[This is the headline over an article by Ben Borland published this evening on the Express website and scheduled to appear in tomorrow’s Sunday Express. It reads in part:]
Ahmed Jibril, the leader of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), is blamed by former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only person ever convicted of Britain's worst terror attack, which claimed the lives of 270 people when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Scotland in December 1988.
However, Mr MacAskill - who freed the dying Libyan from prison in 2009 - says in his controversial new book that Iran, Syria and the PFLP-GC were also involved.
He may now face prosecution for breaching the Official Secrets Act after revealing the King of Jordan wrote to John Major to implicate Jibril's group in the bombing. (...)
Now campaigners and relatives of those who died in the attack are calling for the Crown Office to take similar steps to pursue Jibril in his Syrian bolthole.
The PFLP-GC have been fighting for President Assad's regime and in August 2014 Islamist rebels claimed to have killed Jibril with a roadside bomb.
Those reports have now proved unfounded after the 77-year-old terror warlord broke cover earlier this month to attend a memorial service for a Hezbollah commander in Damascus.
Video footage shows Jibril looking hale and hearty as he pays tribute to Mustafa Badreddine, who had a place alongside him on the list of the world's most wanted men.
Iran is alleged to have paid Jibril $10million to carry out the bombing, which sources say he has used to fund "the good life" including luxurious homes in Damascus and the Mediterranean city of Tartous.
Dr Jim Swire - whose daughter Flora died in the bombing - said: "I would very warmly applaud anybody trying to bring Jibril to justice because I'm certain that he and his group were used by the Iranians as their mercenaries.
"Jibril would probably say he was fighting for the cause of a free Palestine and it was his paymasters in Iran who were ultimately behind Lockerbie, but the PFLP-GC were the executors.
"I hold Jibril pre-eminently responsible for the murder of my daughter so I would warmly welcome any attempt to bring him to justice."
Professor Robert Black QC, a member of the Justice for Megrahi campaign, said there were "strong reasons" why Jibril should be "very closely investigated".
"Those reasons have always been there," he added. "The fact that Kenny MacAskill is now saying it doesn't have anything to do with it.
"The hypocrisy of the man is unbelievable. He is now suggesting there should be a new investigation into Lockerbie, which is exactly what people like me have been saying for years while he was the bloody cabinet secretary and in a position to make it happen."
In his book, Mr MacAskill endorses the theory that Lockerbie was ordered in revenge for the US Navy mistakenly shooting down an Iranian passenger jet earlier in 1988. (...)
However, according to his version of events, the PFLP-GC plan was thwarted by police raids in Germany and Gaddafi's Libya "picked it up from there".
Last night, a Crown spokesman said: "The suggestion that the PFLP-GC was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing was fully considered by the trial court following the incrimination of this terrorist group by Megrahi during his trial and does nothing to undermine the Crown's case that Megrahi acted with others in the bombing of flight Pan Am 103."
I'm wondering if MacAskill has just started reading this blog. If so, he's got a bit to go yet.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few things MacAskill should have read before setting finger to keyboard to write that book. He seems to have read none of them. As an exercise in failing to do your basic research, it's unparallelled.
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