenge” for Flight 655.
However…
Let me say this one more time. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Lockerbie verdict is utter nonsense.
Megrahi — the man known as the Lockerbie bomber — clearly suffered a spectacular miscarriage of justice.
In fact, the analysis of the fragment that linked Libya to Lockerbie demonstrates that the Swiss timers delivered to Libya played no role in the tragedy.
This is, in my opinion, the only reasonable conclusion that an honest person can reach.
However, to many observers, the innocence of Megrahi — and Libya — can only point to the guilt of Iran.
I can not agree with such a flawed logic, for it may very well replace a 30 years old lie by a new one, which would be quite convenient to certain groups today as it would suit very well their geopolitical agenda. (...)
Let me make this point very clear. There is not a shred of evidence that Iran ordered the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie as an act of retaliation for Iran Air 655.
And there is a good reason for that which I will reveal today.
In the aftermath of Flight 655 disaster, the US and Iran conducted a series of secret talks in the city of Montreux, Switzerland. Richard Lawless was representing Bush and Abolghasem Mesbahi was an envoy of Rafsanjani.
By the end of September 1988 — 3 months before Lockerbie — they managed to settle an agreement.
None of this has ever been made public for obvious reasons. It would have been perceived as a second IranGate scandal. (...)
So, what really happened?
The Lockerbie investigation underwent three separated stages. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the American and British investigators quickly identified the cause of the tragedy as well as those responsible for it.
However, both Bush and Thatcher agreed that the truth was inconvenient.
From early January 1989 to March 1989, US and UK Intelligence agencies were busy writing a script implicating Iran.
That was not a very difficult task considering that very realistic but false “means, motive, and opportunity” could easily be wowen into a rather believable story.
Basically, the events of the “Autumn Leaves” operation — the PFLP-GC cell operating in Frankfurt — became a blueprint for the script. Thus all the key items appear at this stage: brown Samsonite, clothes from Malta, Toshiba radio, Semtex, Frankfurt, etc…
But in March 1989, George H W Bush and Margaret Thatcher decided to hold off this game plan.
Why? Remember that the US is in secret talks with Rafsanjani and the future seems promising.
Ayatollah Khomeini is dying and his hardliner heir — Grand Ayatollah Montazeri — has been sacked on March 26 1989.
Khomeini died on June 3rd 1989. Ali Khamenei was elevated from the position of hojatoleslām to the rank of Ayatollah.That title, and a modification of the Constitution which previously restricted the job to the few people such Montazeri who had the title of Grand Ayatollah, was then enough to promote him as Khomeini’s successor.
Next, Rafsanjani himself was elected Iran’s president on August 3rd 1989.
By September 1989, blaming Iran for Lockerbie would no longer have served the geopolitical interests of the US and UK.
And lo and behold, in September 1989, the investigation entered stage 3 and switched away from Iran to solely focus on Libya thanks to the mysterious ‘discovery’ of a tiny circuit board known as PT/35(b). The rest is History. (...)
If the SCCRC recommend a new trial, the infamous Zeist verdict does not have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving.
This should be the very top priority. Once Megrahi is acquitted and the Lockerbie-Libya fiction is erased once and for all, then the time will be right to investigate the true cause of disaster and reveal the identity of the culprits. It is not very hard at all…
Showing posts sorted by date for query PFLP-GC. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query PFLP-GC. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Friday 10 January 2020
Sunday 5 January 2020
Libya got the blame, but many in US and UK intelligence believe Iran gave the instructions
[What follows is excerpted from a long article by John Simpson in today's edition of The Mail on Sunday:]
Following the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in the early hours of Friday morning – personally ordered by President Trump from his Florida holiday home, Mar-a-Lago – retribution is now a major priority for Iran’s leaders and their forces. And, as my Iranian friend implied, they have plenty of options. There are only two requirements: whatever action they take should satisfy Iran’s instinctive desire for vengeance, yet it should not be so blatant that it provokes the United States into an all-out war. (...)
There is a huge variety of alternative strategies. Iran has often staged cyber-attacks against Western targets, with some success; but although cutting American power supplies or the flow of information might be briefly satisfying to Iran’s leaders, it won’t have the element of personal revenge they want. As in the past, Iran can use proxy groups to attack international shipping in the Gulf. But Western intelligence and tactics have improved recently, and this may not be as effective as in the past. (...)
An eye for an eye has always been the approach of the clerics who control the government of the Islamic Republic. (...)
On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes, a new guided missile cruiser, was on patrol in the Gulf at a time of greatly heightened tension between Iran and the US. It found itself involved in a shoot-out with a group of apparently hostile Iranian gunboats. While the firing was still going on, an Airbus A300 of Iran Air took off from Bandar Abbas, a civil as well as military airport on the Gulf coast of Iran, and flew south towards the Vincennes.
As a result of a catastrophic technical mistake, the defensive systems on the Vincennes identified the Airbus as a military jet coming in to attack. Vincennes fired two radar-guided missiles at it, bringing it down with the loss of all 290 people on board.
By chance, a television team was filming on the bridge of the Vincennes that morning. The cameraman captured the delight of the crew when they thought they had shot down a hostile fighter, and the change to horror when it became clear what had really happened.
William Rogers, the captain of USS Vincennes who gave the order to fire the missiles, was cleared by a board of inquiry, but Iran believes to this day that the destruction of the Airbus was deliberate, and its leaders announced that they would avenge it.
Almost six months later, on December 21, a small group of Libyan terrorists associated with Iran’s close ally Syria planted a bomb on an American PanAm airliner. It blew up over Lockerbie, killing 270 people altogether.
Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya got the blame, but many people in the American and British intelligence community believe that Iran gave the original instructions for the attack, to avenge the shooting down of the Airbus. (...)
[RB: While many believe that Iran commissioned the destruction of Pan Am 103, no-one that I'm aware of has ever suggested that Abdelbaset Megrahi or Lamin Fhimah were members of "a small group of Libyan terrorists associated with Iran's close ally Syria" nor is there any evidence that such a group existed. If Iran was the instigator, the evidence points to the actual perpetrators being Ahmed Jibril's PFLP-GC and there is no evidence of any Libyan link to that group.]
Iran’s religious leaders believe their authority and the reputation of Iran now depend on getting specific retribution for President Trump’s ordering of the assassination of General Soleimani and his companions.
Following the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani in the early hours of Friday morning – personally ordered by President Trump from his Florida holiday home, Mar-a-Lago – retribution is now a major priority for Iran’s leaders and their forces. And, as my Iranian friend implied, they have plenty of options. There are only two requirements: whatever action they take should satisfy Iran’s instinctive desire for vengeance, yet it should not be so blatant that it provokes the United States into an all-out war. (...)
There is a huge variety of alternative strategies. Iran has often staged cyber-attacks against Western targets, with some success; but although cutting American power supplies or the flow of information might be briefly satisfying to Iran’s leaders, it won’t have the element of personal revenge they want. As in the past, Iran can use proxy groups to attack international shipping in the Gulf. But Western intelligence and tactics have improved recently, and this may not be as effective as in the past. (...)
An eye for an eye has always been the approach of the clerics who control the government of the Islamic Republic. (...)
On July 3, 1988, the USS Vincennes, a new guided missile cruiser, was on patrol in the Gulf at a time of greatly heightened tension between Iran and the US. It found itself involved in a shoot-out with a group of apparently hostile Iranian gunboats. While the firing was still going on, an Airbus A300 of Iran Air took off from Bandar Abbas, a civil as well as military airport on the Gulf coast of Iran, and flew south towards the Vincennes.
As a result of a catastrophic technical mistake, the defensive systems on the Vincennes identified the Airbus as a military jet coming in to attack. Vincennes fired two radar-guided missiles at it, bringing it down with the loss of all 290 people on board.
By chance, a television team was filming on the bridge of the Vincennes that morning. The cameraman captured the delight of the crew when they thought they had shot down a hostile fighter, and the change to horror when it became clear what had really happened.
William Rogers, the captain of USS Vincennes who gave the order to fire the missiles, was cleared by a board of inquiry, but Iran believes to this day that the destruction of the Airbus was deliberate, and its leaders announced that they would avenge it.
Almost six months later, on December 21, a small group of Libyan terrorists associated with Iran’s close ally Syria planted a bomb on an American PanAm airliner. It blew up over Lockerbie, killing 270 people altogether.
Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya got the blame, but many people in the American and British intelligence community believe that Iran gave the original instructions for the attack, to avenge the shooting down of the Airbus. (...)
[RB: While many believe that Iran commissioned the destruction of Pan Am 103, no-one that I'm aware of has ever suggested that Abdelbaset Megrahi or Lamin Fhimah were members of "a small group of Libyan terrorists associated with Iran's close ally Syria" nor is there any evidence that such a group existed. If Iran was the instigator, the evidence points to the actual perpetrators being Ahmed Jibril's PFLP-GC and there is no evidence of any Libyan link to that group.]
Iran’s religious leaders believe their authority and the reputation of Iran now depend on getting specific retribution for President Trump’s ordering of the assassination of General Soleimani and his companions.
Saturday 19 October 2019
Far from a final answer
[On the occasion Syracuse University's annual Week of Remembrance for its 35 students who died in the Pan Am 103 tragedy, the website of central New York State's Spectrum News has published a long article on the Lockerbie disaster. The following are excerpts:]
Soon after the bombing, police and military fanned out on foot. They’d eventually scour hundreds of square miles.
It was the largest murder investigation in British history. In the end, it all came down to a piece of evidence so tiny it would fit on a fingertip.
After initially focusing on a possible Iranian connection, more attention was turning to Libya and its leader, Moamar Qaddafi. The pattern of Libyan action and US response had been building throughout the 1980s.
In 1989, investigators in Scotland discovered some clothing fragments. Embedded in them was a tiny piece of what had been a circuit board commanding a timer that set off the explosion aboard Pan Am 103. It was a brand of timer sold to Libya.
Forensics experts traced the clothing to a shop in the island nation of Malta. The owner of the shop identified the man who had purchased the clothes. He turned out to be a low-level operative in Libyan intelligence named Abdel Basset al-Megrahi.
A second Libyan charged was Khalifa Fhima, a former official of Libyan airlines at Malta’s Luqa Airport. (...)
It took years and tough United Nations sanctions, but Libya’s government eventually handed over al-Megrahi and Fhima for an unusual trial.
“I wanted to kill them. If I could have gone and sat there with an Uzi, I would have shot them dead on the spot,” said Susan Cohen, the mother of a Flight 103 victim. “No regrets, even if I got shot for it. And you want to know something? I still feel the same way.”
When the final verdict came 12 years after the bombing, the three-judge Scottish panel found al-Megrahi guilty and acquitted Fhima. Al-Megrahi would be handed a life sentence in Scottish prison. (...)
In 2015, the BBC reported that the Scottish government had named two new suspects, both reportedly behind bars in Libya at the time. Abdullah al-Senussi is the former Libyan intelligence chief under Gaddafi. Mohammed Abouajela Masud is a suspected bomb maker. Tracking them has been a challenge. (...)
But not everyone is convinced they’re on the right trail. Over the years, an entirely different theory has emerged about whom, and which country, were responsible.
In July 1988, a US warship came under attack by Iranian gunboats in the Persian Gulf. In the midst of the confrontation, the crew aboard the USS Vincennes spotted what it believed to be an approaching Iranian fighter jet closing in on their position. The US response was lethal.
It wasn’t long before the Vincennes crew realized they had made a tragic mistake. It was not an Iranian fighter jet, but an Iranian passenger jet — with 290 people onboard.
There was a quick promise of Iranian revenge.
In the months to come, intelligence agencies would report a series of meetings, organized by a leading Iranian government radical named Ali Akbar Mohtashami-Pur. Among those in attendance was Ahmed Jibril, leader of a splinter Palestinian group known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). Jibril was a close ally of Syrian President Hafez Assad.
Jibril's deputy was Hafez Dalkamoni, a man being closely watched by German police. Police knew of a plot to bomb aircraft flying out of Frankfurt. When they made their move, Dalkamoni and several others were arrested. Weapons were found, including a bomb hidden in a radio cassette player. There were indications that five bombs were produced. Only four are recovered.
A man with close ties to the PLFP-GC was Mohammed Abu Talb. Talb had visited Frankfurt and was later spotted in Malta, shortly before the Lockerbie bombing. At his home, police later found a calendar with the date — December 21, 1988 — circled.
Did Iran pay the PFLP-GC to exact its revenge? An airliner for airliner? (...)
The man who headed the Scottish side of the case against Libya says it’s possible the Libyan agents, knowing of the Frankfurt arrests, may have used details of that plot to cover their own moves, including housing the bomb in a Toshiba cassette player.
Relatives of those who died in Lockerbie sense that the case against the two Libyans was far from a final answer.
Soon after the bombing, police and military fanned out on foot. They’d eventually scour hundreds of square miles.
It was the largest murder investigation in British history. In the end, it all came down to a piece of evidence so tiny it would fit on a fingertip.
After initially focusing on a possible Iranian connection, more attention was turning to Libya and its leader, Moamar Qaddafi. The pattern of Libyan action and US response had been building throughout the 1980s.
In 1989, investigators in Scotland discovered some clothing fragments. Embedded in them was a tiny piece of what had been a circuit board commanding a timer that set off the explosion aboard Pan Am 103. It was a brand of timer sold to Libya.
Forensics experts traced the clothing to a shop in the island nation of Malta. The owner of the shop identified the man who had purchased the clothes. He turned out to be a low-level operative in Libyan intelligence named Abdel Basset al-Megrahi.
A second Libyan charged was Khalifa Fhima, a former official of Libyan airlines at Malta’s Luqa Airport. (...)
It took years and tough United Nations sanctions, but Libya’s government eventually handed over al-Megrahi and Fhima for an unusual trial.
“I wanted to kill them. If I could have gone and sat there with an Uzi, I would have shot them dead on the spot,” said Susan Cohen, the mother of a Flight 103 victim. “No regrets, even if I got shot for it. And you want to know something? I still feel the same way.”
When the final verdict came 12 years after the bombing, the three-judge Scottish panel found al-Megrahi guilty and acquitted Fhima. Al-Megrahi would be handed a life sentence in Scottish prison. (...)
In 2015, the BBC reported that the Scottish government had named two new suspects, both reportedly behind bars in Libya at the time. Abdullah al-Senussi is the former Libyan intelligence chief under Gaddafi. Mohammed Abouajela Masud is a suspected bomb maker. Tracking them has been a challenge. (...)
But not everyone is convinced they’re on the right trail. Over the years, an entirely different theory has emerged about whom, and which country, were responsible.
In July 1988, a US warship came under attack by Iranian gunboats in the Persian Gulf. In the midst of the confrontation, the crew aboard the USS Vincennes spotted what it believed to be an approaching Iranian fighter jet closing in on their position. The US response was lethal.
It wasn’t long before the Vincennes crew realized they had made a tragic mistake. It was not an Iranian fighter jet, but an Iranian passenger jet — with 290 people onboard.
There was a quick promise of Iranian revenge.
In the months to come, intelligence agencies would report a series of meetings, organized by a leading Iranian government radical named Ali Akbar Mohtashami-Pur. Among those in attendance was Ahmed Jibril, leader of a splinter Palestinian group known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). Jibril was a close ally of Syrian President Hafez Assad.
Jibril's deputy was Hafez Dalkamoni, a man being closely watched by German police. Police knew of a plot to bomb aircraft flying out of Frankfurt. When they made their move, Dalkamoni and several others were arrested. Weapons were found, including a bomb hidden in a radio cassette player. There were indications that five bombs were produced. Only four are recovered.
A man with close ties to the PLFP-GC was Mohammed Abu Talb. Talb had visited Frankfurt and was later spotted in Malta, shortly before the Lockerbie bombing. At his home, police later found a calendar with the date — December 21, 1988 — circled.
Did Iran pay the PFLP-GC to exact its revenge? An airliner for airliner? (...)
The man who headed the Scottish side of the case against Libya says it’s possible the Libyan agents, knowing of the Frankfurt arrests, may have used details of that plot to cover their own moves, including housing the bomb in a Toshiba cassette player.
Relatives of those who died in Lockerbie sense that the case against the two Libyans was far from a final answer.
Friday 12 April 2019
Lockerbie case: campaigner and lawyer hit out at 'withheld' evidence
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The National. It reads as follows:]
A prominent figure in the fight to prove the innocence of Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing has said keeping the contents of a 1991 telegram to then prime minister John Major secret until at least 2032 is not in Scotland’s – or any other nation’s – public interest.
Dr Jim Swire was speaking to The National after the claim about the document resurfaced. Its contents have been in the public domain for more than three years.
It was said to have been written by the late King Hussein of Jordan, who said the group originally suspected of carrying out the December 1988 atrocity – the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) – was responsible.
And Aamer Anwar, the Scottish lawyer who is leading the Megrahi family’s bid to clear his name, told The National it was a “vital piece of evidence” that had been withheld from Megrahi’s defence.
That view is shared by Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing. He said: “I can’t make out why it should be in the public interest of the Scots or any other nation for this to remain under public interest immunity (PII) after this long – unless you believe it is in Scotland’s interest to continue to conceal the failure of her biggest international criminal investigation of recent years.
“It was the concealment of items such as this which led Professor Hans Koechler [UN observer to the Camp Zeist trial] to describe the proceedings as not representing justice, largely because of the Crown Office’s failure to share evidently significant material with the defence.
“The King of Jordan’s communication had been made available to the Crown Office for years before [then foreign secretary] David Miliband placed the PII certificate on it, at the Crown Office’s request. [RB: The Crown Office did not oppose release of the communication. It was the Advocate General for Scotland, acting on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, that did so.] I think it is in the Scottish public’s interest to know how Whitehall connived with the Crown Office to ensure that justice was not done at Zeist.
He added: “It was Lady Thatcher who originally forbade an inquiry. Could it have been in part because her then recently privatised Heathrow was the showpiece of her privatisation programme?”
Anwar said the Megrahi family case was still with the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) which he expected to report by the end of summer, when he hoped to return to the Appeal Court.
He said: “What is incredibly frustrating is the fact that the British government, the authorities, seem to still be maintaining attempts to continue what would be seen as a cover-up and deny critical information to the defence, because we remain the defence lawyers for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi posthumously.
All of this information which would go to proving his innocence continues to be denied us. The finger of blame as always pointed at the PFLP-GC.
“It is ... shocking behaviour, whether it be from the Crown Office or others in authority who seem to be conducting themselves in this manner.”
Meanwhile, The Telegraph yesterday named four members of the PFLP-GC – allegedly hired by Iran to bring down Pan Am flight 103 as revenge for a US naval attack on an Iranian Airbus in July 1988. They were: Ahmed Jibril, its potential mastermind; Hafez Dalkamoni, his right-hand man; Jordanian-born bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat, who possibly made the Lockerbie device; and Mohammed Abu Talb, who could have delivered it. [RB: I cannot find this Telegraph article. But the newspaper did publish an article naming these four men on 10 March 2014. It can be read here.]
The Crown Office said the PFLP-GC link was considered and rejected at the original trial. A spokesperson added: “The court concluded that the conception, planning and execution of the plot which led to the bombing was of Libyan origin. The only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the criminal court, and Mr Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior judges.
“His conviction was upheld unanimously by five judges, in an Appeal Court presided over by the Lord Justice General, Scotland’s most senior judge. As the investigation remains live, it would not be appropriate to offer further comment.” [RB: My commentary on the grave shortcomings of the trial verdict and the appeal can be read here.]
A prominent figure in the fight to prove the innocence of Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi for the Lockerbie bombing has said keeping the contents of a 1991 telegram to then prime minister John Major secret until at least 2032 is not in Scotland’s – or any other nation’s – public interest.
Dr Jim Swire was speaking to The National after the claim about the document resurfaced. Its contents have been in the public domain for more than three years.
It was said to have been written by the late King Hussein of Jordan, who said the group originally suspected of carrying out the December 1988 atrocity – the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) – was responsible.
And Aamer Anwar, the Scottish lawyer who is leading the Megrahi family’s bid to clear his name, told The National it was a “vital piece of evidence” that had been withheld from Megrahi’s defence.
That view is shared by Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing. He said: “I can’t make out why it should be in the public interest of the Scots or any other nation for this to remain under public interest immunity (PII) after this long – unless you believe it is in Scotland’s interest to continue to conceal the failure of her biggest international criminal investigation of recent years.
“It was the concealment of items such as this which led Professor Hans Koechler [UN observer to the Camp Zeist trial] to describe the proceedings as not representing justice, largely because of the Crown Office’s failure to share evidently significant material with the defence.
“The King of Jordan’s communication had been made available to the Crown Office for years before [then foreign secretary] David Miliband placed the PII certificate on it, at the Crown Office’s request. [RB: The Crown Office did not oppose release of the communication. It was the Advocate General for Scotland, acting on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, that did so.] I think it is in the Scottish public’s interest to know how Whitehall connived with the Crown Office to ensure that justice was not done at Zeist.
He added: “It was Lady Thatcher who originally forbade an inquiry. Could it have been in part because her then recently privatised Heathrow was the showpiece of her privatisation programme?”
Anwar said the Megrahi family case was still with the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) which he expected to report by the end of summer, when he hoped to return to the Appeal Court.
He said: “What is incredibly frustrating is the fact that the British government, the authorities, seem to still be maintaining attempts to continue what would be seen as a cover-up and deny critical information to the defence, because we remain the defence lawyers for Abdelbaset al-Megrahi posthumously.
All of this information which would go to proving his innocence continues to be denied us. The finger of blame as always pointed at the PFLP-GC.
“It is ... shocking behaviour, whether it be from the Crown Office or others in authority who seem to be conducting themselves in this manner.”
Meanwhile, The Telegraph yesterday named four members of the PFLP-GC – allegedly hired by Iran to bring down Pan Am flight 103 as revenge for a US naval attack on an Iranian Airbus in July 1988. They were: Ahmed Jibril, its potential mastermind; Hafez Dalkamoni, his right-hand man; Jordanian-born bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat, who possibly made the Lockerbie device; and Mohammed Abu Talb, who could have delivered it. [RB: I cannot find this Telegraph article. But the newspaper did publish an article naming these four men on 10 March 2014. It can be read here.]
The Crown Office said the PFLP-GC link was considered and rejected at the original trial. A spokesperson added: “The court concluded that the conception, planning and execution of the plot which led to the bombing was of Libyan origin. The only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the criminal court, and Mr Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior judges.
“His conviction was upheld unanimously by five judges, in an Appeal Court presided over by the Lord Justice General, Scotland’s most senior judge. As the investigation remains live, it would not be appropriate to offer further comment.” [RB: My commentary on the grave shortcomings of the trial verdict and the appeal can be read here.]
Thursday 11 April 2019
Reaction to sealing of 1991 Lockerbie telegram to John Major
[A letter from Dr Jim Swire is published in today's edition of The Times. It reads as follows:]
As the father of Flora Swire, a victim of the 1988 Lockerbie disaster, may I congratulate The Times on its brave attempt to obtain the contents of a telegram sent to John Major as prime minister from an unnamed overseas government (“Lockerbie telegram must remain sealed until 2032”, Scotland edition, Apr 10). It has long been apparent that there are many fatal flaws in the evidence brought to the Zeist court in 2000-01, and used to convict the Libyan Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi of being a key perpetrator.
Lockerbie remains the worst single terrorist outrage to occur in the UK since the Second World War, yet there has been no inquiry. Those who value the independence of judicial systems from political interference must, like us relatives, be concerned about the reluctance of successive UK governments to allow relevant matters to become public. By 2032 I will be 96, and probably leaning on a cromach to listen.
[RB: As submitted, the letter read as follows:]
As the father of Flora Swire, a victim the 1988 Lockerbie disaster may I congratulate The Times on its brave attempt to obtain the contents of a telegram sent to Sir John Major as PM, from an overseas kingdom.
It has long been apparent that there are many fatal flaws in the evidence brought to the Zeist court in 2000/1, and used to convict the Libyan, Baset Al-Megrahi of being a key perpetrator.
During the second appeal by Mr Megrahi against conviction, Scotland's Advocate-General of the day was sent post-haste to confer with then UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband who was persuaded immediately to issue a PII certificate to protect a communication received by Sir John from access by the public or the defence team.
When a distinguished Scottish newspaper, having discovered the contents was about to publish, it was threatened with draconian measures to disrupt its editions
This communication to Sir John had been in the possession of the Megrahi prosecution team for years, but denied to Megrahi's defence. Megrahi's second appeal was on the cusp of reaching parts of the evidence in which it might have been highly relevant.
At that point Mr Megrahi was offered compassionate release and his appeal was stopped.
Lockerbie remains the worst single terrorist outrage to occur in the UK since WWII, yet there has been no inquiry.
Those who value the independence of judicial systems from political interference must, like us relatives, be concerned about the reluctance of successive UK Governments to allow relevant matters to become public for so long.
By 2032 I will be 94 years old, and probably leaning on a cromach to listen.
[RB: An article published in today's edition of The National reads in part:]
A decision to keep under wraps a telegram sent to them prime minister John Major three years after the Lockerbie bombing “adds insult to injury” for the families and friends of those who died in the atrocity, according to a campaigner who believes in the innocence of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted for it.
The Cabinet Office claimed the contents of the telegram to Major in 1991 were against the national interest – despite the fact that former Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill put them into the public domain almost three years ago in his book The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice.
Officials refused a Freedom of Information (FoI) request from The Times newspaper, which means the document will be kept secret at the UK National Archives, at Kew in London, until at least 2032.
Their response read: “In this instance, we believe the release of the information received in confidence would harm UK relations with the country which provided the information.
“This would be detrimental to the operation of government and would not be in the UK’s interest.
“In light of the potential harm to UK relations with the country concerned, and UK interests there, it is judged that release of the material would not be in the public interest.”
The material is covered by a controversial public interest immunity (PII) certificate, which was signed in 2008 by then foreign secretary David Miliband.
It was identified as important to the defence of Megrahi by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which granted his appeal after the Crown failed to disclose details at his 2002 trial.
In his book, MacAskill said the telegram to Major, above, was from the late King Hussein of Jordan and blamed the bombing on the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), the group originally suspected of carrying it out.
Records at the National Archives confirm that Major received a telegram relating to the bombing on November 15, 1991 – the day after the British and US governments announced they were bringing charges against Megrahi and his co-accused Lamin Khalifah Fhimah.
Iain McKie, from the Justice for Megrahi (JfM) group, which is campaigning to clear the Libyan’s name, said: “It beggars belief that the UK government, after 30 years of widespread and well-founded doubts about various aspects of the Lockerbie investigation and trial, continues in its efforts to hide the truth about the tragedy.
“That it should claim to be protecting the public interest only adds insult to injury for the family and friends of the 270 souls who perished.
“Why would they claim it was in the public interest in keeping this material quiet until 2032?
“In some ways it heightens – not lessens – suspicion.
“Here in Scotland we’re awaiting the SCCRC decision on the submission from the Megrahi family – and there is a big story to be told internationally.”
MacAskill told The National there was “no good reason” to keep the contents secret, given that Hussein is dead. He said: “It can hardly exacerbate the situation in Jordan.
“Besides, the Crown has always been happy for it to be released as they think it just adds to the conspiracy theories when there’s a good explanation about it and it doesn’t exculpate Libya or Megrahi.” (...) [RB: The failure to disclose the document to Megrahi's legal team before or during the Lockerbie trial is one of the six reasons given by the SCCRC for finding that Megrahi's conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice. It is accordingly difficult to accept the Crown's contention, as reported here by Mr MacAskill, that it does not exculpate Libya or Megrahi, or at least seriously undermine the case against them.]
Professor Robert Black QC, the architect of the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands, who believes there was a miscarriage of justice, said: “It is extremely difficult to understand how a document dating from Nov-ember 15, 1991, could still in 2019 adversely affect the national interests of the UK or its relations with the country of origin.”
“Much more likely is that the contents of the documents would embarrass the UK by showing just how tenuous is the case for Libyan responsibility for the Lockerbie tragedy.”
As the father of Flora Swire, a victim of the 1988 Lockerbie disaster, may I congratulate The Times on its brave attempt to obtain the contents of a telegram sent to John Major as prime minister from an unnamed overseas government (“Lockerbie telegram must remain sealed until 2032”, Scotland edition, Apr 10). It has long been apparent that there are many fatal flaws in the evidence brought to the Zeist court in 2000-01, and used to convict the Libyan Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi of being a key perpetrator.
Lockerbie remains the worst single terrorist outrage to occur in the UK since the Second World War, yet there has been no inquiry. Those who value the independence of judicial systems from political interference must, like us relatives, be concerned about the reluctance of successive UK governments to allow relevant matters to become public. By 2032 I will be 96, and probably leaning on a cromach to listen.
[RB: As submitted, the letter read as follows:]
As the father of Flora Swire, a victim the 1988 Lockerbie disaster may I congratulate The Times on its brave attempt to obtain the contents of a telegram sent to Sir John Major as PM, from an overseas kingdom.
It has long been apparent that there are many fatal flaws in the evidence brought to the Zeist court in 2000/1, and used to convict the Libyan, Baset Al-Megrahi of being a key perpetrator.
During the second appeal by Mr Megrahi against conviction, Scotland's Advocate-General of the day was sent post-haste to confer with then UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband who was persuaded immediately to issue a PII certificate to protect a communication received by Sir John from access by the public or the defence team.
When a distinguished Scottish newspaper, having discovered the contents was about to publish, it was threatened with draconian measures to disrupt its editions
This communication to Sir John had been in the possession of the Megrahi prosecution team for years, but denied to Megrahi's defence. Megrahi's second appeal was on the cusp of reaching parts of the evidence in which it might have been highly relevant.
At that point Mr Megrahi was offered compassionate release and his appeal was stopped.
Lockerbie remains the worst single terrorist outrage to occur in the UK since WWII, yet there has been no inquiry.
Those who value the independence of judicial systems from political interference must, like us relatives, be concerned about the reluctance of successive UK Governments to allow relevant matters to become public for so long.
By 2032 I will be 94 years old, and probably leaning on a cromach to listen.
[RB: An article published in today's edition of The National reads in part:]
A decision to keep under wraps a telegram sent to them prime minister John Major three years after the Lockerbie bombing “adds insult to injury” for the families and friends of those who died in the atrocity, according to a campaigner who believes in the innocence of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted for it.
The Cabinet Office claimed the contents of the telegram to Major in 1991 were against the national interest – despite the fact that former Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill put them into the public domain almost three years ago in his book The Lockerbie Bombing: The Search for Justice.
Officials refused a Freedom of Information (FoI) request from The Times newspaper, which means the document will be kept secret at the UK National Archives, at Kew in London, until at least 2032.
Their response read: “In this instance, we believe the release of the information received in confidence would harm UK relations with the country which provided the information.
“This would be detrimental to the operation of government and would not be in the UK’s interest.
“In light of the potential harm to UK relations with the country concerned, and UK interests there, it is judged that release of the material would not be in the public interest.”
The material is covered by a controversial public interest immunity (PII) certificate, which was signed in 2008 by then foreign secretary David Miliband.
It was identified as important to the defence of Megrahi by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which granted his appeal after the Crown failed to disclose details at his 2002 trial.
In his book, MacAskill said the telegram to Major, above, was from the late King Hussein of Jordan and blamed the bombing on the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), the group originally suspected of carrying it out.
Records at the National Archives confirm that Major received a telegram relating to the bombing on November 15, 1991 – the day after the British and US governments announced they were bringing charges against Megrahi and his co-accused Lamin Khalifah Fhimah.
Iain McKie, from the Justice for Megrahi (JfM) group, which is campaigning to clear the Libyan’s name, said: “It beggars belief that the UK government, after 30 years of widespread and well-founded doubts about various aspects of the Lockerbie investigation and trial, continues in its efforts to hide the truth about the tragedy.
“That it should claim to be protecting the public interest only adds insult to injury for the family and friends of the 270 souls who perished.
“Why would they claim it was in the public interest in keeping this material quiet until 2032?
“In some ways it heightens – not lessens – suspicion.
“Here in Scotland we’re awaiting the SCCRC decision on the submission from the Megrahi family – and there is a big story to be told internationally.”
MacAskill told The National there was “no good reason” to keep the contents secret, given that Hussein is dead. He said: “It can hardly exacerbate the situation in Jordan.
“Besides, the Crown has always been happy for it to be released as they think it just adds to the conspiracy theories when there’s a good explanation about it and it doesn’t exculpate Libya or Megrahi.” (...) [RB: The failure to disclose the document to Megrahi's legal team before or during the Lockerbie trial is one of the six reasons given by the SCCRC for finding that Megrahi's conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice. It is accordingly difficult to accept the Crown's contention, as reported here by Mr MacAskill, that it does not exculpate Libya or Megrahi, or at least seriously undermine the case against them.]
Professor Robert Black QC, the architect of the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands, who believes there was a miscarriage of justice, said: “It is extremely difficult to understand how a document dating from Nov-ember 15, 1991, could still in 2019 adversely affect the national interests of the UK or its relations with the country of origin.”
“Much more likely is that the contents of the documents would embarrass the UK by showing just how tenuous is the case for Libyan responsibility for the Lockerbie tragedy.”
Friday 22 March 2019
Thatcher warned US of reprisals years before Lockerbie bombing
[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Times. It reads as follows:]
Margaret Thatcher privately begged President Reagan two years before the Lockerbie bombing not to attack Libya, warning it would unleash a bloody “cycle of revenge and counter-revenge”.
In 1986 Britain took the controversial decision to allow the US to use RAF bases to launch a raid on Colonel Gaddafi’s regime. However, secret documents newly released and placed in the National Archives in Kew, show the prime minister was deeply troubled by the plan and outlined her concerns in a series of frank “Dear Ron” letters.
Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in 1988 and Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan national, was convicted for the atrocity in 2001.
It was confirmed yesterday that prosecutors from Scotland had interviewed five retired Stasi agents in Germany over their possible involvement in the bombing, which killed 270 people, including 190 US and 43 UK citizens. Investigators do not believe al-Megrahi acted alone, while campaigners insist he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. According to reports in Germany, the ex-agents were in their 70s and 80s, and were interviewed over the past nine months.
Days before ordering airstrikes against Libya, which led to the deaths of more than 70 people in April 1986, the US president requested assistance from his ally. He confirmed it was a response to an attack on a nightclub used by US servicemen, writing: “Because the evidence we have on direct Libyan involvement in the Berlin bombing is so convincing, and our information on their future plans is so threatening, I have reluctantly taken the decision to use US forces to exact a response.”
Thatcher responded: “Dear Ron . . . as you know my instinct is always to stand beside the United States, but what you say in your message causes me very considerable anxiety. My worry is that this risks getting us into a cycle of revenge and counter-revenge in which many more innocent lives will be lost.
“Given all we know of Gaddafi’s nature, a military attack on Libya seems all too likely to lead him to step up terrorist attacks against civilian targets, resulting in the death of more innocent victims — some of them yours and some of them mine.” Referring to the conflict in Northern Ireland, she added: “I have to live with the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic across which terrorists come daily. We have lost 2,500 of our people in the last ten years, but we have never crossed that border to exact revenge.”
Reagan appealed to her sense of loyalty, writing: “You should not underestimate the profound effect on the American people if our actions to put a halt to these crimes continue to receive only lukewarm support, or no support at all, from our closest allies whom we have committed ourselves to defend.”
She responded: “You can count on our unqualified support for action directed against specific Libyan targets demonstrably involved in the conduct and support of terrorist activities.”
US F-111 jets launched raids on Tripoli and Benghazi from RAF bases in Suffolk and Oxfordshire. The actions caused an international outcry.
[RB: If Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, President Reagan's 1986 attack on Tripoli and Benghazi is normally regarded as supplying the motivation. The competing view, of course, is that Pan Am 103 was destroyed by the PFLP-GC at the instigation of Iran in revenge for the shooting down of Iran Air flight 655 by the USS Vincennes on 3 July 1988.]
Margaret Thatcher privately begged President Reagan two years before the Lockerbie bombing not to attack Libya, warning it would unleash a bloody “cycle of revenge and counter-revenge”.
In 1986 Britain took the controversial decision to allow the US to use RAF bases to launch a raid on Colonel Gaddafi’s regime. However, secret documents newly released and placed in the National Archives in Kew, show the prime minister was deeply troubled by the plan and outlined her concerns in a series of frank “Dear Ron” letters.
Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in 1988 and Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan national, was convicted for the atrocity in 2001.
It was confirmed yesterday that prosecutors from Scotland had interviewed five retired Stasi agents in Germany over their possible involvement in the bombing, which killed 270 people, including 190 US and 43 UK citizens. Investigators do not believe al-Megrahi acted alone, while campaigners insist he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. According to reports in Germany, the ex-agents were in their 70s and 80s, and were interviewed over the past nine months.
Days before ordering airstrikes against Libya, which led to the deaths of more than 70 people in April 1986, the US president requested assistance from his ally. He confirmed it was a response to an attack on a nightclub used by US servicemen, writing: “Because the evidence we have on direct Libyan involvement in the Berlin bombing is so convincing, and our information on their future plans is so threatening, I have reluctantly taken the decision to use US forces to exact a response.”
Thatcher responded: “Dear Ron . . . as you know my instinct is always to stand beside the United States, but what you say in your message causes me very considerable anxiety. My worry is that this risks getting us into a cycle of revenge and counter-revenge in which many more innocent lives will be lost.
“Given all we know of Gaddafi’s nature, a military attack on Libya seems all too likely to lead him to step up terrorist attacks against civilian targets, resulting in the death of more innocent victims — some of them yours and some of them mine.” Referring to the conflict in Northern Ireland, she added: “I have to live with the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic across which terrorists come daily. We have lost 2,500 of our people in the last ten years, but we have never crossed that border to exact revenge.”
Reagan appealed to her sense of loyalty, writing: “You should not underestimate the profound effect on the American people if our actions to put a halt to these crimes continue to receive only lukewarm support, or no support at all, from our closest allies whom we have committed ourselves to defend.”
She responded: “You can count on our unqualified support for action directed against specific Libyan targets demonstrably involved in the conduct and support of terrorist activities.”
US F-111 jets launched raids on Tripoli and Benghazi from RAF bases in Suffolk and Oxfordshire. The actions caused an international outcry.
[RB: If Libya was responsible for Lockerbie, President Reagan's 1986 attack on Tripoli and Benghazi is normally regarded as supplying the motivation. The competing view, of course, is that Pan Am 103 was destroyed by the PFLP-GC at the instigation of Iran in revenge for the shooting down of Iran Air flight 655 by the USS Vincennes on 3 July 1988.]
Saturday 29 December 2018
There are good reasons to believe that the conviction of Megrahi was a shameful miscarriage of justice
[What follows is excerpted from an article by Kim Sengupta published today on the website of the Belfast Telegraph (and a week ago behind a paywall on the website of The Independent):]
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi lay in his bed attached to a drip, on red sheets stained by dark splashes of blood he had coughed up. An oxygen mask covered his skeletal face; his body twitched as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He was in the advanced stages of cancer: medicine he desperately needed had been plundered by looters; the doctors who had been treating him had fled.
This was in Tripoli in the winter of 2011, in the turmoil of Libya's civil war and the chaotic aftermath of the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. It was a time of great violence. A dozen bodies were piled up beside a roundabout a half-mile from where I had seen Megrahi lie slowly dying. They were corpses of black men, lynched by the rebels because they were supposedly mercenaries fighting for the regime. In reality, they were victims of a xenophobia against African migrants which had accompanied the uprising.
Megrahi himself had been convicted of a dreadful massacre; of being responsible for 270 deaths on December 21, 1988, when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over the town of Lockerbie in Scotland. A bomb - 12 ounces of Semtex in a Toshiba radio-cassette player - had been secreted in the luggage of the plane carrying passengers to the US, many returning home for Christmas.
After spending eight years in Scottish prisons following his conviction, Megrahi had been returned to Libya on compassionate grounds following a diagnosis of prostate cancer. After a few months in prison in Tripoli, unable to walk and bedridden, he was allowed to return to his family home.
There was vengeful anger expressed by some in Britain, and more so in the US, at Megrahi's return to Libya. He had faked his illness, it was claimed, and even if that was not the case, he had escaped justice by not actually dying in a cell.
The charge of subterfuge was reinforced by the perception that his release was part of the many dodgy deals between Tony Blair's government and Colonel Gaddafi's regime.
Yet there are good reasons to believe that the conviction of Megrahi was a shameful miscarriage of justice and that, as a result, the real perpetrators of one of the worst acts of terrorism in recent history remained free. That certainly was the view of many, including international jurists, intelligence officers, journalists who followed the case, and members of bereaved families.
Among the latter group was Jim Swire, who lost his daughter, Flora, in the bombing. Dr Swire, a man of integrity and compassion, who became a spokesman for UK Families 103, stressed that "the scandal around Megrahi is not that a sick man was released, but that he was even convicted in the first place. All I have ever wanted to see is that the people who murdered my daughter are brought to justice".
Megrahi died in May 2012, a few months after I had seen him. Yet a campaign Dr Swire had helped set up, Justice for Megrahi, continues to help the Libyan's family to seek a new appeal against the sentence in their efforts to posthumously clear his name.
Certainly, the chronology of the original investigation into the bombing is strange, raising serious questions about the official narrative.
Soon after the downing of the Pan Am flight, American and British security officials began laying the blame on an Iran-Syria axis. The suggested scenario was that Tehran had taken out a contract in revenge for the destruction of an Iranian civilian airliner (Iran Air Flight 655), which had been shot down by missiles fired from an American warship (the USS Vincennes) a few months earlier.
The theory went that the contract had been taken up by the PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command), which specialised in such operations.
The blame switched to Libya - which was then very much a pariah state - around the time Iran and Syria joined the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf war.
Robert Baer, the former American intelligence officer and author, was among those who held that an Iranian-sponsored hit was the only plausible explanation for the attack. This was the firm belief held "to a man", he stated, by his former colleagues in the CIA.
After years of wrangling, Megrahi, the former head of security at Libyan Airlines and allegedly a Libyan intelligence officer, was finally extradited in 1999 - along with another man named as a suspect over the bombing, Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, also allegedly employed by Libyan intelligence. (...)
I covered their trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, which took place in a specially constituted court, with a panel of Scottish judges but without a jury, under Scots law. The two men were effectively charged with joint enterprise - conspiracy - yet only Megrahi was found guilty. (...)
The prosecution evidence was circumstantial, details of the bomb timer on the plane were contradictory, and the testimony of a key witness, a Maltese shopkeeper, was extremely shaky under cross-examination.
Five years on from the trial, the former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmville, who had been responsible for initiating the Lockerbie prosecution, famously described the witness, Tony Gauci, as "an apple short of a picnic" and "not quite the full shilling".
The performance and evidence of a supposedly prime CIA intelligence asset, Abdul Majid Giaka, codenamed Puzzle Piece, who turned up in a Shirley Bassey wig, was widely viewed as risible. It emerged later that important evidence had not been passed on to the defence lawyers. Ulrich Lumpert, an engineer who testified to the validity of a key piece of evidence, admitted later in an affidavit of lying to the court.
The observer for the UN at the trial severely criticised the verdict, as did many lawyers. Robert Black, a law professor born in Lockerbie, who played an important role in organising the Camp Zeist proceedings, later became convinced that a great injustice had taken place. (...)
Fr Patrick Keegans had just been appointed as parish priest in Lockerbie and was looking forward to his first Christmas there at the time of the crash. His tireless work with the traumatised community drew wide praise and is remembered with gratitude.
He reflected: "For those of us who experienced Lockerbie, the story will never come to an end. Lockerbie lives with us, we are part of Lockerbie and Lockerbie is part of us... the horror, the tragedy, the sadness, the grief, the support and the love that was shown - all of that stays with us."
Fr Keegans, who is now retired, joined the Justice for Megrahi campaign after meeting the convicted man's family and is now backing the call for a fresh appeal.
"I can't live with myself being silent," he explained, "when I'm truly convinced that this man has been unjustly convicted. Lockerbie is an unfinished story as far as the legal aspects are concerned."
Megrahi died at his home in Tripoli, still protesting his innocence. He thanked Dr Jim Swire and others who had believed in him.
In his final days, he said: "I pray for all those who died every day. I shall be meeting my God soon, but the truth will come out.
"I really hope the truth of what really happened will come out one day."
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi lay in his bed attached to a drip, on red sheets stained by dark splashes of blood he had coughed up. An oxygen mask covered his skeletal face; his body twitched as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He was in the advanced stages of cancer: medicine he desperately needed had been plundered by looters; the doctors who had been treating him had fled.
This was in Tripoli in the winter of 2011, in the turmoil of Libya's civil war and the chaotic aftermath of the fall of Muammar Gaddafi. It was a time of great violence. A dozen bodies were piled up beside a roundabout a half-mile from where I had seen Megrahi lie slowly dying. They were corpses of black men, lynched by the rebels because they were supposedly mercenaries fighting for the regime. In reality, they were victims of a xenophobia against African migrants which had accompanied the uprising.
Megrahi himself had been convicted of a dreadful massacre; of being responsible for 270 deaths on December 21, 1988, when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over the town of Lockerbie in Scotland. A bomb - 12 ounces of Semtex in a Toshiba radio-cassette player - had been secreted in the luggage of the plane carrying passengers to the US, many returning home for Christmas.
After spending eight years in Scottish prisons following his conviction, Megrahi had been returned to Libya on compassionate grounds following a diagnosis of prostate cancer. After a few months in prison in Tripoli, unable to walk and bedridden, he was allowed to return to his family home.
There was vengeful anger expressed by some in Britain, and more so in the US, at Megrahi's return to Libya. He had faked his illness, it was claimed, and even if that was not the case, he had escaped justice by not actually dying in a cell.
The charge of subterfuge was reinforced by the perception that his release was part of the many dodgy deals between Tony Blair's government and Colonel Gaddafi's regime.
Yet there are good reasons to believe that the conviction of Megrahi was a shameful miscarriage of justice and that, as a result, the real perpetrators of one of the worst acts of terrorism in recent history remained free. That certainly was the view of many, including international jurists, intelligence officers, journalists who followed the case, and members of bereaved families.
Among the latter group was Jim Swire, who lost his daughter, Flora, in the bombing. Dr Swire, a man of integrity and compassion, who became a spokesman for UK Families 103, stressed that "the scandal around Megrahi is not that a sick man was released, but that he was even convicted in the first place. All I have ever wanted to see is that the people who murdered my daughter are brought to justice".
Megrahi died in May 2012, a few months after I had seen him. Yet a campaign Dr Swire had helped set up, Justice for Megrahi, continues to help the Libyan's family to seek a new appeal against the sentence in their efforts to posthumously clear his name.
Certainly, the chronology of the original investigation into the bombing is strange, raising serious questions about the official narrative.
Soon after the downing of the Pan Am flight, American and British security officials began laying the blame on an Iran-Syria axis. The suggested scenario was that Tehran had taken out a contract in revenge for the destruction of an Iranian civilian airliner (Iran Air Flight 655), which had been shot down by missiles fired from an American warship (the USS Vincennes) a few months earlier.
The theory went that the contract had been taken up by the PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command), which specialised in such operations.
The blame switched to Libya - which was then very much a pariah state - around the time Iran and Syria joined the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf war.
Robert Baer, the former American intelligence officer and author, was among those who held that an Iranian-sponsored hit was the only plausible explanation for the attack. This was the firm belief held "to a man", he stated, by his former colleagues in the CIA.
After years of wrangling, Megrahi, the former head of security at Libyan Airlines and allegedly a Libyan intelligence officer, was finally extradited in 1999 - along with another man named as a suspect over the bombing, Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, also allegedly employed by Libyan intelligence. (...)
I covered their trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, which took place in a specially constituted court, with a panel of Scottish judges but without a jury, under Scots law. The two men were effectively charged with joint enterprise - conspiracy - yet only Megrahi was found guilty. (...)
The prosecution evidence was circumstantial, details of the bomb timer on the plane were contradictory, and the testimony of a key witness, a Maltese shopkeeper, was extremely shaky under cross-examination.
Five years on from the trial, the former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmville, who had been responsible for initiating the Lockerbie prosecution, famously described the witness, Tony Gauci, as "an apple short of a picnic" and "not quite the full shilling".
The performance and evidence of a supposedly prime CIA intelligence asset, Abdul Majid Giaka, codenamed Puzzle Piece, who turned up in a Shirley Bassey wig, was widely viewed as risible. It emerged later that important evidence had not been passed on to the defence lawyers. Ulrich Lumpert, an engineer who testified to the validity of a key piece of evidence, admitted later in an affidavit of lying to the court.
The observer for the UN at the trial severely criticised the verdict, as did many lawyers. Robert Black, a law professor born in Lockerbie, who played an important role in organising the Camp Zeist proceedings, later became convinced that a great injustice had taken place. (...)
Fr Patrick Keegans had just been appointed as parish priest in Lockerbie and was looking forward to his first Christmas there at the time of the crash. His tireless work with the traumatised community drew wide praise and is remembered with gratitude.
He reflected: "For those of us who experienced Lockerbie, the story will never come to an end. Lockerbie lives with us, we are part of Lockerbie and Lockerbie is part of us... the horror, the tragedy, the sadness, the grief, the support and the love that was shown - all of that stays with us."
Fr Keegans, who is now retired, joined the Justice for Megrahi campaign after meeting the convicted man's family and is now backing the call for a fresh appeal.
"I can't live with myself being silent," he explained, "when I'm truly convinced that this man has been unjustly convicted. Lockerbie is an unfinished story as far as the legal aspects are concerned."
Megrahi died at his home in Tripoli, still protesting his innocence. He thanked Dr Jim Swire and others who had believed in him.
In his final days, he said: "I pray for all those who died every day. I shall be meeting my God soon, but the truth will come out.
"I really hope the truth of what really happened will come out one day."
Sunday 23 December 2018
The record must be set straight once and for all and justice delivered
[What follows is the text of an editorial headlined Libya and Lockerbie published today in the Daily Times of Pakistan:]
Three decades have passed since the Lockerbie tragedy. And it seems that increased doubt surrounds the Libyan role in the worst terrorist attack on American civilians; the events of 9/11 notwithstanding.
Back in 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was travelling from London to New York when it was brought down by explosives. The plane crashed in the Scottish town of Lockerbie; killing all 270 aboard. What happened next would be the biggest investigation in British history.
There have long been claims that Iran gave the order to strike and paid a ‘middle-man’ the hefty sum of $10 million to do the needful: the Syria-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). [RB: Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer contends that the document alleged to show a $10m payment from Iran to the PFLP-GC does not in fact do so and has no connection with Lockerbie.] This was reportedly a tit-for-tat move. For a few months earlier, the Americans had, in their own words, mistakenly, downed an Iran Air plane; killing 290. Moreover, the daughter of a former PFLP operative — in the run-up to the thirty-year anniversary of the disaster — repeated allegations of Tehran’s involvement. According to popular theories, London and Washington sought to frame Col Gaddafi of Libya for Lockerbie over his support for Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It has been argued that the UK and US were keen to keep Iran on side during the first Gulf War.
If true, there has been a terrible miscarriage of justice. First and foremost for purported Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset el-Megrahi who was convicted in 2001 on all 270 counts of murder and had always professed his innocence. And also for the entire nation. For once Gaddafi publicly carried the can for the terror attack some two years later — an unfortunate sequence of events put the country firmly in the eye of the American storm. El-Megrahi, who was suffering from cancer, was returned to Tripoli on compassionate grounds. And some political pundits believe that this provided the impetus for Barrack Obama to push for NATO intervention in the country. For at the time of the Benghazi offensive there were reports of JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) being on standby to try and pick up el-Megrahi and fly him to Washington to stand trial before American courts.
To avoid further speculation, therefore, an international tribunal must be set up to re-open the Lockerbie case. After all, spooks working on both sides of the Atlantic have in the past spoken of likely Iranian involvement. The world — particularly the Libyan people — deserve to know the truth. For important questions remain. Namely, why, if at all, would Gaddafi allow himself to be framed in this way? What was the payback he was hoping to secure from the West? This is not to rule out Iranian absolution. The point here is that the record must be set straight once and for all and justice delivered.
If nothing else, a re-investigation may afford a better understanding of the underlying dynamics that are currently fanning Middle Eastern flames. While affording the victims’ families long overdue closure.
Three decades have passed since the Lockerbie tragedy. And it seems that increased doubt surrounds the Libyan role in the worst terrorist attack on American civilians; the events of 9/11 notwithstanding.
Back in 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was travelling from London to New York when it was brought down by explosives. The plane crashed in the Scottish town of Lockerbie; killing all 270 aboard. What happened next would be the biggest investigation in British history.
There have long been claims that Iran gave the order to strike and paid a ‘middle-man’ the hefty sum of $10 million to do the needful: the Syria-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). [RB: Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer contends that the document alleged to show a $10m payment from Iran to the PFLP-GC does not in fact do so and has no connection with Lockerbie.] This was reportedly a tit-for-tat move. For a few months earlier, the Americans had, in their own words, mistakenly, downed an Iran Air plane; killing 290. Moreover, the daughter of a former PFLP operative — in the run-up to the thirty-year anniversary of the disaster — repeated allegations of Tehran’s involvement. According to popular theories, London and Washington sought to frame Col Gaddafi of Libya for Lockerbie over his support for Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It has been argued that the UK and US were keen to keep Iran on side during the first Gulf War.
If true, there has been a terrible miscarriage of justice. First and foremost for purported Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset el-Megrahi who was convicted in 2001 on all 270 counts of murder and had always professed his innocence. And also for the entire nation. For once Gaddafi publicly carried the can for the terror attack some two years later — an unfortunate sequence of events put the country firmly in the eye of the American storm. El-Megrahi, who was suffering from cancer, was returned to Tripoli on compassionate grounds. And some political pundits believe that this provided the impetus for Barrack Obama to push for NATO intervention in the country. For at the time of the Benghazi offensive there were reports of JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) being on standby to try and pick up el-Megrahi and fly him to Washington to stand trial before American courts.
To avoid further speculation, therefore, an international tribunal must be set up to re-open the Lockerbie case. After all, spooks working on both sides of the Atlantic have in the past spoken of likely Iranian involvement. The world — particularly the Libyan people — deserve to know the truth. For important questions remain. Namely, why, if at all, would Gaddafi allow himself to be framed in this way? What was the payback he was hoping to secure from the West? This is not to rule out Iranian absolution. The point here is that the record must be set straight once and for all and justice delivered.
If nothing else, a re-investigation may afford a better understanding of the underlying dynamics that are currently fanning Middle Eastern flames. While affording the victims’ families long overdue closure.
Saturday 22 December 2018
The truth behind bomb that took down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie remains a 30-year mystery
[This is the headline over an article by John R Schindler published yesterday on the US Observer website. It reads in part:]
Thirty years ago this week, Pan Am Flight 103 was torn apart by an explosion as it cruised 31,000 feet above the Scottish Lowlands, 38 minutes after it departed London’s Heathrow Airport. The shattered Boeing 747, named Clipper Maid of the Seas, was bound for New York but never made its destination, falling in flames around the bucolic town of Lockerbie. (...)
Once it was obvious that nobody survived the crash, the biggest investigation in British history commenced, painstakingly locating and cataloguing over four million pieces of wreckage—including thousands of body parts—spread over 850 square miles of the Scottish countryside. Within a week of the disaster, investigators discovered traces of explosive, revealing that the Lockerbie crash was no accident.
A bomb took down the 747, and FBI analysis revealed that the huge airliner was destroyed by less than a pound of plastic explosive, specifically Semtex from Czechoslovakia, packed in a Samsonite suitcase stowed in the plane’s forward left luggage container. The improvised explosive device was hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette player and was detonated by a barometric sensor designed to detect altitude.
This revelation set off alarm bells, since less than two months before the attack, German police rolled up a terrorist cell near Frankfurt—where Pam Am 103’s transatlantic trip originated—that was building bombs, specifically a Semtex bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player. The cell belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command, a radical Arab group headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army officer. Western intelligence considered the PFLP-GC to be little more than an extension of Syria’s security services.
Moreover, the October 1988 arrests bagged a top PFLP-GC official, plus the Jordanian national Marwan Khreesat, a veteran bomb-maker who is believed to have played a part in an unsolved terrorist attack in 1970 that took down a Swissair jetliner, killing 47 people. Before long, Khreesat was released from custody, apparently because he was an informant for Jordanian intelligence.
German police seized four bombs from the PFLP-GC’s Frankfurt cell, but a fifth IED went missing. Western intelligence agencies assumed that may have been the device that took down Pam Am 103. Neither was it difficult to ascertain a motive for the attack. Only months before, on July 3, the cruiser USS Vincennes, on station in the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iran Air Airbus, killing all 290 aboard, 66 of them children. It was a terrible accident, but hotheads in Tehran promised revenge. Had they gotten it in the skies over Scotland?
That was hardly a far-fetched idea. In the 1980s, Iranian-backed terrorists left a trail of bombings across the Middle East and beyond, several of which killed large numbers of Americans. Not to mention that the Syrian regime was friendly with the mullahs in Tehran, and outsourcing Iran’s vengeance for the downed Airbus to the PFLP-GC seemed plausible to seasoned Middle East-watchers.
That was the conclusion of US intelligence, particularly when the National Security Agency provided top-secret electronic intercepts which demonstrated that Tehran had commissioned the PFLP-GC to down Pan Am 103, reportedly for a $10 million fee. One veteran NSA analyst told me years later that his counterterrorism team “had no doubt” of Iranian culpability. Bob Baer, the veteran CIA officer, has stated that his agency believed just as unanimously that Tehran was behind the bombing. Within a year of the attack, our Intelligence Community assessed confidently that Lockerbie was an Iranian operation executed by Syrian cut-outs, and that take was shared by several allies with solid Middle Eastern insights, including Israeli intelligence.
American spies were therefore profoundly shocked in November 1991 when the American and British governments indicted two Libyans for the bombing. It took nine years for a trial to commence, since Libya was reluctant to hand over its nationals, and it began in May 2000 in the Netherlands, although the proceedings took place under Scottish law. In January 2001, only one of the defendants, Abdelbaset el-Megrahi, reported to be a Libyan intelligence officer, was convicted on 270 murder charges.
Megrahi professed his innocence and he was sent back to his native country in the summer of 2009 on compassionate grounds since he had terminal prostate cancer. He died in May 2012, not long after Libya’s revolution felled his former boss, dictator Muammar Gaddafi. In 2003, as part of his effort to curry Western favor, Gaddafi admitted responsibility for the Lockerbie attack and paid compensation to victims’ families, but he never conceded that he ordered the bombing. [RB: Libya did not admit "responsibility for the Lockerbie attack" -- it accepted "responsibility for the actions of its officials". The full text of the relevant document can be read here.]
Libya, too, perpetrated a rash of terrorist attacks in the 1980s, and some of them killed Americans, so it was never implausible that Lockerbie was executed by Libyan intelligence. Indeed, U.S. intelligence never excluded the possibility that Libyan spies played some role in the attack. Such multinational collaboration in terrorism happens in the real world, with spies employing foreign terrorists, sometimes from multiple groups, as cut-outs. However, the evidence for Megrahi as the lead Lockerbie terrorist was never especially firm, and the case has weakened over time, as stories have changed.
While Libyan intelligence veterans have claimed that Gaddafi was behind Lockerbie, Iranian intelligence veterans have just as adamantly pointed the finger at Tehran. Revealingly, Jim Swire, an English doctor who lost his daughter on Pam Am 103, has devoted the last three decades to Lockerbie victims’ advocacy, becoming over time a vehement defender of the late Megrahi, believing the Libyan was a patsy. Like all sides in this mystery, Swire has assembled a convincing, if ultimately circumstantial, case for his theory of the crime.
The number of people who know the truth about Lockerbie is dwindling as time takes its toll. It is troubling that what U.S. intelligence confidently believed about the attack never translated into judicial or political action. The atrocity that took place over Scotland 30 years ago remains the deadliest terror attack on American civilians except for 9/11. In 2014, Marwan Khreesat was living freely in Jordan, posting pictures on Facebook of the blown-apart Pam Am 103 and a replica of the bomb which took her down. He died two years ago and Khreesat’s daughter recently told the media that her father left behind proof that he was responsible for Lockerbie due to his “deal with Iran.” Time is running out to let the public know what really happened to Clipper Maid of the Seas and 270 innocent people.
Thirty years ago this week, Pan Am Flight 103 was torn apart by an explosion as it cruised 31,000 feet above the Scottish Lowlands, 38 minutes after it departed London’s Heathrow Airport. The shattered Boeing 747, named Clipper Maid of the Seas, was bound for New York but never made its destination, falling in flames around the bucolic town of Lockerbie. (...)
Once it was obvious that nobody survived the crash, the biggest investigation in British history commenced, painstakingly locating and cataloguing over four million pieces of wreckage—including thousands of body parts—spread over 850 square miles of the Scottish countryside. Within a week of the disaster, investigators discovered traces of explosive, revealing that the Lockerbie crash was no accident.
A bomb took down the 747, and FBI analysis revealed that the huge airliner was destroyed by less than a pound of plastic explosive, specifically Semtex from Czechoslovakia, packed in a Samsonite suitcase stowed in the plane’s forward left luggage container. The improvised explosive device was hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette player and was detonated by a barometric sensor designed to detect altitude.
This revelation set off alarm bells, since less than two months before the attack, German police rolled up a terrorist cell near Frankfurt—where Pam Am 103’s transatlantic trip originated—that was building bombs, specifically a Semtex bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player. The cell belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command, a radical Arab group headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army officer. Western intelligence considered the PFLP-GC to be little more than an extension of Syria’s security services.
Moreover, the October 1988 arrests bagged a top PFLP-GC official, plus the Jordanian national Marwan Khreesat, a veteran bomb-maker who is believed to have played a part in an unsolved terrorist attack in 1970 that took down a Swissair jetliner, killing 47 people. Before long, Khreesat was released from custody, apparently because he was an informant for Jordanian intelligence.
German police seized four bombs from the PFLP-GC’s Frankfurt cell, but a fifth IED went missing. Western intelligence agencies assumed that may have been the device that took down Pam Am 103. Neither was it difficult to ascertain a motive for the attack. Only months before, on July 3, the cruiser USS Vincennes, on station in the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iran Air Airbus, killing all 290 aboard, 66 of them children. It was a terrible accident, but hotheads in Tehran promised revenge. Had they gotten it in the skies over Scotland?
That was hardly a far-fetched idea. In the 1980s, Iranian-backed terrorists left a trail of bombings across the Middle East and beyond, several of which killed large numbers of Americans. Not to mention that the Syrian regime was friendly with the mullahs in Tehran, and outsourcing Iran’s vengeance for the downed Airbus to the PFLP-GC seemed plausible to seasoned Middle East-watchers.
That was the conclusion of US intelligence, particularly when the National Security Agency provided top-secret electronic intercepts which demonstrated that Tehran had commissioned the PFLP-GC to down Pan Am 103, reportedly for a $10 million fee. One veteran NSA analyst told me years later that his counterterrorism team “had no doubt” of Iranian culpability. Bob Baer, the veteran CIA officer, has stated that his agency believed just as unanimously that Tehran was behind the bombing. Within a year of the attack, our Intelligence Community assessed confidently that Lockerbie was an Iranian operation executed by Syrian cut-outs, and that take was shared by several allies with solid Middle Eastern insights, including Israeli intelligence.
American spies were therefore profoundly shocked in November 1991 when the American and British governments indicted two Libyans for the bombing. It took nine years for a trial to commence, since Libya was reluctant to hand over its nationals, and it began in May 2000 in the Netherlands, although the proceedings took place under Scottish law. In January 2001, only one of the defendants, Abdelbaset el-Megrahi, reported to be a Libyan intelligence officer, was convicted on 270 murder charges.
Megrahi professed his innocence and he was sent back to his native country in the summer of 2009 on compassionate grounds since he had terminal prostate cancer. He died in May 2012, not long after Libya’s revolution felled his former boss, dictator Muammar Gaddafi. In 2003, as part of his effort to curry Western favor, Gaddafi admitted responsibility for the Lockerbie attack and paid compensation to victims’ families, but he never conceded that he ordered the bombing. [RB: Libya did not admit "responsibility for the Lockerbie attack" -- it accepted "responsibility for the actions of its officials". The full text of the relevant document can be read here.]
Libya, too, perpetrated a rash of terrorist attacks in the 1980s, and some of them killed Americans, so it was never implausible that Lockerbie was executed by Libyan intelligence. Indeed, U.S. intelligence never excluded the possibility that Libyan spies played some role in the attack. Such multinational collaboration in terrorism happens in the real world, with spies employing foreign terrorists, sometimes from multiple groups, as cut-outs. However, the evidence for Megrahi as the lead Lockerbie terrorist was never especially firm, and the case has weakened over time, as stories have changed.
While Libyan intelligence veterans have claimed that Gaddafi was behind Lockerbie, Iranian intelligence veterans have just as adamantly pointed the finger at Tehran. Revealingly, Jim Swire, an English doctor who lost his daughter on Pam Am 103, has devoted the last three decades to Lockerbie victims’ advocacy, becoming over time a vehement defender of the late Megrahi, believing the Libyan was a patsy. Like all sides in this mystery, Swire has assembled a convincing, if ultimately circumstantial, case for his theory of the crime.
The number of people who know the truth about Lockerbie is dwindling as time takes its toll. It is troubling that what U.S. intelligence confidently believed about the attack never translated into judicial or political action. The atrocity that took place over Scotland 30 years ago remains the deadliest terror attack on American civilians except for 9/11. In 2014, Marwan Khreesat was living freely in Jordan, posting pictures on Facebook of the blown-apart Pam Am 103 and a replica of the bomb which took her down. He died two years ago and Khreesat’s daughter recently told the media that her father left behind proof that he was responsible for Lockerbie due to his “deal with Iran.” Time is running out to let the public know what really happened to Clipper Maid of the Seas and 270 innocent people.
Lockerbie suspect now living in US suburb slams 'complete lie' he planted bomb
[This is the headline over a long report in today's edition of the Daily Mirror. It reads in part:]
The man suspected of planting the Lockerbie bomb has been tracked down by the Daily Mirror.
Once allegedly identified as Abu Elias, the Syria-born US citizen lives a normal life under a different name in a suburban town outside Washington DC.
Questioned by the Mirror, he said it was a “complete lie” that he played any role in the worst terror attack in Britain which killed 270 people 30 years ago.
He hit out after former Cold War spy Douglas Boyd named him as the prime suspect and argued Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – the only person to be convicted – was a fall guy.
And it comes after the Mirror’s world exclusive yesterday with stunning claims from the daughter of a senior Jordanian militant.
She said before his death two years ago, Marwan Khreesat told his family his old terror group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command carried out the attack.
He claimed its chief Ahmed Jibril was paid millions of pounds by Iran, which wanted revenge for 290 deaths when a US warship shot down an Iranian passenger jet months earlier.
Author Boyd, in his recent book Lockerbie: The Truth, claims it was Jibril’s nephew Elias who most likely broke into the Pan Am baggage store at Heathrow to plant the device on Flight 103.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation and, previously, the CIA have also named Elias as a prime suspect.
Terror cell member Mobdi Goben also claimed Elias was guilty in a deathbed confession.
But the suspect, who lives just 20 miles from the Lockerbie Cairn Memorial at Washington, told the Daily Mirror he was innocent.
Asked if he was ever known as Abu Elias, he replied: “No. I have been subject to more than 90 hours of investigation from Scotland Yard and the FBI, and they are through with me.
“The FBI did their homework. They know me very well. They have a big thick file on me.”
He later admitted the identity he now lives under was not his birth name.
But he added: “I’m not the nephew to no one. The bit you are talking about is full of f***ing lies. It’s a bloody lie.”
Author Boyd wrote in his book: “Megrahi was convicted on a tissue of lies. Little of the evidence against him can be taken at face value.
“It is a story of incompetence, vengeance, political expediency and then a cover-up orchestrated from the highest levels in London and in Washington – where the real bomber is said to live today, under cover of a witness protection scheme.” (...)
Many believed some of the evidence [against Megrahi] was weak. He was identified as buying clothes in Malta that were later found in the Lockerbie luggage. Megrahi died at home in 2012 from prostate cancer, aged 60, having been released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds three years previously.
It is believed he planned to reveal Elias’ new identity in a bid to clear his own name.
However, two weeks after being freed to return to Tripoli, SNP politician Christine Grahame used Scottish Parliamentary privilege to identify the man she said was Elias.
She said at the time: “Why were there no criminal prosecutions following the shooting down of the Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes in 1988, five months before Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie?
“Was there a contract issued by the Iranian authorities to the PFLP-GC to take revenge for the death of 290 Iranian pilgrims, 60 of whom were children, by bringing down an American plane bringing its pilgrims home for Christmas?
“Why have the US authorities not queried the true identity of [name withheld] alias Abu Elias, a senior figure in the PFLP-GC at the time of the bombing and nephew of Ahmed Jibril, former head of that terrorist organisation?”
We asked the suspect where he was on December 21, 1988 – the day of the bombing. He replied: “I was in the United States. The FBI saw my journal they know I was in South West Washington DC handling my job.” (...)
Speaking to the Daily Mirror, SNP politician Ms Grahame said: “These various discoveries that you have made builds further on the case that it was, as many of us believe, Iran that was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing and that Megrahi was the fall guy. Libya took the rap for various international reasons.” (...)
[The Megrahi family's] lawyer Aamer Anwar said this week: “Many believe that Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and the finger of blame has long been pointed in the direction of Iran.”
The man suspected of planting the Lockerbie bomb has been tracked down by the Daily Mirror.
Once allegedly identified as Abu Elias, the Syria-born US citizen lives a normal life under a different name in a suburban town outside Washington DC.
Questioned by the Mirror, he said it was a “complete lie” that he played any role in the worst terror attack in Britain which killed 270 people 30 years ago.
He hit out after former Cold War spy Douglas Boyd named him as the prime suspect and argued Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – the only person to be convicted – was a fall guy.
And it comes after the Mirror’s world exclusive yesterday with stunning claims from the daughter of a senior Jordanian militant.
She said before his death two years ago, Marwan Khreesat told his family his old terror group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command carried out the attack.
He claimed its chief Ahmed Jibril was paid millions of pounds by Iran, which wanted revenge for 290 deaths when a US warship shot down an Iranian passenger jet months earlier.
Author Boyd, in his recent book Lockerbie: The Truth, claims it was Jibril’s nephew Elias who most likely broke into the Pan Am baggage store at Heathrow to plant the device on Flight 103.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation and, previously, the CIA have also named Elias as a prime suspect.
Terror cell member Mobdi Goben also claimed Elias was guilty in a deathbed confession.
But the suspect, who lives just 20 miles from the Lockerbie Cairn Memorial at Washington, told the Daily Mirror he was innocent.
Asked if he was ever known as Abu Elias, he replied: “No. I have been subject to more than 90 hours of investigation from Scotland Yard and the FBI, and they are through with me.
“The FBI did their homework. They know me very well. They have a big thick file on me.”
He later admitted the identity he now lives under was not his birth name.
But he added: “I’m not the nephew to no one. The bit you are talking about is full of f***ing lies. It’s a bloody lie.”
Author Boyd wrote in his book: “Megrahi was convicted on a tissue of lies. Little of the evidence against him can be taken at face value.
“It is a story of incompetence, vengeance, political expediency and then a cover-up orchestrated from the highest levels in London and in Washington – where the real bomber is said to live today, under cover of a witness protection scheme.” (...)
Many believed some of the evidence [against Megrahi] was weak. He was identified as buying clothes in Malta that were later found in the Lockerbie luggage. Megrahi died at home in 2012 from prostate cancer, aged 60, having been released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds three years previously.
It is believed he planned to reveal Elias’ new identity in a bid to clear his own name.
However, two weeks after being freed to return to Tripoli, SNP politician Christine Grahame used Scottish Parliamentary privilege to identify the man she said was Elias.
She said at the time: “Why were there no criminal prosecutions following the shooting down of the Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes in 1988, five months before Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie?
“Was there a contract issued by the Iranian authorities to the PFLP-GC to take revenge for the death of 290 Iranian pilgrims, 60 of whom were children, by bringing down an American plane bringing its pilgrims home for Christmas?
“Why have the US authorities not queried the true identity of [name withheld] alias Abu Elias, a senior figure in the PFLP-GC at the time of the bombing and nephew of Ahmed Jibril, former head of that terrorist organisation?”
We asked the suspect where he was on December 21, 1988 – the day of the bombing. He replied: “I was in the United States. The FBI saw my journal they know I was in South West Washington DC handling my job.” (...)
Speaking to the Daily Mirror, SNP politician Ms Grahame said: “These various discoveries that you have made builds further on the case that it was, as many of us believe, Iran that was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing and that Megrahi was the fall guy. Libya took the rap for various international reasons.” (...)
[The Megrahi family's] lawyer Aamer Anwar said this week: “Many believe that Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and the finger of blame has long been pointed in the direction of Iran.”
Friday 21 December 2018
Marwan Khreesat's daughter says Iran not Libya was behind bomb
[What follows is excerpted from a report in today's edition of the Daily Mirror:]
Iran paid a Palestinian terror group to carry out the Lockerbie bombing, it is claimed.
Member Marwan Khreesat allegedly told relatives boss Ahmed Jibril led the 1988 plot. Daughter Saha said: “He has a deal with Iran.”
For 17 years Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has been blamed for the Lockerbie bombing, despite grave doubts over his involvement.
But the Mirror today reveals fresh claims by the daughter of a former terrorist which she says finally proves Iran was behind the outrage that killed 270 people 30 years ago today.
Jordanian Marwan Khreesat left his wife a dossier of evidence that allegedly shows his boss in a Palestinian terror group, Ahmed Jibril, was paid millions of pound by Tehran to mastermind the horrific attack over the Scottish town.
Khreesat’s 43-year-old daughter Saha claims her father even gave the name of the bombmaker to her mother.
It will add to long-held suspicions that Tehran ordered the atrocity in revenge for the US shooting-down of an Iranian passenger plane months earlier, killing 290 civilians.
Saha insisted Khreesat played no part in the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 and blamed Jibril, who was leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
Speaking to us in the middle class suburb of the Jordanian capital Amman, she said: “I think he is responsible, and he has a deal with the Iran government.
“I do have a proof that Ahmed Jibril is responsible for Lockerbie." (...)
Khreesat was identified as a possible Lockerbie suspect shortly after the 1988 attack. He had been arrested two months earlier in Frankfurt with another PFLP-GC member who had plastic explosives hidden in a Toshiba cassette player in his car. The device was very similar to the one used on Flight 103.
Asked if her father knew the name of the bombmaker, Saha replied: “For sure he knows but I don’t know. My dad left something written about this but it’s not in the house.
“If my dad made the bomb he would have taken lots of money but now we don’t have anything because my dad didn’t have anything to do with it.
“Ahmed Jibril took the first million and then he took the rest of the money and got very rich but my dad didn’t take anything." (...)
Asked why her dad did not reveal this information while he was alive, she made reference to the US-led 1986 bombing of Libyan capital Tripoli, in revenge for terror explosions at a West Berlin nightclub.
She said: “Maybe he just wanted to protect Jordan. Maybe he’ll put Jordan in danger if he talked.
“What happened to Libya will happen to Jordan. Lockerbie is an important topic since it is related to America and no one is supposed to mess with America.”
Saha claimed Jordan’s intelligence services were not interested in the truth about Lockerbie. (...)
Scottish MSP Christine Graham said: “These various discoveries that you have made builds further on the case that it was, as many of us believe, Iran that was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing and that al-Megrahi was the fall guy. Libya took the rap for various reasons.”
Dr Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died in the attack, added: “This confirms what we have known for a long time and have never been able to say in public.” Within months of Lockerbie, it was being blamed on the PFLP-GC and Iran by the US and UK. America named Jibril.
Former King Hussein of Jordan said the group was behind the attack in a 1996 letter to John Major. [RB: This is the document in respect of which the UK Government claimed Public Interest Immunity during the appeal by Megrahi that was abandoned when he sought repatriation. The details can be found here.]
Khreesat died two years ago at 70. Jibril, 80, is believed to be in Syria fighting for Bashar al-Assad.
A special mass marking Lockerbie’s 30th anniversary will take place today at Holy Trinity RC Church. Parish priest at the time of the bombing, Canon Pat Keegans, will say he is “not convinced” justice has been done.
Iran paid a Palestinian terror group to carry out the Lockerbie bombing, it is claimed.
Member Marwan Khreesat allegedly told relatives boss Ahmed Jibril led the 1988 plot. Daughter Saha said: “He has a deal with Iran.”
For 17 years Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi has been blamed for the Lockerbie bombing, despite grave doubts over his involvement.
But the Mirror today reveals fresh claims by the daughter of a former terrorist which she says finally proves Iran was behind the outrage that killed 270 people 30 years ago today.
Jordanian Marwan Khreesat left his wife a dossier of evidence that allegedly shows his boss in a Palestinian terror group, Ahmed Jibril, was paid millions of pound by Tehran to mastermind the horrific attack over the Scottish town.
Khreesat’s 43-year-old daughter Saha claims her father even gave the name of the bombmaker to her mother.
It will add to long-held suspicions that Tehran ordered the atrocity in revenge for the US shooting-down of an Iranian passenger plane months earlier, killing 290 civilians.
Saha insisted Khreesat played no part in the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 and blamed Jibril, who was leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
Speaking to us in the middle class suburb of the Jordanian capital Amman, she said: “I think he is responsible, and he has a deal with the Iran government.
“I do have a proof that Ahmed Jibril is responsible for Lockerbie." (...)
Khreesat was identified as a possible Lockerbie suspect shortly after the 1988 attack. He had been arrested two months earlier in Frankfurt with another PFLP-GC member who had plastic explosives hidden in a Toshiba cassette player in his car. The device was very similar to the one used on Flight 103.
Asked if her father knew the name of the bombmaker, Saha replied: “For sure he knows but I don’t know. My dad left something written about this but it’s not in the house.
“If my dad made the bomb he would have taken lots of money but now we don’t have anything because my dad didn’t have anything to do with it.
“Ahmed Jibril took the first million and then he took the rest of the money and got very rich but my dad didn’t take anything." (...)
Asked why her dad did not reveal this information while he was alive, she made reference to the US-led 1986 bombing of Libyan capital Tripoli, in revenge for terror explosions at a West Berlin nightclub.
She said: “Maybe he just wanted to protect Jordan. Maybe he’ll put Jordan in danger if he talked.
“What happened to Libya will happen to Jordan. Lockerbie is an important topic since it is related to America and no one is supposed to mess with America.”
Saha claimed Jordan’s intelligence services were not interested in the truth about Lockerbie. (...)
Scottish MSP Christine Graham said: “These various discoveries that you have made builds further on the case that it was, as many of us believe, Iran that was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing and that al-Megrahi was the fall guy. Libya took the rap for various reasons.”
Dr Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died in the attack, added: “This confirms what we have known for a long time and have never been able to say in public.” Within months of Lockerbie, it was being blamed on the PFLP-GC and Iran by the US and UK. America named Jibril.
Former King Hussein of Jordan said the group was behind the attack in a 1996 letter to John Major. [RB: This is the document in respect of which the UK Government claimed Public Interest Immunity during the appeal by Megrahi that was abandoned when he sought repatriation. The details can be found here.]
Khreesat died two years ago at 70. Jibril, 80, is believed to be in Syria fighting for Bashar al-Assad.
A special mass marking Lockerbie’s 30th anniversary will take place today at Holy Trinity RC Church. Parish priest at the time of the bombing, Canon Pat Keegans, will say he is “not convinced” justice has been done.
Lockerbie bombing 30 years on: What is the truth behind UK's deadliest terrorist atrocity?
[This is the headline over a long article in The Independent today. The following are excerpts:]
Thirty years ago on Friday the name Lockerbie became synonymous with disaster.
The grim sequel is that today, Lockerbie does not just conjure up images of tragedy.
It brings to mind suggestions of conspiracy, of murky deals done in the diplomatic margins, of international machinations that betrayed justice, ensuring – some say – that the only person convicted in connection with the bombing, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was an innocent man. (...)
It still took nearly 12 years before the trial of two Libyan suspects began on May 3 2000, at a specially convened tribunal, operating under Scottish law and heard by three Scottish judges without a jury, at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands.
The tortuous road to trial included the imposition of sanctions on Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya, suggestions the international consensus on sanctions was collapsing, and lengthy secret negotiations between the UK, US and the Netherlands, initiated by Tony Blair’s foreign secretary Robin Cook.
The investigation that put Megrahi and alleged accomplice Lamin Khalifa Fhimah in the frame had involved interviewing 15,000 people and examining 180,000 pieces of evidence.
When the trial began in the Netherlands, Dr [Jim] Swire was convinced both men were guilty.
By the time the judges acquitted Fhimah and found Megrahi guilty on 31 January 2001, Dr Swire was convinced that the only man convicted was innocent.
He befriended Megrahi, visiting him, exchanging Christmas cards, becoming relentless in his efforts to clear the Libyan’s name, and thus to find his daughter’s ‘real killers’. (...)
The Scottish Crown Office - backed it should be said by many American victims' families - remains sure Megrahi was a Libyan agent, a key player in a plot where an unwitting Air Malta worker checked the Samsonite onto a Frankfurt-bound flight as a favour for a “friend” in Germany, where the suitcase was routed to Heathrow, then loaded on to Pan Am 103.
Tony Gauci, whose shop Mary’s House was near Malta’s airport, identified Megrahi as the man who bought clothes from him that were later found to have been packed into the Samsonite, concealing the bomb.
But there were reports of large undisclosed payments going from the US Justice Department to Mr Gauci.
The suspicion was growing that, either by accident or cover-up, Megrahi had become the innocent fall guy who got a life sentence for mass murder.
The Libyan was described, by The Independent among others, as less secret agent and more “Tripoli airport control manager briefly assigned to Libyan intelligence for bureaucratic rather than specialist tradecraft reasons.”
Many came to believe the Lockerbie atrocity was the work of Palestinian militants, with suspicion falling in particular on the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).
The trial, for example, had heard evidence from FBI agent Edward Marshman that Jordanian bomb maker Marwan Khreesat told him he had supplied the PFLP-GC with explosive devices similar to the one used to down Pan Am 103.
By contrast there was considerable scepticism about the prosecution’s attempts to link Libya’s intelligence services to the improvised explosive device that destroyed the jet.
A fingernail-sized fragment of circuit board found in the wreckage was identified by prosecutors as being part of a timer made by contractor Thuring and sold by Swiss company Mebo to the Libyan armed forces.
But sceptics said independent analysis of the timer fragment showed it had a pure tin coating, whereas Thuring devices were covered in a tin-lead alloy.
Dr Swire came to disbelieve the official story of a bomb going from Malta to Frankfurt to London, thinking instead that the bomb had been smuggled through Heathrow and only ever travelled on one aeroplane: Pan Am 103.
One Heathrow staff member reportedly told police in January 1989 that he had seen a hard-shell Samsonite in a luggage container heading for the Boeing 747’s hold before the Frankfurt feeder flight that was supposed to have carried the bomb had even landed at the London airport.
Some accounts were prepared to accept that Libyan money might have helped fund the Palestinian militants – the US bombing raid on Tripoli in 1986 certainly gave Gaddafi plenty of motive for becoming (or continuing as) a terrorist paymaster.
But the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by a missile fired in error from a US warship in July 1988 gave another Middle East government a far more recent grievance, one that would have made targeting American civilian air passengers particularly appealing.
Whatever the truth, the conflicting accounts and the seeming entanglement with Middle Eastern intrigue left many with the sense that Lockerbie had become a decidedly murky affair. (...)
In 2015 Scottish prosecutors effectively re-opened the Lockerbie investigation by naming two Libyans they wanted to talk to: Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddaffi’s brother-in-law and formerly a senior Libyan intelligence official, and Abu Agila Masud, a man believed to have bomb-making skills.
Both men are in jail in Libya. Scottish and American prosecutors are said to be hopeful they will be allowed, despite the chaos now bedevilling Libya, to talk to the two suspects.
A report in this week’s Times suggested prosecutors were “closing in” on their two targets. The response from the Libyan government – or at least the UN-backed version of it – was said to have been “positive and constructive”.
Megrahi’s family, meanwhile, has launched a fresh appeal against his conviction to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC).
When he died in 2012, his brother Abdulhakim said: “Just because Abdulbaset is dead doesn’t mean the past is now erased. We will always tell the world my brother was innocent.”
For his part, Dr Swire described the death of his friend as “a very sad event”. He praised the way that Megrahi, even when dying and in great pain, had sought to pass on the information amassed by his defence team.
Dr Swire himself is now 82.
Thirty years on from being called from his study to watch a TV news bulletin that changed his life, he is still searching for simple, undisputed truth about what happened to his daughter and 269 others.
Given what we now know about Lockerbie, it seems rash to assume that anyone will ever find it.
Thirty years ago on Friday the name Lockerbie became synonymous with disaster.
The grim sequel is that today, Lockerbie does not just conjure up images of tragedy.
It brings to mind suggestions of conspiracy, of murky deals done in the diplomatic margins, of international machinations that betrayed justice, ensuring – some say – that the only person convicted in connection with the bombing, Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was an innocent man. (...)
It still took nearly 12 years before the trial of two Libyan suspects began on May 3 2000, at a specially convened tribunal, operating under Scottish law and heard by three Scottish judges without a jury, at Camp Zeist, the Netherlands.
The tortuous road to trial included the imposition of sanctions on Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya, suggestions the international consensus on sanctions was collapsing, and lengthy secret negotiations between the UK, US and the Netherlands, initiated by Tony Blair’s foreign secretary Robin Cook.
The investigation that put Megrahi and alleged accomplice Lamin Khalifa Fhimah in the frame had involved interviewing 15,000 people and examining 180,000 pieces of evidence.
When the trial began in the Netherlands, Dr [Jim] Swire was convinced both men were guilty.
By the time the judges acquitted Fhimah and found Megrahi guilty on 31 January 2001, Dr Swire was convinced that the only man convicted was innocent.
He befriended Megrahi, visiting him, exchanging Christmas cards, becoming relentless in his efforts to clear the Libyan’s name, and thus to find his daughter’s ‘real killers’. (...)
The Scottish Crown Office - backed it should be said by many American victims' families - remains sure Megrahi was a Libyan agent, a key player in a plot where an unwitting Air Malta worker checked the Samsonite onto a Frankfurt-bound flight as a favour for a “friend” in Germany, where the suitcase was routed to Heathrow, then loaded on to Pan Am 103.
Tony Gauci, whose shop Mary’s House was near Malta’s airport, identified Megrahi as the man who bought clothes from him that were later found to have been packed into the Samsonite, concealing the bomb.
But there were reports of large undisclosed payments going from the US Justice Department to Mr Gauci.
The suspicion was growing that, either by accident or cover-up, Megrahi had become the innocent fall guy who got a life sentence for mass murder.
The Libyan was described, by The Independent among others, as less secret agent and more “Tripoli airport control manager briefly assigned to Libyan intelligence for bureaucratic rather than specialist tradecraft reasons.”
Many came to believe the Lockerbie atrocity was the work of Palestinian militants, with suspicion falling in particular on the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).
The trial, for example, had heard evidence from FBI agent Edward Marshman that Jordanian bomb maker Marwan Khreesat told him he had supplied the PFLP-GC with explosive devices similar to the one used to down Pan Am 103.
By contrast there was considerable scepticism about the prosecution’s attempts to link Libya’s intelligence services to the improvised explosive device that destroyed the jet.
A fingernail-sized fragment of circuit board found in the wreckage was identified by prosecutors as being part of a timer made by contractor Thuring and sold by Swiss company Mebo to the Libyan armed forces.
But sceptics said independent analysis of the timer fragment showed it had a pure tin coating, whereas Thuring devices were covered in a tin-lead alloy.
Dr Swire came to disbelieve the official story of a bomb going from Malta to Frankfurt to London, thinking instead that the bomb had been smuggled through Heathrow and only ever travelled on one aeroplane: Pan Am 103.
One Heathrow staff member reportedly told police in January 1989 that he had seen a hard-shell Samsonite in a luggage container heading for the Boeing 747’s hold before the Frankfurt feeder flight that was supposed to have carried the bomb had even landed at the London airport.
Some accounts were prepared to accept that Libyan money might have helped fund the Palestinian militants – the US bombing raid on Tripoli in 1986 certainly gave Gaddafi plenty of motive for becoming (or continuing as) a terrorist paymaster.
But the downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by a missile fired in error from a US warship in July 1988 gave another Middle East government a far more recent grievance, one that would have made targeting American civilian air passengers particularly appealing.
Whatever the truth, the conflicting accounts and the seeming entanglement with Middle Eastern intrigue left many with the sense that Lockerbie had become a decidedly murky affair. (...)
In 2015 Scottish prosecutors effectively re-opened the Lockerbie investigation by naming two Libyans they wanted to talk to: Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddaffi’s brother-in-law and formerly a senior Libyan intelligence official, and Abu Agila Masud, a man believed to have bomb-making skills.
Both men are in jail in Libya. Scottish and American prosecutors are said to be hopeful they will be allowed, despite the chaos now bedevilling Libya, to talk to the two suspects.
A report in this week’s Times suggested prosecutors were “closing in” on their two targets. The response from the Libyan government – or at least the UN-backed version of it – was said to have been “positive and constructive”.
Megrahi’s family, meanwhile, has launched a fresh appeal against his conviction to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC).
When he died in 2012, his brother Abdulhakim said: “Just because Abdulbaset is dead doesn’t mean the past is now erased. We will always tell the world my brother was innocent.”
For his part, Dr Swire described the death of his friend as “a very sad event”. He praised the way that Megrahi, even when dying and in great pain, had sought to pass on the information amassed by his defence team.
Dr Swire himself is now 82.
Thirty years on from being called from his study to watch a TV news bulletin that changed his life, he is still searching for simple, undisputed truth about what happened to his daughter and 269 others.
Given what we now know about Lockerbie, it seems rash to assume that anyone will ever find it.
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