The Goben memorandum

[What follows is taken from a report on the BBC News website on this date in 2000:]

Private talks are taking place as the defence team in the Lockerbie trial seeks more time to investigate new evidence.

The case was due to resume in open court on Tuesday but was delayed by a meeting in the judges' chambers. (...)

"The delay is now being caused by a hearing in chambers regarding letters of request," a spokesman for the Scottish court told reporters.

[RB: The principal letter of request sought by the defence related to the Goben memorandum. Part of a copy of this document had been disclosed to the defence, and they now sought the full version from the Syrian government (which in fact refused utterly to cooperate). The following is from a report in the Sunday Express on 8 July 2007:]

Documents viewed by the Sunday Express allege the plot began when a man named Mobdi Goben supplied material for the bomb to Hafez Dalkamoni, the leader of the PFLP-GC's European cell. He was then introduced to the alleged bomb maker Marwan Khreesat, by Elias, who has both Syrian and American passports.

Very little is known about Elias, but the defence insists he was paid in travellers' cheques by terror leader Dalkamoni in Cyprus, before he took delivery of the bomb in Frankfurt.  Elias was identified as the key suspect although it was never explored in court, even after documents about his role suddenly emerged during the trial.

The Goben Memorandum, said to have been written by a dying member of the PFLP-GC, was handed to the Lord Advocate detailing the group's activities and a confession about Elias. Elias was concerning the FBI before the bombing and was quizzed about cheques deposited in his bank. In August 1988 he met with agents, who knew he was Jibril's nephew. While the SCCRC said there is dubiety over whether Gauci had correctly identified al-Megrahi, documents show the shopkeeper had no such problems identifying Abu Talb.

[RB: The following is from an article by John Ashton in The Herald on 14 March 2012:]

Six months into Megrahi’s trial the Crown disclosed a transcript of a lengthy deathbed confession by Palestinian self-confessed terrorist Mobdi Goben. He claimed that the bombing was the work of his own group, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC), a Syrian and Iranian backed faction who were the original prime suspects in the bombing.

The defence interviewed a number of Goben’s relatives and associates who were seeking asylum in Norway, plus a man whom Goben had implicated in the bomb plot.

However, the court refused a defence motion to request further information from the Syrian, Iranian, American and Swedish governments, and the allegations were never raised at trial. Megrahi’s SCCRC submission argued that the Crown’s approach to the matter breached his right to a fair trial.

The SCCRC raised the matter with Megrahi’s junior counsel John Beckett, who said that the Goben evidence would have been difficult to use. It also had access to undisclosed Crown documents, which, in its view, contained nothing the defence didn’t already know. It concluded: the Commission does not consider that the Crown’s handling of matters concerning the Goben memorandum gave rise to a breach of the Crown’s obligations … Accordingly, the Commission does not consider that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred in this connection.

Goben’s claims remain unproven, but many who have studied the case, including the British Lockerbie relative Dr Jim Swire, continue to hold the PFLP-GC responsible for Lockerbie.

Mobdi Goben and PFLP-GC member, bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat, each implicated another group member, known as Abu Elias, in the bombing. (…)

A number of Megrahi’s unsuccessful submissions to the SCCRC referred to Abu Elias. Although the Commission could find no direct evidence of his involvement in the bombing, Abu Elias remains the prime suspect for many of those who doubt Megrahi’s guilt.

Lockerbie suspect now living in US suburb slams 'complete lie' he planted bomb

[This is the headline over a long report in today's edition of the Daily Mirror. It reads in part:]

The man suspected of planting the Lockerbie bomb has been tracked down by the Daily Mirror.

Once allegedly identified as Abu Elias, the Syria-born US citizen lives a normal life under a different name in a suburban town outside Washington DC.

Questioned by the Mirror, he said it was a “complete lie” that he played any role in the worst terror attack in Britain which killed 270 people 30 years ago.

He hit out after former Cold War spy Douglas Boyd named him as the prime suspect and argued Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi – the only person to be convicted – was a fall guy.

And it comes after the Mirror’s world exclusive yesterday with stunning claims from the daughter of a senior Jordanian militant.

She said before his death two years ago, Marwan Khreesat told his family his old terror group the Popular Front for the ­Liberation of ­Palestine – General Command carried out the attack.

He claimed its chief Ahmed Jibril was paid millions of pounds by Iran, which wanted revenge for 290 deaths when a US warship shot down an Iranian passenger jet months earlier.

Author Boyd, in his recent book Lockerbie: The Truth, claims it was Jibril’s nephew Elias who most likely broke into the Pan Am baggage store at Heathrow to plant the device on Flight 103.

The Palestine Liberation Organisation and, previously, the CIA have also named Elias as a prime suspect.

Terror cell member Mobdi Goben also claimed Elias was guilty in a deathbed confession.

But the suspect, who lives just 20 miles from the ­Lockerbie Cairn Memorial at Washington, told the Daily Mirror he was innocent.

Asked if he was ever known as Abu Elias, he replied: “No. I have been subject to more than 90 hours of investigation from Scotland Yard and the FBI, and they are through with me.

“The FBI did their ­homework. They know me very well. They have a big thick file on me.”

He later admitted the identity he now lives under was not his birth name.

But he added: “I’m not the nephew to no one. The bit you are talking about is full of f***ing lies. It’s a bloody lie.”

Author Boyd wrote in his book: “Megrahi was convicted on a tissue of lies. Little of the evidence against him can be taken at face value.

“It is a story of incompetence, vengeance, political expediency and then a cover-up orchestrated from the highest levels in London and in ­Washington – where the real bomber is said to live today, under cover of a witness protection scheme.” (...)

Many believed some of the evidence [against Megrahi] was weak. He was identified as buying clothes in Malta that were later found in the Lockerbie luggage. Megrahi died at home in 2012 from prostate cancer, aged 60, having been released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds three years previously.

It is believed he planned to reveal Elias’ new identity in a bid to clear his own name.

However, two weeks after being freed to return to Tripoli, SNP politician Christine Grahame used Scottish Parliamentary privilege to identify the man she said was Elias.

She said at the time: “Why were there no criminal prosecutions following the shooting down of the Iranian Airbus by the USS Vincennes in 1988, five months before Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie?

“Was there a contract issued by the Iranian authorities to the PFLP-GC to take revenge for the death of 290 Iranian pilgrims, 60 of whom were children, by bringing down an ­­American plane bringing its pilgrims home for Christmas?

“Why have the US authorities not queried the true identity of [name withheld] alias Abu Elias, a senior figure in the PFLP-GC at the time of the bombing and nephew of Ahmed Jibril, former head of that terrorist organisation?”

We asked the suspect where he was on December 21, 1988 – the day of the bombing. He replied: “I was in the United States. The FBI saw my journal they know I was in South West Washington DC handling my job.” (...)

Speaking to the Daily Mirror, SNP politician Ms Grahame said: “These various discoveries that you have made builds further on the case that it was, as many of us believe, Iran that was responsible for the ­Lockerbie bombing and that Megrahi was the fall guy. Libya took the rap for various international reasons.” (...)

[The Megrahi family's] lawyer Aamer Anwar said this week: “Many believe that Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and the finger of blame has long been pointed in the direction of Iran.”

CIA evidence 'clears Libya' of Lockerbie

[This is the headline over an article published in the Sunday Herald on this date in 2002. It reads as follows:]

Megrahi's appeal team ignored 'evidence' from key CIA investigator that claims Iran was behind PanAm 103 bombing

One of the CIA's leading Lockerbie bomb investigators has come forward with compelling evidence that Libya was not behind the downing of PanAm 103 which killed 270 people.

Robert Baer, a retired senior CIA agent, offered to meet the defence team leading the appeal of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, who was convicted last year of the bombing. However, his offer was not accepted and the new evidence never raised in court.

The new evidence, according to Baer, shows Iran masterminded and funded the bombing; implicates the Palestinian terrorist unit, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), as the group behind the plot; and reveals that just two days after the December 21 1988 bombing the PFLP-GC received $11 million (£7.6m), paid into a Swiss bank account by Iran.

Legal experts say the new evidence should have been brought before the court, and are asking why Megrahi's defence didn't take up the offer.

Megrahi's appeal, which took place at a special Scottish court sitting at Camp Zeist in Holland, adjourned on Thursday for judges to consider whether to overturn the original verdict.

Baer claims he is breaking his silence now because of growing disillusionment with the CIA's counter-terrorist operations and the war on terror.

Baer, an anti-terrorist specialist, was one of the key CIA officers investigating Lockerbie. He says the CIA received definitive evidence that the PFLP-GC struck a deal with Iranian intelligence agents in July 1988 to take down an American airliner.

Baer also has details of an $11m payment made to the PFLP-GC. On December 23 1988 the money was paid into a bank account used by the terror group in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was transferred to another PFLP-GC account at the Banque Nationale de Paris and moved to the Hungarian Trade Development Bank.

A terrorist linked to the PFLP-GC, Abu Talb, who was later jailed for terrorist offences in Sweden, was also paid $500,000 (£350,000). The money went into an account in Talb's name in Frankfurt four months after the bombing, on April 25 1989.

Germany was a key base for the PFLP-GC in the late 1980s. Baer has the number of at least one of these bank accounts.

Talb and the PFLP-GC were to have been implicated by lawyers working for Megrahi and his co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, at the original trial, but little evidence was ever raised to show they were part of the Lockerbie plot.

On legal advice Baer is not disclosing his Lockerbie records, but the Sunday Herald has seen CIA paperwork that supports his claims. British and US intelligence have always publicly denied that the PFLP-GC played a part in the Lockerbie plot, saying raids by German police two months before the Lockerbie bombing took the terror group out of action.

Baer says, however, that these arrests were a mere hiccup in PFLP-GC plans as other members of the German unit rem ained at large. This theory also fits with claims that the bomb began its journey in Frankfurt, rather than Malta, where Megrahi was based.

PFLP-GC leader Hafez Dalkamoni and the group's chief bomb-maker, Marwan Khreesat, were arrested in Germany in October 1988 in possession of a Toshiba radio-cassette player containing a bomb. PanAm 103 flew from Frankfurt and was destroyed by a bomb built inside a Toshiba radio-cassette.

Timers matching the one used in the Lockerbie device were sold to both Libya and the East German secret service, the Stasi, which had close links to the PFLP-GC. 'I don't know what components the bomb contained,' Baer said, 'but there was very reliable information from multiple sources that (the PFLP-GC) were running around between East and West Germany and Sweden, trying to get the operation back on track. It's conceivable that the Stasi supplied components during a trip to East Germany.'

Baer said the components for the bomb were supplied by a terrorist known as Abu Elias, who was for a time the CIA's prime suspect but was never caught. 'He was the big centre of the investigation, but he was very elusive,' Baer said. Khreesat and Dalkamoni were on their way to meet Abu Elias when they were arrested in Germany. Abu Elias was a close associate of Abu Talb. Both lived in Sweden. [RB: More about Abu Elias can be found here and here.]

Talb had made a trip to Malta just weeks before the Lockerbie bombing. Clothes from a shop in Malta were packed in the suitcase which contained the PanAm 103 bomb.

Baer also claims the CIA has irrefutable intelligence that Talb and Dalkamoni were Iranian agents and were on a government roll of honour for their services to the 'Islamic revolutionary struggle against the west'. Baer added: 'Although it was not specific, Dalkamoni's citation praised him for achieving Iran's greatest- ever strike against the west'.

Iran had vowed 'the skies would rain with American blood' after a US battle cruiser, the USS Vincennes, accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 people, six months before the Lockerbie bombing.

'It doesn't take a genius to figure out where the $11m came from,' says Baer. He added that 'the information [would] be useful to the defence as much of it was of a type that would be admissible in court. Once the investigators had the timer evidence, which seemed to point to Libya, they stopped pursuing other leads -- that's the way most criminal investigations work. People sleep better at night if they think they have justice. Who wants an unsolved airplane bombing?'

Edinburgh University law professor Robert Black, the architect of the Lockerbie trial, said of Megrahi's defence not seeking to interview Baer: 'I don't know why they would act like this. Real hard evidence of a money transfer from Iran to the PFLP-GC is so supportive of the alternative theory behind the bombing that I'm at a loss to explain their actions.

'At the very least, you would interview the source of the information and make a decision once you have spoken to him. A lawyer's job is to provide a belt-and-braces defence for his client, so to refuse to even meet with Baer requires a lot of explaining.'

Finger of blame for Lockerbie pointed at American citizen

[This is the headline over an article by Derek Lambie published in the Sunday Express on this date in 2007.  It reads as follows:]

In a sensational twist, Abu Elias, currently living near Washington DC, will be named with others believed to be in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) as part of a terror cell behind the Pan Am disaster.

Lawyers claim the radical Palestinian organisation was hired for $10million to avenge the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the US five months earlier.

Two weeks ago Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, 55, was given the right to appeal his conviction.  Elias - who has a new identity the Sunday Express cannot divulge - is the nephew of the terror group's leader, Ahmed Jibril, the man believed to be the mastermind of the bombing.

The Sunday Express understands new documents - likely to form the basis for al-Megrahi's appeal - show the American was described as "the primary target" early in the investigation.  They also state he conspired with Mohammed Abu Talb, an Egyptian named by Dumfries and Galloway Police as the initial chief suspect.

Lockerbie relatives last night said they are more convinced than ever that the PFLP-GC are the perpetrators of the atrocity. Dr Jim Swire, who lost daughter Flora in the disaster, said: "My view has always been that Abu Talb was involved but that he was not the actual bomber. This development is encouraging and opens new avenues."

Pan Am Flight 103 was just 38 minutes into its journey from London to New York when it was blown up.  Investigators concluded a Semtex bomb was in a cassette player rigged with a Swiss electronic timing device.  Al-Megrahi was convicted in 2002 following a £75million trial at a Scottish Court, at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, although his co-accused Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima was cleared.

But the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) has identified six grounds where it believes a miscarriage of justice may have occurred, with its main focus on the evidence from Tony Gauci, who said  al-Megrahi had come into his shop in Malta and bought clothes found at the scene of the disaster.

With the decision, the finger of blame is once again being pointed at the PFLP-GC. Jibril was suspected of organising the bombing on behalf of Iran as revenge on the US for shooting down Iran Air 655 over the Persian Gulf in 1988.

Evidence submitted to the SCCRC named Jibril, now 79, as the mastermind, with his nephew working with Abu Talb, a member of a splinter group and later jailed for life in Sweden for a bomb attack that left one person dead.

The defence case included a US Defence Intelligence Agency cable from September 24, 1989, which states: "The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar (Mohtashemi-Pur), the former Iranian Minister of Interior.

"The operation was contracted to Ahmad Jabril (sic)... for $1million. The remainder was to be paid after successful completion of the mission."

Documents viewed by the Sunday Express allege the plot began when a man named Mobdi Goben supplied material for the bomb to Hafez Dalkamoni, the leader of the PFLP-GC's European cell. He was then introduced to the alleged bomb maker Marwan Khreesat, by Elias, who has both Syrian and American passports.

Very little is known about Elias, but the defence insists he was paid in travellers' cheques by terror leader Dalkamoni in Cyprus, before he took delivery of the bomb in Frankfurt.  Elias was identified as the key suspect although it was never explored in court, even after documents about his role suddenly emerged during the trial.

The Goben Memorandum, said to have been written by a dying member of the PFLP-GC, was handed to the Lord Advocate detailing the group's activities and a confession about Elias. Elias was concerning the FBI before the bombing and was quizzed about cheques deposited in his bank. In August 1988 he met with agents, who knew he was Jibril's nephew. While the SCCRC said there is dubiety over whether Gauci had correctly identified al-Megrahi, documents show the shopkeeper had no such problems identifying Abu Talb.

Despite the evidence, the investigation took an unexpected twist and the Syrian terror group's suspected role in the disaster was dropped. Meanwhile, it emerged Talb could be brought to trial in Scotland because he does not have lifetime immunity from prosecution as had been believed. During al-Megrahi's trial there was a widespread belief he had been given Crown protection for giving evidence. However, the Crown Office yesterday confirmed he does not have immunity.

Lockerbie Revealed: other key findings from 'secret' report

[This is the headline over a long article by John Ashton published today on the heraldscotland.com website.  It reads in part:]

During its four-year investigation, as well as finding six grounds why Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission examined numerous other issues which, according to his lawyers, affected the safety of his conviction. (...)

The Libyan informant

A key witness against Megrahi was a former Libyan Arab Airlines colleague, Majid Giaka, who was also a junior intelligence officer and CIA informant. At trial the defence were provided with partially redacted CIA cables about him.

After two of the Crown team had viewed almost complete cables on 1 June 2000, the Lord Advocate assured the court that the blanked out sections were of no relevance.

However, when less redacted versions were eventually released they cast further doubt on Giaka’s credibility. In their application to the SCCRC, Megrahi’s lawyers, who were not those who represented him at trial, argued that the failure to release the full, unredacted cables breached Megrahi’s right to a fair trial.

Remarkably, the SCCRC was not allowed to view the full cables, but having read the partially redacted ones, it commented:

it is difficult to understand the Lord Advocate’s assurances to the court on 22 August 2000 that there was “nothing within these documents which relate to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid on these matters”. The matter is all the more serious given that part of the reason for viewing the cables on 1 June 2000 was precisely in order to assess whether information behind the redacted sections reflected upon Majid’s credibility.

The SCCRC nevertheless concluded that the failure to release the full cables had not resulted in a miscarriage of justice.  Twenty-two years on, Giaka’s full story remains unknown.

The terrorist whistleblower

Six months into Megrahi’s trial the Crown disclosed a transcript of a lengthy deathbed confession by Palestinian self-confessed terrorist Mobdi Goben. He  claimed that the bombing was the work of his own group, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), a Syrian and Iranian backed faction who were the original prime suspects in the bombing.

The defence interviewed a number of Goben’s relatives and associates who were seeking asylum in Norway, plus a man whom Goben had implicated in the bomb plot.

However, the court refused a defence motion to request further information from the Syrian, Iranian, American and Swedish governments, and the allegations were never raised at trial. Megrahi’s SCCRC submission argued that the Crown’s approach to the matter breached his right to a fair trial.

The SCCRC raised the matter with Megrahi’s junior counsel John Beckett, who said that the Goben evidence would have been difficult to use. It also had access to undisclosed Crown documents, which, in its view, contained nothing the defence didn’t already know. It concluded: the Commission does not consider that the Crown’s handling of matters concerning the Goben memorandum gave rise to a breach of the Crown’s obligations … Accordingly, the Commission does not consider that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred in this connection.

Goben’s claims remain unproven, but many who have studied the case, including the British Lockerbie relative Dr Jim Swire, continue to hold the PFLP-GC responsible for Lockerbie.

Prime suspect No.1: Abu Elias

Mobdi Goben and PFLP-GC member, bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat, each implicated another of group member, known as Abu Elias, in the bombing. (…)

A number of Megrahi’s unsuccessful submissions to the SCCRC referred to Abu Elias. Although the Commission could find no direct evidence of his involvement in the bombing, Abu Elias remains the prime suspect for many of those who doubt Megrahi’s guilt. 

Prime suspect No.2: Abu Talb

The most unusual Crown witness at Megrahi’s trial was convicted terrorist Mohamed Abu Talb, who was serving a life sentence in Sweden for fatal bombings in Northern Europe in the mid-eighties.

Previously a prime suspect in the Lockerbie bombing, he had visited Malta two months before Lockerbie, returning with clothes, and some of his associates had visited the German flat in which the PFLP-GC’s Marwan Khreesat made barometric bombs. (…)

The SCCRC uncovered no significant new evidence about Abu Talb, but was unable to properly investigate an airline ticket, which suggested that he possibly made a second trip to Malta at around the time that Tony Gauci said he sold the bomb suitcase clothing.

The report says: The Commission requested that D&G (Dumfries and Galloway Police) ask the police officers involved in enquiries relative to Abo Talb whether they had established that the position in respect of the return portion of the ticket. D&G confirmed in a letter dated 19 April 2006 that none of the officers could recall making enquiries in this connection … In the Commission’s view, although it is regrettable that the matter was not checked with Scandinavian Airlines at the time of the police investigation, there was no failure by the Crown to disclose material evidence about the return portion of Talb’s flight ticket.

There is no smoking gun to implicate Abu Talb, but his trip to Malta and his PFLP-GC connections continue to fuel suspicions of his involvement in Lockerbie.

The shopkeeper

Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci was the key witness against Megrahi, as it was he who sold the clothes that were supposedly packed into the bomb suitcase. In 1991 he made a tentative identification of Megrahi, which he repeated at an ID parade 8 years later and again during his trial evidence.

Although four of the SCCRC grounds of referral concerned Gauci, the Commission rejected a number of submissions contained in Megrahi’s original application.  Among these was the claim that Gauci had been taken to Scotland by the police, where he received treats and hospitality, which may have influenced his evidence.

The Commission confirmed that Gauci was taken to Scotland on a number of occasions, but considered that nothing improper had taken place. It says: … almost all of Mr Gauci’s visits to Scotland took place after he had given evidence. The only exception to this is his visit in 1999 when he attended Dumfries for precognition and was taken sight-seeing in Edinburgh the following day. However, in the Commission’s view any possible significance that might have been attached to this by the defence has to be seen in light of the other information contained in the reports described above. It appears from this that far from viewing his visits to Scotland and elsewhere as an incentive Mr Gauci was strongly opposed to his removal from Malta which he regarded as a source of inconvenience.

Large question marks remain over Gauci’s evidence. The SCCRC discovered that post-trial he received a reward of at least $2 million from the US Department of Justice.

The CIA agent

The only US investigator interviewed by the SCCRC, former CIA agent Robert Baer, reported intelligence indicating that the Iranian government had commissioned the PFLP-GC to bomb Pan Am 103. His sources suggested that two days after the bombing $11 million was transferred into a PFLP-GC Swiss bank account and a few months later $500,000 was paid into an account thought to belong to Abu Talb at the Degussa Bank in Frankfurt.

Overall, the SCCRC concluded: … the Commission has no reason to doubt [Mr Baer’s] credibility. However, as he himself acknowledged, he has no direct knowledge of any of the information in his possession, which came largely from CIA telexes. As with all intelligence, the validity of that information was very much dependent upon the reliability of its source which in many cases Mr Baer was unable to vouch.

The Baer chapter demonstrates the limited reach of the SCCRC’s inquiry and is probably the report’s most disappointing.  

‘The Golfer’

The Golfer was the cover name of a police officer who told Megrahi’s then legal team that key items of evidence had been manipulated to fit the prosecution case.

Subsequent submissions to the SCCRC by the lawyers, MacKechnie & Associates, highlighted anomalies in police documentation, which appeared to support these claims. (…)

The Commission did not consider the documentary anomalies to be sinister: while some of the allegations made in the submissions were based upon information said to have been provided by the Golfer, others were based purely on perceived irregularities in the recorded chain of evidence. The Commission’s approach to the latter was that in any police enquiry, let alone one as large scale and complex as the present one, human error is inevitable. Although apparent omissions, inconsistencies or mistakes in productions records may, after a long period of time, appear difficult to explain, or even suspicious, in the Commission’s view they do not, in themselves, support allegations of impropriety against those involved in the investigation.

The police will be relieved by the report’s conclusions. That relief won’t be shared by the Crown Office, which the SCCRC has left with some important questions to answer. (…)

Megrahi himself

Before referring Megrahi’s conviction to the appeal court, the SCCRC had to be satisfied that, regardless of the weaknesses in the Crown case, there was not overwhelming evidence of his guilt.

In practice this meant exploring the issues that would have been raised during cross-examination, if he had opted to give evidence.

These included his relationship with the JSO, his use of a false passport, large payments into his Swiss bank account and lies he had told in a US television interview. The Commission conducted lengthy interviews with Megrahi and studied 37 of his precognition statements.  

The report says: while at no time did the applicant admit that he was a “member” of [the JSO], in the Commission’s view he was so closely associated with it as to amount to the same thing … It is important to bear in mind in any assessment of the applicant’s accounts that each of them was given in English rather than in his native tongue. It is obvious … that on occasions the applicant had difficulty expressing himself clearly. Caution is therefore required in analysing his accounts … On the other hand, the applicant speaks English relatively well, having previously studied the subject in Cardiff, and he did not request the assistance of an interpreter at any stage in his interview with the Commission. In these circumstances the Commission does not consider the inconsistencies in his accounts are merely the result of communication difficulties … In particular, the Commission believes that there was a real risk that the trial court would have viewed his explanations for his movements on 20 and 21 December 1988, and his use of the [false] Abdusamad passport on that occasion, as weak or unconvincing.

It concluded: The Commission has also considered whether, notwithstanding its conclusion that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred, the entirety of the evidence considered by it points irrefutably to the applicant’s guilt. The Commission’s conclusion is that it does not.

Megrahi insists that he had nothing to hide from the SCCRC and that the inconsistencies in his accounts are all innocent. While he disputes some of its conclusions he has made clear that he is happy for them to be made public.

Lockerbie, Bushnaq, Iran

[This is the headline over a blog by Dov Ivry that was published yesterday evening on the website of The Times of Israel. It reads as follows:]

The takedown of Pan Am 103 at Lockerbie, Scotland was a catastrophe that the US intelligence community could see coming for half a year and no one took the necessary steps to prevent it.

There were 270 people who died in that crash Dec 21, 1988.

On July 3 1988, during a war between Iran and Iraq, a US warship, the Vincennes, sailing in the war zone, shot down an Iranian passenger plane killing all 290 aboard. It should not have happened. It was an unfortunate mistake.

Khomeini, the Iranian leader, immediately issued Iran’s response, which had the force of a binding religious edict, “an eye for an eye.”

Ali Mohtashemipur, the Iranian interior minister, offered $10 million to arch terrorist Ahmed Jibril, head of the PFLP-GC, to blow up an American passenger plane.

Israel knew Mohtashemipur well. He founded Hezbollah in 1982. One of their first major acts was to level the Israeli military headquarters at Tyre killing 91. Yitzhak Shamir, when he came into office, ordered the Mossad to kill him. They send him a holy book, it exploded and stripped away an arm, but he survived. And here he was again.

From the time the Iranians invited Jibril to a meeting July 8 in Teheran until the end, the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), a monitoring agency for the US intelligence community, was reporting what the Iranians and Jibril were discussing, the names of the people at their meetings, the complete package, as it happened.

These reports were not released to the public for years, but they demonstrate that anyone who read them was never in the dark. It was like watching a gang preparing a major bank robbery step-by-step.

One example. Rashid Mehmet, a Turkish engineer and Hezbollah member, who worked at the Frankfurt airport in conjunction with two other Turks, attended planning meetings. Those three put the bomb on the plane. The day the plane went down Mehmet flew to Cyprus to make his getaway and was congratulated by the Iranian chargé d’affaires there for having “performed his mission.”

Those Turks were never arrested. James Shaughnessy, lawyer for Pam Am, asked why none of the numerous Turks who worked at Frankfurt airport were investigated. It appears that no one ever read the FBIS reports even after the fact.

The conspirators also announced with the sound of trumpets the day that they decided to act, Dec 15. There was a big pow-wow in Beirut under the cover of a celebration of the Palestinian cause, where they concluded the meeting by saying the “ordained revenge for America” is nigh.

Here were the consequences. Khaled Jaafar, an affluent 20-year-old from Beirut whose father lived in Dearborn, Mich, and he had American citizenship, was tasked with transporting the bomb to the plane. He had been living with a PLPF-GC cell in Dortmund since Nov 8 awaiting the call, but on Dec 14 he booked a flight to Detroit to go home for the holidays.

The next day a Hezbollah operative living in that house with him, Naim Ghannam, got a call from Beirut and he would change Jaafar’s booking to another plane going to Detroit, Pam Am 103. They did it through a travel agent in Dearborn, who also seems to have been a member of Hezbollah.

The FBIS report says that they chose Pan Am 103 after the Iranian embassy in Beirut confirmed that five CIA agents were on that plane. Other sources say they were tipped off by what is described as a “double agent.” He apparently lived in Beirut, his identity was known, and he was never apprehended either.

Jaafar was an experienced world traveller, with never any issues in flying, but in Frankfurt he knew he was about to die. Yasmin Siddique, the woman behind him in line, who would get off the plane at London, could not take her eyes off him. He was having a nervous breakdown right before her eyes.

None of the several people at the Dortmund cell were arrested although the owner of the house was brought to the show trial of the Libyan al-Megrahi, served up as a scapegoat, to testify for what that was worth. The travel agent’s connection to terrorists was exposed by Debbie Schlussel, a nationally known journalist who lives in Michigan. He was never questioned about his role in enabling the Pan Am attack.

The PFLP-GC at that point in time was a large and far-flung organization with bomb makers and activists throughout Europe including Germany, Sweden, and Yugoslavia, as well as the Middle East and Asia, and they were killing Americans in Europe as well as Israelis here. This was the Cold War and those in Yugoslavia especially were given free rein to do whatever they wanted

The PFLP-GC boss in Germany was Dalkamoni. Israel knew him well. Years before he came into the Galilee carrying a bomb to blow up a power plant, it exploded prematurely and took off a leg. He spent 10 years in prison in Israel before released in a prisoner exchange. In October the Mossad notified German intelligence that the PLFP-GC was up to something and they arrested Dalkamoni and 15 others in a roundup called the Autumn Leaves. Dalkamoni was the main planner at that point, but the PLFP-GC did not miss a beat.

The US investigation got off to a rousing start. Within six months Dan Rather was reporting coast-to-coast that the planner for the Pan-Am attack was named Dalkamoni and the plane was brought down by the PLFP-GC.

What happened? Tom Thurman happened. He was a fraudster posing as an explosives expert in the FBI. He would be banned by an inspector-general in 1997 from giving expert testimony having being found to have no scientific background, just made stuff up. But in 1990 he went into attorney-general Bill Barr’s office and fingered Libyans. For the next 30 years the investigation turned into a reprise of the Keystone Kops running hither and yon nabbing Libyans, who had nothing to do with anything.

Here’s what actually happened. Jibril turned over the implementation to his nephew Basel Bushnaq, 25, head of his military. That position Jibril liked to keep in the family. In 2002 his son Jihad was head of his military and Israel assassinated him.

The Syrian-born Bushnaq was also an American citizen, expert in both airport security and bomb making. Both the CIA and the PLO, which also did an investigation — anything to embarrass their bitter rival — named Bushnaq as the bomb maker. He purchased the detonator on the Beirut black market for $60,000.

He went by the name of Abu Elias. The CIA went looking for him under than name and could not find him. Bushnaq is an ethnic Bosnian. The word “Bushnaq” means Bosnian.

The FBI and Scotland Yard interrogated him under his American name Basel Bushnaq. They asked for him for his Syrian passport. He said he had misplaced it. You would too if the name there was Abu Elias or perhaps Khaisar Haddad, another moniker he sometimes used.

We know that Abu Elias is Basel Bushnaq because five former associates of Jibril told that to the defence team of the Libyan scapegoat al-Megrahi in 2000.

Here is the situation today. Bushnaq murdered 190 Americans. That’s the record for an American killing Americans exceeding Timothy McVeigh’s 168. He is still walking free.

It will take a call to arms to get this guy under lock and key. But it’s not too late.

I’ve got a book out on this called Lockerbie, Bushnaq, Iran. The digital is at Kindle. The paperback is at Sweek.

PFLP-GC

For an article in the Sunday Express 0f 8 July 2007 pointing the finger of blame for the Lockerbie bombing at the PFLP-GC, Ahmed Jibril, Abu Talb, Abu Elias, Mobdi Goben, Hafez Dalkamoni et al, see http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/12732

Nothing very new in it, except the claim that Abu Elias is living near Washington DC under a new identity.

More than two years later (August 2009) the Sunday Express is recycling this story.

Operation Autumn Leaves

[On this date in 1988 the German police arrested seventeen men at Neuss in operation “Autumn Leaves” (Herbstlaub). What follows is excerpted (with citations removed) from the relevant article in Wikipedia:]

For many months after the bombing, the prime suspects were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command (PFLP-GC), a Damascus-based rejectionist group led by former Syrian army captain Ahmed Jibril, sponsored by Iran. In a February 1986 press conference, Jibril warned: "There will be no safety for any traveler on an Israeli or U.S. airliner" (Cox and Foster 1991, p28).

Secret intercepts were reported by author, David Yallop, to have recorded the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) in Baalbeck, Lebanon, making contact with the PFLP-GC immediately after the downing of the Iran Air Airbus. Israeli intelligence (Mossad) allegedly intercepted a telephone call made two days after PA 103 by Mohtashemi-Pur, Interior Minister in Tehran, to the chargé d'affaires at the Iranian embassy in Beirut, instructing the embassy to hand over the funds to Jibril and congratulating them on the success of "Operation Intekam" ('equal and just revenge'). (...)

Jibril's right-hand man, Hafez Dalkamoni, set up a PFLP-GC cell which was active in the Frankfurt and Neuss areas of West Germany in October 1988, two months before PA 103. During what Germany's internal security service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), called Operation Herbstlaub ('Operation Autumn Leaves'), the BfV kept cell members under strict surveillance. The plotters prepared a number of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) hidden inside household electronic equipment. They discussed a planned operation in coded calls to Cyprus and Damascus: oranges and apples stood for 'detonating devices'; medicine and pasta for 'Semtex explosive'; and auntie for 'the bomb carrier'. One operative had been recorded as saying: "auntie should get off, but should leave the suitcase on the bus" (Duffy and Emerson 1990). The PFLP-GC cell had an experienced bomb-maker, Jordanian Marwan Khreesat, to assist them. Khreesat made at least one IED inside a single-speaker Toshiba Bombeat 453 radio cassette recorder, similar to the twin-speaker model RT-SF 16 Bombeat that was used to blow up PA 103. However, unlike the Lockerbie bomb with its sophisticated timer, Khreesat's IEDs contained a barometric pressure device that triggers a simple timer with a range of up to 45 minutes before detonation.

Unbeknown to the PFLP-GC cell, its bomb-maker Khreesat was a Jordanian intelligence service (GID) agent and reported on the cell's activities to the GID, who relayed the information to Western intelligence and to the BfV. The Jordanians encouraged Khreesat to make the bombs but instructed him to ensure they were ineffective and would not explode. (A German police technician would however be killed, in April 1989, when trying to disarm one of Khreesat's IEDs). Through Khreesat and the GID, the Germans learned that the cell was surveying a number of targets, including Iberia Flight 888 from Madrid to Tel Aviv via Barcelona, chosen because the bomb-courier could disembark without baggage at Barcelona, leaving the barometric trigger to activate the IED on the next leg of the journey. The date chosen, Khreesat reportedly told his handlers, was October 30, 1988. He also told them that two members of the cell had been to Frankfurt airport to pick up Pan Am timetables.

Acting upon this intelligence, the German secret police moved in to arrest the PFLP-GC cell on October 26, raiding 14 apartments and arresting 17 men, fearing that to keep them under surveillance much longer was to risk losing control of the situation. Two cell members are known to have escaped arrest, including Abu Elias, a resident of Sweden who, according to Prime Time Live (ABC News November 1989), was an expert in bombs sent to Germany to check on Khreesat's devices because of suspicions raised by Ahmed Jibril. Four IEDs were recovered, but Khreesat stated later that a fifth device had been taken away by Dalkamoni before the raid, and was never recovered. The link to PA 103 was further strengthened when Khreesat told investigators that, before joining the cell in Germany, he had bought five Toshiba Bombeat cassette radios from a smugglers' village in Syria close to the border with Lebanon, and made practice IEDs out of them in Jibril's training camp 20 km (12 mi) away. The bombs were inspected by Abu Elias, who declared them to be good work. What became of these devices is not known.

Some journalists such as Private Eye's Paul Foot and a PA 103 relative, Dr Jim Swire, believed that it was too stark a coincidence for a Toshiba cassette radio IED to have downed PA 103 just eight weeks after the arrest of the PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt. Indeed, Scottish police actually wrote up an arrest warrant for Marwan Khreesat in the spring of 1989, but were persuaded by the FBI not to issue it because of his value as an intelligence source. In the following spring, King Hussein of Jordan arranged for Khreesat to be interviewed by FBI agent, Edward Marshman, and the former head of the FBI's forensic lab, Thomas Thurman, to whom he described in detail the bombs he had built. In the 1994 documentary film Maltese Double Cross, the author David Yallop speculated that Libyan agents and agents paid by Iran may have worked on the bombing together; or, that one group handed the job over to a second group upon the arrest of the PFLP-GC cell members. The former CIA head of counter-terrorism, Vincent Cannistraro, who previously worked on the PA 103 investigation, was interviewed in the film and said he believed the PFLP-GC planned the attack at the behest of the Iranian government, then sub-contracted it to Libyan intelligence after October 1988, because the arrests in Germany meant the PFLP-GC was unable to complete the operation. Other supporters of this theory believed that whoever paid for the bombing arranged two parallel operations intended to ensure that at least one would succeed; or, that Jibril's cell in Germany was a red herring designed to attract the attention of the intelligence services, while the real bombers worked quietly elsewhere.