IRA supplier named as ‘Lockerbie mastermind’

[This is the headline over a report published (behind the paywall) in today’s edition of The Times. It reads in part:]

A Libyan intelligence officer who helped supply the IRA with explosives in the 1980s is suspected of being the mastermind of the Lockerbie bomb plot.

A TV documentary to be aired this week in the US claims that Nasser Ali Ashour, who was the link between the IRA and the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, led the group responsible for the attack. He is among eight suspects sought by Scottish prosecutors, of whom only three are believed to be alive.

Last week, The Times reported that one, Abu Agila Mas’ud, believed to have manufactured the bomb, was being held in a Libyan prison, accused of unrelated charges. Another, Abdullah al-Senussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, has been sentenced to death in Libya.

The documentary, part of the PBS TV programme Frontline, is the work of Ken Dornstein, whose brother David died when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in December 1988.

Ashour’s name has long been known to British intelligence. When a cargo ship, the Eksund, was captured by French customs in 1987, and found to be carrying Semtex explosives and weapons bound for Ireland, its captain named Ashour as the Libyan operative who had supervised the loading of the cargo in Tripoli.

Later he emerged as the senior intelligence officer who supervised the return to Libya of members of the Libyan embassy after the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in London in 1984.

Mr Dornstein has uncovered evidence that allegedly ties Ashour to the plot. The CIA also had him in their sights. He was interviewed by investigators after the bombing and although he denied any involvement, he was revealed in CIA cables to have travelled to Malta before the bomb was loaded on to a flight that linked to PanAm 103. [RB: But as Dr Morag Kerr has conclusively demonstrated in Adequately Explained by Stupidity?: Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies, the bomb suitcase was already in the Heathrow luggage container AVE4041 before any luggage from the relevant Malta flight could have arrived from Frankfurt.]

Ashour was accompanying the only man convicted of the bombing, Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi.

A letter passed to the CIA by Edwin Bollier, a Swiss businessman who supplied the bomb timer to the Libyans and was a witness at al-Megrahi’s trial, includes Ashour’s telephone number.

Ashour was named in the Lockerbie judgment as head of operations in the Jamahiriya Security Organisation, the Libyan secret service under Colonel Gaddafi. He was said to have bought the timers from Bollier. One was later found at the Lockerbie site.

“Ashour is the most significant person who got away,” said Mr Dornstein.

“He has a history of supplying Semtex explosives. Edwin Bollier in his FBI statement in 1991 said that if he had to name the person who he thought was the prime suspect in the [Lockerbie] bombing, it would be Nasser Ashour.”

Ashour, whose whereabouts are unknown, was also a close colleague of another senior Libyan intelligence officer, Said Rashid, who died of a heart attack before he could be questioned. Rashid’s widow, who spoke to Mr Dornstein, said that she had always suspected that he had been involved in the bomb plot. (...)

A spokesman for the Lord Advocate said: “The Crown Office is aware of this individual. Evidence in relation to him featured at the original trial of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi at Camp Zeist.”

[RB: Ken Dornstein's revelations are not new. They have been circulating since the US State Department distributed in April 1992 its notorious (and now deleted) Briefing Note on Lockerbie. Details can be found on this blog here and here.

A further article by Mr Linklater in the same newspaper is headed One man's mission to find Lockerbie bombers.]

Giaka's second day in witness box

[On this date in 2000, Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka spent his second day in the witness box at the Lockerbie trial. What follows is the contemporaneous report published on TheLockerbieTrial.com:]

The Crown's star witness returned to the witness box today for a continuation of the defence counsel's attacks started yesterday by William Taylor QC for Megrahi. Today he was branded a "liar" and as a desperate man who made "incredible" claims to his CIA paymasters.

Giaka was accused by both Richard Keen QC for Fhimah and Taylor of fabricating crucial evidence to stay on with the CIA when it became clear that they were about to ditch him.

William Taylor said that two years after the Lockerbie bombing, CIA telegrams revealed Giaka was a "shattered" man who desperately needed to come up with new information for his CIA handlers.

He suggested Giaka offered new information within hours of a make-or-break meeting with the CIA and US Department of Justice officials.

The Americans, he suggested were saying "come up with something and the future is rosy, come up with nothing and you're cut off without a penny."

The court heard, that only then did Giaka say he saw one of the defendants with a suitcase like the one which contained the bomb, a "fact" that he had failed to mention in his previous two years as a CIA informer.

The defence team also highlighted the bizarre claims Giaka made to the CIA about Libyan leader Colonel Qadafi being a freemason. In one episode, more reminiscent of a farce than a Scottish murder trial, Richard Keen QC asked Giaka about some of the "incredible" claims he had made to the CIA.

Keen said Giaka had told his CIA handlers and the US Grand Jury that he was a relative of King Idris of Libya and that Colonel Qadafi was involved in an international Masonic conspiracy.

The question: "How did you discover that Colonel Gadaffi is a mason?" was put to Giaka six times.

Giaka repeatedly asked Keen for the source of his question before Lord Sutherland intervened and ordered Giaka to answer the question.

"The person is in Libya and for security considerations I can't mention the name of that person" replied Giaka.

Mr Keen asked how Giaka knew the president of Malta and the Libyan foreign minister were also masons, and Giaka said he did not remember.

"Do you remember suggesting that they were somehow conspiring together as masons over a political matter," said Mr Keen.

"I don't recall," replied Giaka.

"It's such a strange accusation to make that it would surely stick in your memory," responded Keen.

Later in his testimony responding to more awkward cross-examination, Giaka said, "I was not given any offer to act as a witness or any other offer. They did not try to buy me off."

"You also told the Americans that you were a relative of King Idris, the last king of Libya."

Giaka said he had never made this claim, suggesting the comment might have arisen from a translation error during an interview with CIA agents.

Keen pressed on, "Mr Giaka, you are a liar, aren't you? You tell big lies and you tell small lies, but you lie, do you not?"

Giaka said, "I do not lie about anything."

Secret cables revealed the CIA were disappointed with the information Giaka had given them into the Libyan intelligence service, said Taylor.

American agents reported Giaka was pressing them to boost his $1,000 per month CIA pay by $500 and was becoming "desperate" as he struggled to find himself a new role in life after leaving the Libyan secret service.

He even asked the CIA to give him $2,000 so he could import bananas from Malta to Libya and make a large profit, said one CIA telegram.

William Taylor said none of the scores of CIA documents about Giaka in the two years after the bombing mentioned his account of seeing defendant Fhimah collect a brown Samsonite suitcase from the luggage carousel at Malta airport and walking out without it being checked by Customs.

Taylor went on: "There's no mention of any incident like the one you described involving a brown Samsonite suitcase in the CIA cables at all. There is a deafening silence on this."

Taylor said Giaka requested an emergency meeting with the Americans on July 13, 1991, and met them on a US warship off Malta, when the CIA was going to decide whether to retain his services.

"Lo and behold, the deafening silence ends the very next day when you come up with a brown Samsonite suitcase and this rubbish about Customs," said Taylor.

"The very next day is the first mention by you, Giaka, of these matters."

Giaka replied that the American officials were very good investigators who could distinguish between truth and lies.

Comment

After day two of the testimony of the Libyan informer, Abdul Giaka, the Crown must be breathing a sigh of relief that tomorrow will be his last day in the witness box.

The court was once again treated to the "evidence" of the crown star witness and it plumbed new depths in terms of Giaka's bizarre statements of high level Masonic conspiracy.

The very mention of Freemasonry in court today must have set several hearts fluttering as it is a well known fact that Freemasonry can count many lawyers amongst its brethren.

It was clear from Giaka's demeanour that he was ill prepared for the cross-examination he is undergoing. Although it is common practice to coach witnesses with mock cross-examination, a number of questions put to Giaka seemed to throw him. This suggests either that his coaching by the Department of Justice was not as thorough it might have been or that they were completely outmanoeuvred by Taylor and Keen.

It now appears that the US Department of Justice is downplaying the importance of Giaka as a witness, as they told one American relative today that the Crown had "done enough to secure convictions, without Giaka." This of course is a complete reversal of the mantra coming from Washington and Edinburgh for years.

Many relatives have been putting very awkward questions to the DOJ today regarding what they see as evidence from Giaka which has been very unhelpful to the Crown's case.

[A verbatim transcript of Giaka’s evidence can be found here.]

Libyan defector Giaka in the witness box

[On this date in 2000, the Crown’s “star witness” Abdul Majid Giaka started his evidence at the Lockerbie trial. TheLockerbieTrial.com reported as follows:]

Witness number 684, Abdul Majid Giaka, today finally stepped into the witness box at the Lockerbie Trial. His appearance at the trial had been delayed due to legal wrangling over CIA cables.

Today the accused Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, the two Libyans charged with bombing Pan Am 103 came face to face once gain with the man billed by the Scottish Crown and the US Department of Justice as the star witness.

In a surprisingly brief and low key examination, Giaka was questioned by Advocate Depute Alistair Campbell QC, for the Crown.

Giaka said he contacted the US embassy in Malta in August 1988 (four months before the Pan Am attack) after becoming disillusioned with the Libyan security service. He stated that he had worked with the accused, for Libyan Arab Airlines and agreed to stay on at the airport and report to

the CIA monthly.

Earlier reports of these meetings show that while he was acting as a double agent his CIA handlers were not impressed with the quality of his information and were continually asking him for new material.

Giaka told the court that in August 1986, more than two years before the Lockerbie bombing, Fhimah showed him two bricks of what he said was the explosive TNT.

The TNT was in the drawer of a desk in an office they shared with another airline employee.

“Fhimah told me he had had 10 kg of TNT delivered by Abdel Basset (Megrahi). He opened the drawer and there were two boxes which contained a yellowish material,” Giaka said, adding Fhimah kept over $10,000 worth of travelers cheques.

The court referred to a CIA document dated October 5, 1988, in which Giaka recounted how the story of the explosives in the drawer had been relayed to CIA officers.

Continuing his testimony Giaka said Megrahi arrived in Malta from Tripoli on December 7, 1988, and had brought some cabin luggage with him. Two to three weeks later, Giaka said he saw Fhimah and Megrahi take a brown hard-shell suitcase off the carousel at Luqa.

Giaka said," They walked together toward customs. The suitcase was not opened for inspection.”

The witness then recounted another story where he remembered being asked by another Libyan Intelligence officer if it was possible to put an unaccompanied bag on a UK plane.

“My answer was that it was possible to place an unaccompanied bag on the flight,” Giaka said.

William Taylor QC for Megrahi then launched into a fierce cross-examination of Giaka forcing the Crown's star witness in to making several contradictory statements. Taylor was to prove relentless in his onslaught and during questioning, when Giaka would occasionally look over in the direction of the two US lawyers [RB: Brian Murtagh and Dana Biehl] who sit behind the Crown team, Taylor reminded him that they could not help.

Taylor had earlier objected to some of Giaka's testimony, calling it “tittle tattle and hearsay.”

“We’ll see many, many more examples of a story becoming embellished and changed to make it look better,” Taylor said as he highlighted more inconsistencies in Giaka's testimony.

Taylor will continue with his cross-examination followed by Richard Keen QC for Fhimah.

[A verbatim transcript of Giaka’s evidence can be found here.]

Pan Am-style tribunal mooted for MH17

[This is the headline over a report published today on the website of Australia’s 9News. It reads in part:]

Nations seeking justice over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 could form a tribunal similar to that established to prosecute Libyan suspects over the 1998 bombing of a Pan Am flight over Scotland.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says nations affected by the MH17 disaster were also considering separate prosecutions.

The Malaysia Airlines flight was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed over eastern Ukraine in July last year, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

A report by the Dutch led investigation team, set to be published on October 13, is understood to include evidence the plane was brought down by a Russian-made Buk missile fired from separatist territory in eastern Ukraine.

Russia has denied any involvement but in July used its veto power at the UN to block a resolution that would have formed a tribunal to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Ms Bishop, in an interview with The New York Times, said a core group of aggrieved nations had since "narrowed the options".

"This is the ‘what's next’," Ms Bishop said.

The foreign minister said a court, which does not require UN approval, could be established through a treaty by all of the countries that lost citizens and residents.

Ms Bishop said the closest analogy to such jurisdiction was the Scottish panel established in the Netherlands to prosecute Libyan suspects after the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, which killed 270 people.

Representatives from some of the affected nations would meet in New York next week to consider their options.

Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine are expected to meet next Tuesday during the annual General Assembly meeting of world leaders for further talks.

"There are a number of permutations, and I can assure you there are a number of international criminal lawyers who are working on this," Ms Bishop said.

[A further report on the Europe Online website can be read here.]

Interpol agent thought Lockerbie attributable to Iran

[What follows is the text of an article headlined Evidence plea to Lockerbie inquiry that was published on the website of The Journal on this date in 2006:]

The father of one of the Lockerbie bomb victims yesterday urged investigators to consider new evidence which could help clear the man convicted of the atrocity.

Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was jailed for 27 years following the 1988 disaster, when 270 people died as an American passenger plane blew up over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

An appeal ... is due to be heard towards the end of the year. [RB: The appeal did not in fact start until 28 April 2009.]

A previous appeal against the conviction was refused in 2002.

The new development in the case comes with the publication of a book by a British diplomat's wife, journalist and author Brigid Keenan.

Ms Keenan and her husband Alan Waddams are said to have had dinner with an ex-Interpol agent during which the agent claimed the bombing was carried out to avenge the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by the US five months earlier.

He alleged that the bombers knew the plane's cargo would go unchecked because of a drug smuggling agreement between the US and a terror group linked to Lebanon.

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter, Flora, in the disaster, said he has written to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to alert them to the alleged meeting in Gambia.

[RB: Further details about the Brigid Keenan story can be found on this blog here.]

Iran, not Libya, said US Defense Intelligence Agency

[What follows is excerpted from an item posted on this blog on 23 August 2009:]

It took the use of the US Freedom of Information Act to unlock the full intelligence documents which are now highlighted in the appeal submission. [RB: This refers to the appeal abandoned by Megrahi prior to his compassionate release.]

They show memos from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) which suggested the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people in 1988, was in response to the shooting down of an Iranian Airbus by the American warship USS Vincennes five months earlier.

In a memo dated September 24, 1989, and reproduced in the appeal submission, the DIA states: ‘The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, Iran’s former interior minister.

‘The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmad [Jibril], Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command [PFLP-GC] leader, for a sum of $1million [£600,000].

‘$100,000 of this money was given to Jibril up front in Damascus by the Iranian ambassador to Sy [Syria], Muhammed Hussan [Akhari] for initial expenses.

'The remainder of the money was to be paid after successful completion of the mission.’ (...)

The memos and reports, denied in full to the original trial, were available to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission which, two years ago, cast doubt on the safety of Megrahi’s conviction based on six separate counts of the legal argument.

Their view opened the way for a second appeal.

[What follows is an excerpt from Dr Davina Miller’s article Who Knows About This? Western Policy Towards Iran: The Lockerbie Case:]

On 24 September 1989, the US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), in a secret information report not releasable to foreign nationals and relying on information acquired through the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade (ie through Foreign Signals Intelligence), asserted that the attack on Pan Am Flight 103, “was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar (Mohtashemi-Pur)”, the former Iranian Minister of the Interior. The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmad (Jabri’il), the PFLP-GC leader, for the sum of $1,000,000. The report was highly detailed in describing the organisation of the bombing and claimed that, “the flight was supposed to be a direct flight from Frankfurt to New York, not Pan Am Flight 103”.[xxxii][32]

In October 1989, a further DIA report noted that Iranian “radicals want to be able to retaliate in less time than it took them to carry out the Pan Am 103 bombing”.[xxxiii][33] The CIA’s ‘Terrorism Review’ for 14 December 1989 also noted that liaison between Iran and radical Palestinian groups “was most likely responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103”.[xxxiv][34]

The Defence Intelligence Agency in a brief in December 1989, titled “Pan Am 103: Deadly Co-operation” argued that, “Iran probably was the state sponsor for the PFLP-GC attack on Pan Am 103”. The same report noted:  that the bomb was “a sophisticated, barometrically triggered explosive device probably fabricated by the PFLP-GC”; that “DIA believes the device was placed aboard...in Frankfurt”; and that, “analysis of material confiscated from this PFLP-GC cell has provided strong circumstantial evidence linking the cell to the bombing”. The report further detailed the relationship between Iran and the PFLP-GC, including the initial overtures, payment for Pan Am 103, and the latter’s exploitation of Iran’s “established terror network in Europe”.[xxxv][35]

[xxxii][32]  Defence Intelligence Agency, Information Report, 24 September 1989, http://www.dia.mil/foia/panam103.pdf, 18 March 2010

[xxxiii][33]  Defence Intelligence Agency, Information Report, 7 October 1989, http://www.dia.mil/foia/panam103.pdf, 18 March 2010.

[xxxiv][34]  Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence, Terrorism Review, 14 December 1989, http://www.foia.cia.gov/browse_docs_full.asp, 19 March 2010.

[xxxv][35]  Defence Intelligence Agency, Defence Intelligence Brief, ‘Pan Am 103: Deadly Co-operation’, December 1989, http:/www.dia.mil/foia/panam103.pdf, 18 March 2010.

[RB: These links are now broken, but were operative on 13 December 2011 when I first posted extracts from Dr Miller’s article.]

Investigator whose brother died at Lockerbie has a prime suspect

[This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater published (behind the paywall) in today’s edition of The Times. It reads as follows:]

By any standards, Ken Dornstein’s investigation is remarkable. The death of his brother David in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 led to a lifetime obsession with discovering the identity of the perpetrators.

Just one man — Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi — has been convicted of the atrocity. But Mr Dornstein knew that there must have been others behind the attack, and that someone must have manufactured the bomb. He set about interviewing anybody and everybody who knew anything about the case.

He has travelled three times to Libya, interviewed the widow of one of the suspects, and accompanied Jim Swire, whose daughter was also killed, on a trip to see al-Megrahi.

In the course of his inquiries, Mr Dornstein met Kathryn Geismar, who had dated his brother for two years. They fell in love and are now married.

In order to aid his investigation, he took a job at a detective agency. His career has been as an investigative reporter for the PBS television show Frontline, working on programmes about Iraq and Afghanistan. But his real obsession has been the Lockerbie story.

He travelled to Scotland, interviewed Scottish investigators and located the exact spot where David’s body had landed. In 2006 he published a book, The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky. The book explores his drive to investigate. “I had found a less painful way to miss my brother, by not missing him at all, just trying to document what happened to his body,” he says.

The New Yorker article that documents his search reports that one room of his house in Somerville, Massachusetts, is lined with books about espionage, aviation, terrorism and the Middle East. Another is papered with mugshots of Libyan suspects. Between the two rooms is a large map of Lockerbie, with hundreds of coloured pins indicating where the bodies had fallen.

He has examined all the “counter-theories” which maintain that al-Megrahi was wrongly convicted and that Libya was not involved, but has found no hard evidence to support them. [RB: No hard evidence to support them? The metallurgy discrepancy between PT35b and the timers supplied to Libya? Dr Morag Kerr’s irrefutable demonstration that the bomb was already in luggage container AVE4041 before the transfer baggage arrived from Frankfurt?] Instead, he has focused on tracking down those in Libya who may still be able to cast light on the origins of the plot.

In the course of his inquiries he has made a friend of Mr Swire. He continues to maintain that al-Megrahi was inncocent, but respects Mr Dornstein’s determination to get at the truth, and does not rule out a Libyan connection. Scottish prosecutors gave Mr Dornstein a list of eight prime suspects.

Some of them are dead, some – like Abdullah al-Senussi, Colonel Gaddafi’s former head of intelligence – have been sentenced to execution.

That did not prevent the American from travelling three times to Libya. In the course of one visit he met the widow of Badri Hassan, one of the men on the suspect list, who had died of a heart attack. The New Yorker reports that over several meetings at her family home, she told Mr Dornstein of her long-standing suspicion that her husband had been involved in Lockerbie. She had asked him about it repeatedly, but he had never confessed. “I’m absolutely sure of it,” she said, adding, when she learnt that Mr Dornstein’s brother had been on the plane: “Badri left behind such suffering.”

Mr Dornstein’s prime suspect, Abu Agila Masud, is alive, and serving a ten- year sentence in prison. Libya today, however, is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Even an investigator as intrepid as Mr Dornstein does not feel that it is fair to himself or his family to travel there again and take that final risk.

[A further article by Mr Linklater in the same newspaper can be read here.]

Anniversary of Megrahi's SCCRC application

[What follows is the text of a report published on the Sky News website on this date in 2003:]

Lawyers for the Libyan agent jailed for the Lockerbie bombing have applied for a review of his conviction.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has received an application from solicitors acting for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.

Al Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of the murder of the 259 passengers and crew on board Pan Am flight PA 103 from London to New York, and 11 residents of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988.

The commission is an independent body set up in 1999 to consider alleged miscarriages of justice in Scottish courts. It can decide whether it is in the interests of justice to refer the case to the Appeal Court for a fresh appeal to be considered.

A previous appeal was unsuccessful.

Al Megrahi's solicitor, Eddie MacKechnie, said there was new evidence never mentioned before included in the team's case, but he refused to give details.

"I do not consider it to be appropriate to publicise, in advance of the commission's deliberations, any precise details of the case now presented," he said.

"All I can say is that the case contains detailed legal arguments not previously presented, including allegations of unfairness, abuse of process, insufficiency of evidence, errors in law, non-disclosure of evidence and defective representation.

"In addition, there is new information and potential new evidence never revealed before supporting Mr Megrahi's consistent plea of innocence and, in certain respects, pointing the finger of blame at those most likely to bear responsibility for the most dreadful mass murder in British history."

[The SCCRC eventually, on 28 June 2007, reported that, on six grounds, Megrahi’s conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice. A contemporaneous article by me can be read here. The SCCRC’s full report (at least so far as not withheld for “national security” reasons) can be accessed here.]