Lockerbie: Unanswered questions

[The current (December 2015) issue of the excellent iScot magazine contains an article entitled “Lockerbie: Unanswered questions”, the first in a series by Dr Morag Kerr. It reads in part:]

Most people in Scotland probably know that, some quarter of a century ago, a Jumbo Jet with the name Maid of the Seas painted on her nose-cone fell out of the sky on to the Dumfriesshire town of Lockerbie.  Many people still harbour grave doubts about the safety of the conviction, twelve years later, of the so-called “Lockerbie bomber” Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.  Few retain a detailed recollection of the circumstances, but “Wasn’t the key witness paid millions to implicate him?” is a common refrain.  

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died in May 2012, but the doubts linger.  Efforts to secure a third appeal against his conviction received a setback last month when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission refused to proceed unless his family, virtually incommunicado inside war-torn Libya, provided them with a specific document which doesn’t actually exist under Sharia law.  Quite separately, however, a major police investigation is underway into formal allegations of wrongdoing against individuals involved in both the original investigation and the later court proceedings.  A third strand is public petition PE1370 calling for an independent inquiry into the Lockerbie affair, laid before the Scottish parliament in October 2010.  Only two months ago the disaster was once again in the headlines as the Lord Advocate revealed that he was on the trail of two of Megrahi’s alleged accomplices – but was that story quite what it seemed?  This month, with further revelations likely in the near future, we look back on the chain of events that began in 1988. (...)

A terrorist attack was immediately suspected, and senior police insisted the crash site be treated as a crime scene.  Detectives reviewing the case in 2015 have remarked that even today it’s unlikely the evidence-gathering could be handled any better, and it’s hard to argue with that.  Meticulous records of where every item was recovered yielded a detailed picture of how the plane broke up and what caused it.

What caused it turned out to be a small improvised explosive device disguised as a radio-cassette recorder, packed into a suitcase with some items of clothing. The baggage container carrying the exploding suitcase was identified as one containing only transfer luggage – luggage belonging to passengers connecting from other flights.  The bomb hadn’t been checked in at Heathrow.  The relief of the British investigators when they discovered this seems to have been immense.

After that, things got murkier.  While most of the luggage in that container was transferred from a single flight (a feeder from Frankfurt also designated PA103), a few items from other flights were also present.  The Frankfurt luggage was security-screened in Germany and shunted directly across the tarmac, but the other cases had been collected in Terminal 3 and were supposed to have been screened there.

When the fragments of the container were reassembled the explosion proved to have been about ten inches from the floor.  The Heathrow interline cases had been loaded first and covered the bottom, and everything from the second layer upwards was from the feeder flight.  The forensic scientists believed the bomb suitcase had been on the second layer, and so attention focussed on Frankfurt.

The German police joined the inquiry, and they had news for the Scottish investigators.  Two months before Lockerbie they had busted a terrorist gang in Düsseldorf, making bombs obviously designed to destroy aircraft in flight.  The gang was a cell of a hard-line Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command, or PFLP-GC.  Unfortunately the suspects had been released by the German authorities, and it was feared they had regrouped and completed their mission.

A picture began to emerge.  On 3rd July 1988 an Iranair passenger flight carrying pilgrims travelling to Mecca had been shot down over the Persian Gulf by an American cruiser.  The aftermath of the disaster was appallingly mishandled by the US authorities and Ayatollah Khomeini vowed revenge.  Money appeared to have changed hands, and the suspicion was that Iran had employed proven sabotage experts to do its dirty work.

There was a catch to all this, which the Germans tried to point out to the British investigators.  The type of device the PFLP-GC was known to be making, launched from Frankfurt, would have exploded somewhere over Belgium.  These devices were triggered by the drop in internal pressure that occurs shortly after take-off, and would detonate about half an hour after that.  An IED like that, exploding over Lockerbie, must have been loaded at Heathrow.  The forensics team discounted this and remained wedded to their belief that the bomb had flown in from Germany.

By March 1989 Paul Channon, the UK Transport Secretary, was talking about imminent arrests.  However, no arrests were forthcoming.  The case receded from public consciousness until the autumn, when it emerged that a new lead had been uncovered.  Investigators were now certain the bomb had arrived in Frankfurt on a third aircraft, flight KM180 from Malta. (...)

The investigators secured one big breakthrough.  Scraps of burnt clothing believed to have been packed with the bomb were traced to a Maltese manufacturer, and from there to a small retailer in the Maltese town of Sliema, only three miles from the airport – and the shopkeeper Tony Gauci remembered selling some of the items to a customer in late 1988.  He described the man and his purchases, even remembering the bill and the amount of change given. Detectives set out to try to identify this mystery shopper.

However, as 1989 became 1990, the case went cold again.  The clothes purchaser was elusive, and nobody could figure out how Air Malta’s security precautions might have been breached.  Once again the story faded from the news until in the autumn of 1990 another change of tack hit the headlines.  Iran and the PFLP-GC were no longer suspected.  Iran had taken a “bum rap”, according to US President George Bush Snr.  The new suspect was Colonel Gaddafi’s Libyan regime, and the motive was retaliation for the US bombing of the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi back in 1986.

Events moved quickly after that.  By January 1991 the police had a suspect, a Libyan national named Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and on 13th February Tony Gauci picked Megrahi’s passport photo out of a photo-identity parade.  Some time later it was discovered that Megrahi had been at Malta airport on the morning of 21st December 1988, travelling under an assumed name.  Case closed, or so it seemed.  In November 1991 simultaneous indictments were issued in Scotland and the USA against Megrahi and his colleague Lamin Fhimah for the murder of 270 people at Lockerbie.

Megrahi and Fhimah, however, were in Libya, protesting their innocence. Gaddafi offered to try the pair in Libya, if he was provided with the relevant evidence.  This was correct procedure under the Montreal Convention, but unsurprisingly the offer was rejected.  Stalemate.  Britain and the USA approached the UN complaining that Gaddafi was sheltering terrorists from justice, and as a result punitive sanctions were imposed which heavily impacted the Libyan economy.  In the years that followed the damage multiplied, and eventually the two accused agreed to surrender themselves for trial to secure an end to the blockade.

It was agreed that the trial would be held in a neutral venue.  A disused US air base in the Netherlands, Camp van Zeist, was decreed to be Scottish territory for the duration and converted into a court facility.  The trial began on 3rd May 2000, and on 31st January 2001 the verdict was announced.  Megrahi was found guilty, but Fhimah was not guilty.

The controversy began immediately.  How could one conspirator be guilty but not the other?  It was Fhimah who was alleged to have put the bomb on the plane, so how had Megrahi managed it without Fhimah’s assistance?  The defence had destroyed the prosecution’s star witness, a Libyan CIA informer called Abdul Majid Giaka, and without his testimony was there really enough evidence to convict beyond reasonable doubt?  In late January the Foreign Office had been briefing in the expectation of a double acquittal.  Many people, including UN-appointed observer to the trial Dr. Hans Köchler, believed there was an enormous amount of entirely reasonable doubt.

An appeal was heard at Camp Zeist in early 2002.  The defence had new evidence.  A Heathrow security guard revealed details of a security breach airside in Terminal 3, the night before the disaster.  A door padlock had been broken, apparently from the landward side, not far from the shed where the ill-fated container was parked the following afternoon.  The appeal judges heard his evidence, but dismissed it on the grounds that the trial court recognised that Heathrow security was poor, and knowing there had been an actual breach wouldn’t have altered their conclusions.  Megrahi was sent to Barlinnie to begin a life sentence for mass murder.

In 2003 he applied to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission for leave to mount a second appeal.  In its 2007 report the Commission identified six grounds on which a miscarriage of justice might have occurred.  These centred round the disputed fingering of Megrahi as the man who bought the infamous Maltese clothes, and without the eye-witness identification the case was expected to collapse.

Megrahi’s second appeal came to court in spring 2009, by which time he had received what turned out to be a death sentence – a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer.  The following August his application for compassionate release was granted by Kenny MacAskill, three days after Megrahi had formally abandoned his hard-fought-for appeal.

The appeal could have continued despite the release of the applicant.  Was Megrahi pressurised into withdrawing it?  His advocate Maggie Scott said that he was.  Kenny MacAskill has consistently denied it.  Professor Robert Black has a more nuanced take on the matter, suggesting that Megrahi was poorly informed about the options available to him and open to pressure from Libyan officials anxious to get him back home.

Whatever the rights and wrongs, the appeal was swiftly forgotten in the universal stampede to condemn the Scottish government for releasing a mass murderer.  Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, David Cameron, Jack McConnell, Barack Obama, Robert Menendez and others, who before Megrahi’s release had breathed not a hint of opposition (because of course they were all heartily glad to see Megrahi back in Libya and the obstacle to trade and oil deals with Gaddafi removed), turned on Kenny MacAskill and Alex Salmond and monstered them.

Others were dismayed for a different reason.  The abandoning of the appeal torpedoed the chance to have the case reviewed again in court and the doubts and uncertainties examined.  Was it possible, or likely, that Megrahi had bought these clothes?  Did the bomb really start its journey on Malta, as the investigators believed?  And what was all that about a fragment of printed circuit board, widely alleged to be a fabricated plant?

Subsequent articles in this series will examine these contentious issues.  How much reasonable doubt surrounds Megrahi's guilt?  Was the evidence tampered with?  Might we, indeed, suggest that his innocence can be proved beyond reasonable doubt?

An' then the world came tae oor doorstep

[What follows is taken from an item published on this blog on this date in 2008:]

An' then the world came tae oor doorstep: Lockerbie Lives and Stories

by Jill S Haldane, with a foreword by Robert Black.

Product Description

The Lockerbie Stories tell of the absolute incomprehension of something as alien as hunks of aeroplane and associated detritus falling through the roof of the home from aerospace above, penetrating the security of the family and exposing the self to chaos and despair, inverting life's experience from relatively familiar to discrete. The grief and trauma that followed, dealing with veil of death and destruction as victims and their belongings rained on homes, gardens and streets, together with the shock and upset involved in evacuation from your home and disruption of your routine. The frustrating inability to communicate with family and friends out with the community; the violation of all pre-conceived representations of Christmas and the descending swarm of strangers. To see your wee space on the planet, on the screen and beamed to innumerable other homes across the world. The silence then the noise: the sound of people and busyness was deafening to the quietude of the town and the echo reverberated for a few years. This is not a comparative study of how the Lockerbie bombing compares to any other disaster, natural or premeditated. By nature, disasters are variously horrific for the people directly and indirectly involved.

The book consists of accounts by Lockerbie indwellers of their experiences on 21 December 1988 and the years that followed.

Product Details

Paperback: 332 pages

Publisher: The Grimsay Press (December 19, 2008)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1845300637

ISBN-13: 978-1845300630

List price: £16.95/US$32.50

[RB: My foreword reads as follows:]

The only previous book of which I am aware which is devoted to recording something of the social life of the town of Lockerbie is Lockerbie: A narrative of village life in bygone days (Lockerbie: Herald Press, 1937) by Thomas Henderson, Solicitor, of the law firm Henderson & Mackay (which exists to this day). The author’s intention was to record with historical accuracy (albeit in a loose, fictionalised narrative form) what was known about life in the town at the time of the Napoleonic wars, while there were still people around who had heard first-hand accounts from parents and others who were alive at the time. My copy contains a clipping of a lengthy and laudatory review (probably from the local newspaper, The Annandale Herald) by the then minister of Dryfesdale Parish Kirk, Rev John Charlton Steen MA (who, incidentally, some ten years later, baptised me).

At least part of Jill Haldane’s aim in the present book is not entirely dissimilar: to record accounts by inhabitants of Lockerbie of the recent event with which the name of the town has become indissolubly linked and to reflect on how that seminal event may have changed, for good or ill, the life of the town and its indwellers.

Here, in brief, is my, and my family’s, story.

In 1988, both of my parents were still alive and living in the town’s Hillview Street. I was due to join them there on 23 December to spend Christmas and the New Year.

The first news of the Lockerbie disaster came to me through BBC radio. I was at my home in Edinburgh preparing my evening meal with, as usual, my wireless tuned to Radio Four. The first reports were, inevitably, sketchy and, I remember, suggested that Langholm too had been affected. But as soon as it was indicated that a plane had crashed on the town, my immediate thought was that it must have been one of the RAF jets that used the locality for low-flying exercises, to the great concern of the local inhabitants who often predicted that there would one day be a tragedy.

I immediately tried to telephone my mother, but all the lines were down and I could not get through. Shortly after 8pm a university colleague phoned me. Her first words were: “Bob, are you sitting down?” When I said that I wasn’t, she said “I think you should.” She then said that television programmes had been interrupted to announce that a plane had crashed on Lockerbie. Knowing that I did not have a television set (and twenty years later I still don’t) she assumed that I would not have received the news.

As the gravity of the incident became clearer, so my concern for the safety of my mother and father increased. However, at around 8.15, I received a phone call from my niece, at that time a nurse in a hospital in Glasgow. It transpired that she had actually been on the phone to my mother when the plane came down and, because the line was not cut until a few minutes thereafter, was able to confirm that her grandmother and grandfather had not been killed or injured. At the actual moment of impact, my father had been outside the house, posting a letter in the pillar box just across the road. He rushed to the alleyway between the houses and sheltered there while small items of debris rained down on the street.

When I drove in to Lockerbie on 23rd December, I was asked by the police what my business there was and, having convinced them that it was legitimate, was instructed to take a circuitous route to Hillview Street because the direct route was closed. That route would have led through Park Place which, of course, was one of the locations (other than Sherwood Crescent) most affected by debris from the plane.

Hillview Street itself had not been damaged. But a short distance away, just beyond Lambhill Terrace, the local golf course was one of the main sites from which bodies were recovered. Indeed, the main immediate impact that the disaster had on my family’s daily life was that it prevented my father from taking his daily walks over the golf course with his elderly next-door neighbour’s equally elderly dog.

The most obvious signs to me over the next few days that all was not normal were: the presence of multitudes of strangers in the town; the prevalence of baseball caps (not at that time a common item of headgear in Scotland) among the (presumably American) incomers; and the constant noise of helicopters.

My parents – typically, I think – did not then, or in the years that followed, talk a great deal about the event. Nor did their friends and neighbours. These were not people who wore their emotions on their sleeves. Scorn and distaste were, of course, expressed for the disaster groupies who felt compelled to visit the principal sites of destruction and gawk. But apart from that, reticence was the keynote of local reaction. And while there may well have been some citizens of the town who made use of the counselling services provided, on the whole the denizens of Lockerbie did not provide fertile ground for trauma counsellors.

My personal involvement in the aftermath of the destruction of Pan Am 103 began in early 1993. I was approached by representatives of a group of British businessmen whose desire to participate in major engineering works in Libya was being impeded by the UN sanctions that had been imposed on Libya in attempt to compel the surrender for trial in Scotland or the United States of America of their two accused citizens. They asked if I would be prepared to provide (on an unpaid basis) independent advice to the government of Libya on matters of Scottish criminal law, procedure and evidence with a view (it was hoped) to persuading them that their citizens would obtain a fair trial if they were to surrender themselves to the Scottish authorities. This I agreed to do, and submitted material setting out the essentials of Scottish solemn criminal procedure and the various protections embodied in it for accused persons.

In the light of this material, it was indicated to me that the Libyan government was satisfied regarding the fairness of a criminal trial in Scotland but that since Libyan law prevented the extradition of nationals for trial overseas, the ultimate decision on surrender for trial would have to be one taken voluntarily by the accused persons themselves, in consultation with their independent legal advisers. For this purpose a meeting was convened in Tripoli in October 1993 of the international team of lawyers which had already been appointed to represent the accused. This team consisted of lawyers from Scotland, England, Malta, Switzerland and the United States and was chaired by the principal Libyan lawyer for the accused, Dr Ibrahim Legwell. The Libyan government asked me to be present in Tripoli while the team was meeting so that the government itself would have access to independent Scottish legal advice should the need arise. However, the Libyan government expectation was clearly that the outcome of the meeting of the defence team would be a decision by the two accused voluntarily to agree to stand trial in Scotland.

I am able personally to testify to how much of a surprise and embarrassment it was to the Libyan government when the outcome of the meeting of the defence team was an announcement that the accused were not prepared to surrender themselves for trial in Scotland. In the course of a private meeting that I had a day later with Dr Legwell, he explained to me that the primary reason for the unwillingness of the accused to stand trial in Scotland was their belief that, because of unprecedented pre-trial publicity over the years, a Scottish jury could not possibly bring to their consideration of the evidence in this case the degree of impartiality and open-mindedness that accused persons are entitled to expect and that a fair trial demands. A secondary consideration was the issue of the physical security of the accused if the trial were to be held in Scotland. Not that it was being contended that ravening mobs of enraged Scottish citizens would storm Barlinnie prison, seize the accused and string them up from the nearest lamp posts. Rather, the fear was that they might be snatched by special forces of the United States, removed to America and put on trial there (or, like Lee Harvey Oswald, suffer an unfortunate accident before being put on trial).

The Libyan government attitude remained, as it always had been, that they had no constitutional authority to hand their citizens over to the Scottish authorities for trial. The question of voluntary surrender for trial was one for the accused and their legal advisers, and while the Libyan government would place no obstacles in the path of, and indeed would welcome, such a course of action, there was nothing that it could lawfully do to achieve it.

Having mulled over the concerns expressed to me by Dr Legwell in October 1993, I returned to Tripoli and on 10 January 1994 presented a letter to him suggesting a means of resolving the impasse created by the insistence of the governments of the United Kingdom and United States that the accused be surrendered for trial in Scotland or America and the adamant refusal of the accused to submit themselves for trial by jury in either of these countries. This was a detailed proposal, but in essence its principal elements were: that a trial be held outside Scotland, ideally in the Netherlands, in which the governing law and procedure would be that followed in Scottish criminal trials on indictment but with this major alteration, namely that the jury of 15 persons which is a feature of that procedure be replaced by a panel of judges who would have the responsibility of deciding not only questions of law but also the ultimate question of whether the guilt of the accused had been established on the evidence beyond reasonable doubt.

In a letter to me dated 12 January 1994, Dr Legwell stated that he had consulted his clients, that this scheme was wholly acceptable to them and that if it were implemented by the government of the United Kingdom the suspects would voluntarily surrender themselves for trial before a tribunal so constituted. By a letter of the same date the Deputy Foreign Minister of Libya stated that his government approved of the proposal and would place no obstacles in the path of its two citizens should they elect to submit to trial under this scheme.

On my return to the United Kingdom I submitted the relevant documents to the Foreign Office in London and the Crown Office (the headquarters of the Scottish prosecution service) in Edinburgh. Their immediate response was that this scheme was impossible, impracticable and inherently undesirable, with the clear implication that I had taken leave of what few senses nature had endowed me with. That remained the attitude of successive Lord Advocates and Foreign Secretaries for four years and seven months. During this period the British government's stance remained consistent: United Nations Security Council Resolutions placed upon the government of Libya a binding international legal obligation to hand over the accused for trial to the UK or the US authorities. Nothing else would do. If Libyan law did not currently permit the extradition of its own nationals to stand trial overseas, then Libya should simply alter its law (and, if necessary, its Constitution) to enable it to fulfil its international duty.

However, from about late July 1998, following interventions supporting my “neutral venue” scheme from, amongst others, President Nelson Mandela, there began to be leaks from UK government sources to the effect that a policy change over Lockerbie was imminent; and on 24 August 1998 the governments of the United Kingdom and United States announced that they had reversed their stance on the matter of a "neutral venue" trial.

Although many within the governments of Britain and the United States and within the media were sceptical, the suspects did eventually, on 5 April 1999, surrender themselves for trial before the Scottish court at Camp Zeist. That trial, after lengthy delays necessitated by the defence's need for adequate time to prepare, started on 3 May 2000 and a verdict of guilty was returned against one of the accused, and of not guilty against the other, on 31 January 2001.

I feel a measure of pride in the part that I, a Lockerbie boy born and bred, played in resolving an international impasse and in bringing the trial about. I have reason to suspect, however, that the United Kingdom government feels no sense of gratitude towards me. And I feel no pride whatsoever in the outcome of the proceedings. The conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on the evidence led at the trial constitutes, in my view, a flagrant miscarriage of justice, and one that I hope to live to see rectified as a result of the reference of the case back for a further appeal by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in June 2007.

Many in Lockerbie hoped, I think, that the twentieth anniversary of the tragedy would signal an end to the town’s exposure to the eyes of the world. Regrettably, because of the Crown’s delaying tactics, it looks as if the new appeal will not be concluded before 21 December 2008. But the town’s wish will surely be fulfilled before the twenty-first anniversary and Lockerbie will be permitted to sink back into decent obscurity. But future generations will be grateful that, before that happened, Jill Haldane had the vision and the persistence to find a way of ensuring that the voices of the people of Lockerbie were heard and preserved.

Britain and US in rift over Libyan Lockerbie apology

[This is the headline over an article by Lucy Adams published in The Sunday Times on this date in 2002:]

Officials in London and Tripoli have agreed the wording of an admission of responsibility for the 1988 atrocity in which 270 people died.

However the draft statement has been rejected by the American government because it falls short of an unconditional admission of guilt. It also fails to recognise the legitimacy of the Scottish court in the Netherlands which convicted Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who is now serving at least 20 years in Barlinnie prison.

Washington’s rejection of the draft apology will delay the removal of Libya from the US government’s blacklist of countries that sponsor terrorism, and the payment of compensation to the victims’ families by the Libyan government.

Lawyers for Colonel Muammar Muhammad al-Gadaffi’s government have said that up to £1.3m could be withheld from each family until it is removed from the list and trade sanctions, in force for the past 16 years, are lifted.

The apology was agreed in London by British officials at meetings with the Libyan intelligence official Musa Kusah and Muhammad al-Zuway, the Libyan ambassador to Britain.

It was drafted with the help of Professor Robert Black, the Scottish legal expert who was instrumental in establishing the Scottish trial on Dutch soil at Camp Zeist. It states: “Megrahi was convicted of the bombing of Pan Am 103 and his conviction was upheld on appeal.

“He is a Libyan citizen and was an employee of a state enterprise. The Libyan government accepts state responsibility for the consequences of that conviction because he was a Libyan citizen and state employee.”

One senior Libyan source said: “As far as an admission of responsibility is concerned, the furthest we are prepared to go is acceptance that under international law there is state responsibility for the actings of citizens and employees of state enterprises, and acknowledgment that a Libyan citizen and employee of a state enterprise has been convicted in a judicial process to which we signed up but the outcome of which we will not accept as establishing the truth.”

Black, a professor of law at Edinburgh University, said: “The form of the words is not an outright apology. They want to make it an admission of responsibility not guilt.”

Last August Mike O’Brien, foreign office minister of state for Middle East affairs, became the first British minister to visit Libya in almost 20 years.

At the meeting with O’Brien in Tripoli Abdurrahman Shalgam, Libya’s foreign minister, was reported to have said: “Regarding compensation, as a principle, yes, we are going to do something on that topic. Regarding responsibility, we are discussing this issue.”

Kreindler and Kreindler, the legal firm representing the families of American victims, said Gadaffi had agreed to pay up to £1.85 billion in compensation. However, the payments depend on the lifting of trade sanctions.

A fresh look at the bombing of Pan Am 103

This is the headline over an article by Trina Y Vargo that was published yesterday on Huffington Post. It reads as follows:]

Photos of the debris of a Russian airliner scattered across the Sinai reminded many of another plane that also came apart at 31,000 feet, more than a quarter of a century ago.

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded in midair, killing 259 people on board and 11 residents in the town of Lockerbie, Scotland below. Several victims were Massachusetts' residents. Many questions about that bombing remain unanswered, but new clues suggest this cold case should get a fresh look.

In 2001 a Libyan, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, was convicted in a special court in the Netherlands for planning the bombing. After serving only 8 years in a Scottish prison (about 11 days per victim), the Scots released him on "compassionate grounds" in August 2009. It was reported that he was about to die from prostate cancer. He didn't die until nearly 3 years later and I was not alone in believing that his release had more to do with oil than compassion. Within days, he was meeting with Muammar Qadaffi, who, according to The Guardian, "heaped praise on Scotland, his 'friend Gordon Brown', the Queen and Prince Andrew, saying all of them had contributed" to the release of al-Megrahi.

Among the 189 Americans on Pan Am 103 was a 25 year-old named David Dornstein. Ken Dornstein was 21 years old when his brother was killed. In an excellent three-part series on PBS's Frontline, Ken, a documentary-maker who has been investigating the bombing, makes a compelling case that bomb-maker Abu Agila Mas'ud should be added to the list of suspects.

It was reported last month that the Scots and the US Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch have asked the Libyans for help in tracking down two suspects, presumably because of what Dornstein uncovered. While the suspects have not been named, the Libyans shouldn't have to look far to find Mas'ud or Qadaffi's former intelligence officer, Abdullah al-Senussi, as both are currently serving time in Libya after being convicted in the same trial. (The upheaval in Libya in the years that followed the 2011 killing of Qadaffi meant that his loyalists had to flea or try to hide and survive in a chaotic Libya where there is no love lost for the former regime.)

Dornstein's investigative work is impressive. One thing it should hopefully do is put to rest any suggestion that al-Megrahi was innocent. One of the most compelling things Dornstein presents is Libyan television footage of al-Megrahi's return to Libya, which shows some of the worst characters in the Qadaffi regime greeting him like a brother. If al-Megrahi was innocent, why was he warmly embracing al-Senussi and Al-Masud (who are identified in the video for the first time by Dornstein)?

This new information will also hopefully lead to a fresh look for evidence that may reach beyond Libya. At the time of the bombing, I was a foreign policy adviser to Senator Edward M Kennedy. In addition to supporting the bringing to trial of al-Megrahi and another Libyan who was ultimately acquitted, we encouraged the Clinton Administration to continue to investigate the many questions regarding possible Syrian and Iranian involvement in the bombing, questions that date back to the Reagan Administration.

The most widely held theory is that Iran, seeking revenge for the July 1988 downing of an Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes in the Persian Gulf, sponsored Ahmed Jibril, the Syrian-based leader of the PFLP-GC to carry out the bombing. Jibril's plans were disrupted in the fall of 1988, when German agents raided his terrorist cells in Germany in an operation known as "Autumn Leaves." It was believed that Jibril then handed off the plans to Qadaffi who was all too happy to carry out the bombing because he hated President Ronald Reagan who had bombed Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation for the 1986 Libyan bombing of a discotheque in Berlin which killed 2 American soldiers and injured 79 others.

Several investigators at the time told us that only the two Libyans could be tried because they were the only two for whom prosecutors could make a case. With so much upheaval in the region, opportunities may now exist to obtain more leads and answers. The Obama Administration should make it a priority to quickly interview al-Senussi and Al-Masud. They might unlock answers to Qadaffi's personal involvement and perhaps answer questions about Iran and Syria. The US should also investigate other fresh evidence Dornstein has uncovered. And what of the Syria and Iran? Where is Ahmed Jibril? A 2012 New York Times reference to the Bashar al-Assad supporter suggests that he is either still in Syria, or perhaps Iran. And why did Scotland really let al-Megrahi go?

There are many questions that deserve a new look. The FBI might want to hire Ken Dornstein to give them a hand.

Lockerbie: The Story and the Lessons

[On this date in 2000, Rodney Wallis’s book Lockerbie: The Story and the Lessons was published. What follows is taken from the Amazon website:]

The explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, should never have happened. Wallis, who has extensive, direct, personal knowledge of aviation security matters gained from his position at the crossroads of security information and the industry's endeavors to combat aviation terrorism, had warned the industry one year before the bombing that the interline element of baggage represented the prime opportunity for terrorist activity and had urged the adoption of passenger and baggage matching, a system that he had helped to develop. Mandated by the FAA for use at high risk airports, it was the feature missing from Pan Am's activity at Frankfort, an omission so cruelly exploited by the bombers. Wallis argues that the priority given by governments to technological solutions to the continuing terrorist threat puts the flying public at unnecessary risk every day.

This volume brings together all of the facts surrounding the sabotage of Flight 103, including the investigation and the civil litigation in which so much of the story unfolded for the first time. It uncovers the fundamental weaknesses in Pan Am's communication and management policies. Wallis supports the policy that politics are politics and explores the possibility that U.S. and U.K. policy towards a neutral trial for the two Libyans indicted for the bombing, which may have been affected by the wider scenario of Middle East politics rather than simple justice for the victims of Lockerbie. Although the tragedy has led to improvements in defense technology for use against acts of aviation sabotage, these methods have yet to be applied universally.

About the Author

RODNEY WALLIS led the airline industry's efforts to combat terrorism aimed against civil aviation for 11 years, from 1980 to 1991. As Director of Security for the International Air Transport Association, he served on ICAO's Panel of Aviation Security Experts. He drafted the Guidelines used by the world's customs authorities and established the basis for the industry's work in combating international drug trafficking. He is currently an independent civil aviation consultant.

[A customer review on the Amazon website reads as follows:]

Rodney Wallis has written a detailed account of the Lockerbie Pan Am 103 disaster from a unique perspective. Wallis was Security Director for the IATA and ICAO in 1988 when the Lockerbie bombing occured. As he makes clear in establishing his credentials he and his associates had access to more and higher level security information in the months prior to the bombing than anybody outside government.

This book provides a solid background on the aircraft bombings prior to Lockerbie, and several chapters of very detailed account of the civil suit against Pan Am and its insurers. This is an excellent summary of those disparate sources. One striking problem with this book is the total absence of references.

Wallis scrupulously sidesteps any of the questions that point to the government, the intelligence services, or what more loosely would be called the "political" aspects. Nevertheless he says clearly several things of the utmost importance that points to some of those questions.

He says emphatically - as he did under oath in the Pan Am suit - that he does not believe that the Helsinki warning which the US State Department selective disseminated to its employees was a "hoax" - the line of US and UK government.

Wallis says that in the months before the Lockerbie bombing Iran had a debt to settle, that it called for "an eye for an eye" justice (p.20), that the pictures of the bombs designed for use on airlines that were captured by German police in October 1988 had been given to many officials. It was clear that in the months before Lockerbie to all of the relevant civil and government security experts that an attack was imminent. Wallis believes that the Helsinki warning was no hoax and was related to Lockerbie (p.24). Wallis confirms that nothing was done to act on those warning (p.25 "the intelligence ...failed to elicit an effective response"). He states that the US and UK governments have been disingenuous ever since then in regard to what they did know in regard to the warnings and the bombing (p.34). His interpretation of the evidence is ultimately pointing to Iran - "Iranians were in no doubt that they had a real motive for revenge" - p.32, "The decision to bomb a Pan Am aircraft was and still is seen by most observers to have originated with the shooting down of the Iran Air airbus" p.52.

Wallis does not speculate what produced the inactivity on the part of government officials. It should be noted that he is a career professional with the civil administration charged with aviation security. His concerns are with technology and procedures and he is unwilling to recognize that an attack on the US by foreign government is beyond the capacity his organizations. Perhaps defending American citizens against an attack by foreign government is the responsibility of our own defense and intelligence agencies. Given the reams of evidence of foreknowlege that Wallis describes the decision to leave these matters in the hands of Pan Am's private security seems like somebody’s tacit acquiescence.

Wallis ends on a rather lame note debunking two pathetic theories relating Lockerbie to a drug running operation or an attempt to assassinate of a group US intelligence agents. There is nothing to support the "drug running" canard and it seems likely the CIA agents were just unlucky leaving Cyprus they did not benifit from warnings that the rest of the US government employees received. .

Wallis dismisses these ridiculously implausible "conspiracies" because they require a callousness by intelligence agents that "stretches the imagination to a point beyond belief". This is unsatisfactory. But as Wallis has made abundantly clear a very large number of people knew with frightening specificity that the Pan Am bombing would take place, where it would take place and when - and that nothing was done. The alternative to an utterly implausable concatenation of unlikely events is that just the kind of decision that Wallis seems to find unbelievable were made - but certainly at a much higher level and for something much more important than a "drug sting". Wallis gives the reader many facts to ask the right question - but he keeps his opinions about what the answers might be, to himself.

In fact given the history of attempts to write on the Lockerbie disaster Wallis's discretion is essential. Books that did not toe the government line on Lockerbie have been suppressed by legal actions in the UK and the US. Others are tied up in legal vetting. Writers on the topic who have raised just some of these questions have been subject to legal actions by government officials or former officials involved in one way or the other with Lockerbie. The courts have been a very effective tool to dissuade any investigative journalist from looking into Lockerbie. In contrast to Wallis's comment that "whenever the names of these two [Iran and the United States] were linked, the name of Lockerbie was never far away"; in fact the Iranian role in Lockerbie, as it is recognized by Wallis, has been utterly expunged from the US press since the Bush administration announced its position in 1991. Senior writers and editors at major US papers have produced a long stream of articles that whitewash Iran and amount to a pro-Iran lobby. To have gotten this book into print at all is an accomplishment. Despite some important lacunae and the lamentable absence of notes and sources this remains far and away the best work yet published on the Lockerbie and the first book that even approaches being a serious treatment. To understand Lockerbie start here.

Lockerbie 'no case' plea rejected

[This is the headline over a report published on this date in 2000 on the BBC News website. It reads as follows:]

Judges in the Lockerbie trial have rejected an appeal by one of the accused to throw out the case against him.

They ruled that the prosecution had led sufficient evidence for Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah to remain on trial at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands.

Richard Keen QC, lead defence lawyer for Fhimah, 44, had submitted that his client had "no case to answer".

Mr Fhimah and Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, 48, are accused of murdering 270 people by blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988.

The defence has argued that the evidence put forward to try to prove Mr Fhimah was a Libyan spy who helped in the conspiracy to bomb the Pan Am airliner is either circumstantial or non-existent.

After considering the submission overnight, the presiding judge, Lord Sutherland, said: "We are unable to be satisfied there is no case to answer and must therefore refuse Mr Keen's motion.

"We have regard in particular to certain entries in the second accused's diary, his association with the first accused with whom he is charged with acting in concert and crucially the evidence of (Abdul Mijid) Giaka."

Giaka is a CIA mole who gave evidence for the prosecution and testified that Mr Fahima kept explosives in his desk at Malta's Luqa airport.

The judge stressed that at this stage, the court was not concerned with the credibility and reliability of witnesses.

According to evidence presented by the prosecution, Mr Fhimah was shown to have made entries in his diary reminding himself to acquire Air Malta luggage tags a few days before the attack.

The trial against both men will resume next Tuesday with the first witnesses called by Mr Megrahi's defence team.

It is likely that he will give evidence himself at some point during the week.

Defence lawyers will claim that a Palestinian underground group or groups were behind the bombing.

[RB: The report on the day’s proceedings from Glasgow University’s Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit can be accessed here.]

Fhimah "no case to answer" submission

[What follows is the text of a report that appeared on The Guardian website on this date in 2000 (and in the printed edition of the newspaper on 29 November):]

The case against one of the Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing teetered on a knife edge last night as judges retired to consider whether they would throw it out.

Counsel for Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah told the Scottish court in the Netherlands there was "not a jot of evidence" against his client on some charges. Even prosecution lawyers agreed they could not directly prove that Fhimah was at the airport where the bomb was alleged to have been planted.

Prosecution lawyers claim the bomb, which blew up Pan Am flight 103, was placed on a plane which left Malta's Luqa airport, and then transferred to the New York-bound jumbo at Frankfurt airport on December 21, 1988.

But the advocate depute, Alastair Campbell, conceded yesterday there was no direct evidence to prove Fhimah was at Luqa airport on that date. He asked the judges to infer Fhimah's involvement in the bombing from circumstantial evidence - a request that was ridiculed by Richard Keen QC, counsel for Fhimah.

"Your lordships are being asked to infer that a man who wasn't there did, by a means we do not know, smuggle a bomb into Luqa airport," Mr Keen said.

In the biggest mass murder trial in British history, Fhimah - along with his co-accused Abdelbaset Al Megrahi - faces charges of murder, conspiracy to murder and a breach of the Aviation Security Act.

Before the defence had even begun its case, the trial judges were yesterday asked by Mr Keen to throw out the charges faced by Fhimah, on the basis of insufficient evidence to sustain any of them.

Last night the judges retired to consider the application. It is likely they will return with their decision this morning. If they uphold the submission, Fhimah will be free to go home to Libya immediately - and one half of the £2m-a-month trial will have collapsed.

The judges' decision, however, will not affect Megrahi; his lawyers have indicated that their defence will blame Palestinian terrorist organisations for the atrocity.

In the late 1980s, Fhimah worked as station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa airport, though he had given up the position months before the Lockerbie bombing. The prosecution claimed he used the post as a front for his activities with the Libyan intelligence service, the JSO. But Mr Keen said yesterday there was no evidence to suggest Fhimah had been associated with JSO.

Mr Keen told the court that the only evidence of Fhimah being involved with the JSO came from Abdul Majid Giaka, the Libyan "supergrass" who defected to the US; even he conceded that he had only assumed Fhimah was in the JSO.

Mr Giaka had also told the court that Fhimah had shown him 10kg of TNT in his desk at Luqa airport. But Mr Keen said that was at least three months before the Lockerbie bombing, and Semtex, not TNT, was used in the attack.

Mr Keen said that none of the evidence presented incriminated Fhimah in a conspiracy to destroy a civil aircraft with the consequent murder of its occupants.

In response, Mr Campbell said Fhimah filled three key criteria needed to enable him to be a conspirator in the murder of the 270 who died in the Lockerbie bombing. He said Fhimah had access to luggage tags, he could get a suitcase holding a bomb through Luqa airport security, and he could get an unaccompanied bag on to an aircraft. Mr Campbell said Fhimah had carried out all three actions with full knowledge of their consequence.

[RB: The report on the day’s proceedings by Glasgow University’s Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit can be accessed here.]