[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.”
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