Only truth, not revenge, allows us to heal and forgive

[This is part of the headline over an article by Dr Jim Swire published in today's edition of Scotland on Sunday. A longer version of the article reads as follows:]

Looking at the situation in the Middle East, we may never have a better opportunity to decry the use of brute force, public deception and material power as a route to bettering our future than we have at this moment. 

On 3rd July 1988 the USS Vincennes a cutting edge American missile cruiser equipped with a state of the art Aegis weapons control system, and commanded by (the late) Captain Will C Rogers III was in the Persian Gulf. American warships then were busy protecting international oil tanker traffic in the straits of Hormuz from Iranian attacks. History repeats itself.

Back in 1988 the Vincennes’ helicopter had reported coming under fire from Iranian speedboats, and though unscathed was ordered back to the Vincennes. The ship herself turned into Iranian waters in order to fire back at the Iranian speedboats, known as ‘Boghammers’, with which she then immediately engaged. At this time the ship’s radar picked up the trace of an aircraft climbing out of Bandar Abbas Airport (Iran). This was Iran Air Flight 655 an airliner with 290 people aboard. The airport supported both civil and military aircraft. Those interested to learn more might attempt to get access to a copy of STORM CENTER the USS Vincennes and Iran Air Flight 655 published by the (US) Naval Institute Press ISBN 1 755750 727 9, a personal account of tragedy and terrorism by Will and Sharon Rogers. It is a riveting account from the cutting edge by the Vincennes’ captain and his family.

Back on that 3rd of July 1988, the ship’s captain Will C Rogers III was led to misinterpret the radar trace of IR Flight 655 as being an attacking Iranian warplane, but it must be remembered this occurred in the tense circumstances of the fire from the Boghammers, and the restrictions placed on his ship’s duties from higher levels of the US navy. 

We humans do all make mistakes. 

Two of the ships missiles were fired and destroyed the airliner: the wreckage and the 290 bodies plunged into the waters of the Hormuz straits, killing all aboard; among cheers over the threat-resolution from the crew [and a from a media team who happened to be recording the amazing facilities of the ship and her technology that day.]

Captain Rogers remained in charge of his ship, and was later awarded the Legion of Merit decoration "for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service as commanding officer of USS Vincennes from April 1987 to May 1989”, though IR655 was downed in 1988. The award was given for his service as the Commanding Officer of Vincennes, specifically highlighting his tactical skills and leadership in the Persian Gulf, including engagements with Iranian surface craft. There was no mention there of flight IR655.

Iranian sources immediately publicly swore revenge upon “The Great Satan”, over the tragic loss of IR655 with all those people aboard. 

In November 1991, Scottish and American prosecutors simultaneously indicted Libyans Abdel Baset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. Both were identified as members of the Libyan intelligence service. This was a sudden dramatic reversal of the previous years of work between the disaster in 1988 at Lockerbie and 1991, in which time intelligence services had concluded, as do we now, that the Lockerbie bombing was a revenge attack by Iran in return for the fate of IR 655. 

Within some ten days of this startling about turn [published simultaneously in the USA and by Scotland’s Lord Advocate], to blaming Libya, for the Lockerbie disaster, two Western hostages, one of whom happened to be the British Terry Waite an emissary of the UK’s then archbishop of Canterbury and both having been held by Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, were released, others soon followed. 

Now that the Persian Gulf is again sporting US warships, with Iran’s leaders no doubt plotting how to manage the repercussions of being bombed this time by US and Israeli warplanes, and also with US marine groups on their way. We need to heed the words of German philosopher Georg Hegel: “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” 

For starters the subsequent bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988 has been shown for our group ‘’UK Families-Flight 103’ by our own careful researches over more than 38 years, to have been the work of Iran, through the use of Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP-GC terrorist group in Damascus acting as mercenaries and financed - just as Hezbollah in the Bekaa has always been - by the Iranian Ayatollas. The PFLP-GC workshop in Damascus was where a set of cunning IED bombs intended to destroy aircraft in flight was made, under Jordanian Marwan Khreesat meanwhile the capture of a terrorist intermediary had confirmed to us [through incriminating documents found on his person by CIA assets], the passage of funds from Iran to Jibril’s group.

We had also obtained in early 1989 access to an illustrated warning sent in July 1988 to the UK Government, [among many others], by the German BKA police group under Herr Rainer Gobel. Containing colour photographs and descriptions of bombs recovered by them from members of Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP-GC Palestinian terrorist group now caught in the small German town of Neuss, convenient to Frankfurt airport.

Please study the story contained in our book LOCKERBIE: a father’s search for justice (ISBN 978 1 78027 920 6: Birlinn, Edinburgh, reprinted 2025) to understand how our search for the truth as to who had murdered our families was pressed forward over the decades, and how it came to fundamentally differ from the official account. It has had no driving force other than the need for us to know the truth about who really had murdered our family members, and to improve, if we could, the protection for other air travellers in the future. Many who have attempted to understand what is said to be the complex story of why Lockerbie happened, seem unaware of how it was shown that the one seemingly solid link between the bomb used at Lockerbie is nothing other than fake news. The link to Malta for the bomb simply did not exist. Its main support among the story tellers of the world was a tiny fingernail sized fragment of circuit board, named from the Zeist trial onwards as PT35b, and allegedly recovered from the crash debris at the site of the tragedy.

The first pointer we got as to the significance of this forensic element ‘PT35b’ found inside a Scottish police evidence bag and produced in court as proof of the concept of the bomb’s travel from Malta, was words from the USA attributed to Richard Marquise working on the tragedy for the FBI from the USA, who is alleged to have said that a court trial without this tiny piece of evidence would not have been possible.

This fragment now known as ‘PT35b’ was treated with great gravity by those attempting to defend the two accused Libyans. The fragment was submitted to electron microscopic and spectroscopic analysis. What that showed was that in the two surviving tracks on it’s small surface, the copper had been plated with pure tin.

At first this seemed part of the normal manufacturing processes used by a reputable Swiss firm ‘Turing’ who were supplying circuit boards to MEBO, who in turn had made the ‘MST13’ digital timers some of which were supplied by MEBO to the Libyans, and which the prosecution decided had been used for the Lockerbie bomb.

There were however two major problems: FIRST,During the intervening years between the disaster and the trial, the electronics industry had undergone a significant change. Those responsible at an international level for industrial and domestic waste disposal practices had become acutely aware of the risks to human health from the metal lead both in the domestic environment and when deposited in landfill. Rapidly it was decided that the metal lead must be removed from domestic use and in the platings on electronic circuit boards. With the cooperation of the EU, Japan and America in particular, it was agreed that all lead should be forbidden in the manufacture of electronic printed circuit boards. Meanwhile statements from Turing about their circuit board manufacture until after December 1988 confirmed that their output was universally made from boards plated in the standard electronic platings of the time, in which the blend of metals used always consisted of tin and lead.

Turing’s director Bonfadelli signed a sworn statement that his firm had been equipped solely for the application of tin/lead platings, before 1988 and so could not have made the board from which ‘PT35b’ would have had to have come. 

Second, the police evidence bag in which the fragment PT35b was found was unique in having had its label altered, and in such a way as to make it evident that debris within should be examined, rather than only the charred cloth also within, (which was readily shown to have originated from Malta). The Zeist court failed to have the details of who might have altered the label and what his/her motives might have been for doing so probed.

It was clear that neither the Scottish police nor any agent for the Crown Office were remotely likely to be responsible for originating ‘PT35b’, for we know that the investigating Scots police were in possession of pristine circuit boards given to them by MEBO, and that these were coated with a tin/lead alloy from which the lead could not be removed by the heat or blast of a Semtex explosion.

The likely origin for PT35b therefore seems to lie outwith the investigating team in Scotland, even though ‘PT35b’ was first revealed from a police evidence bag, and access to the police evidential bags seems to have been most generous for American agents from the FBI or intelligence agents also from the US. Without the ability to investigate the detailed behaviour of US agents in the investigation, we were made aware that a MEBO type timer had been acquired by the CIA from a site in Togo and that that evidence was passed from the CIA to the FBI, to an operative called James Thurman working in the FBI’s laboratories. This man broke the news to US media that he was the man who identified the CIA materials given to him which carried with them Libyan tainted details. He was lauded as man of the month, for establishing in many US minds the concept that this was a link to Libya. Unfortunately Mr James Thurman was soon removed from his position in the FBI labs after it came to light that internal investigations had shown persistent distortions by him of evidence in other FBI major investigations, his removal seems to have been the work of his superior ‘line manager’ Whitehurst. 

There can be no doubt that access to potentially evidential materials was gained by US agents right from the earliest hours following the disaster itself, and that this was found shocking by some who were honestly engaged in extensive searching of the disaster crash site. The late Labour MP Tam Dalyell had experienced the doubts of many who had been witnesses to the early evolution of the police investigations. We had hoped that people within the US would gather what evidence they could, and we never have wanted to disturb any ‘closure’ that American bereaved families might feel they had obtained for themselves.

Recent international political and military events, particularly some emanating from the USA have confirmed what we had already discovered the hard way: truth had been suborned into US foreign policy and there crushed underfoot along with the interests of those bereaved families in the UK who merely sought that truth. Inability to reach that truth is echoed in the subheading of the Washington Post newspaper: ‘democracy dies in darkness’.

Knowingly or not those currently assaulting Iran and her people from above will now find themselves embedded in asymmetrical warfare. The story of how Vincennes captain Will Rogers III’s wife Sharon came to escape miraculously from the shrapnel of a powerful pipe-bomb placed underneath the family’s van within the Continental USA itself in 1989 should leave no doubt about that prediction. American investigators were ‘unable to discover’ who had planted that pipe bomb.

Just so long as those in power in Iran, (Ayatollahs or not), remain in power and able to slake their lust for revenge, so long will the world be a needlessly dangerous place. The Iranian people on the other hand have tried to make their dissatisfaction with their regime known with the greatest bravery, losing around10,000 citizens' lives to the weapons of their own rulers recently.

It is a desperately sad aspect of humanity that the first visceral reaction that comes into so many of our human brains when we are attacked, or worse still those we love are killed, is to seek revenge. Yet it does not have to be so. We do not in our group ‘UK Families-Flight 103’ seek revenge against Iran for the Lockerbie atrocity. We have sought the truth, and not simply in ’Truth Social’ either. 

Knowledge of what the truth really is about the origins of the dreadful attack on Pan Am 103, has only reinforced the realisation for us that revenge is self-defeating and generates hatred and the lust for revenge. 

Revenge attempted by Iran against the family of the Captain of the Vincennes was amplified for many through the killing of 270 people at Lockerbie. Yet there still is another way; from accepting the truth of where blame lies could spring the roots of healing. If on the other hand, for reasons of State, of International Politics or simply from our own human nature we were to enlarge or repeat the words and acts of revenge, where then would be the route to forgiveness or healing? One cannot forget, but can forgive. Even for that, we need to know the truth.

Sometimes it is educational to remember days long past when young. As an eight year old boy, the writer living in the Scottish Island of Skye was aware of family links to Canada, whose current leader speaks so much free common sense nowadays. There, like so many in Scotland we had Canadian cousins, who unlike us in 1946 had freedom already to buy as much food as they required, and who sometimes were able to send to us food parcels to help fill the limitations of post World War 2 rationing. One day a large parcel from Canada arrived for us, inside were large packets of tea and white sugar, sent with love.

Seated around a dining room table in Skye our family were set to work, the younger ones with sharp eyes, but the adults also dedicated to the task of disentangling the contents of those bags, for they had burst and the sugar and the tea leaves so precious to us in those days had mixed in the jumbling of their travels. We were separating tea leaves from grains of sugar. It took all day, with the rain beating on the windows as though it disapproved of this affront to the limits of the post war rationing. Sometimes it is all too easy to think of people together as if all were to be tarred with the same brush and to think that all the parcel contents were good for would be to make cups of exceedingly sweet tea, or plates of sweet but tannin laden porridge. Dealing with Iran can be like failing to disentangle the sweet from the sour. It would be wise to think of Iranian people not as evil but like a mixed up parcel, just like we are here. Iran, after all is the remaining rootstock of one of the greatest civilisations the world has ever seen and its people of today may hold the seed-corn of a great future.

Not being Iranians ourselves we should not seek to distinguish between one Iranian and another, we are not this time best placed to tell the ‘sugar' from the 'tea leaves' and can only say that those who claim to run their Iranian 'theocracy’ have, over many years, held themselves free to attack and destroy the lives of others indiscriminately, whether or not those others appeared to have any connection other than just their nation or even just their common language with any acts of violence or hatred.

True, Iranians have emerged to find themselves governed by a ‘theocracy’ which they themselves may have summoned back from France, but which, given the reins of power, corrupted itself through the lust for even greater influence through militarism and terrorist-related bloody revenge.

Our Western bible does tell us stories of the life of Jesus, and at Easter we are there bidden to remember even stories of resurrection and glory. Let us though not forget, believers or not, how, in one such story when a woman was to be stoned to death for adultery, none of the accusing rabble of men could convincingly tell himself that he ‘at least’ was free of sin, and so they did not cast the first stone, but slunk away, and the woman lived. Elsewhere in that book we are told ‘judge not, that you be not judged, and forgive even those who have sinned grievously against us.

Both Iran and the UK whether Muslim, Christian, agnostic, or atheist can read or listen to the teachings which Jesus Christ left behind, namely that judgement of others should be the realm of God, not us, and that our privilege is to love one another.

By chance it so happens that only last week in England was enthroned a fresh Archbishop of Canterbury, for the first time ever in history a woman. How healing it would be if the people of Iran who have suffered so much already could somehow come to forgive their Western assailants. How hard that would be today with bombs and missiles being showered on them.

But meanwhile here in an act of amnesty towards our little group of Lockerbie victims, (‘UK Families - Flight 103’) now that the bonds between our own country and the USA have loosened considerably, and the truth has been so often crushed, perhaps the restrictions upon being allowed to know the contents of all the files that our own country keeps relevant to Lockerbie, but has kept out of public or media sight in Kew all these years, could be released for us to see. It was after all our loved ones who were killed, and time must have loosened both the need for security over the events of December 1988 and the need to protect any ongoing idea of prosecuting the guilty. We only seek to know the truth and after so many years surely the whole of the truth known, by our Government at least, about the atrocity over Lockerbie could be allowed out into the daylight? As the Washington Post heading proclaims ‘Democracy dies in Darkness'.

Did Israel just settle Lockerbie’s oldest score?

[This is the headline over an article by barrister David Wolchover published today on the website of Jewish News. It reads in part:]

As the Iran conflict intensifies, fresh scrutiny is falling on the true architects of the Pan Am bombing, which killed 270 people aboard Flight 103 and 11 Lockerbie residents, and on Israel’s long-delayed reckoning with them

With the world focused on the joint US/Israel war against Iran, this may be a timely moment to recall an episode years ago which has had an intriguing outcome in the new conflict.

At the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War, American warships were engaged in protecting tanker movements in the Persian Gulf. On 3 July, 1988, the missile cruiser USS Vincennes was involved in hostile exchanges with Iranian Boghammer fast patrol boats when an IranAir Airbus on flight IR655 took off from Bandar Abbas and was ascending on route to Dubai.

The facts are complex, but by a combination of computer and human error, the airliner’s profile and trajectory were misinterpreted as that of two Iranian F-14A Tomcats descending towards the cruiser. A missile was launched, and all 290 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus died.

The next day, President Reagan referred to the terrible human tragedy but provocatively added that it was a “proper defensive action”, and Vice President Bush subsequently rubbed further salt in the wound. As revealed by contemporary American and Israeli intelligence gained from telecommunications intercepts and mole infiltration, the Iranians were so enraged that they resolved to take revenge.

To do so, they enlisted Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (General Command) to destroy an American airliner using a bomb of the kind the faction had perfected and used previously. Such bombs were typically detonated by an ingenious barometric device triggered by the drop in air pressure as the aircraft gained altitude.

Meanwhile, in the summer of 1988, Israel had incurred Whitehall’s wrath when Israeli agents were found to be treating the UK as their own private intelligence fiefdom and four diplomats were expelled. Then, in November, Israel tipped off MI6 that, as security was lax at Heathrow during the reconstruction of Terminal 3, the airport had been chosen by terrorists to plant a bomb on board an American airliner in revenge for IR655.

The tip-off was dismissed as a facile attempt by Israeli intelligence to worm its way back into Britain’s good books, but it proved to be disastrously prescient.

On 21 December, Jibril’s nephew Marwad Bushnaq flew into Heathrow aboard an IranAir freighter, bringing a suitcase containing a small barometric bomb. He was able to place the bag in a portable luggage container due to be loaded into a Pan American Airways 747 designated for flight 103 to New York JFK, positioning it precisely where it would need to be, up against the hull, to blast a hole in the fuselage.

The bomb detonated over the Scottish town of Lockerbie with the loss of all 270 passengers and crew and 11 Lockerbie residents.

In the months which followed, there was little doubt as to the identity of the conspirators – highly placed members of Iran’s government and their agents, the PFLP-GC – but priorities moved on. The US government was under pressure to secure the release of American and other Western hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon. A scapegoat for Lockerbie had to be found, and these were the Libyans Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi and Lamin Fhima. American indictments were obtained against them in November 1991, and within days, the hostages were released.

The case against the Libyans, which culminated in their trial before a special Scottish judge-only tribunal in the Hague in 2001, was utterly ludicrous. It was contended that the suitcase containing the bomb travelled as unaccompanied luggage from Malta to Frankfurt, where it was transferred to a Pan Am feeder flight to Heathrow.

There, it was alleged, it was hurriedly transferred by innocent baggage handlers on the tarmac to the doomed aircraft, where it happened to end up quite by chance in the exact position necessary to avoid its going off like a damp squib.

The prosecution had to get around the awkward facts (a) that the bomb exploded after exactly the time from take-off at a normal climb rate, which a typical PFLP-GC barometric device would have detonated, and (b) that such a device would have anyway detonated on the first leg. So they alleged the perpetrators used an electronic timer. Yet with the vagaries of pre-Christmas scheduling, that might well have resulted in detonation between flights, a complete waste of effort.

Furthermore, the microchip fragment of a timer, which featured as a key plank in the prosecution’s case, has been decisively exposed as a fake, probably planted at a later date to prop up the Malta origin story. The British were only too delighted to go along with the charade because it got them off the hook for ignoring the Israeli tip-off and exonerated Heathrow.

The Iranian conspirators responsible for commissioning the PFLP-GC included a number of prominent officials, but overall executive responsibility for authorising the atrocity rested with the then president of Iran. It may be some consolation for the Lockerbie victims’ families that he was none other than Ali Khamenei, later Supreme Leader, who finally got his comeuppance courtesy of an Israeli air strike on 28 February.

Lockerbie, petition PE1370 and the continuing political debate

[At a meeting held on 11 March 2026 the Scottish Parliament’s Criminal Justice Committee kept open the Justice for Megrahi campaign’s petition PE1370. What follows is an account of the historical background:]

More than three decades after the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, the political and legal debate surrounding the conviction of Abdelbaset al‑Megrahi continues. One of the most persistent mechanisms keeping the issue alive in Scotland is Petition PE1370, lodged in the Scottish Parliament in 2010 and still technically open today.

The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988 killed 270 people, including passengers, crew and residents of Lockerbie. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack ever to occur in the United Kingdom. The investigation that followed involved police forces and intelligence agencies across several countries and eventually led to charges against two Libyan intelligence officials.

Because of diplomatic complications, the suspects were tried under Scottish law at a special court sitting in the Netherlands at Camp Zeist. In 2001 the court convicted Abdelbaset al‑Megrahi and sentenced him to life imprisonment, while his co‑accused Lamin Fhimah was acquitted. The conviction was upheld in Megrahi’s first appeal in 2002.

However, the case soon became controversial. Critics argued that key elements of the prosecution case were uncertain. Central among these concerns was the testimony of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who identified Megrahi as the man who bought clothing that surrounded the suitcase bomb. Gauci’s identification was criticised as inconsistent and influenced by media exposure. Questions were also raised about the forensic evidence linking a tiny fragment of circuit board to Libyan intelligence and about the broader theory that Libya alone was responsible for the attack.

The debate intensified in 2007 when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission completed a four‑year investigation into the conviction. The Commission concluded that there were six grounds on which a miscarriage of justice might have occurred and referred the case back to the appeal court. That appeal never reached a conclusion because Megrahi abandoned it in 2009 shortly before he was released from prison by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He returned to Libya and died in 2012.

Because the appeal was abandoned, many of the questions raised by the review were never fully tested in court. This gap in the legal process became the central argument for campaigners who believed the case should be re‑examined.

In 2010 campaigners led by Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the bombing, lodged Petition PE1370 in the Scottish Parliament. The petition called for the Scottish Government to establish an independent public inquiry into the conviction of Megrahi. Over the years the Public Petitions Committee repeatedly decided to keep the petition open while related investigations and appeals continued.

The legal debate resurfaced again in 2020 when the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the case back to the High Court of Justiciary for a second time. Megrahi’s family pursued the appeal after his death, arguing that evidence had been withheld and that the identification evidence was unreliable. In January 2021 the appeal court rejected the challenge, ruling that although aspects of the evidence had been criticised, a reasonable court could still have convicted Megrahi. In 2022 the United Kingdom Supreme Court refused permission for a further appeal, effectively bringing the legal process in Scotland to an end.

Despite these decisions, the political debate has not disappeared. Some relatives of victims, lawyers and former investigators continue to argue that the conviction has never been adequately scrutinised in light of the concerns raised by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Members of the Scottish Parliament from different political parties have periodically suggested that a public inquiry might still be necessary to resolve lingering doubts.

At the same time the international investigation has continued. In 2022 a Libyan suspect, Abu Agila Masud, was transferred to the United States to face charges related to the construction of the bomb used in the attack. His trial may produce new evidence about the operation that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103.

For this reason Petition PE1370 has remained open within the parliamentary system. By carrying the petition forward into new parliamentary sessions, committees have effectively preserved the option of revisiting the case if significant new information emerges. The petition has therefore become less a single political demand than a continuing parliamentary placeholder for one of the most controversial criminal cases in modern Scottish history.

Timeline of Key Events

1988 – Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Lockerbie, killing 270 people.

1991 – Two Libyan suspects, Abdelbaset al‑Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah, are formally charged.

2000–2001 – Trial held under Scottish law at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.

2001 – Megrahi convicted; Fhimah acquitted.

2002 – Megrahi’s first appeal is rejected.

2007 – Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission concludes a miscarriage of justice may have occurred and refers the case for appeal.

2009 – Megrahi abandons the appeal and is released from prison on compassionate grounds.

2010 – Petition PE1370 lodged in the Scottish Parliament calling for an independent inquiry.

2012 – Megrahi dies in Libya.

2018–2020 – Further review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission leads to another referral for appeal.

2021 – High Court of Justiciary rejects the posthumous appeal.

2022 – UK Supreme Court refuses permission for a further appeal.

2022–present – Libyan suspect Abu Agila Masud faces prosecution in the United States.

Key Figures Associated with Petition PE1370

Dr Jim Swire – British doctor and leading campaigner for a full inquiry; his daughter Flora died in the Lockerbie bombing.

Members of the Scottish Parliament Public Petitions Committee – the parliamentary body responsible for considering and keeping PE1370 open.

Abdelbaset al‑Megrahi – Libyan intelligence officer convicted of the bombing in 2001.

Lamin Fhimah – Co‑accused at the original trial who was acquitted.

Tony Gauci – Maltese shopkeeper whose identification evidence played a key role in the conviction.

Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission – the body that twice referred the conviction back to the appeal court citing possible miscarriage of justice.

Lockerbie bomb suspect appears in US court over confession claim

[This is the headline over a report published yesterday on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]

A Libyan man accused of building the device used in the Lockerbie bombing has appeared in a US court as his lawyers attempt to stop his alleged confession being used as evidence at his trial.

The US Department of Justice claims Abu Agila Mohammed Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, referred to as Masud, admitted taking part in the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 when questioned at a Libyan detention facility in 2012.

However, Masud has claimed the confession is false, was made under duress and should be ruled inadmissible before his trial in Washington DC later this year. (...)

Wearing a washed-out prison uniform and sporting a short grey beard, Masud listened as the hearing before judge Dabney L Friedrich got under way at the District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday. (...)

Details of Masud's alleged confession were first made public when the FBI criminal complaint against him was published in 2020.

It is claimed Masud admitted bombing the LaBelle Discotheque in West Berlin in 1986, killing three people, including two American servicemen.

He is also said to have further confessed to taking a bomb hidden in a suitcase from Libya to Malta in December 1988, under the orders of senior officials from the Libyan intelligence service.

There, he is alleged to have met two accomplices - Abdulbasset Al Megrahi, the Libyan agent convicted of bombing the plane after standing trial 25 years ago, and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, a former Libyan Arab Airline official who was cleared by the same Scottish court.

According to the confession, Masud set the bomb timer so the explosion would occur exactly 11 hours later, bought clothes to pack into the brown Samsonsite suitcase that held the device, and then handed it to Fhimah at Luqa airport on Malta the next morning.

Fhimah was said to have placed it onto a conveyor belt, introducing the unaccompanied bag into the international baggage system, tagged to be flown to the US.

In court documents lodged before the hearing, Masud claimed he had been forced into making a false confession by three masked men who had threatened him and his family.

In response, the US government said Masud had freely provided a highly detailed insider account corroborated by other evidence from the case. (...)

In 2020, two FBI agents and two Police Scotland officers interviewed the Libyan official who questioned Masud in 2012, referred to in court as "Jamal".

Agent Tunstall said the contents of the confession were supported by evidence from the crime scene, forensics and immigration and flight records.

"Jamal" told the Scots and Americans he had tried to record what Masud was saying, using audio or video on a phone, but the recording was "lost". (...)

The hearing is scheduled to last two days, with the judge expected to issue her decision at a later date.

Lockerbie bomb suspect confession video 'lost or destroyed'

[This is the headline over a report published today on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]

A Lockerbie bombing suspect cannot get a fair trial because a video of his alleged confession has been "lost or destroyed", his defence lawyers have claimed.

Public defenders representing Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi in a United States court case said the disappearance of the video deprived him of evidence which could have cleared his name.

They are also arguing the case against the Libyan - also known as Masud - should be thrown out of court because it involves events which took place 37 years ago, outside US territorial jurisdiction. (...)

Masud was forcibly removed from Libya and taken into US custody in 2022, with his trial due to get under way in Washington DC this August after two postponements.

US prosecutors allege Masud admitted his role in bombing the airliner when he was interrogated in a Libyan detention facility in 2012.

According to an FBI summary of the case, he told a Libyan law enforcement officer that the bomb was hidden in an unaccompanied suitcase on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt.

The device was then transferred undetected onto a Pan Am feeder flight to Heathrow, where it was placed in the forward hold of Pan Am 103.

Masud has already claimed he was forced into making a false confession under duress and is arguing that it should be ruled inadmissible.

In a fresh line of attack, his lawyers have said his right to a fair trial has been violated because of the "bad-faith loss of material" during the long history of the case.

That material is said to include a video recording of Masud's alleged confession, made by the Libyan official who had questioned him.

According to the defence, the official claimed to have kept the video in a safe for three years before telling a colleague what had happened in 2015.

Scottish investigators heard about the alleged confession later that year and obtained copies of a written statement in 2017.

The documents were passed on to the Americans and were central to the charges against Masud, which were announced on the bombing of the anniversary in 2020.

The defence says that in 2024, the Libyan interrogator stated he had "located the recording device but could not locate the recording itself".

Federal public defender Geremy Kamens submitted that the loss of the video had deprived Masud of "potentially exculpatory evidence would could have attacked the centrepiece of the government's case against him".

"A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video comprises dozens of pictures every second," Kamens said.

"The interrogation video may have shown Mr Al-Marimi [Masud] appearing nervous, apprehensive, uncomfortable, tense, jumpy, subdued or any combination of these states at various times.

"He may have been sweating, his language may have been stilted, he may have avoided eye contact.

"Any discrepancy between the recording and the written statement or the interrogator's descriptions of the conversation would provide powerful fodder for cross-examination and impeachment.

"It was not until he [the Libyan official] was asked to provide a copy of the recording to US law enforcement in 2024 that the recording suddenly vanished."

Kamens also argued that delays in bringing Masud before a jury would deny him his right to a fair trial.

"It borders on the impossible for Mr Al-Marimi [Masud] to investigate his actions and whereabouts 30 years ago, let alone the government's allegations, whereas the government can rely on the fruits of a contemporaneous investigation and decades of preparation by an international cohort of prosecutors and police."

Kamens said Masud's defence would be hampered by his "mental and physical deterioration" and the deaths of crucial witnesses, including Al-Megrahi.

The US government is expected to respond to the defence arguments this week.

A hearing on the admissibility of the alleged confession is due to be held in Washington next month.

Father of US Lockerbie victim concerned about Masud trial delays

[What follows is excerpted from a report published yesterday on the Devon Live website:]

The dad of a Lockerbie victim has called for greater transparency on the health of the alleged bombmaker - after revealing further delays to his trial.

Libyan Abu Agila Masud, 74, has been accused of making the bomb which killed 270 victims over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 and was originally due to go on trial in Washington in May this year.

But Paul Hudson, who lost his daughter Melina in the bombing as she flew home to New York after a semester at a school in Exeter, Devon, said it has now been delayed until May next year "at the earliest."

He has now raised concern about the health of the defendant, which he says is being held back from the public under 'privacy grounds'.

And he fears his health could be being manipulated - citing the example of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was freed early in the UK under claims he had months to live - but survived for another three years.

Paul said he fears this could be being deployed as a delaying tactic for the trial, which has already been pushed back twice.

He said: "He seems to be stable as of now from what we know. But they are keeping secret his actual medical information. I find it a little strange as that is not something that is prejudicial. They are keeping it secret and the judge is saying it is based on medical privacy standards.

"It seems that should not really apply in cases like this.

"There was something similar in a different context with al-Megrahi. He was let out of prison in the UK prematurely based on claims he was going to pass away within six months. There was never any release of the medical information outside experts could evaluate. It turns out it was completely untrue and he went on to live a lot longer.

"I don't agree with that. There is not much I can do but there should be as much transparency as possible. If health of the defendant and medical issues is used to delay trial - or even accelerate it - it should not be kept secret to anyone.

"Even the judge doesn't have access to it I understand. There is only limited access to the prosecution but none at all for the public. (...)

Mr Hudson has since spent decades fighting for justice for the victims of Pan Am 103.

Masud was initially due to stand trial at a federal court in Washington in May this year accused of two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle resulting in death.

He has denied all three charges and Paul was initially told of a delay due to his health.

After being told his health had improved and a target trial date was set for March next year, further delays have now been confirmed to the victim's families.

Paul added: "There have been more delays and I think we are probably looking at late spring or summer at the earliest for trial.

"I think it requires leadership at a higher level to make it all go forward in a good way.

"I don't trust the prosecutors, the police or judiciary, even if they wanted to.

"One of the things I am hoping for is a meeting with the US attorney general and with the chief prosecutor to make sure all the different parts are moving together to a proper conclusion and schedule.

"Reasons given for the latest delays include a change of personnel in prosecution and the defence law firms.

"They are also going through suppression hearings where the defence will try to exclude evidence the prosecution wants to present at trial.

"There is a confession the defence claims was improper and a bunch of other things they are going through.

"Motions are being filed back and forth. Hearings are mostly closed to the public and to the victims. It is really hard for any outsider to know the know to keep it from potential jurors what evidence is going to be excluded.

"I have read the paper motions but have not been able to go to the hearings before the judge to hear about the evidence in great detail.

"My feeling is I would like to see it happen sooner rather than later to never. However I would like to see it done correctly.

"So on the other hand a trial that begins prematurely could also be negative for prosecution and justice generally." (...)

Masud stands charged with two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle resulting in death.

He has denied all three charges and claims his confession to building the bomb and taking it in a suitcase from Tripoli to Malta was made under duress.

Paul, who is now 79, said he would never stop fighting for justice. (...)

"I am hopeful, not only of a conviction here, but we may have a defendant who no doubt knows other people involved that could lead to further prosecutions."

Currently the only suspect convicted remains Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who was jailed for life in 2001 but released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds in 2009.

His co-defendant Lamin Khalifah Fhimah was acquitted but remains the subject of an active US arrest warrant.

US trial of Lockerbie bombing accused delayed further

[What follows is excerpted from a report published this evening on the BBC News website:]

The trial of a Libyan accused of building the bomb that destroyed an American airliner over Lockerbie has been delayed for a second time.

The case against Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir al-Marimi, known as Mas'ud, was due to get under way in Washington in May but was postponed to 20 April next year.

In July his lawyers requested a further delay, saying they needed more time to consider all the evidence from the 37-year-old case.

Mas'ud has denied constructing and priming the bomb which brought down Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988. (...)

Prosecutors from the US Department of Justice argued against a second postponement, but the trial judge has set aside the April start date.

It is understood the legal teams are now exploring whether the trial can get under way in the summer.

A small group of public defenders are representing Mas'ud, who has been in US custody since 2022.

They said they have to review 356GB of data with 413,000 separate files, including expert evidence on DNA, finger and palm prints, explosives, facial recognition and handwriting analysis.

The defence team said they also have to consider "voluminous documents in multiple foreign languages, thousands of pages of prior-trial transcripts, and documentation of a sprawling 37-year investigation".

In a submission to the court, they added: "Mr Al-Marimi is anxious for his trial to begin, but understands the challenges that his current attorneys face."

In response, prosecutors argued a further delay would be "an extraordinary step that could be justified only by extraordinary circumstances which are not present here".

They said many potential witnesses are in their 80s and could become unavailable to testify "due to death or infirmity".

Further delays could "irreparably damage" the prospects of a full and fair determination of the facts, they said.

The Department of Justice team also pointed out that many relatives of the victims are advancing in age and have already "suffered for decades".

BBC News understands that the availability of witnesses next July or August will determine when the case finally gets under way. (...)

Bombing accused Masud confessed in 'safest place' say US prosecutors

[What follows is excerpted from a report published yesterday on the Daily Mail website:]

A Libyan accused of building the bomb that blew up Pam Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie was in the ‘safest place’ when he ‘voluntarily’ admitted his involvement in the atrocity, prosecutors have said.

Abu Agila Masud Kheir Al-Marimi claims he was forced into making a false confession after he was held captive in Libya by men who threatened his family.

But U.S. prosecutors argue that there were no signs of coercion or torture and that the Libyan officer who interviewed him was ‘unarmed’.

In court papers, they state that the 74-year-old, known as Masud, was ‘housed in the same room’ as several other men and ‘appeared to the officer to be in good health, and to have access to necessities and to news about the outside world through a television’.

This is contrary to claims by Masud, who is due to stand trial in Washington DC in April over his role in the 1988 terror attack which killed 270 people, that he was kept in isolation.

He also claims that while in custody he witnessed others being beaten and abused.

Prosecutors, however, state: ‘Based on the officer’s observations, the facility that the defendant was held at was one of the best available during the chaos of the post-revolution period, and it was the safest place for the defendant… given the extent of street violence and anti-Gaddafi sentiment prevailing at the time.’

They add that the officer ‘observed no signs of torture or coercion’ and that Masud was interviewed in a ‘typical office-type room’ during which time he was ‘afforded a lunch break and…the proper facilities to pray’. (...)

The officer asked the defendant whether he consented to be interviewed, and he freely gave his consent.’ Masud’s defence team have filed a ‘motion to suppress statements’, saying the ‘circumstances’ of his arrest, ‘incommunicado detention’ and ‘captivity in a system well known for human rights abuses’ renders his confession ‘inadmissible’.

But prosecutors have urged the court not to accept this ‘fictitious account’.The bomb maker for the Libyan External Security Organisation was extradited to the US in 2022 after allegedly admitting to building the Lockerbie device.

Lockerbie bombing accused Masud says he was forced into false confession

 

[What follows is excerpted from a report published today on the BBC News website:]

The Libyan accused of building the bomb that brought down an American airliner over Lockerbie 36 years ago has claimed he was forced into making a false confession.

Abu Agila Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, 74, has said he was in custody in Libya when three masked men ordered him to memorise information about the destruction of Pan Am 103 and another terror attack.

Referred to as Mas'ud by prosecutors, he said he repeated what he had learned to a Libyan official, under duress, after the men threatened his family.

Masud's lawyers have asked a federal court in Washington to rule the alleged confession inadmissible in advance of his trial in April next year.

Details of the alleged confession were first made public five years ago after the US department of justice announced it was charging Mas'ud over the atrocity which claimed the lives of 270 people on 21 December 1988. (...)

With just seven months to go until the scheduled start of Mas'ud's trial, public defenders acting on his behalf have lodged a motion with the district court asking a judge to rule that his confession should not be allowed as evidence.

The Libyan has pled not guilty to the charges against him. But the "motion to suppress" reveals for the first time his version of what led to the alleged jailhouse confession.

Setting the scene, the motion quotes a US Department of State report which said Gaddafi's regime had controlled Libya through extrajudicial killings and intimidation, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention.

The document says that after the revolution there was a climate of anger and retaliation against those associated or thought to be associated with Gaddafi.

Contemporary reports by US government officials recount more incidents of "arbitrary and unlawful killings, kidnappings, torture and other cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment."

The defence lawyers say: "Just as... a black man accused of killing a white man in Jim Crow-era Arkansas would fear mob violence... so would a Libyan who allegedly worked for Gaddafi have feared retaliation against himself and his family in post-revolution Libya."

It was against that background, according to Mas'ud, that he was abducted from his home by armed men, separated from his family and his medication, held incommunicado in an unofficial prison facility and denied procedural rights.

He says he saw bodies lying in the streets when he was being driven to the prison and while in custody, and encountered other inmates who had been beaten and abused.

Mas'ud has told his legal team that he was alone in a small room when three men in civilian clothes came in. They were unarmed but wearing face coverings and did not identify themselves.

He says he was certain the men, who handed him the piece of paper, were anti-Gadaffi revolutionaries.

"The single, handwritten sheet began with an order that Mr Al-Marimi confess to the Lockerbie incident, as well as another terrorist attack," his defence lawyers claim.

The men told him to read over the details and to repeat what it said when he was questioned by someone else the next day.

"They told him he had to answer the questions with what was on the paper, otherwise bad things would happen to him or his family.

"Mr Al-Marimi felt he had no choice but to comply. He had ample reason to fear for himself; before his seizure, he had personally witnessed beatings in other prisons.” (...)

The lawyers say a frightened Mas'ud did as he was told when he was questioned by another man the next evening.

They say that - when presented with similar evidence of coercion - American courts have found custodial statements involuntary and inadmissible under the fifth amendment of the US constitution, whether they were made in the United States or abroad.

The defence has asked the court to order the suppression of the alleged statements and has requested a hearing so the issue can be decided.

The FBI has said that the Libyan official who noted Mas'ud's confession in 2012 is prepared to give evidence at his trial.

Prosecutors from the US Department of Justice have not yet responded to the claims made on Mas'ud's behalf.

Sturgeon considered resigning over Lockerbie bomber release

[This is the heading over a section of an article published in today's edition of The Times under the headline Ten things we learnt from Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir. It reads as follows:]

The decision to free Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, almost led to Sturgeon’s resignation from the government, she reveals.

In one of the biggest decisions taken by Salmond’s government, in a move of global significance, Megrahi was released and returned to Libya on compassionate grounds in August 2009.

Suffering from terminal prostate cancer, he was given a prognosis of three months to live, but survived for three years.

Sturgeon recalls bereaved constituents who lost loved ones in the attack informing her that they would see the release of Megrahi a “betrayal of their loved ones’ memories” and she says she did not support his release or transfer. [RB: Opinion polls conducted by Scottish local newspapers showed that the Scottish public supported by substantial majorities the decision to release Megrahi.]

However, she bemoans the lack of consultation with the cabinet over the issue and says she was “astounded” to learn of Kenny MacAskill, then the justice secretary, visiting the terrorist in Greenock prison. She says she later learnt of the decision to release him from Newsnight. [RB: The criticism of Kenny MacAskill's visit to Megrahi in prison is misconceived, as I commented at the time.]

After Megrahi’s releases was confirmed, Sturgeon recalls him arriving “like a conquering war hero returning from battle” in Tripoli, with some in the crowd waving saltires. 

[RB: Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who accompanied Megrahi on the plane back to Tripoli denied that he had received a hero's welcome:] 

"There was not in fact any official reception for the return of Mr Megrahi, who had been convicted and imprisoned in Scotland for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. The strong reactions to these misperceptions must not be allowed to impair the improvements in a mutually beneficial relationship between Libya and the West.

"When I arrived at the airport with Mr Megrahi, there was not a single government official present. State and foreign news media were also barred from the event. If you were watching Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network, at the time the plane landed, you would have heard its correspondent complain that he was not allowed by Libyan authorities to go to the airport to cover Mr Megrahi’s arrival.

"It is true that there were a few hundred people present. But most of them were members of Mr Megrahi’s large tribe, extended families being an important element in Libyan society. They had no official invitation, but it was hardly possible to prevent them from coming.

"Coincidentally, the day Mr Megrahi landed was also the very day of the annual Libyan Youth Day, and many participants came to the airport after seeing coverage of Mr Megrahi’s release on British television. But this was not planned. Indeed, we sat in the plane on the tarmac until the police brought the crowd to order."

What Lockerbie meant for Libyans

[This is the headline over an article by Owen Schalk just published in the July/August 2025 issue of the Scottish Left Review. The following are excerpts:]

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to Detroit exploded over the rural Scottish town of Lockerbie, raining hellfire on the community’s inhabitants. Eleven people were killed by falling debris. All 259 of the plane’s occupants died.

The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom pointed the finger at Libya. In 1992, the United Nations Security Council imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Libya over the bombing, including an air embargo, an arms embargo, and a ban on the sale of oil equipment to the country. In 1996, the US Congress tightened sanctions by passing the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act. These sanctions deprived the Jamahiriya of billions in revenue and contributed to the Libyan leadership’s ill-fated decision to “open up” economically to the West in the early 2000s.

37 years after the Lockerbie bombing, two TV shows aired in Britain: Lockerbie: A Search for the Truth (Sky Studios) and The Bombing of Pan Am 103 (BBC). The production of two TV series about Lockerbie almost four decades after the bombing shows the continued public interest in the case’s many ins, outs, and inconsistencies. Despite this, the retrospectives around Lockerbie leave out one important piece of the story: the Libyans themselves, namely, how they experienced the economic sanctions that resulted from the Lockerbie bombing.

The bombing and the trial

Initial investigations into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 implicated members of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), based in Syria. The group had apparently executed the bombing on behalf of the Iranian government, which sought revenge for the destruction of Iran Air Flight 655, a civilian airbus shot down by the USS Vincennes on July 3, 1988. 290 civilians died in the US warship’s attack.

On November 13, 1991, the Lockerbie investigation abruptly shifted focus from the PFLP-GC/Iran to the Libyan government. Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the bombing of Pan Am 103, recounted his shock at the sudden turn of events: “There were hints from various sources of surprises to come, but nothing has prepared me for this. Today Iran is forgotten; it’s all about Libya.”

An “official story” was provided to the public: the bombing was revenge for the Reagan administration’s assassination attempt against Muammar Qadhafi in 1986, a US attack that had killed dozens of civilians and the Libyan leader’s infant daughter Hana.

According to the main counternarrative of the Lockerbie bombing, the US and UK decided to shift blame for the attack to Libya because Libya, unlike Iran, was more vulnerable to destabilization and less likely to retaliate.

The Libyan government maintained its innocence. After years of diplomatic wrangling, a trial was held for the accused in the Hague. Two Libyans went to trial: Lamin Khalifah Fhimah and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Megrahi was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Fhimah was acquitted. Circumstances surrounding the trial remain highly questionable.

The Lockerbie case is a window, albeit a cloudy one, into the tense relationship between the West and Qadhafi’s Libya. Readers in the West have a general awareness about what the case meant to the US and the UK. However, they have little knowledge of what Lockerbie meant for Libyans themselves.

The sanctions period

In Libya, the Lockerbie sanctions resulted in constricted state revenues, which meant unpaid salaries, diminishing subsidies, and goods shortages. Inflation rose, public infrastructure decayed, while a growing number of smugglers and black marketeers sought to resell subsidized goods at higher prices in neighbouring countries. Corruption became increasingly normalized, a system of “favours” and “bribes” running through the public administration, damaging Libyans’ confidence in their socialist-oriented political system. As Matteo Capasso writes, the process of egalitarian development that characterized the early Jamahiriya was “abandoned in the 1990s. The structure of the dominant class started to change, the effectiveness of the newly democratic structures decreased and this affected the entire political edifice of al-Jamahiriyah, leading to the dramatic increase of socio-economic inequalities.”  

Estimates have been made regarding Libyan economic losses from the Lockerbie sanctions. One found that between 1992 and 1999, “the oil sector lost between $18 billion and $33 billion both as lost opportunities and lost revenue.” Meanwhile, $8 billion in overseas assets were frozen, “denying [Libya] the cash needed to buy all kinds of equipment, expertise, machinery, food and medicine.”

A former Libyan deputy foreign minister recalled that “steps were taken” by the Libyan government to compile data on economic losses. One Qadhafi-era minister said the Lockerbie losses file contained “everything including the number of deaths” caused by the sanctions. Some of these deaths resulted from a lack of medical care, which forced Libyans to take tortuous routes abroad for treatment. “Because of the sanctions,” writes Libyan academic Mustafa Fetouri, “people wishing to leave Libya had to drive to Djerba in Tunisia for example and take a flight from there.”

Libya’s Lockerbie losses file was destroyed during the 2011 NATO war. Fetouri estimates that the sanctions cost Libya nearly $100 billion. These losses hit the oil sector, aviation, healthcare, agriculture, and industry, and caused thousands of deaths. The daily price of food rose by an estimated 40 percent and the cost of medicine rose by 30 percent (though most medicines were free). In 2003, the Libyan government paid another $2.7 billion in compensation as part of the agreement to have the sanctions lifted.

In the context of massive economic losses caused by the Lockerbie sanctions, many in the Libyan leadership, including Muammar Qadhafi himself, became sympathetic to the idea of economic opening to the West. They believed such an opening would appease the imperialist powers while giving an economic boost to the Jamahiriya, thereby stabilizing the Libyan political system. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

The failure of “opening up”

Libya’s “opening up” was a disastrous failure riven by internal tensions and external interventions, both overt and covert, by the US government. Unlike China’s reform and opening up after 1978, Libya’s was the result of economic strain imposed from the outside, namely, the Lockerbie sanctions and destabilizing interventions from imperialist powers. For an export-dependent, import-reliant country like Libya, these interventions had a wide-ranging impact. The liberalizing reforms would not have happened without the above factors. The sanctions in particular devastated Libya’s economy, hindered Libya’s revolutionary momentum, and set the bounds for internal debate on the Jamahiriya’s economic policy. In order to reach détente with the West and encourage foreign investment, Libya sacrificed its nuclear program and ended support for revolutionary activities abroad. The sanctions were lifted in the early 2000s.

Qadhafi and his allies viewed opening up as a means of encouraging foreign investment in the oil sector, while retaining majority state control, in order to strengthen the economy and thereby stabilize the Jamahiriya political system. Not all agreed with this approach. The reformists – including the Western-trained Mahmoud Jibril and Shukri Ghanem – sought wide-ranging privatizations that would undermine the leading role of the state. For his part, Ghanem declared the need to “change the thinking, the mentality and the culture of the [Libyan] people,” describing the Libyan mindset as “their general feeling that the state is their father and it is their guarantor that has to pay everything for them and provide them with housing, treatment, work and everything else.” In the context of desperation over massive economic losses, individuals like Ghanem were empowered within Libyan power structures.

The US government funded opposition civil society and established contacts with the reformist camp, whose economic policies would give US companies greater access to Libyan labour and resources. Persistent fissures between the revolutionary and reformist camps in the leadership weakened the Libyan state. When protests over housing policy in early 2011 avalanched into a NATO-backed revolution, prominent reformists including Jibril and Mustafa Abdul Jalil defected to the increasingly Islamist-led opposition. (,,,)

Lockerbie sanctions and the fall of the Jamahiriya

The Lockerbie sanctions cost Libya billions of dollars, and they led the Jamahiriya’s leadership to make security concessions to the West and liberalize the economy in order to encourage foreign investment. Various factions in the leadership had conflicting views on how far this liberalization should go, and in the context of continued Western interference in Libya, these divisions proved fatal. Indeed, the sanctions-imposed liberalization spelled the end of the Jamahiriya, leading directly to various wars that have caused thousands of deaths, impoverished hundreds of thousands and led hundreds of thousands more to flee the country.

The above reality cannot be ignored in retrospectives on the Lockerbie bombing. The horror of subsequent tragedies in Libya (the civil war, the open-air slave markets, the Derna floods) may divert attention from Libyans’ experience of the 1990s, but one should remember the steps by which Libya reached its current situation of state collapse and internal conflict. The Lockerbie sanctions – which, it should be recalled, were imposed following dubious legal proceedings – had a significant impact on straining the Libyan economy, which led directly to “opening up” and the fall of the Jamahiriya.

This is what Lockerbie means to Libyans. It should be what Lockerbie means to people in the West too.

Father of US Lockerbie victim on DNA "breakthrough" and health of Masud

[What follows is excerpted from a report published today on the website of the Teignmouth Post and Gazette:]

The dad of a young Lockerbie victim has hailed a "significant" DNA breakthrough - and revealed the alleged bomb-maker was now 'healthy' to stand trial next year.

Paul Hudson, whose daughter Melina died aged 16 travelling home from a semester at a school in Exeter, Devon, said the link to DNA could be 'crucial' in next year's trial of the suspect.

He said he hopes proceedings are now 'on a good path' and the coming months could finally lead to some justice for the families of the tragedy.

Paul also revealed the health of Abu Agila Masud had significantly improved following a delay to proceedings - clearing the pathway for the much-anticipated trial to start in April next year.

He was speaking after forensic experts were reportedly able to extract DNA from the luggage lining that contained the bomb and an umbrella packed inside for the very first time.

Steps are now being taken to see if it is a match for the alleged bombmaker Masud, 74.

Paul, who now lives in Florida and has been campaigning for justice for the families for decades, said: "The DNA testing could be a real breakthrough if it pans out.

"Details are pretty much all kept secret but the judge will rule if it can be presented at trial.

"All I can say is DNA technology has advanced greatly in the last 30 years and they are able to get DNA residue off many things with much more sophisticated testing.

"Assuming they have DNA from the suspect and assuming they have DNA from something that was close to the bomb - that would tend to be good substantial evidence that could be used at a trial.

"Unless the confession is going to be accepted you are going to need circumstantial evidence to prove a case - and scientific findings would be a huge benefit." (...)

Mr Hudson has since spent decades fighting for justice for the victims of Pan Am 103 that claimed the life of 270 people when it exploded in mid-air in December 1988.

Masud stands charged with two counts of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle resulting in death.

He was previously a bomb-maker for the Libyan External Security Organisation and was extradited to the US in 2022. [RB: Masud was not extradited. He was abducted from his home by a local militia, was sold on to US authorities and then became the victim of extraordinary rendition to the United States.] He has denied all three charges and claims his confession to building the bomb and taking it in a suitcase from Tripoli to Malta was made under duress.

Paul added: "Everyone on our side would like to see the trial happen as soon as possible and - assuming he is guilty - with a conviction. But it is more important to get it right than to get it done quickly.

"I don't see the delay as being excessive in the circumstances. The defendant had some medical issues and the impression we've now been given is they've got better. His health has improved so we seem to be on a good path now."

Paul has also been campaigning for the victim's families to be allowed to access the trial remotely - and was part of an audio trial for a previous hearing.

He said: "They are not going to allow access except at certain locations in the US and the UK where people have to physically go to watch a video of the trial.

"I was part of testing for an audio only feed where victim's family members can listen in to parts that are not considered confidential.

"It seemed to work and hopefully going forward when we get to the trial and more hearings, if people can not come to one of the locations at least they can hear the audio.

"I would prefer a zoom type video but it is certainly better than not allowing any remote access other than from a government controlled location."

Paul revealed another recent revelation coming out of Libya from the abandoned archives of the Gaddafi government surrounded the testing of the bomb with this defendant being part of it.

The information was published in a book in France and used during a corruption trial.

Paul, who is now 78, said he would never stop fighting for justice.

DNA extracted from Lockerbie bomb suitcase, 37 years after atrocity

[This is the headline over a report published in today's edition of The Sunday Times. It reads in part:]

Forensic experts have extracted DNA from the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb for the first time and will seek to match it against swabs taken from the Libyan explosives chief accused of Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity.

Advances in technology have allowed Scottish scientists to gather DNA from the suitcase lining and an umbrella packed into the luggage before Pam Am Flight 103 exploded in mid-air in December 1988, killing 270 people.

Prosecutors hope the new evidence could match samples from Abu Agila Masud, 74, the alleged bomb-maker, who is waiting to go on trial in America.

The potential breakthrough is outlined in US court papers obtained by The Sunday Times. The documents identify a list of expert witnesses for the prosecution, including Dr Nighean Stevenson, a leading authority in DNA analysis at the Scottish Police Authority (SPA). She has re-examined exhibits retrieved from the crash site more than three decades ago. (...)

The only suspect convicted to date is Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer who was jailed for life in 2001 following a trial in the Netherlands presided over by Scottish judges.

Megrahi was released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds in 2009 after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He lived for another 33 months, dying at his home in Tripoli, aged 60.

A co-defendant in Megrahi’s trial, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, another Libyan intelligence officer, 69, was acquitted. However, he remains the subject of an active US arrest warrant.

Masud’s name came up in the original investigation into the atrocity after Scottish police, aided by the FBI, established that the bomb had travelled in an unaccompanied suitcase from Malta to Heathrow, via Frankfurt, before being loaded on to Flight 103. However, investigators were unable to trace him. [RB: The theory that the bomb on Pan Am 103 was in a suitcase offloaded from the feeder flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow has been convincingly demolished by Dr Morag Kerr in her book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies.]

It was only after the fall of Colonel Gadaffi, the Libyan leader, in 2011 that Masud, a bomb-maker for the Libyan External Security Organisation, the intelligence service, was detained by opposition forces.

He was extradited to the US at the end of 2022 after allegedly confessing to building the Lockerbie bomb and taking it in a suitcase from Tripoli to Malta. [RB: Masud was not extradited. He was abducted from his home by a local warlord, sold on to US authorities and then the victim of extraordinary rendition to the United States.] His defence team are set to argue that the confession was extracted in Libya under duress, and is therefore inadmissible. He has entered a not guilty plea.

That means a DNA match between items from the bomb suitcase and Masud could be highly significant.

“If you’ve got his DNA [in the suitcase] … it would knock down the building blocks of his potential defence,” said Dick Marquise, the FBI special agent who led the US end of the original investigation.

Marquise said he was not aware of any DNA evidence collected in the immediate aftermath of the bombing in 1988. “It was much too new a science,” he added. (...)

Outlining her expertise as a potential prosecution witness, US court papers state: “Dr Stevenson examined items relating to an umbrella and an item relating to the lining of a suitcase.

“These items were examined using specialised lighting, and DNA samples were taken from each. The DNA profiles obtained from these items were of varying quality and were generally commensurate with the expectations of these items.”

The document continues: “Analysis of a DNA reference sample relating to the accused nominal [Masud] has yet to be carried out. When a DNA profile relating to this individual has been generated, it will thereafter be compared to any suitable DNA profiles which have already been obtained.”

This weekend it remained unclear whether a DNA match had been found. However, software used by Stevenson’s team is able to generate a “likelihood ratio” of a “person of interest” contributing to a specific DNA profile rather than other individuals.

In theory, the tests could also prove whether Megrahi had handled items packed into the bomb suitcase.

Part of the evidence against him in 2001 revolved around the testimony of a Maltese shop owner, who claimed Megrahi had bought various items of clothing and an umbrella from his business days before the Lockerbie attack.

Masud’s trial in Washington was due to start last month. However, the complexity of the case and the defendant’s poor health have led to it being pushed back until spring.

In his alleged confession, made in a Libyan jail in 2012, Masud named both Megrahi and Fhimah as co-conspirators.

A criminal complaint filed by the FBI states: “Approximately three months after [the bombing], Masud and Fhimah met with the then Libyan leader, Muammar Gadaffi, and others, who thanked them for carrying out a great national duty against the Americans, and Gadaffi added that the operation was a total success.”

[RB: The following comment is from an article published today on Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer's Intel Today website:]

The Old “Look at the Door” Trick

Henri Landru was a French serial killer tried in 1921. During World War I, he posed as a lonely widower seeking companionship through classified ads. In reality, he lured wealthy widows to his villa in Gambais, murdered them, and allegedly disposed of their bodies in his oven.

Ten women—and the teenage son of one of them—disappeared after visiting Landru. There were no bodies, no direct eyewitnesses, and no confession. The entire case was built on circumstantial evidence, which left—just barely—room for reasonable doubt.

Landru’s defense lawyer, Vincent de Moro Giafferri, was a master of courtroom theatrics. During his closing argument, he focused on the absence of physical proof. He knew that if he could shake the jury’s certainty, he might save his client from the guillotine.

At a dramatic moment, Moro Giafferri played a psychological card. As he neared the end of his plea, he said something like:

“One of the women Landru is accused of killing—what if she is still alive? What if she walked through that door right now?”

He gestured toward the courtroom entrance. And naturally, every juror turned to look. Then came the punchline:

“Ladies and gentlemen, you all looked. That means you’re not sure. And in our justice system, if there is doubt, it must benefit the accused.”

Back to Lockerbie

It was a brilliant moment—simple, theatrical, unforgettable. A masterclass in planting uncertainty.Now, 37 years after the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, US authorities claim they have extracted DNA from the suitcase believed to have held the bomb.

The sample is being tested to determine whether it matches that of Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, the Libyan man accused of constructing the device.

Let’s be clear: the FBI and the US DoJ know the DNA won’t match. The purpose of this operation isn’t to prove Masud’s guilt — it’s to perform certainty. It’s the modern version of the “look at the door” trick.

Only this time, it’s not the defense gesturing at the door. It’s the prosecution — and they already know no one’s coming through. Because this trial isn’t for a jury. It’s for public consumption.

By conducting a highly publicized DNA analysis — decades after the fact, with compromised evidence — they aren’t seeking truth.

They’re selling belief. They’re telling the world: “We’re still working the case. We believe in the evidence. We believe in the guilt.”

But they don’t. And we know it.

ADDENDUM

RB: I am grateful to John Ashton for the following comment on the above article:

A couple of points re the DNA story in The Sunday Times. The SCCRC, in its original review, considered a DNA trace on one of the umbrella fragments – see paras 4.50 to 4.56 of the Statement of Reasons). The results, while inconclusive, pointed to the Crown forensic experts. Also attached is a photo of the circuit board fragment from the crown forensic report (see below). All the photos in the report were taken at RARDE. The fact that the fragment was resting on a bare fingertip suggests a lack of regard for DNA evidence (and, for that matter, fingerprint evidence).