John Ashton on Aljazeera's "Lockerbie: what really happened?"

[What follows is the text of an item posted this evening by John Ashton on his Megrahi: You are my Jury website:]

Aljazeera last night premiered its long-awaited documentary Lockerbie: What Really Happened? The programme’s broad thrust, with which I agree, is that the bombing was ordered by Iran and carried out by the PFLP-CG, with help from Hezbollah. It also suggests that Libya may have had a role, which I don’t rule out.

Before commenting further, I should make a declaration of interest: I was paid consultant and interviewee for the producers’ previous Aljazeera programme Lockerbie: Case Closed, (which you can view here) which was broadcast on the day that Megrahi: You are my Jury was published, and was also a paid consultant during the development phase of this one, although I was not involved with the production itself. The most significant discoveries I made during the development phase were of no great interest to the producers, so I took them to Channel 4 News, who took a different view and commissioned a special report, which was broadcast on 20 December (you can view it here).

Last night’s programme has generated a lot of media coverage, but contains little that hasn’t already been reported previously. Most of the coverage has led on the allegations made in the film by Abolghasem Mesbahi, the German-based Iranian defector, who alleged that the bombing was carried out in revenge for the US shootdown of Iran Air flight 655. His claims have been reported as if they are new, but they are not: they originally surfaced in the German media in 1996 or 1997. Mesbahi gave his first broadcast interview about Lockerbie to the German channel ZDF in 2008 and Aljazeera’s interview, which was in fact shot by ZDF, featured in another ZDF documentary last month.

Mesbahi was a former senior official in Iran’s security service, Vevak, and was based in, among other places, Paris and Bonn. In late 1988 he was imprisoned briefly as a suspected US double agent and in 1996 defected. He claimed to have first hand knowledge of the plot that resulted in the 1992 murder, by Iranian agents, of several leading Kurdish separatists in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin. His testimony proved crucial in the subsequent trial of some of the Iranians. It was not until some months after his defection that he began to talk about Lockerbie.

Last year I spoke to a leading German journalist who is very familiar with both Mesbahi and the Lockerbie story. While he believes that the evidence that Mesbahi gave in the Mykonos case was credible, he is very sceptical of his claims about Lockerbie.

By Mesbahi’s own admission, all his information about Lockerbie was second-hand. His accounts to the German police (documented in memos disclosed to the Abdelbaset’s lawyers pre-trial) were erratic. Some of his claims were unlikely, others patently nonsense. He claimed that the Iranian government initiated the operation and Iranian foreign minister Velajati held talks with Colonel Gadaffi, during which they’d agreed on a joint operation in which Iran would be responsible for the explosives and Libya for the electronics. There was no reason for Iran to rely on the Libyans to sort out the electronics, when they had plenty of other bomb makers at their disposal. He did not mention the PFLP-GC and instead suggested that the operation was not only commissioned by the Iranian government, but also largely undertaken by Iranian agents.

He said that the technical instructions for the bomb came from the Abu Nidal Organisation. He initially claimed that it was assembled and loaded at Heathrow by Libyan agents who had access to the airport’s ‘secure area’ (by which, presumably, he meant airside), but later claimed that it was assembled there by a ANO members. He also said that the bomb was activated by a chemical detonator, which again seems unlikely. He reported that the Iranians sent explosives to London after which the green light was given to the Libyans to deliver the electronic components. This, a source told him, was done by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Lamin Fhimah only days before the bombing.

However, there is no evidence that they were in London at any point. It is clear that Abdelbaset was in Prague and Switzerland from 9th to 17th December and that he and Lamin were in Malta on the 20th and 21st. I suspect that Mesbahi stitched together a story that would implicate Iran, while accommodating the official ‘Libya-did-it narrative.’

Another disappointing aspect of the programme was the prominence it gave to the claims of the Operation Bird reports, about which I have written previously (here and here). Some of the reports’ key allegations are, in my view, unlikely, in particular the claim that the PFLP-GC’s German ringleader, Hafez Dalkamoni, attended a crucial planning meeting in Malta in October 1988. This claim is contradicted by documentary and witness evidence gathered by the BKA, which is far stronger than the evidence that the programme presented to corroborate the claim (essentially, a 1989 Maltese newspaper article).

The film was on more solid ground when it presented US Defence Intelligence Agency reports from 1989 and 1990, which implicated the PFLP-GC and Iran in the attack. Unfortunately, it implied that the reports were secret and stated that they would have been used at Abdelbaset’s second appeal. Neither suggestion was true: the reports had no role in the appeal and are available online having been declassified many years ago.

There were other exaggerated and misleading claims. For example, the commentary stated ‘this programme has learned’ that Tony Gauci had picked out a photo of Mohamed Abu Talb before his partial identification of Abdelbaset. In fact it is well known that, when shown a photo of Abu Talb by the police in October 1989, Gauci said that he resembled the clothes purchaser. The programme also stated that the Toshiba radio-cassette player that housed the Lockerbie bomb was of the same type as the one seized by the BKA during the Autumn Leaves raids, but in fact it was substantially different.

On the plus side, the film contained powerful interviews with former CIA investigator Robert Baer, researcher and campaigner Morag Kerr and, surprisingly, the former Times political editor Robin Oakley. Overall, though, it was a wasted opportunity.

Innocence of Megrahi and Libya does not point to guilt of Iran

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer published today on his Intel Today website, where full supporting citations can be found:]

On January 6 2020, President Hassan Rouhani tweeted the following message:

“Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR655. Never threaten the Iranian nation.”

This tweet was a response to President Donald Trump’s threat to target 52 sites in Iran should it retaliate against the US drone strike that killed top Iranian military figure General Qassem Soleimani on January 3 2020.

Not surprisingly, Rouhani’s message was quickly commented on by Middle East and Lockerbie experts as well as by imbeciles and hypocrites.

Real experts —

Middle East analyst Fatima Alasrar, from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, was one of the first to indicate the link between Rouhani’s tweet and Lockerbie.

“Rouhani is basically reminding @realDonaldTrump of the #Iranian Air Flight 655 carrying 290 passengers which was downed by a US navy warship the Vincennes in 1988.

Though it was deemed a human error, Tehran worked covertly to exact its revenge.

How? Lockerbie.”

Robert Black — Professor Emeritus of Scots Law in the University of Edinburgh and best known as the architect of the Lockerbie Trial– concurs.

Speaking to The National as Iran continued to mourn Soleimani, Black said:

“I think Rouhani’s tweet does refer to Pan Am 103 … The 290 clearly refers to those killed on Iran Air 655 and with ‘Never threaten the Iranian nation’ it seems to me that he’s saying that Iran responded to those Iranian deaths caused by US action.

The only response that I can think of was the bombing of Pan Am 103 six months later.”

Imbeciles and hypocrites —

Given half a chance, idiots will never miss the opportunity to share with you their “deep knowledge” on sensitive issues. The current Iran Crisis is a case in point.

Describing himself as an expert on terrorism strategy with 36 years of services in the US Intel Community, Malcolm Nance tweeted:

“PANAM 103 was DEFINATELY Qaddafi Libya. We found the same Swiss digital detonators were purchased by Libyan intelligence and were also used on the UTA 772 in flight bombing. No question. Iran had nothing to do with it.”

Here is a quick primer for this “expert”. Firstly, no detonators were recovered, let alone identified, among the debris of PA 103 and UTA 772.

Secondly, the timer that allegedly triggered the bomb on UTA 772 was produced in Taiwan, not Switzerland.

Thirdly, we know now that PT/35(b) — a fragment of an PCB allegedly found at Lockerbie — does NOT match the metallurgy of the Swiss timers — MST13 — delivered to Libya. Full stop. (...)

Intel Today analysis —

There is no doubt whatsoever that Rouhani makes a direct reference to the 290 victims of Iranian Air Flight 655.

His warning “Never threaten the Iranian nation” appears to be a veiled threat suggesting that Iran will retaliate for Soleimani’s assassination just like they did in the case of Iranian Air Flight 655.

Assuming that this is indeed what Rouhani means, then it seems logical to conclude that he is claiming Iran’s responsibility for the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.

Actually, it is not the first time that a high level Iranian cleric claims responsibility for Lockerbie.

Indeed, when I spoke to Bani Sadr — who served as the first president of the Republic of Iran — he told me that ayatollah Motashemi-pur had immediately taken credit for the Lockerbie bombing which he regarded as a “just revenge” for Flight 655.

However…

Let me say this one more time. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Lockerbie verdict is utter nonsense.

Megrahi — the man known as the Lockerbie bomber — clearly suffered a spectacular miscarriage of justice.

In fact, the analysis of the fragment that linked Libya to Lockerbie demonstrates that the Swiss timers delivered to Libya played no role in the tragedy.

This is, in my opinion, the only reasonable conclusion that an honest person can reach.

However, to many observers, the innocence of Megrahi — and Libya — can only point to the guilt of Iran.

I can not agree with such a flawed logic, for it may very well replace a 30 years old lie by a new one, which would be quite convenient to certain groups today as it would suit very well their geopolitical agenda. (...)

Let me make this point very clear. There is not a shred of evidence that Iran ordered the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie as an act of retaliation for Iran Air 655.

And there is a good reason for that which I will reveal today.

In the aftermath of Flight 655 disaster, the US and Iran conducted a series of secret talks in the city of Montreux, Switzerland.  Richard Lawless was representing Bush and Abolghasem Mesbahi was an envoy of Rafsanjani.

By the end of September 1988 — 3 months before Lockerbie — they managed to settle an agreement.

None of this has ever been made public for obvious reasons. It would have been perceived as a second IranGate scandal. (...)

So, what really happened?

The Lockerbie investigation underwent three separated stages. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the American and British investigators quickly identified the cause of the tragedy as well as those responsible for it.

However, both Bush and Thatcher agreed that the truth was inconvenient.

From early January 1989 to March 1989, US and UK Intelligence agencies were busy writing a script implicating Iran.

That was not a very difficult task considering that very realistic but false “means, motive, and opportunity” could easily be wowen into a rather believable story.

Basically, the events of the “Autumn Leaves” operation — the PFLP-GC cell operating in Frankfurt — became a blueprint for the script. Thus all the key items appear at this stage: brown Samsonite, clothes from Malta, Toshiba radio, Semtex, Frankfurt, etc…

But in March 1989,  George H W Bush and Margaret Thatcher decided to hold off this game plan.

Why? Remember that the US is in secret talks with Rafsanjani and the future seems promising.

Ayatollah Khomeini is dying and his hardliner heir — Grand Ayatollah Montazeri — has been sacked on March 26 1989.

Khomeini died on June 3rd 1989. Ali Khamenei was elevated from the position of hojatoleslām to the rank of Ayatollah.That title, and a modification of the Constitution which previously restricted the job to the few people such Montazeri who had the title of Grand Ayatollah, was then enough to promote him as Khomeini’s successor.

Next, Rafsanjani himself was elected Iran’s president on August 3rd 1989.

By September 1989, blaming Iran for Lockerbie would no longer have served the geopolitical interests of the US and UK.

And lo and behold, in September 1989, the investigation entered stage 3 and  switched away from Iran to solely focus on Libya thanks to the mysterious ‘discovery’ of a tiny circuit board known as PT/35(b). The rest is History. (...)

If the SCCRC recommend a new trial, the infamous Zeist verdict does not have a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving.

This should be the very top priority. Once Megrahi is acquitted and the Lockerbie-Libya fiction is erased once and for all, then the time will be right to investigate the true cause of disaster and reveal the identity of the culprits. It is not very hard at all…

Lockerbie relatives to appeal Megrahi conviction

[This is the headline over a report in today’s edition of The Herald.  It reads as follows:]

British relatives of victims of the Lockerbie atrocity are planning another attempt to overturn the conviction of the only person found guilty of the attack after a former Iranian spy went public with his claims that Syrian-based extremists recruited by Iran carried out the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Former Iranian intelligence officer Abolghassem Mesbahi told a TV documentary, screened last night and repeated tonight, that the December 1988 bombing was undertaken by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) on behalf of Tehran.

He claimed it was carried out in revenge for the mistaken shooting down in July 1988 of an Iran Air Airbus by the USS Vincennes, a US Navy cruiser in the Gulf.

Iran's then leader Ayatollah Khomeini had pledged the skies would "rain blood" in revenge.

During Al Jazeera's Lockerbie: what really happened? documentary, Mr Mesbahi said: "Iran decided to retaliate as soon as possible. The decision was made by the whole system in Iran and confirmed by Ayatollah Khomeini.

"The target of the Iranian decision makers was to copy exactly what happened to the Iranian Airbus. Everything exactly same, minimum 290 people dead."

Campaigner Dr Jim Swire said yesterday that UK relatives of the victims, including himself, are preparing to apply to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) for the conviction of Libyan Abdelbaset al Megrahi to be overturned. Megrahi died in 2012 protesting his innocence.

Mr Swire, whose daughter Flora, 23, was on board Flight 103 said: "Some British relatives have decided that enough is enough and we will be applying within weeks for a further appeal against the Megrahi verdict. We have a right to know who killed our families and why the British Government and authorities responsible for the safety of the aircraft failed in their duty. We are not going away."

A successful SCCRC application could start the third appeal into Megrahi's conviction.

The Al Jazeera documentary fingered Ahmed Jibril, secretary-general of the PFLP-GC, as the key figure behind the attack, which was led by Hafez Dalkamoni. The bomb itself is alleged to have been made by Jordanin Marwan Khreesat.

In December 1988, an anonymous man took responsibility for the crash in the name of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution and in retaliation for the downing of the Iran Air flight.

Earlier that year, German police raided a PFLP-GC cell and found Toshiba cassette recorder bombs, and arrested Khreesat and Dalkamoni. The bombs were later found to be almost identical to the one used to blow up Flight 103.

But during the Lockerbie investigation, the spotlight turned from Iran to Libya when forensic examination of the suitcase that carried the bomb found it had contained a Maltese-made babygrow. Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci identified Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, as the man who bought the baby clothes and other items found in the suitcase.

In 1991 an indictment for murder was issued against Megrahi and Malta airport manager Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. The pair were handed over to Scottish authorities in 1999. Fhimah was later cleared of any involvement in the bombing.

Egyptian-born Abu Talb had also previously emerged as a key suspect, with his accusers alleging he had smuggled the bomb onto the flight. However, when Megrahi went on trial in 2000, Talb was called as a prosecution witness.

New information about Talb and his activities in Europe was sent to the SCCRC during an earlier investigation. It claimed he was paid millions of dollars by Iran following the bombing. In 1989, a Swedish court convicted Talb of bombing a synagogue in Denmark and gave him a life sentence. He has since been released.

John Ashton, Megrahi's biographer, said: "There is very little that is new here. For about 18 months after the bombing Tehran got the blame, before attention focused on Libya. I am glad [Al Jazeera's] report has put the focus back on Iran."

A Crown Office spokesman said: "Mesbahi's claim that Iran was responsible was first reported in the media in the late 1990s and was available to the defence before the trial but they did not call him as a witness.

"The wider alleged involvement of the PFLP-GC has been repeatedly reported over many years but was addressed in full and rejected at the original trial."

He added that Megrahi was convicted and that the verdict was upheld following an appeal.

[The Scotsman also today runs an article headlined New Lockerbie appeal to be launched ‘within weeks’.

An interesting article appears today in the Maltese newspaper The Times.  It contains the following:]

The latest documentary sheds light on events in Malta months  before the actual bombing. According to documentation gathered for the film, in March 1988, intelligence officers from Iran, Syria and Libya met at the Miska Bakery, in Qormi. The place was used by a cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) that operated in Malta.

Foreign intelligence agencies knew of the cell’s presence on the island and were monitoring the bakery.

However, the information was not accurate enough for action to be taken.

The Iranian, Syrian and Libyan intelligence officers had agreed to a general campaign “against Israeli and American targets” but Pan Am 103 was not yet in the picture. Things changed three months later when, on July 3, the USS Vincennes, a military ship patrolling the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iranian passenger plane killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children.

The ship mistook the airliner for a fighter jet but the US refused to issue an apology even after the tragedy was revealed. Iran wanted revenge and a plan was hatched to destroy an American aircraft. In October 1988, terrorists from the PFLP-GC met in a St Julian’s apartment to discuss the final details of its execution.

Information on this meeting came from a source who was present. The source was tracked down by Jessica de Grazia, a former Manhattan District Attorney working for Mr al Megrahi’s defence. Her findings would have formed the basis of his appeal hearing, which he abandoned on being released in 2009 from Greenock prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds.

One of those present for the Malta meeting was Mohammed Abu Talb, who headed the Swedish cell of PFLP-GC, and would later become one of the prime suspects in the case before the probe shifted to Libya and Mr al Megrahi.

Journalist Joe Mifsud had reported on the meeting in the wake of the Lockerbie attack. Speaking to Times of Malta yesterday, Dr Mifsud was not surprised by the findings of the documentary. “It confirms what I had reported on, even before the Lockerbie trial, that Abu Talb was the prime suspect in the case,” he said.

Dr Mifsud, who was present for Mr Abu Talb’s testimony at the trial, said the Swedish police had found clothes from Malta in the Palestinian’s apartment in Sweden and a calendar with December 21 circled.

In fact, the theory that the Lockerbie bombing was executed by the PFLP-GC on behalf of Iran was in line with the original leads pursued by Scottish and American investigators.

Al Jazeera tracked down the alleged bomb maker, Marwan Khreesat, to Amman in Jordan, where he is kept under surveillance by Jordanian intelligence. He refused to discuss the affair on camera but a source close to him later told Al Jazeera the attack had indeed been commissioned by Iran and the bomb was put on board at Heathrow.

Iran denies new Lockerbie bombing claims

[This is the headline over an Agence France Presse news agency report as published on the Arab Today website on this date in 2014. It reads as follows:]

Iran on Tuesday denied any involvement in the Lockerbie bombing in the face of new allegations it contracted Palestinian militants to carry out the 1988 attack which killed 270 people.

Documents obtained by Al-Jazeera television for a documentary to be broadcast later on Tuesday provided new backing to longstanding allegations that Iran and not slain Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi was behind the downing of the Pan Am airliner over the Scottish town.

"We reject any claims of Iranian involvement in this act of terror," foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham told reporters.

"Iran's stance -- not only on this case but on all terrorist-related issues -- is quite clear: Iran flatly denies (links) to any act of terror."

Former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, -- the only person ever convicted over the bombing -- maintained his innocence right up until his death in May 2012.

Al-Jazeera said that new evidence gathered for Megrahi's planned appeal, which was aborted by his release from prison on compassionate grounds in 2012, supported his innocence and implicated a Syrian-based Palestinian militant group.

Campaigners led by Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in the bombing, have long claimed that Tehran contracted the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command to carry out the bombing in revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by the USS Vincennes, which killed 290 people in July 1988. The Syria-based PFLP-GC is blacklisted as a terrorist group by both the European Union and the United States.

In the documentary called Lockerbie: What Really Happened? Al-Jazeera cites testimony from alleged former senior Iranian intelligence official, Abolghasem Mesbahi, who defected to Germany in the late 90s. Mesbahi claims Iran contracted the bombing to PFLP-GC leader Ahmed Jibril, and provides names of those he says were involved in the operation.

"Money was given to Jibril upfront in Damascus for initial expense. The mission was to blow up a Pam-Am flight," Mesbahi told Al-Jazeera.

Former CIA agent Robert Baer, who was involved in the Lockerbie investigation, told Al-Jazeera that US intelligence agencies had long been convinced of Iran's involvement. He said the finger of blame was pointed at Kadhafi's Libya because the US government did not want to alienate Syria in the run-up to the 1991 Gulf war.

Kadhafi's regime admitted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing in 2003 and eventually paid $2.7 billion in compensation to victims' families. But Kadhafi's now jailed son and heir apparent Seif al-Islam has long insisted that the admission was merely a tactical ploy to end the regime's pariah status and mend fences with the West.

[RB: I understand that a further Al-Jazeera documentary on Lockerbie will shortly be ready for broadcast.]

The American people "have a right to the truth"

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Caroline Glick published today on the website of The Jerusalem Post:]

... in 1992 and 1993, the UN Security Council passed harsh economic sanctions against Libya to force then-Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to extradite two Libyan nationals suspected of carrying out the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988 that killed 270 people. Due to the sanctions, in 1998, the Libyan government extradited the suspects to Britain for trial. Gaddafi later apologized for the bombing and paid compensation to the families of the victims. [RB: There was no apology. What there was, was an acceptance by Libya of "responsibility for the actions of its officials".]

The Lockerbie model can be applied to the AMIA bombing as well. Security Council action against Iranian leaders can massively increase their international isolation. Depending on the structure and target of the sanctions, Iranian citizens can be subjected to significant restrictions on international travel and Iranian diplomatic missions can be shut down. The more powerful the sanctions, the more effective they will be in both deterring foreign governments from cooperating with the regime and causing Iranian nationals to be disgusted with the regime.

This brings us to the Lockerbie bombing itself. [Argentinian prosecutor Alberto] Nisman’s findings [regarding the AMIA bombing] relied in large part on information presented by Iranian defector and former intelligence officer Abolghassem Mesbahi who served in Germany until he defected in the 1990s. Mesbahi reported directly to then-Iranian president Rafsanjani. Four years ago, Mesbahi revealed in an Al Jazeera documentary that Iran, not Libya, was responsible for the bombing. The attack, he said, was carried out by terrorists from Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command, headquartered in Damascus. Mesbahi’s allegations are substantiated by information collected by investigators at the crash site in Lockerbie and by evidence of similar bombs discovered in an apartment in Frankfurt rented by terrorists in the PFLP-GC weeks before the bombing.

Reports at the time claimed that in 1990, then-US president George H W Bush and then-British prime minister Margaret Thatcher chose to ignore the leads and follow less compelling evidence pointing to Gaddafi because the US wanted then-Syrian President Hafez Assad to join the US-led Arab coalition in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

The case against the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was always controversial. Megrahi went to his death in 2012 protesting his innocence. And on May 3, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission decided to review his conviction “in the interests of justice.” A review request was submitted by his widow hoping to clear his name.

Of the 270 of the victims of Flight 103, 179 were Americans – 35 were students from Syracuse University coming home for Christmas after completing a semester of study abroad in London and Florence. It goes without saying that if Iran was responsible for their murder, the American people, and their families, have a right to the truth. Following the information presented by Mesbahi, and the information already gathered by FBI investigators at the time of the bombing, the US should open a new investigation of alleged Iranian responsibility for the attack. The investigation should be public, and the names of Iranian officials suspected of involvement in the attack should be widely publicized.

Similar actions should be taken by other governments whose citizens have been murdered by Iran in acts of international terrorism.

The deeper the regime is implicated in acts of mass murder, the less able its leaders will be to justify their continued grip on power. The more Khamenei’s personal role in recognized worldwide, the less capable he will be to wield power and command obedience. Branded as murderers at home and abroad, Khamenei and his henchmen will find it harder and harder to suppress demonstrators demanding that they end their sponsorship of Syria’s genocidal dictator Bashar Assad and the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas and surrender their power.

Lockerbie bombing "commissioned by Iran" - bomb loaded at Heathrow not Malta

[Today’s edition of the Daily Telegraph contains a long article headlined Lockerbie bombing: are these the men who really brought down Pan Am 103? based on the material in Aljazeera’s new documentary.  It reads as follows:]

Evidence gathered for the aborted appeal against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's conviction points finger at Iran and Syrian-based terrorist group

In the 25 years that have passed since Pan Am 103 blew up in the sky over Lockerbie, one of the only facts that has remained uncontested is that a bomb concealed in a Samsonite suitcase exploded at 7.02pm on December 21, 1988, causing the loss of 270 lives.

From the day Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, the UK’s smallest police force, began investigating the country’s worst terrorist atrocity, the truth about who was responsible has been hidden by a fog of political agendas, conspiracy theories and unreliable evidence.

The 2001 conviction of the Libyan suspect Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, (and the acquittal of his co-defendant Khalifah Fhimah) only served to raise more questions than were answered.

Quite apart from a number of problems with the prosecution’s case was the question of who else took part in the plot. All sides agreed that Megrahi had not acted alone, even if he was guilty.

Yet some of the investigators who sifted through the wreckage of the Boeing 747 and studied intelligence dating from the months before the attack have never wavered in their belief that it was Iran, not Libya, that ordered it, and that a Syrian-based terrorist group executed it.

Now, following a three-year investigation by a team of documentary-makers working for Al Jazeera television, a new and compelling narrative has emerged, in which previously troublesome evidence suddenly fits together like the parts of a Swiss clock.

It begins in Malta nine months before the bombing and winds its way through Beirut, Frankfurt and London leaving a trail of evidence that pointed to Iran, before a phone call from George H W Bush to Margaret Thatcher allegedly switched the focus of the investigation to Libya.

In March 1988, intelligence officers from Iran, Syria and Libya met in the back room of a baker’s shop owned by Abdul Salaam, the head of the Malta cell of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).

They shared a common cause, and agreed to “join together in a campaign against Israeli and American targets”, according a witness who was at the meeting.

Classified US intelligence cables obtained by Al Jazeera suggest America was aware of the meeting. A Defence Intelligence Agency signal said that “Iran, Libya and Syria have signed a co-operation treaty for future terrorist acts”.

At that stage they did not have a specific target in mind, but three months later, on July 3, 1988, Iran’s hatred of America reached a new high after Iran Air flight 655 was shot down by the USS Vincennes, which was protecting merchant shipping in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war.

During a skirmish with Iranian gunboats the American warship mistook the Airbus A300 on its radar for a fighter jet, and fired two radar-guided missiles which downed the aircraft in the Strait of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children.

Iran’s leaders were convinced the aircraft had been shot down deliberately, and proclaimed that there would be “a real war against America”.

By the time the Iranian, Syrian and Libyan plotters next met in Malta in October 1988, their target was clear: to blow up an American airliner as payback for Flight 655.

A source who was present at the meetings was tracked down by Jessica de Grazia, a former Manhattan District Attorney who was hired by Megrahi’s defence team to explore alternative theories over the bombing. Her findings would have formed the basis of Megrahi’s appeal hearing, which he abandoned after he was released from Greenock prison in Scotland on compassionate grounds in 2009.

She said that among those present were “hard core terrorist combatants” trained in explosives, guns and military matters”.

One of those present was Mohammed Abu Talb, who headed the Swedish cell of PFLP-GC, and would later become one of the prime suspects in the Lockerbie bombing before the focus shifted to Megrahi.

Robert Baer, a CIA agent who investigated the Lockerbie bombing, told Al Jazeera that the PFLP-GC and Iran quickly became the main suspects.

He claims that six days after Flight 655 was downed by the USS Vincennes, at a meeting in Beirut representatives of the Iranian regime turned to Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian officer and head of the PFLP-GC, and tasked him with bringing down five American jets.

Jibril, who enjoyed the protection of the Syrian regime, had masterminded aircraft bombings in the past, and the DIA was aware of his mission.

According to another cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team: “The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmed Jibril…money was given to Jibril upfront in Damascus for initial expenses – the mission was to blow up a Pan Am flight.”

Jibril placed one of his most trusted deputies, a Palestinian PFLP-GC member called Hafez Dalkamoni, in charge of the terrorist cell, and he travelled to Germany to prepare the attack with Marwan Khreesat, an expert bomb-maker.

While Khreesat busied himself making his devices, Dalkamoni flew to Malta for another meeting in the baker’s shop. Also present was Abu Talb. Their presence in October 1988 was reported by a Maltese newspaper, tipped off that members of the PFLP-GC were in town.

According to the witness spoken to by Miss de Grazia, the meeting was convened to discuss how to get a bomb on board a US passenger jet.

Malta would also become key to the prosecution case against Megrahi, after the suitcase containing the Lockerbie bomb was found to contain clothes bought in a shop in Malta.

One of the key prosecution witnesses at Megrahi’s trial was Tony Gauchi [sic], owner of Mary’s House boutique, who identified Megrahi as buying clothes from him before the bombing. His evidence was later thrown into doubt after it emerged he had seen a picture of Megrahi in a magazine before he picked him out at an ID parade. He was also paid $2 million by the US Department of Justice.

On his deathbed, Megrahi said: “As God is my witness, I was never in that shop. This is the truth.”

Intriguingly, the papers assembled by Megrahi’s defence team for his aborted appeal show that before Megrahi was ever in the frame, Mr Gauchi identified another of his customers from a list of initial suspects. That man was Abu Talb, who bears a clear resemblance to an artist’s impression of a dark-skinned man with an afro hairstyle which was drawn from Mr Gauchi’s initial recollections.

So was Abu Talb, who Tony Gauchi said had bought clothes in his shop, the man who put the bomb on Pan Am 103?

According to the judges who found Megrahi guilty, the bomb was placed on a flight from Luqa airport in Malta to Frankfurt, and then transferred onto a feeder flight from Frankfurt to Heathrow, where it was finally transferred onto Pan Am 103. But there was another problem for the prosecution: they acknowledged that they had no evidence of Megrahi putting the bomb on board the Air Malta flight at Luqa.

John Bedford, a Heathrow baggage handler, told the Megrahi trial that after he took a tea break on the day of the bombing, he recalled seeing a brown hard-shell case on a cargo trolley that had not been there when he left. He saw the case an hour before the flight from Frankfurt landed at Heathrow. There had also been a break-in at Heathrow the night before: security guard Ray Manly told Megrahi's appeal that he found a padlock on a baggage store cut.

Cell leader Dalkamoni and bomb-maker Khreesat had been arrested by the time of the bombing, after German police rounded up terrorist suspects in two cities. But Talb was still at large.

When Talb was arrested until the following year over unrelated terrorist offences police who searched his home found clothing bought in Malta, circuitry and other potential bomb-making materials. For now, his exact role, if any, remains a mystery.

Dalkamoni and Khreesat had been kept under surveillance by German police, who were aware of their terrorist connections, and when the police raided 14 apartments in Frankfurt and Neuss in October 1988 the two men were among 17 suspects who were held.

The police discovered an arsenal of guns, grenades and explosives, and in the back of a Ford Cortina driven by Dalkamoni found a bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player.

The bomb was specifically designed to bring down an aircraft, as it had a barometric switch which would set off a timer when the aircraft reached a certain height. Its design had a striking peculiarity: the plastic explosives had been wrapped in silver foil from a Toblerone chocolate bar.

The German police found four bombs in total, but had reason to believe there had been five.

Was the fifth bomb placed on board Pan Am 103? Bomb fragments recovered from the crash site showed that the bomb had been concealed in a Toshiba radio cassette player identical to the one found in Germany.

Even more strikingly, the bomb fragments included tiny pieces of silver foil from a chocolate bar.

A German forensic officer told the Megrahi trial that the timer on the Lockerbie bomb was not switched on until seven minutes into the flight, suggesting a barometric switch had been used to set it off.

Despite so many pointers to Khreesat being the bomb-maker, he has never been charged over Lockerbie because the judges at the Megrahi trial said that there was “no evidence from which we could infer that [PFLP-GC] was involved in this particular act of terrorism”.

The suggestion of a barometric trigger did not fit the prosecution’s version of events, as they said Megrahi, the head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines, smuggled the bomb on board an Air Malta flight. But if a barometric switch had been used, the bomb would have detonated on take-off from Malta. Instead, the prosecution said the bomb was triggered at 31,000ft by a straightforward timer switch.

The forensic evidence against Megrahi depended on a tiny fragment of the bomb’s timer recovered from the crash site and said to be identical to a batch of 20 timers known to have been purchased by Libya.

But when Megrahi’s defence team obtained the bomb fragment and sent it to a metallurgist to be tested, he showed it was not one of the timers sold to Libya.

On December 5, 1988, a man with an Arab accent called the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, warning that a bomb would be planted on a Pan Am flight in two weeks time. Despite the warning, the bombers managed to smuggle their device on board Pan Am 103.

Another DIA cable obtained by Megrahi’s defence team stated that in early 1989 a cheque from the Iranian Central Bank was written out by an Iranian minister and handed to a middle-man who gave it to Ahmed Jibril. The pay-off was $11 million (£6.5m), according to former CIA agent Robert Baer.

When Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary began its investigation into the bombing, it believed the PFLP-GC was involved. A report written in 1989 by Supt Pat Connor identified 15 members of the organisation he wanted arrested and questioned, and the then Transport Minister Paul Channon invited selected journalists to an off-the-record briefing to set out the case against Iran and the PFLP-GC, adding that arrests were imminent.

But by the middle of 1989 the investigation had suddenly changed tack, reportedly following a phone call between President George H W Bush and Baroness Thatcher in March 1989. The two leaders, it is claimed, were anxious not to antagonize the PFLP-GC’s guardian, Syria - a key strategic power in the Middle East - and decided that Libya, which had taken part in the meetings in Malta, should be the focus of the investigation.

The following year Syria joined forces with the US and Britain to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait during the Gulf War.

Mr Baer said the FBI began investigating Libya “in complete disregard to the intelligence” and suggested Libya’s pariah status made it a convenient scapegoat.

Al Jazeera tracked down alleged bomb-maker Khreesat to Amman in Jordan, where he is kept under surveillance by Jordanian intelligence. He refused to discuss the affair on camera but a source close to him later told Al Jazeera that the attack had indeed been commissioned by Iran and that the bomb was put on board at Heathrow.

Abu Talb now lives in Sweden, having been released from prison four years ago following a 20-year sentence for unrelated terrorist acts. His son said he had “nothing to do with Lockerbie”.

For the families of the Lockerbie victims, the wait for the truth goes on.

Lockerbie: What Really Happened? is on Al Jazeera English at 8pm on Tuesday, March 11, Freeview 83, Sky 514.  

[An accompanying article in the same newspaper is headlined Lockerbie bombing: profiles of the men who were implicated before Libya took the blame; another is headlined Lockerbie bombing 'was work of Iran not Libya', says former [Iranian] spy.

A Press Association news agency report published on the Sunday Post website reads as follows:]

The Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Iran in retaliation for a US strike on an Iranian passenger plane, a documentary has claimed.

Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is the only person to be convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in which 270 people were killed more than 25 years ago. 

Megrahi, who was released from jail by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with prostate cancer, died in 2012 protesting his innocence and h is family plan to appeal against his conviction.

But former Iranian intelligence officer Abolghassem Mesbahi has told an Al Jazeera documentary that the bombing was ordered by Tehran and carried out by the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) in retaliation for a US navy strike on an Iranian commercial jet six months earlier, in which 290 people died.

The US ship apparently mistook the plane for an F-14 fighter jet.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Mr Mesbahi said: "Iran decided to retaliate as soon as possible. The decision was made by the whole system in Iran and confirmed by Ayatollah Khomeini.

"The target of the Iranian decision makers was to copy exactly what's happened to the Iranian Airbus. Everything exactly same, minimum 290 people dead. This was the target of the Iranian decision makers."

US Defence Intelligence Agency cables at the time reported that the leader of the PFLP-GC had been paid to plan the bombing, the broadcaster said.

The Crown Office has previously said the alleged involvement of the PFLP-GC was addressed at the original Lockerbie trial.

A successful application from Megrahi's family to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission could start the third appeal into the conviction.

Megrahi lost his first appeal in 2002, one year after he was found guilty of mass murder and jailed for life.

The SCCRC recommended in 2007 that Megrahi should be granted a second appeal against his conviction. He dropped his appeal two days before being released from prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds.

In December, the Libyan attorney general announced he had appointed two prosecutors to work on the case. For the first time they met Scottish and US investigators who are trying to establish whether there are other individuals in Libya who could be brought to trial for involvement in the attack.