The Palestinian connection

[This is the headline over an article by Martin Asser published on the BBC News website on this date in 2000. It reads in part:]

The Lockerbie trial has resurrected the names of players in Palestinian radical politics that have long since ceased to be relevant in the armed struggle for an independent Palestinian state, a cause which itself has been consigned to the margins.

It was a world veiled in secrecy, where the abundance of splinter groups reflected the fact that internecine rivalry often took the place of liberation as the major occupation of those involved.

Lawyers for the two Libyans on trial for the 1988 airline bombing fingered 11 alleged members of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF), a little-known organisation which is now allied to Palestinian self-rule leader Yasser Arafat in the Israeli-occupied territories.

The more prominent Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), a prime suspect in the immediate aftermath of the Lockerbie atrocity, also had an unspecified number of its members accused in the trial indictment.

Both groups have denied involvement, with protestations that, when they were involved in the armed struggle, their operations were directed exclusively against Israel.

Before the emergence in the late 1980s and 1990s of Hamas and Hezbollah as the major vehicles of militant (Islamic) resistance against Israel, the PFLP-GC, founded by Ahmad Jibril in 1968, took the lead in anti-Israeli attacks. (...)

Ahmad Jibril was born in the Palestinian city of Jaffa, now in Israel, in 1928, but his family moved to Syria and he became an officer in the Syrian army, reportedly attending the British military academy at Sandhurst.

He set up the small Palestinian Liberation Front in 1959, joining forces in 1967 with fellow radical George Habash to found the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

His breakaway PFLP-GC was founded after tensions arose between Syria and Mr Habash. Mr Jibril has remained consistently pro-Syrian ever since.

This orientation caused splits with other Palestinian organisations, such as the pro-Iraqi Fatah Revolutionary Council (the Abu Nidal group) in 1978, and the umbrella PLO in the mid-1980s, when Yasser Arafat broke with Damascus over negotiating with Israel for territory.

Mr Jibril's "revolutionary nihilism" - as one rival leader put it - apparently also led him into the arms of similarly inclined states such as Libya and Iran.

Hardly present in Israel and the occupied territories themselves, his group was to be found wherever there were the most hardline opponents of Israel. (...)

West Germany was the main centre for alleged PFLP-GC cells, in association with PPSF cells in Scandinavia.

These are alleged to have been engaged in bomb making and planning attacks on behalf of Iran and Syria, including the Lockerbie bombing. Tehran's motive, with Syrian backing, could have been revenge for the July 1988 shooting down of an Iranian airliner with the loss of all 270 people on board by a US warship in the Gulf.

The possibility of Libyan sponsorship, to avenge the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi, was also mooted in the aftermath of Lockerbie. The PFLP-GC had been linked to Col Gaddafi, who reportedly arranged training for Mr Jibril's fighters and even recruited them in his war against Chad in the 1980s.

However, there remain many sceptics who believe Washington's identification of Libya as the sole perpetrator of the Lockerbie bombing has much more to do with politics than evidence.

The first US theories put Syria and Iran firmly in the frame, but that changed after Syria joined the alliance to oust Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, and shortly thereafter Damascus became a key player in the US-sponsored Arab-Israeli peace process.

But it is in the nature of groups like PFLP-GC, and their relationship with the states which support them, that the whole truth may never come out.

[RB: Dr Kevin Bannon’s rather different perspective on the PFLP-GC can be read here and here.]

What Lockerbie evidence should be relied on, and what not?

[What follows is a further contribution from Kevin Bannon:]

Lockerbie: the PFLP-GC, the Helsinki warning, Marwan Khreesat, the 1988 Frankfurt bomb factory, the Goben memorandum, Iran, Syria ‘...and all that’ (after Sellar & Yeatman).

The history of the Lockerbie bombing can only be disseminated and understood from that which can be properly and reasonably established, not by uncorroborated hearsay and rumours. We know what was said at trial and in police statements because there are verbatim records. These confirm, for example, that Tony Gauci changed his eyewitness evidence - in every aspect - from a narrative that consistently ruled out the participation of al-Megrahi in the Lockerbie bombing, to one in which served to incriminate him. We know that these changes were made while the police were discussing among themselves the potential of rewards for Gauci - specifically to lubricate his testimony in favour of their suspect-profile. 

The forensic evidence is so profoundly unsatisfactory as to be farcical. A fragment of a time switch, which would link Gauci’s shop to the Pan Am 103 explosive device, and to Libya, was found in the Lockerbie debris on a date which is ambiguous. Both the means of its recognition as significant evidence and the identity of the investigator who first made this discovery – are unclear. The evidence label which annotated the items in the bag, later found to include the timer fragment, had been plainly falsified, but the police officer who admitted having “overwritten” it - and explained why he had done so - later expressed doubt that it was his “handwriting”. The alteration crucially changed the description of the evidence bag’s contents. The page number on which the item was logged in the chief forensic scientist’s notebook had been systematically altered for reasons which remain highly suspicious. The police photograph of the evidence items and its purported date, are inconsistent with other records and the picture is of such poor quality that essential details are unintelligible – contrary to the very purpose of police photographs. The crucial items of evidence – the timer fragment, the radio/cassette recorder which had enclosed it, the fragments of the suitcase which carried it – were not shown to have been tested for explosive residues. 

Incredibly, this catalogue of fiddling and negligence represents the core of the greatest forensic investigation in British criminal history!

This evidence eventually led to the conviction of al-Megrahi – who became a suspect only because of his reputed visit to Gauci’s shop – which transparently never took place. While the find of the timer fragment is generally accepted as almost miraculous, subsequent independent scientific tests on a control sample from the circuit boards supplied to Libya found it to be constituently different from the suspect fragment.

In court, virtually every component of al-Megrahi’s defence was apparently suspended, enabling his incrimination by the contrived prosecution evidence. He was advised to say nothing in his defence in the face of 230 prosecution witness testimonies against the defence’s three; the Crown brought 1,858 court productions to Kamp Zeist, compared with the defence’s seven. In his pre-trial examination, al-Megrahi (like his co-accused) was advised to reply to all 76 questions put to him with a stock refusal to respond, even when the accusations that he planted the bomb were put to him – such is a standard defence procedure in Scotland normally only applied for pathological criminals in open-and-shut cases heard before juries. 

The blatant contradictions in Gauci’s recollections were inexplicably skirted during his cross-examination while al-Megrahi’s counsel openly and repeatedly complemented Gauci on his honesty - at the outset of the appeal he even declared to the Bench, that Gauci’s honesty was above reproach. Other evidence of value to the defence was ignored or blatantly deconstructed. Finally, his advocate simply jettisoned the essential criteria on which al-Megrahi’s appeal might have been effective, even disabling the scope of the Bench to endorse the appeal – as their conclusions confirmed. 

Unfortunately these facts are not generally known because they have not been effectively disseminated; the popular perception is that some dispute al-Megrahi’s conviction, basing their doubts on ‘conspiracy theories’ – the well established euphemism for imaginative fantasies constructed around major crime narratives. In fact, the conspiracy theories in this case, are more steadfastly clung to by those who believe al-Megrahi was justly convicted, including CIA and FBI officials, who have enthusiastically posited al-Megrahi as representing only the tip of an iceberg of international conspirators. The otherwise straightforward narrative about corruption of due process has become lost in a mess of uncorroborated, vaguely intersecting plots, none of which were factually established either during the police investigation or the testimonies at Kamp Zeist. 

The recently posted Scotsman obituary of Lord Coulsfield - referring to the Kamp Zeist verdict as a ‘much debated subject’ and citing the Princess Diana and JFK stories - reveals precisely the detrimental effect of these alternative themes. 

When John Ashton presented ‘Megrahi: You are my Jury’ at the August 2012 Edinburgh book festival before a large audience, one of the first members of the audience to raise a question was a journalist who made plain his deep scepticism about Ashton’s book. This was Ian Black, the Middle East Editor of The Guardian - arguably the most influential individual in Britain concerning perceptions of Middle Eastern affairs. The Guardian is overwhelmingly the newspaper of choice among most Labour and Liberal MPs and academics, particularly in the humanities – a cohort among whom we would expect to find a rich seem of scepticism on this issue. However, I am not aware of significant commentary from these quarters - not even from the shadow cabinet - about this terrible miscarriage of justice, which has had dire consequences, ultimately helping precipitate the destruction of Libya itself.

I strongly believe that the inclusion of the international terrorist conspiracy in the Lockerbie bombing discussion are enormously damaging to the aims and objectives of JfM. In the first place, attempting to identify the actual perpetrators of the Lockerbie bombing is a task a thousand times more complex than unravelling the embroidered ‘evidence’ brought against the late al-Megrahi. Secondly, placing these unsubstantiated theories in the same narrative as genuine, documented evidence reduces what is incontrovertible to similar obscurity – a fait accompli for the opponents of JfM. 

The documented facts of the Lockerbie case are very clear and require no supplement of ‘debateable’ half-baked anecdotes – especially those associated with the ulterior agendas of dis-informants, spooks with CIA connections - and even terrorists - a collective which did so much to frame Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in the first place.

The PFLP-GC chimera: Part Two

[What follows is Part Two of Kevin Bannon’s article on the chimerical PFLP-GC. Part One can be read here.] 

Steve Emerson et al

In their book The Fall of Pan Am 103 (1990) Steve Emerson and Brian Duffy alluded to a suspicion that the Germans had secretly agreed with Syria to leave Palestinian suspects alone so long as no terrorist actions would be planned in Germany: ‘We will leave you alone if you leave Germans and German targets alone’ [Emerson & Duffy  p124]. The notion of such a diabolical pact between Germany and a terrorist group is absurd and entirely incompatible with both West Germany’s Cold War position and its post-war attitude to terrorism. The Germans had in fact adopted a famously pro-Israeli position in the aftermath of The Holocaust. In this context, The murders of 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team at the 1972 Olympics in Munich by the ‘Black September’ group had been a catastrophe for the Germans just as it had been a disaster for Israel and for the Olympic movement. The suggestion that Germany would again entertain murderous terrorists in their midst on the condition that German citizens would not be amongst their victims is abject nonsense. Emerson & Duffy’s stated source for this theory is ‘Israeli and Western intelligence officials’ [pp124 & 139] which speaks volumes about the integrity and reliability of such sources. An article in The Guardian in April 2012 by veteran foreign journalist Luke Harding and Israel correspondent Harriet Sherwood, observed that ‘German politicians from both left and right have traditionally been supportive of Israel, for obvious historical reasons’ [p27, The Guardian 6 April 2012]. The revelations of Herbstlaub more strongly suggest that the West German government had tolerated the presence of an Israeli ‘sting’ operation in their jurisdiction, out of a sense of obligation. 

According to Emerson, the Camp Zeist proceedings were ‘secured’ by Gaddafi, enabling the accused Libyans to get more ‘preferential treatment’ than they would were they tried in the US. He believed that the trial did not do justice to all the evidence, particularly ‘intelligence that could not satisfy the burden imposed’ by the ‘rules’ of proof and corroboration applicable to a court of law. Clearly a fountain of misconceptions - one could use coarser terms. [Steve Emerson, Terrorism on Trial: the Lockerbie Terrorist Attack and Libya: A retrospective Analysis, Case West Reserve Journal of International Law, Vol.36 no.2-3. 2004, 487-490].

Robert Baer, a former CIA man has made a successful second career out of writing about espionage and international intrigue. His take on the Lockerbie bombing does not contribute to a plausible or logical construct compatible with known facts, which genuine historical material tends to do. It is noteworthy that as a former CIA man, Robert Baer, for ‘security’ (i.e. strategic) reasons, cannot reveal most of the important things he must have knowledge of – hardly a position of strength for a writer of publications purporting to help unravel such mysteries. 

In my own research, I did manage to find some novelties in Mark Perry’s The Last Days of the CIA (1992) – but referred to them only for their effect as ‘comic relief’.

The PFLP-GC and Ahmed Jibril

The moniker ‘PFLP-GC’ represents a cynical attempt to usurp the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – an official and rational political party with international recognition as such. 

The deadliest atrocity attributed to the PFLP-GC was said to be the in-flight bombing of Swissair Flight 330 en-route to Tel Aviv in February 1970, killing 47 passengers and crew. After the bombing, the PFLP-GC - or callers on its behalf - were reported as having claimed and (separately) denied responsibility for the atrocity, but it was suggested, implausibly, that the denial was only after the outrage the bombing had caused – an outcome which the actual bombers must surely have expected [New York Times, Feb 22, 1970]. The criminal investigation into the plane’s loss by the Swiss Federal Prosecutors Office ‘ceased definitively’ in November 2000 as no perpetrator had been identified. In response to a ‘demand’ for information about the investigations into the loss of Flight SR 330 filed in the Swiss Federal Council chamber in March 2009, the Federal Council’s response was: "There is little hope of bringing the bomber[s] to court because there are not enough clues for their identification and arrest. This was the case in 1970, and the passage of time has further blurred the evidence and reduced the chances of a successful prosecution" [Daniel Huber, “We are crashing - goodbye everybody” (E-paper) 20 Minuten 9 February 2010]. 

The PFLP-GC were retrospectively named or claimed as perpetrators of the Kiryat Shimona massacre of Israeli villagers in 1974, but those terrorists blew themselves up before they could be interrogated. Another attack in Israel using micro-light aircraft in the 1980’s also resulted in the deaths of the perpetrators. These terrorist acts were real enough, but the claim that the PFLP-GC were behind it, was no more than that.

As a matter of historical comparison, the Israelis famously sought out and liquidated most of the ‘Black September’ group responsible for the murders of members of the 1972 Munich Israeli Olympic team. It must be significant that Ahmed Jibril, the PFLP-GC leader, ostensibly responsible for murdering many more Jewish and Israeli non-belligerents, has not only remained at large but has been openly accessible, enjoying a high profile, and giving filmed interviews to news teams (See Francovitch The Maltese Double Cross 1994). In May 1985 the Israelis actively promoted Jibril as go-between in a spectacular deal involving the release of well over 1,150 Palestinian ‘and other’ prisoners in exchange for 3 Israeli soldiers said to have been held by the PFLP-GC – whoever they were. [Ze'ev Schiff, ‘The Prisoner Exchange’ Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol 14, No. 4, (Summer, 1985) University of California Press, pp176-180]. The agreement greatly enhanced Jibril’s prestige and status, confirming him as the ‘Palestinian’ that the Israeli’s could do business with, but if Jibril had been what he claimed to be, the Israeli’s would surely have eliminated him. In that event, the Palestinians would have shed few tears as Ahmed Jibril has been persona non grata in Gaza and the West Bank for decades. Gaza-based Mohammed Suliman writing for the pan-Middle Eastern website Al-Monitor, quoted two Palestinian residents in Syria in December 2012, while the Syrian civil conflict was on-going. One PFLP official, Mariam Abu Dakka criticized Jibril’s faction as unrepresentative. “Everyone knows the true size of PFLP-GC. They are not representative of the Palestinians. Their acts only represent them[selves], and in fact their membership in the Palestine Liberation Organization has been frozen for some time now,” Similarly, Rabah Mhanna, a senior member of the political bureau of the PFLP, affirmed the same position. “Ahmed Jibril does not even belong to the Palestinian Left. He is closer to the extremist right-wing groups than to revolutionary leftist ones” [Mohammed Suliman, Al-Monitor: 27 December 2012]. This explains Israel’s promotion of Jibril, whose principal contribution has been to help associate the Palestinians primarily with indiscriminate mass killings, rather than their pursuit of statehood.

Defence counsel in the Lockerbie trial ventured to present the Frankfurt bomb factory, PFLP-GC and the Goben memorandum as crucial to their case. In fact these diversions played a significant role in making the entire defence case eventually look ridiculous.

The PFLP-GC chimera: Part One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A response to the Dornstein documentary

[What follows is a commentary by Dr Kevin Bannon on Ken Dornstein’s documentary as broadcast on BBC Channel 4:]

I am loath to disparage an investigation by anyone who lost immediate family in such an atrocity as the bombing of Pan Am103. However, notwithstanding his otherwise pertinent observations, I think that John Ashton (in his recent blog) has been remarkably genteel in his response to Ken Dorntein’s pseudo-investigative documentary Lockerbie: My Brother’s Bomber. Dornstein’s faith in the conviction of al-Megrahi appears unshakeable as does his implicit belief that the co-accused, Fhimah was freed on a technicality.

To summarise his film, its recurring focus is the video of al-Megrahi’s return to Tripoli airport, over which Dornstein seethes, while he identifies several more potential Lockerbie suspects among the welcoming party. One of these is Abu Agela whose name also turns up in files found in Tripoli and in former East Berlin archives. Agela is also listed travelling twice on the same plane flights as al-Megrahi. These circumstances are backed by hearsay which identifies Agela as an explosives expert and then link him to the 1986 bombing of Berlin’s La Belle nightclub. To this, I can only add that Ken Dornstein is entitled to his suspicions.

I found more interesting what Musbah Eter had to say, because since his conviction 14 years ago for the La Belle bombing, there had been no apparent comment from him or his 3 accomplices about their convictions. Ken Dornstein gives him ample camera time to explain himself and Eter is shown looking around his old office - not at camera, and not exactly confessing, but thinking aloud, apparently regretting but simultaneously justifying his past:

“...here we conducted state terrorism, surveillance of enemies...and from here we launched the bombing of the Berlin nightclub, from the second floor...carrying with it the destruction and murder of the innocent...  What we did was wrong and I admit it. If I could go back in time I wouldn’t have done it. But the pressure from the state...and the direct orders from the security services...were [sic] the reason why so many Libyan youths were caught up in it.”

Years previously Eter had both admitted and denied having a role in the La Belle bombing as well as implicating his co-accused in court - then denying that too. His cynical mea culpa in the film does little justice to a premeditated act of violence which killed three and maimed and injured many more. Eter offers no explanation or proof of his role and in Ken Dornstein’s film he is not questioned at all on any such details. John Ashton’s recent blog notes Eter’s former CIA associations – it certainly puts the La Belle bomber’s meanders into a kind of perspective.

The film shows the investigating prosecutor in the La Belle case, Detlev Mehlis musing how he had difficulty spelling the name ‘Abugela’ (Abu Agela) “...sorry...I have no idea how to spell Abugela...I would probably spell it like ‘jelly’ or something...” Eter had written down the name for him ‘ABUGELA’ and next to it ‘NEGER’ which Mehlis pronounces “neeger” adding “...but here in German it doesn’t have that negative meaning as in the US.” Mehlis might not find this word negative, but he should know that since the seventies this has been regarded as a derogatory word among most educated Germans.

The Le Belle club specialised in soul music and had been particularly popular with Afro-American servicemen, two of whom were killed along with a Turkish woman - improbable targets by Libya seeking revenge on Washington. A bomb had exploded a week earlier outside Berlin’s German-Arab Friendship offices, (the DAFG), injuring several Arabs. Three Middle Eastern men who had been arrested as the initial suspects in the La Belle bombing were subsequently blamed for this attack; it was said that the motive had been antipathy towards the PLO which they apparently believed the DAFG had represented. However Ahmed Hasi (or Hazi) who placed the DAFG bomb, had no history a political zealot but rather a police record for abusing his wife and drug dealing.

In September 1980, Germany’s deadliest bombing attack on civilians since World War II killed 13 people at the ‘Oktoberfest’– a popular family festival held annually. The device had exploded prematurely, killing the bomber, Gundolf Köhler - a member of a Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann - a banned neo-Nazi party. Had this bomb plant gone according to plan, one wonders who might have been blamed for the attack – targeting ordinary families and Bavarian provincial traditions – obviously not the far-right.

Ken Dornstein chooses to include a short news clip from al-Megrahi’s deathbed, an interview in which al-Megrahi, in his intermediate English, says that his name had been ‘exaggerated’ - Al-Megrahi wouldn’t have been familiar the words ‘slandered’ or ‘besmirched’ but in October 2011, his comment went viral in the West’s media, who made the interpretation that al-Megrahi’s role in the bombing plot had been exaggerated – which would have been tantamount to an admission of guilt. Al-Megrahi’s fervent denials of any involvement in the Lockerbie bombing were numerous and un-ambiguous. This ‘exaggerated’ statement was grossly misleading in its original broadcasts but more so in Dornstein’s reiteration of it - especially as in his film, it is presented as al-Megrahi’s final word.

Dornstein is also shown equipping himself with a hidden micro-video camera, having ingratiated himself with Jim Swire in hope of filming al-Megrahi himself – and he toys with the idea of demanding a confession or denial from al-Megrahi. To see Jim Swire - totally oblivious to Dornstein’s ruse - warmly welcomed by al-Megrahi’s son at the front door, before introducing Dornstein (who had to wait in the hall) is galling and acutely dishonest. Jim Swire’s openness and magnanimity is well-known and I would expect he forgave Dornstein – as a fellow-in-grief - but I’m not ashamed to say I wouldn’t have. A conversation afterwards with Jim Swire shows Ken Dornstein nodding ‘sympathetically’ as he listens to Jim Swire’s poignant lament for al-Megrahi - this makes Ken Dornstein look, frankly, two-faced.

An investigation of any kind requires elements such as definition, corroboration, credible testimonials or some kind of logical chain-of-evidence – a testable hypothesis or one that is falsifiable as the late Karl Popper would have described it.

I have no idea who planted the bomb – my emphasis is on who didn’t - a narrower focus and a simpler research problem with a more finite evidence basis.

What follows is all factual:

A - The prime witness

Al-Megrahi was originally linked to the Lockerbie bombing plot based only on the evidence eyewitness Antony Gauci a shopkeeper in Malta. There were at least 10 separate features or conditions pertaining to his evidence about items he had sold to a customer; their total cost; the date of sale; the weather on that day; the appearance and age of the customer etc. Fundamental aspects of each and every one of these evidence items or their conditions changed between the initial statements and the latter ones - changes 100% favourable to the prosecution case. The original evidence thoroughly discounted al-Megrahi as the customer in every aspect.

Within the same general period that Tony Gauci modified his testimony he had ‘expressed an interest in receiving money’ and the police discussed on more than one occasion - not in his presence - the possibility of substantial or immediate cash payments being made to him as an inducement: Example from a police memo: "if a monetary offer was made to Gauci this may well change his view and allow him to consider a witness protection programme...”

After the conviction of al-Megrahi, it became apparent that Tony Gauci received ‘in excess of $2 million’ as a reward for helping with the Lockerbie investigation.

B - The circuit board fragment

A fragment of charred cloth was found near Lockerbie about three weeks after the bombing. The item later yielded a tiny fragment of circuit board which forensic investigators linked to timing devices sold to the Libyan defence forces. To this day it remains unclear what date the crucial piece of circuit board was discovered and who discovered it.

No evidence of explosive residue examination of this item – supposedly the only piece of the explosive device found – was produced at trial or shown to have taken place.

Soon after it was first logged, the label attached to this evidence describing its contents was falsified so that its original description ‘Cloth’ then read ‘Debris’ (falsified – not merely ‘overwritten’).

An existing metallurgy test on this circuit board fragment, establishing that it was constitutionally different from the batch sold to Libya, was not introduced in court. Several years later another more advanced metallurgy test confirmed this – corroborating the elimination of the Libyan link to the explosive device.

False testimony drew al-Megrahi into the Lockerbie bombing indictment and corrupt procedures pertaining to the circuit board fragment nailed his conviction. The only rational explanation for this is that al-Megrahi was fitted-up in a conspiracy by individuals associated with the Lockerbie investigation and/or the subsequent prosecution and trial. It is perhaps no wonder why the Scottish and UK authorities are reticent to have the matter delved into any further.

Entirely un-mentioned in Ken Dornstein’s film is Moussa Koussa, former Libyan foreign minister, principal security adviser to Gaddafi himself, and subject of one of the greatest intelligence coups anywhere since 1945. Koussa, Gaddafi’s right-hand man, had been simultaneously a direct informant to the CIA and to MI6 since at least the 1990’s and almost certainly since the early 80s. In 1980 he had uttered, direct to a reporter of The Times in London, an open threat both to assist the IRA and to liquidate Libyan dissidents abroad – an incrimination of the Libyan regime from which it never recovered. This helps explain, better than anything else, the perception of Libya’s self-destructive international image during the 1980s.

On the 30 March 2011, at a decisive moment in the Libyan uprising, Koussa flew to the UK to be debriefed by MI6 and others – and was then allowed safe-passage to Saudi Arabia – into media silence and luxurious exclusion. This alone establishes that the contradictions surrounding Libya since 1980 are much more likely to lie with Western intelligence services rather than amidst Tripoli’s rubble.

When Ken Dornstein arrived in Tripoli the first time, the city had been shattered – the result of a Bay of Pigs--Contras-type CIA war led by Washington, dressed up, naturally as a popular revolt. This time the CIA had been ‘successful’ because they were backed by NATO air power and had the benefit of digital-age disinformation and news management – not to mention Moussa Koussa’s assistance at the outset. Even the overall casualty figures of this destruction-of-a-nation have been withheld – possibly not even enumerated at all. In either case this is in blatant contravention of universal law – because people, or military personnel, are supposed to know what they are doing and what they have done. The report of the UN Human Rights Council into the Libyan ‘rebellion’ was told by NATO that ‘aircraft flew a total 17,939 armed sorties with a “zero expectation” of death or injury to civilians’. The UN sampled 20 NATO airstrikes and counted 60 civilian deaths attributable to them – and left it at that; ‘Do the math’:  (17,939  ÷ 20)  x  60 = x

At least we know that there were ‘zero’ NATO casualties – “a new highpoint in technological warfare” as one Guardian letter-writer observed. We also know that - however shattered Tripoli was after the CIA and NATO had finished with it – conditions there subsequently worsened.

Lockerbie: My Brother’s Bomber is the second Libya-themed ‘documentary’ in the BBC’s appropriately named Storyville series. Its predecessor earlier this year Mad Dog: Gaddafi’s secret world featured a host of stomach-churning anecdotes - all uncorroborated. These included Gaddafi storing the bodies of his enemies in a fridge so he could gloat over them – in one instance 20 years later; a six year old girl having her lips cut off and bleeding to death for smiling inappropriately in Gaddafi’s presence; that Gaddafi was a rampant racist, and regarded dark-skinned Africans as an inferior people; a boy of about 14 filmed holding an ostensible human heart in his hands and promising to eat it; Gaddafi’s relentless appetite for seducing or raping school children, implicitly of both sexes. The narrative was artfully backed by a soundtrack like a horror film.

By contrast, a snuff-movie featuring the torture to death of Gaddafi himself is perfectly genuine. The Sun newspaper devoted a whole front-page to the image of his paraded corpse with the headline: “That’s for Lockerbie”.

It is profoundly disturbing that even the once ‘independent’ BBC broadcasts propagandist items such as Storyville as historical documentary. These will help authorise and sustain the successive armed interventions in the Middle East led by the United States under the false guises of ‘humanitarian assistance’ and ‘national security’.

Ken Dornstein’s film is not the core of the problem; it is the enormous international media backing the film has received. I suggest Ken Dornstein read Manufacturing Consent (Herman & Chomsky 1988) – just in case he has any delusions about why his narrative has received such extraordinary publicity.