[This is the heading over a lengthy and important recent post on the Ed's Blog City weblog. Reproduced below is the bulk of the text of the post.]
Since the release of the Dutch TV documentary, "Lockerbie:Revisted", a number of curious unexplained inconsistencies in the accounts given by many of those who led the investigation have remained unchallenged. Officially anyway. The documentary maker Gideon Levy asked a number of important questions, crucial to the investigation and pivotal to the whole case, which were quite clearly not satisfactorily answered. Even more astounding, given the position and power of those in the investigation, some of the answers given by those entrusted to find those guilty of the bombing in 1988 directly conflicted with one another.
Mr Levy's first unexplained question relates to the PFLP-GC cell which was exposed by the German BKA and who's members were arrested in Neuss, Germany in October 1988, two months before the Pan Am bombing. They had been discovered with an array of weapons including a radio cassette manipulated into a bomb designed specifically for targeting aircraft. The key member of this group Marwan Khreesat, seemingly known to be the bomb maker, and part of a group planning on attacking American targets, was inexplicably released without charge and was thought to have left Germany for Jordan. After the bombing over Lockerbie, and it was determined that the bomb had been concealed in a radio cassette player, naturally suspicion focussed on the cell that had been exposed in Germany.
Lord Fraser, the former Lord Advocate entrusted in leading the investigation into the bombing, claims that the Scottish authorities were never given the opportunity to question Khreesat at any point with regard to any connection or knowledge about the Lockerbie bombing. Mr Khresat's involvement with the PFLP group and yet subsequent release can only be explained by deducing he was involved with very powerful individuals with the capability of securing such a release, and we can only conclude that the chance to question him was denied due to Khreesat's complex and unclear association with various intelligence and government agencies.
Richard Marquise, head of the FBI investigative team, states that he does not know why Khreesat was released by the Germans, and it is a matter Mr Levy should take up with the German government to clarify. Mr Marquise considers an explanation may be that Khreesat was working for the Palestinian group, as a bomb maker targeting US trains, bases and aircraft, but was also involved with the Jordanian intelligence services who enabled his release from Germany. Lord Fraser however, suggests that the only plausible explanation was that Khreesat was working for the Palestinian group while also involved with US intelligence therefore facilitating his release from Germany and proving someone who the Scottish authorities could not gain access to interview.
This in itself seems a disturbing chain of events and assumptions by those investigating the bombing of 103, and even more inexplicable to those who expect honest endeavour when seeking truth and justice from the investigators, especially given the nature of Khreesat's activities in Germany and his apparent history of expertise in bomb making. This cynicism is merely strengthened when Mr Fraser had stated unequivocally that neither he nor the Scottish prosecutors had ever gained access, despite repeated attempts, "they (the PFLP-GC cell) had simply disappeared", to interview Khreesat, while Mr Marquise seems quite indifferent to the fact that the German authorities had simply released a man of extremely dubious background clearly engaged in activities to cause serious harm to American citizens and institutions.
Mr Marquise does however state that to his knowledge Scottish prosecutors did in fact interview Khreesat, as did the FBI in 1989, clearly contradicting Lord Fraser's position, and that Scottish investigators were happy to accept Khreesat's word during an interview that he knew nothing of the Lockerbie bombing. That a key figure such as Khreesat, the man that according to Mr Marquise was "building the bombs", with the motive, method and capability of attacking US targets, and whether investigators had interviewed him or not, is not conclusively known to either of the two people leading the investigation, is simply incomprehensible.
Mr Levy then enquires about the possibilty of financial payments made to witnesses before, during or subsequent to the trial at Zeist in Holland where Al-Megrahi was found guilty. Inducement had been made to the public by the US authorities to "Give up these terrorists, and we'll give you upto $4 million" by the way of posters with photographs of the two Libyans, and presumably, naturally, by those investigating while interviewing suspects or witnesses. Even if not explicitly offered to those potential witnesses by investigators, the witnesses would be well aware of the financial reward that was available for the successful conviction of the two Libyan's.
Both Lord Fraser and Mr Marquise deny any financial reward, as promised in the posters and adverts issued, was made before or during the trial. However, while Lord Fraser is unaware of any payment subsequent to the trial, Mr Marquise will not comment. The only implication that can be made from this is that the reward offered before the trial and during the investigation was indeed paid to some witnesses after the trial. Any financial reward or inducement to those providing statements would surely render any testimony or information as lacking credibility and does not enhance the supposed search for 'truth' when life changing amounts of money are used as enticement.
So concerned with the implication of rewards to witnesses that Lord Fraser is reluctant to even comment on the suggestion that money was paid to witnesses after the trial without his knowledge.
The focus of the documentary then turns to the most pivotal and crucial piece of evidence found during the investigation and presented at the trial in Zeist. The fragment of microchip discovered 6 months (although the exact period has been disputed) after the disaster, and determined to be the most significant piece of evidence linking the bomb to a Swiss timer manufacturer who had links to Megrahi and Libya.
This particular piece of evidence, the microchip fragment, already somewhat controversial given the unexplained altering of the labels on evidence bags containing the 'charred' fragments, was examined and concluded had originated with the Swiss company called 'Mebo'. They had supplied these timers, it was claimed, to Libya, and Megrahi with his connections and dealings with Mebo, had used this timer in constructing the bomb which he then placed on a flight in Malta, later finding it's way onto the Pan Am flight from Heathrow.
Now it seems, neither Lord Fraser or Mr Marquise can conclusively explain who exactly made this identification of the timer fragment, and where this identification was made. In the UK or in Washington? By Mr Thurman or Mr Feraday? The fragment itself, or as part of the larger circuit board from where the fragment came? By photograph or the actual fragment?
Mr Marquise is certain that this evidence was transported from the UK to the US, and taken to the FBI labs in Washington, by a member of RARDE, thought to be Alan Feraday were the identification was made. The photograph of the tiny piece of fragment of the microchip (evidence PT35b) on a persons finger is claimed to be that of Thomas Thurman of the FBI, who was also the scientist who uncovered the microchips origin and connection to the circuit board made by Mebo. He claims in Mr Levy's film that the microchip was "brought over by UK authorities" to the United States were identification was made, and was conclusively re-identified in the UK by RARDE (Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment).
However, once again there are contradictions in the accounts given. Lord Fraser is adamant that no evidence recovered from the Pan Am debris has ever left his authority or the UK mainland. This would have compromised the whole investigation and could have resulted in accusations of manipulation and, or, contamination of any evidence purity. Detective Chief Supt Mr Stuart Henderson, head of the UK police investigation, also states that the evidence relating to Pan Am 103, any evidence, but specifically the fragment of microchip, never left the UK mainland, but in actual fact the US investigators and the FBI had travelled to the UK to identify the fragment at RARDE with Mr Feraday.
When the public are asked to trust the integrity of those we commend with providing the truth and justice our democratic society demands, expectations can be, on occasion, somewhat unrealistic. Especially when dealing with highly complex issues of international politics, international crimes of nation states and multi-national business corporations. The public however, do expect a genuine and honest search for these truths, and those we charge with this responsibility to fulfil those simplest and most honourable tasks to have carried out their duty, with conscience and integrity.
Those who died over Lockerbie, and the families of the victims deserve at least this. With the pain of a lost loved one however, the relatives of those who died have also had to endure the persistent inaccuracies, the constant contradictions, and the inexplicable decisions taken with respect to those who carried out the atrocity and how their government failed in their loved ones protection. Not by those who wish to seek conspiracies were there are none, and not by those who have ulterior motives for continuing to ask questions. But by the very investigators, police, professionals, experts, lawyers and those in power entrusted with upholding their faith in human kind and seeking justice in the supposed democratic nation we live in today. For those fundamental expectations and hopes are diminished with every conflicting statement, every unexplained area of the investigation, and every inscrutable and unaccountable decision taken by those with power in relation to finding the true perpetrators who organised and carried out the crime over Lockerbie in 1988.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Marwan Khreesat. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Marwan Khreesat. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday 23 June 2009
Thursday 22 June 2017
Inconsistencies and contradictions of Lockerbie
[This is part of the heading over a lengthy item posted on this date in 2009 on the Ed's Blog City website. Reproduced below is the bulk of the text of the post.]
Since the release of the Dutch TV documentary, Lockerbie: Revisted, a number of curious unexplained inconsistencies in the accounts given by many of those who led the investigation have remained unchallenged. Officially anyway. The documentary maker Gideon Levy asked a number of important questions, crucial to the investigation and pivotal to the whole case, which were quite clearly not satisfactorily answered. Even more astounding, given the position and power of those in the investigation, some of the answers given by those entrusted to find those guilty of the bombing in 1988 directly conflicted with one another.
Mr Levy's first unexplained question relates to the PFLP-GC cell which was exposed by the German BKA and who's members were arrested in Neuss, Germany in October 1988, two months before the Pan Am bombing. They had been discovered with an array of weapons including a radio cassette manipulated into a bomb designed specifically for targeting aircraft. The key member of this group Marwan Khreesat, seemingly known to be the bomb maker, and part of a group planning on attacking American targets, was inexplicably released without charge and was thought to have left Germany for Jordan. After the bombing over Lockerbie, and it was determined that the bomb had been concealed in a radio cassette player, naturally suspicion focussed on the cell that had been exposed in Germany.
Lord Fraser, the former Lord Advocate entrusted in leading the investigation into the bombing, claims that the Scottish authorities were never given the opportunity to question Khreesat at any point with regard to any connection or knowledge about the Lockerbie bombing. Mr Khresat's involvement with the PFLP group and yet subsequent release can only be explained by deducing he was involved with very powerful individuals with the capability of securing such a release, and we can only conclude that the chance to question him was denied due to Khreesat's complex and unclear association with various intelligence and government agencies.
Richard Marquise, head of the FBI investigative team, states that he does not know why Khreesat was released by the Germans, and it is a matter Mr Levy should take up with the German government to clarify. Mr Marquise considers an explanation may be that Khreesat was working for the Palestinian group, as a bomb maker targeting US trains, bases and aircraft, but was also involved with the Jordanian intelligence services who enabled his release from Germany. Lord Fraser however, suggests that the only plausible explanation was that Khreesat was working for the Palestinian group while also involved with US intelligence therefore facilitating his release from Germany and proving someone who the Scottish authorities could not gain access to interview.
This in itself seems a disturbing chain of events and assumptions by those investigating the bombing of 103, and even more inexplicable to those who expect honest endeavour when seeking truth and justice from the investigators, especially given the nature of Khreesat's activities in Germany and his apparent history of expertise in bomb making. This cynicism is merely strengthened when Mr Fraser had stated unequivocally that neither he nor the Scottish prosecutors had ever gained access, despite repeated attempts, "they (the PFLP-GC cell) had simply disappeared", to interview Khreesat, while Mr Marquise seems quite indifferent to the fact that the German authorities had simply released a man of extremely dubious background clearly engaged in activities to cause serious harm to American citizens and institutions.
Mr Marquise does however state that to his knowledge Scottish prosecutors did in fact interview Khreesat, as did the FBI in 1989, clearly contradicting Lord Fraser's position, and that Scottish investigators were happy to accept Khreesat's word during an interview that he knew nothing of the Lockerbie bombing. That a key figure such as Khreesat, the man that according to Mr Marquise was "building the bombs", with the motive, method and capability of attacking US targets, and whether investigators had interviewed him or not, is not conclusively known to either of the two people leading the investigation, is simply incomprehensible.
Mr Levy then enquires about the possibilty of financial payments made to witnesses before, during or subsequent to the trial at Zeist in Holland where Al-Megrahi was found guilty. Inducement had been made to the public by the US authorities to "Give up these terrorists, and we'll give you upto $4 million" by the way of posters with photographs of the two Libyans, and presumably, naturally, by those investigating while interviewing suspects or witnesses. Even if not explicitly offered to those potential witnesses by investigators, the witnesses would be well aware of the financial reward that was available for the successful conviction of the two Libyan's.
Both Lord Fraser and Mr Marquise deny any financial reward, as promised in the posters and adverts issued, was made before or during the trial. However, while Lord Fraser is unaware of any payment subsequent to the trial, Mr Marquise will not comment. The only implication that can be made from this is that the reward offered before the trial and during the investigation was indeed paid to some witnesses after the trial. Any financial reward or inducement to those providing statements would surely render any testimony or information as lacking credibility and does not enhance the supposed search for 'truth' when life changing amounts of money are used as enticement.
So concerned with the implication of rewards to witnesses that Lord Fraser is reluctant to even comment on the suggestion that money was paid to witnesses after the trial without his knowledge.
The focus of the documentary then turns to the most pivotal and crucial piece of evidence found during the investigation and presented at the trial in Zeist. The fragment of microchip discovered 6 months (although the exact period has been disputed) after the disaster, and determined to be the most significant piece of evidence linking the bomb to a Swiss timer manufacturer who had links to Megrahi and Libya.
This particular piece of evidence, the microchip fragment, already somewhat controversial given the unexplained altering of the labels on evidence bags containing the 'charred' fragments, was examined and concluded had originated with the Swiss company called 'Mebo'. They had supplied these timers, it was claimed, to Libya, and Megrahi with his connections and dealings with Mebo, had used this timer in constructing the bomb which he then placed on a flight in Malta, later finding it's way onto the Pan Am flight from Heathrow.
Now it seems, neither Lord Fraser or Mr Marquise can conclusively explain who exactly made this identification of the timer fragment, and where this identification was made. In the UK or in Washington? By Mr Thurman or Mr Feraday? The fragment itself, or as part of the larger circuit board from where the fragment came? By photograph or the actual fragment?
Mr Marquise is certain that this evidence was transported from the UK to the US, and taken to the FBI labs in Washington, by a member of RARDE, thought to be Alan Feraday were the identification was made. The photograph of the tiny piece of fragment of the microchip (evidence PT35b) on a persons finger is claimed to be that of Thomas Thurman of the FBI, who was also the scientist who uncovered the microchips origin and connection to the circuit board made by Mebo. He claims in Mr Levy's film that the microchip was "brought over by UK authorities" to the United States were identification was made, and was conclusively re-identified in the UK by RARDE (Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment).
However, once again there are contradictions in the accounts given. Lord Fraser is adamant that no evidence recovered from the Pan Am debris has ever left his authority or the UK mainland. This would have compromised the whole investigation and could have resulted in accusations of manipulation and, or, contamination of any evidence purity. Detective Chief Supt Mr Stuart Henderson, head of the UK police investigation, also states that the evidence relating to Pan Am 103, any evidence, but specifically the fragment of microchip, never left the UK mainland, but in actual fact the US investigators and the FBI had travelled to the UK to identify the fragment at RARDE with Mr Feraday.
When the public are asked to trust the integrity of those we commend with providing the truth and justice our democratic society demands, expectations can be, on occasion, somewhat unrealistic. Especially when dealing with highly complex issues of international politics, international crimes of nation states and multi-national business corporations. The public however, do expect a genuine and honest search for these truths, and those we charge with this responsibility to fulfil those simplest and most honourable tasks to have carried out their duty, with conscience and integrity.
Those who died over Lockerbie, and the families of the victims deserve at least this. With the pain of a lost loved one however, the relatives of those who died have also had to endure the persistent inaccuracies, the constant contradictions, and the inexplicable decisions taken with respect to those who carried out the atrocity and how their government failed in their loved ones protection. Not by those who wish to seek conspiracies were there are none, and not by those who have ulterior motives for continuing to ask questions. But by the very investigators, police, professionals, experts, lawyers and those in power entrusted with upholding their faith in human kind and seeking justice in the supposed democratic nation we live in today. For those fundamental expectations and hopes are diminished with every conflicting statement, every unexplained area of the investigation, and every inscrutable and unaccountable decision taken by those with power in relation to finding the true perpetrators who organised and carried out the crime over Lockerbie in 1988.
Friday 20 July 2012
Swissair 330, Pan Am 103 and Marwan Khreesat
I am grateful to Edwin Bollier for drawing my attention to an article headed Den Bombenbauer ignorierten sie ("They ignored the bomb maker") in the 4 July 2012 edition of the Swiss newspaper Beobachter. The article discloses (with supporting documentation) that, as early as May 1989, Lockerbie investigators linked both the 1970 Swissair tragedy and the Lockerbie disaster to bombs made by the PFLP-GC's Marwan Khreesat.
Wikipedia, citing Steven Emerson and Brian Duffy, The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation (1990) ISBN 0-399-13521-9, states: "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."
Wikipedia, citing Steven Emerson and Brian Duffy, The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation (1990) ISBN 0-399-13521-9, states: "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."
Tuesday 23 February 2016
The PFLP-GC chimera: Part One
This article was originally posted yesterday (22 February). Without intervention from me, it disappeared overnight. I have therefore posted it again. It had attracted a comment from Aku which pointed out that the Goben Memorandum is in fact available online at https://panam103.wordpress.com/documents/.
[In this article Kevin Bannon poses some pertinent questions about the PFLP-GC and its often-suggested rôle in the Lockerbie bombing. Part One appears today; Part Two will appear tomorrow.]
In November 1988, after an intensive surveillance lasting some weeks (the ‘Autumn Leaves’ or Herbstlaub operation) the West German Federal Police (the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) made a number of arrests of Middle Eastern individuals in and around Frankfurt, suspected of making explosive devices for terrorist purposes. None of the suspects were charged but two of the arrestees, named Dalkamoni and Ghadanfar were eventually jailed for a separate bombing attempt on a military train several months earlier. The Frankfurt plotters escaped conviction despite apparently strong evidence against them.
After the Lockerbie bombing which happened just weeks later, there were perceived circumstantial resonances between it the Frankfurt plot. Like the Lockerbie bomb, the Frankfurt explosive devices had been housed in Toshiba brand radio-cassette decks and Frankfurt airport happened to be the departure point for the first leg of the Pan Am flight. Suspicions were enhanced with poorly substantiated stories, firstly that one of the bombs from the Frankfurt cache had gone missing, and then there were two separate eyewitness reports of dark brown Samsonite suitcases – like that which contained the Lockerbie bomb – seen in the possession of Frankfurt suspects.
None of the documents presented at Camp Zeist concerning the BKA’s surveillance of the West German IED factory, nor testimony from BKA officers and other German security personnel, established a Frankfurt link with the Lockerbie bombing beyond rumour or notion. In any event the Lockerbie investigators eventually decided to run with an even wilder plot, which had the Lockerbie bomb beginning its journey in Malta. This strange overlap between a bomb factory in Frankfurt and a completely separate bomb from another conspiracy entirely - transiting through Frankfurt airport between Malta and Heathrow - dogged and obfuscated both the Lockerbie investigation and the trial.
If this wasn’t perplexing enough, a third phantom entered into the frame: the ‘PFLP-GC.’ At the Camp Zeist trial, the defence sought to suggest that this Middle Eastern terrorist group was associated with the Frankfurt plot and somehow involved in the Lockerbie conspiracy.
This formed part of a pathetic attempt by the Camp Zeist defence to propose alternative culprits for the bombing - in my view a very weak defence strategy prima facie – all the more so because there was no proof of the existence of the PFLP-GC per se. The PFLP-GC was mentioned up to 200 times at trial, never introduced by witnesses, but led by both prosecution and defence advocates. The deputy chief forensic investigator, Allan Feraday was asked if the Pan Am 103 bomb had come from “the PFLP-GC in Germany?” Feraday vaguely referred to “...hearsay and things going on in the background about groups.” He added “...I'm sure at some stage I knew that there was a suspect about that, but it played no parts in my thoughts at all.” [CZ transcript p3365]. The German investigators at Camp Zeist did not refer to any PFLP-GC-centred aspect of their enquiries; Rainer Holder, a BKA officer in 1988 was involved in Autumn Leaves “right from the very outset” but when asked about the allegations of PFLP-GC involvement with the Frankfurt bomb makers, he only said “That was what we assumed.” [CZ transcript p8673]. Gerwin Friedrich, a German federal government anti-terrorism investigator was asked “...was the Autumn Leaves operation itself an operation into the activities of a group of people suspected to belong to an organisation called the PFLP-GC?.” Friedrich replied “I am not fully aware of that at this moment in time...” [CZ transcript p8687]. Former BKA officer Anton Van Treek agreed that the Autumn Leaves investigation had targeted a cell that was merely “suspected of belonging to an organisation known as the PFLP-GC”. [CZ transcript p8705].
The only supposed ‘evidence’ of the PFLP-GC’s existence appeared in the testimony of a BKA officer who referred to an Arabic-language booklet recovered from a Frankfurt apartment ‘The Political Programme of the PFLG-GC’ - apparently misnamed [CZ p8647]. The BKA report on Operation Herbstlaub produced only one conclusion about the PFLP-GC at Camp Zeist, which was read out to the court: “On the basis of a statement by Ghadanfar, the GBA [?] envisaged a partial organisation of the PFLP-GC in the Federal Republic of Germany...” This vague and hardly intelligible item was based on the reported testimony of a terrorist in police custody. [CZ p8723].
A CIA cable cited at Camp Zeist noted a proposal to ask their agent in Malta, Majid Giaka if he had been ‘aware of any Libyan involvement with the activities of the PFLP-GC cell led by Dalkamoni in Frankfurt’ [CZ p6742] – implying that the CIA knew no more than the German investigators. This is the only CIA mention of the PFLP-GC presented at Camp Zeist. If the CIA, with its vast intelligence resources, has ever had evidence of the PFLP-GC’s existence, then its secret has remained safe with them and they apparently did not want to reveal it to anyone at the Lockerbie trial or to any police force anywhere, either before or since. Therefore the various and substantial criminal investigations based in Germany, the UK and the USA, featuring their combined police, security and intelligence resources, failed to establish PFLP-GC connections to either Lockerbie or to reality.
Transparently, the objective of the BKA’s Herbstlaub operation was the investigation and apprehension of individuals involved in making explosive devices for a terrorist purpose. It was never established that information about the PFLP-GC was either relevant or useful to this objective. There is no evidence that the PFLP-GC was a focus of such investigations, nor that the mooted references to the PFLP-GC had any bearing on, or were of any benefit to the progress of the BKA investigations into terrorist activity or bombing plots. Throughout the Camp Zeist trial, as during the BKA investigation, the PFLP-GC was not established as anything more than an insignia mentioned in hearsay, and this was based on testimony primarily from terrorist/criminal sources and Western-supported Middle Eastern intelligence agencies.
The PFLP-GC was not cited in the Camp Zeist indictment and whether it existed or not, it did not impinge on the investigation or trial of those accused of the Lockerbie bombing. The BKA investigation unearthed many incriminating items, including Eastern European hand weapons, terrorist literature, airline timetables, labelled explosives, phone numbers of terrorists and their foreign controllers. Whether it was an evidence trail left by bungling anarchists or one designed by more sophisticated agencies, precisely so that it would be discovered is anyone’s guess. While accrediting the PFLP-GC plot as genuine, the defence at Camp Zeist appeared to be indifferent to the fact that Marwan Khreesat, designer of the cassette-recorder bombs and chief engineer/foreman of the Frankfurt bomb factory, was himself a Western intelligence agent and was the principal informant about the entire Frankfurt bomb-making project and its PFLP-GC associations.
On 5 November 1988 Marwan Khreesat – aka Omar Marwar - was permitted by his German custodians to make a lengthy phone call to Amman, Jordan during which he spoke with someone of apparently high authority. The BND (the Bundesnachrichtendienst; Germany’s foreign intelligence service) appeared to be fully aware that Khreesat’s detention had been only temporary [John Ashton, 2012, pp33-34]. When he appeared before a Federal High Court judge facing the BKA’s request for a renewal of his arrest warrant the judge freed him; Khreesat obviously knew the right people! Khreesat, had been incriminated in plausible testimony from two accomplices; had all but admitted to involvement in the preparation of bombs and had been monitored coming from an apartment containing improvised, disguised explosive devices and he was apprehended in a car containing such a device.
It was subsequently revealed at the Camp Zeist trial that Khreesat had throughout been an undercover agent for Jordanian intelligence service, the GID [CZ transcript, pp9271-9277]. John Ashton notes that Jordanian Intelligence is historically ‘very close’ to the CIA and that Khreesat had been ‘reporting back’ to the BND, who officially thanked him for his assistance with their investigations [Ashton 2012 p34]. The Jordanian Intelligence Service had been set up with CIA assistance, and insider Western intelligence sources would later describe Khreesat as having been ‘an asset’ to the CIA, to the German BND and to the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. This explains why he was released and returned immediately to Jordan - he was on our side! (sic).
Despite such distractions, the reiterated, uncorroborated references in court to the PFLP-GC were oddly taken seriously by the Camp Zeist judges:
‘…it was clear from other evidence that we heard, in particular from officers of the German police force, the BKA, that a cell of the PFLP-GC was operating in what was then West Germany at least up until October 1988.’ [Opinion of the Court, para 73].
Their lordships view that the PFLP-GC operation ‘was clear from…evidence’ was a complete delusion on their part and not relevant anyway to the destruction of Pan Am 103, even by their Lordships liberal interpretations of what constituted ‘evidence’.
If the CIA had sought to create the Jordanian GID in its own likeness, they did an excellent job. At Camp Zeist, FBI Special Agent Ed Marshman testified that Khreesat’s status had been confirmed by the GID Director General Samih Battikhi. In 2003 General Battikhi was jailed for 8 years for ‘forgery…and abuse of office’ [The Economist, July 17, 2003]. One of Battikhi’s successors, Mohammed al-Dahabi was similarly convicted for embezzlement and abuse of office [‘Ex-intelligence chief jailed for corruption’ The Guardian, 12 November 2012, p 24]. Chips off the old block! – except that the CIA failed to instruct their protégés how to wriggle out of legal sanction: Former CIA Director Richard Helms received a suspended sentence for perjury in 1977 for misleading a Senate committee by denying CIA funding for the overthrow of Chile’s Allende government. He avoided sanction for previously destroying documents and tape recordings of probable value to the Watergate investigation [‘Richard Helms, Ex-CIA Chief, Dies at 89’ NY Times October 24, 2002]. Helms’s successor William Colby had formerly overseen operation ‘Phoenix’ in which 20,000 Vietnamese non-combatants, mostly community leaders, were murdered to intimidate the people against sympathising with the communists [‘William E. Colby, Head of CIA, a Time of Upheaval’ NY Times May 7, 1996].
These are the kind of people which the Scottish police and judiciary were dealing with in preparation for their indictment and prosecution of al-Megrahi.
Khreesat was too shy to appear at Camp Zeist to explain himself and his phantoms in more detail. Other players in the charade faded away; his obscure assistant Ramzi Diab – AKA Salah Kewkes - scuttled back to Syria (we are told) where Jibril (it was said) had him killed – for obscure reasons. The unseen ‘mastermind’ Abu Elias – if he ever existed – was never seen again. Then there was the enigmatic and almost certainly non-existent ‘Goben memorandum’ believed to be in the possession of the PFLP-GC and the Syrian government, to whom a letter of request had been sent by the Defence at Camp Zeist [CZ p8978]. This document supposedly held ‘a great deal of information’ about the inner workings of the PFLP-GC [CZ p8991]. At Camp Zeist the memorandum was talked-up to the status of a Rosetta Stone which promised to crack the whole case for the defence. The Goben memorandum has never appeared to this day.
[In this article Kevin Bannon poses some pertinent questions about the PFLP-GC and its often-suggested rôle in the Lockerbie bombing. Part One appears today; Part Two will appear tomorrow.]
In November 1988, after an intensive surveillance lasting some weeks (the ‘Autumn Leaves’ or Herbstlaub operation) the West German Federal Police (the Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) made a number of arrests of Middle Eastern individuals in and around Frankfurt, suspected of making explosive devices for terrorist purposes. None of the suspects were charged but two of the arrestees, named Dalkamoni and Ghadanfar were eventually jailed for a separate bombing attempt on a military train several months earlier. The Frankfurt plotters escaped conviction despite apparently strong evidence against them.
After the Lockerbie bombing which happened just weeks later, there were perceived circumstantial resonances between it the Frankfurt plot. Like the Lockerbie bomb, the Frankfurt explosive devices had been housed in Toshiba brand radio-cassette decks and Frankfurt airport happened to be the departure point for the first leg of the Pan Am flight. Suspicions were enhanced with poorly substantiated stories, firstly that one of the bombs from the Frankfurt cache had gone missing, and then there were two separate eyewitness reports of dark brown Samsonite suitcases – like that which contained the Lockerbie bomb – seen in the possession of Frankfurt suspects.
None of the documents presented at Camp Zeist concerning the BKA’s surveillance of the West German IED factory, nor testimony from BKA officers and other German security personnel, established a Frankfurt link with the Lockerbie bombing beyond rumour or notion. In any event the Lockerbie investigators eventually decided to run with an even wilder plot, which had the Lockerbie bomb beginning its journey in Malta. This strange overlap between a bomb factory in Frankfurt and a completely separate bomb from another conspiracy entirely - transiting through Frankfurt airport between Malta and Heathrow - dogged and obfuscated both the Lockerbie investigation and the trial.
If this wasn’t perplexing enough, a third phantom entered into the frame: the ‘PFLP-GC.’ At the Camp Zeist trial, the defence sought to suggest that this Middle Eastern terrorist group was associated with the Frankfurt plot and somehow involved in the Lockerbie conspiracy.
This formed part of a pathetic attempt by the Camp Zeist defence to propose alternative culprits for the bombing - in my view a very weak defence strategy prima facie – all the more so because there was no proof of the existence of the PFLP-GC per se. The PFLP-GC was mentioned up to 200 times at trial, never introduced by witnesses, but led by both prosecution and defence advocates. The deputy chief forensic investigator, Allan Feraday was asked if the Pan Am 103 bomb had come from “the PFLP-GC in Germany?” Feraday vaguely referred to “...hearsay and things going on in the background about groups.” He added “...I'm sure at some stage I knew that there was a suspect about that, but it played no parts in my thoughts at all.” [CZ transcript p3365]. The German investigators at Camp Zeist did not refer to any PFLP-GC-centred aspect of their enquiries; Rainer Holder, a BKA officer in 1988 was involved in Autumn Leaves “right from the very outset” but when asked about the allegations of PFLP-GC involvement with the Frankfurt bomb makers, he only said “That was what we assumed.” [CZ transcript p8673]. Gerwin Friedrich, a German federal government anti-terrorism investigator was asked “...was the Autumn Leaves operation itself an operation into the activities of a group of people suspected to belong to an organisation called the PFLP-GC?.” Friedrich replied “I am not fully aware of that at this moment in time...” [CZ transcript p8687]. Former BKA officer Anton Van Treek agreed that the Autumn Leaves investigation had targeted a cell that was merely “suspected of belonging to an organisation known as the PFLP-GC”. [CZ transcript p8705].
The only supposed ‘evidence’ of the PFLP-GC’s existence appeared in the testimony of a BKA officer who referred to an Arabic-language booklet recovered from a Frankfurt apartment ‘The Political Programme of the PFLG-GC’ - apparently misnamed [CZ p8647]. The BKA report on Operation Herbstlaub produced only one conclusion about the PFLP-GC at Camp Zeist, which was read out to the court: “On the basis of a statement by Ghadanfar, the GBA [?] envisaged a partial organisation of the PFLP-GC in the Federal Republic of Germany...” This vague and hardly intelligible item was based on the reported testimony of a terrorist in police custody. [CZ p8723].
A CIA cable cited at Camp Zeist noted a proposal to ask their agent in Malta, Majid Giaka if he had been ‘aware of any Libyan involvement with the activities of the PFLP-GC cell led by Dalkamoni in Frankfurt’ [CZ p6742] – implying that the CIA knew no more than the German investigators. This is the only CIA mention of the PFLP-GC presented at Camp Zeist. If the CIA, with its vast intelligence resources, has ever had evidence of the PFLP-GC’s existence, then its secret has remained safe with them and they apparently did not want to reveal it to anyone at the Lockerbie trial or to any police force anywhere, either before or since. Therefore the various and substantial criminal investigations based in Germany, the UK and the USA, featuring their combined police, security and intelligence resources, failed to establish PFLP-GC connections to either Lockerbie or to reality.
Transparently, the objective of the BKA’s Herbstlaub operation was the investigation and apprehension of individuals involved in making explosive devices for a terrorist purpose. It was never established that information about the PFLP-GC was either relevant or useful to this objective. There is no evidence that the PFLP-GC was a focus of such investigations, nor that the mooted references to the PFLP-GC had any bearing on, or were of any benefit to the progress of the BKA investigations into terrorist activity or bombing plots. Throughout the Camp Zeist trial, as during the BKA investigation, the PFLP-GC was not established as anything more than an insignia mentioned in hearsay, and this was based on testimony primarily from terrorist/criminal sources and Western-supported Middle Eastern intelligence agencies.
The PFLP-GC was not cited in the Camp Zeist indictment and whether it existed or not, it did not impinge on the investigation or trial of those accused of the Lockerbie bombing. The BKA investigation unearthed many incriminating items, including Eastern European hand weapons, terrorist literature, airline timetables, labelled explosives, phone numbers of terrorists and their foreign controllers. Whether it was an evidence trail left by bungling anarchists or one designed by more sophisticated agencies, precisely so that it would be discovered is anyone’s guess. While accrediting the PFLP-GC plot as genuine, the defence at Camp Zeist appeared to be indifferent to the fact that Marwan Khreesat, designer of the cassette-recorder bombs and chief engineer/foreman of the Frankfurt bomb factory, was himself a Western intelligence agent and was the principal informant about the entire Frankfurt bomb-making project and its PFLP-GC associations.
On 5 November 1988 Marwan Khreesat – aka Omar Marwar - was permitted by his German custodians to make a lengthy phone call to Amman, Jordan during which he spoke with someone of apparently high authority. The BND (the Bundesnachrichtendienst; Germany’s foreign intelligence service) appeared to be fully aware that Khreesat’s detention had been only temporary [John Ashton, 2012, pp33-34]. When he appeared before a Federal High Court judge facing the BKA’s request for a renewal of his arrest warrant the judge freed him; Khreesat obviously knew the right people! Khreesat, had been incriminated in plausible testimony from two accomplices; had all but admitted to involvement in the preparation of bombs and had been monitored coming from an apartment containing improvised, disguised explosive devices and he was apprehended in a car containing such a device.
It was subsequently revealed at the Camp Zeist trial that Khreesat had throughout been an undercover agent for Jordanian intelligence service, the GID [CZ transcript, pp9271-9277]. John Ashton notes that Jordanian Intelligence is historically ‘very close’ to the CIA and that Khreesat had been ‘reporting back’ to the BND, who officially thanked him for his assistance with their investigations [Ashton 2012 p34]. The Jordanian Intelligence Service had been set up with CIA assistance, and insider Western intelligence sources would later describe Khreesat as having been ‘an asset’ to the CIA, to the German BND and to the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. This explains why he was released and returned immediately to Jordan - he was on our side! (sic).
Despite such distractions, the reiterated, uncorroborated references in court to the PFLP-GC were oddly taken seriously by the Camp Zeist judges:
‘…it was clear from other evidence that we heard, in particular from officers of the German police force, the BKA, that a cell of the PFLP-GC was operating in what was then West Germany at least up until October 1988.’ [Opinion of the Court, para 73].
Their lordships view that the PFLP-GC operation ‘was clear from…evidence’ was a complete delusion on their part and not relevant anyway to the destruction of Pan Am 103, even by their Lordships liberal interpretations of what constituted ‘evidence’.
If the CIA had sought to create the Jordanian GID in its own likeness, they did an excellent job. At Camp Zeist, FBI Special Agent Ed Marshman testified that Khreesat’s status had been confirmed by the GID Director General Samih Battikhi. In 2003 General Battikhi was jailed for 8 years for ‘forgery…and abuse of office’ [The Economist, July 17, 2003]. One of Battikhi’s successors, Mohammed al-Dahabi was similarly convicted for embezzlement and abuse of office [‘Ex-intelligence chief jailed for corruption’ The Guardian, 12 November 2012, p 24]. Chips off the old block! – except that the CIA failed to instruct their protégés how to wriggle out of legal sanction: Former CIA Director Richard Helms received a suspended sentence for perjury in 1977 for misleading a Senate committee by denying CIA funding for the overthrow of Chile’s Allende government. He avoided sanction for previously destroying documents and tape recordings of probable value to the Watergate investigation [‘Richard Helms, Ex-CIA Chief, Dies at 89’ NY Times October 24, 2002]. Helms’s successor William Colby had formerly overseen operation ‘Phoenix’ in which 20,000 Vietnamese non-combatants, mostly community leaders, were murdered to intimidate the people against sympathising with the communists [‘William E. Colby, Head of CIA, a Time of Upheaval’ NY Times May 7, 1996].
These are the kind of people which the Scottish police and judiciary were dealing with in preparation for their indictment and prosecution of al-Megrahi.
Khreesat was too shy to appear at Camp Zeist to explain himself and his phantoms in more detail. Other players in the charade faded away; his obscure assistant Ramzi Diab – AKA Salah Kewkes - scuttled back to Syria (we are told) where Jibril (it was said) had him killed – for obscure reasons. The unseen ‘mastermind’ Abu Elias – if he ever existed – was never seen again. Then there was the enigmatic and almost certainly non-existent ‘Goben memorandum’ believed to be in the possession of the PFLP-GC and the Syrian government, to whom a letter of request had been sent by the Defence at Camp Zeist [CZ p8978]. This document supposedly held ‘a great deal of information’ about the inner workings of the PFLP-GC [CZ p8991]. At Camp Zeist the memorandum was talked-up to the status of a Rosetta Stone which promised to crack the whole case for the defence. The Goben memorandum has never appeared to this day.
Wednesday 19 March 2014
Bomb-maker Khreesat posts Lockerbie photos on Facebook
[A report headlined ‘Bomb-maker’ brags about El Al blast, posts Lockerbie photos has been published today on the website of The Times of Israel. It reads as follows:]
The man investigators initially believed built the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie 25 years ago maintains a Facebook page on which he recently posted pictures of the Lockerbie bombing and promised to write about the circumstances of the attack.
Marwan Khreesat, who now lives in Jordan, was arrested but bizarrely released by German police two months before the Lockerbie bombing as part of a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command cell found in possession of bombs designed to blow up airliners.
He writes frequent posts condemning Israel, the Palestinian Authority for dealing with Israel, the Assad regime and others. Late last year, he also castigated PFLP-GC leader Ahmad Jibril, for whom he allegedly built several bombs used to blow up airplanes in the 1970s, accusing Jibril of abandoning the Palestinian cause in siding with the Assad regime.
Last week, Khreesat posted an entry boasting about the PFLP-GC’s bombing of an El Al plane from Rome to Tel Aviv in 1972, describing the attack as “a challenge to the Israeli intelligence agents who are responsible for searching luggage and everything that goes on a plane.”
It was subsequently established that the 1972 El Al bomb — designed to explode when the plane reached a certain altitude — had been hidden in a record player which two British women had been duped into carrying by two Arab men who were later arrested. Although the bomb exploded, the pilot was able to make an emergency landing. ”It was a successful blow against the Israeli enemy,” Khreesat wrote in a March 14 Facebook post, in which he also described spending time with Jibril in Rome as they waited for the attack to unfold.
In several posts relating to Lockerbie in recent weeks, Khreesat recalled his arrest two months before the December 21, 1988, bombing and posted pictures of the destroyed cockpit of the 747 after the explosion, the painstakingly reconstructed parts of the plane wreckage, and a radio-recorder like the one that held the bomb. He also asked a series of unanswered questions about the attack. “Who did the operation?” he asked in a post on the 25th anniversary of the blast. “Israel? Iran? Libya? Who carried the Toshiba explosive device [in which the bomb was hidden]? … Did the explosive device come from Malta airport like the American intelligence agencies say?… When will these riddles be solved.”
Last October, Khreesat posted that he intended to “write about Pan Am 103,” including “who was on the flight and the circumstances of the incident.”
British and American investigators initially believed that the PFLP-GC had blown up the plane, in which all 259 people on board and 11 more on the ground were killed, and suggested the attack had been ordered by Iran to avenge the mistaken downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by the USS Vincennes in the Persian Gulf six months earlier in which 290 people were killed.
Later, however, suspicion switched to Libya, and to a former Libyan intelligence officer, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi. Megrahi was convicted and jailed in 2001 after a trial in which his fellow alleged Libyan conspirator, Lamin Fhima, was acquitted. He died in 2012 still insisting on his innocence.
In 2007, a Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found a series of grounds to justify concerns that a miscarriage of justice had occurred. The process by which Megrahi was identified has been widely criticized, and the authenticity of a timer fragment central to the implication of Libya in the plot has been increasingly questioned.
An Al Jazeera documentary last week implicated the PFLP-GC in the bombing, and a former Iranian intelligence officer, Abolghasem Mesbahi, who defected to Germany in the 1990s, alleged that Iran had commissioned it, stating that “Iran decided to retaliate [for the downing of its own Flight 655] as soon as possible. The decision was made by the whole system in Iran and confirmed by Ayatollah Khomeini.”
Khreesat originally agreed to be interviewed for the documentary, the program-makers said, but later refused to do so, and was quoted in the film saying, “All my problems are because of Lockerbie.”
Saturday 22 December 2018
The truth behind bomb that took down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie remains a 30-year mystery
[This is the headline over an article by John R Schindler published yesterday on the US Observer website. It reads in part:]
Thirty years ago this week, Pan Am Flight 103 was torn apart by an explosion as it cruised 31,000 feet above the Scottish Lowlands, 38 minutes after it departed London’s Heathrow Airport. The shattered Boeing 747, named Clipper Maid of the Seas, was bound for New York but never made its destination, falling in flames around the bucolic town of Lockerbie. (...)
Once it was obvious that nobody survived the crash, the biggest investigation in British history commenced, painstakingly locating and cataloguing over four million pieces of wreckage—including thousands of body parts—spread over 850 square miles of the Scottish countryside. Within a week of the disaster, investigators discovered traces of explosive, revealing that the Lockerbie crash was no accident.
A bomb took down the 747, and FBI analysis revealed that the huge airliner was destroyed by less than a pound of plastic explosive, specifically Semtex from Czechoslovakia, packed in a Samsonite suitcase stowed in the plane’s forward left luggage container. The improvised explosive device was hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette player and was detonated by a barometric sensor designed to detect altitude.
This revelation set off alarm bells, since less than two months before the attack, German police rolled up a terrorist cell near Frankfurt—where Pam Am 103’s transatlantic trip originated—that was building bombs, specifically a Semtex bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player. The cell belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command, a radical Arab group headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army officer. Western intelligence considered the PFLP-GC to be little more than an extension of Syria’s security services.
Moreover, the October 1988 arrests bagged a top PFLP-GC official, plus the Jordanian national Marwan Khreesat, a veteran bomb-maker who is believed to have played a part in an unsolved terrorist attack in 1970 that took down a Swissair jetliner, killing 47 people. Before long, Khreesat was released from custody, apparently because he was an informant for Jordanian intelligence.
German police seized four bombs from the PFLP-GC’s Frankfurt cell, but a fifth IED went missing. Western intelligence agencies assumed that may have been the device that took down Pam Am 103. Neither was it difficult to ascertain a motive for the attack. Only months before, on July 3, the cruiser USS Vincennes, on station in the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iran Air Airbus, killing all 290 aboard, 66 of them children. It was a terrible accident, but hotheads in Tehran promised revenge. Had they gotten it in the skies over Scotland?
That was hardly a far-fetched idea. In the 1980s, Iranian-backed terrorists left a trail of bombings across the Middle East and beyond, several of which killed large numbers of Americans. Not to mention that the Syrian regime was friendly with the mullahs in Tehran, and outsourcing Iran’s vengeance for the downed Airbus to the PFLP-GC seemed plausible to seasoned Middle East-watchers.
That was the conclusion of US intelligence, particularly when the National Security Agency provided top-secret electronic intercepts which demonstrated that Tehran had commissioned the PFLP-GC to down Pan Am 103, reportedly for a $10 million fee. One veteran NSA analyst told me years later that his counterterrorism team “had no doubt” of Iranian culpability. Bob Baer, the veteran CIA officer, has stated that his agency believed just as unanimously that Tehran was behind the bombing. Within a year of the attack, our Intelligence Community assessed confidently that Lockerbie was an Iranian operation executed by Syrian cut-outs, and that take was shared by several allies with solid Middle Eastern insights, including Israeli intelligence.
American spies were therefore profoundly shocked in November 1991 when the American and British governments indicted two Libyans for the bombing. It took nine years for a trial to commence, since Libya was reluctant to hand over its nationals, and it began in May 2000 in the Netherlands, although the proceedings took place under Scottish law. In January 2001, only one of the defendants, Abdelbaset el-Megrahi, reported to be a Libyan intelligence officer, was convicted on 270 murder charges.
Megrahi professed his innocence and he was sent back to his native country in the summer of 2009 on compassionate grounds since he had terminal prostate cancer. He died in May 2012, not long after Libya’s revolution felled his former boss, dictator Muammar Gaddafi. In 2003, as part of his effort to curry Western favor, Gaddafi admitted responsibility for the Lockerbie attack and paid compensation to victims’ families, but he never conceded that he ordered the bombing. [RB: Libya did not admit "responsibility for the Lockerbie attack" -- it accepted "responsibility for the actions of its officials". The full text of the relevant document can be read here.]
Libya, too, perpetrated a rash of terrorist attacks in the 1980s, and some of them killed Americans, so it was never implausible that Lockerbie was executed by Libyan intelligence. Indeed, U.S. intelligence never excluded the possibility that Libyan spies played some role in the attack. Such multinational collaboration in terrorism happens in the real world, with spies employing foreign terrorists, sometimes from multiple groups, as cut-outs. However, the evidence for Megrahi as the lead Lockerbie terrorist was never especially firm, and the case has weakened over time, as stories have changed.
While Libyan intelligence veterans have claimed that Gaddafi was behind Lockerbie, Iranian intelligence veterans have just as adamantly pointed the finger at Tehran. Revealingly, Jim Swire, an English doctor who lost his daughter on Pam Am 103, has devoted the last three decades to Lockerbie victims’ advocacy, becoming over time a vehement defender of the late Megrahi, believing the Libyan was a patsy. Like all sides in this mystery, Swire has assembled a convincing, if ultimately circumstantial, case for his theory of the crime.
The number of people who know the truth about Lockerbie is dwindling as time takes its toll. It is troubling that what U.S. intelligence confidently believed about the attack never translated into judicial or political action. The atrocity that took place over Scotland 30 years ago remains the deadliest terror attack on American civilians except for 9/11. In 2014, Marwan Khreesat was living freely in Jordan, posting pictures on Facebook of the blown-apart Pam Am 103 and a replica of the bomb which took her down. He died two years ago and Khreesat’s daughter recently told the media that her father left behind proof that he was responsible for Lockerbie due to his “deal with Iran.” Time is running out to let the public know what really happened to Clipper Maid of the Seas and 270 innocent people.
Thirty years ago this week, Pan Am Flight 103 was torn apart by an explosion as it cruised 31,000 feet above the Scottish Lowlands, 38 minutes after it departed London’s Heathrow Airport. The shattered Boeing 747, named Clipper Maid of the Seas, was bound for New York but never made its destination, falling in flames around the bucolic town of Lockerbie. (...)
Once it was obvious that nobody survived the crash, the biggest investigation in British history commenced, painstakingly locating and cataloguing over four million pieces of wreckage—including thousands of body parts—spread over 850 square miles of the Scottish countryside. Within a week of the disaster, investigators discovered traces of explosive, revealing that the Lockerbie crash was no accident.
A bomb took down the 747, and FBI analysis revealed that the huge airliner was destroyed by less than a pound of plastic explosive, specifically Semtex from Czechoslovakia, packed in a Samsonite suitcase stowed in the plane’s forward left luggage container. The improvised explosive device was hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette player and was detonated by a barometric sensor designed to detect altitude.
This revelation set off alarm bells, since less than two months before the attack, German police rolled up a terrorist cell near Frankfurt—where Pam Am 103’s transatlantic trip originated—that was building bombs, specifically a Semtex bomb hidden inside a Toshiba radio cassette player. The cell belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command, a radical Arab group headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army officer. Western intelligence considered the PFLP-GC to be little more than an extension of Syria’s security services.
Moreover, the October 1988 arrests bagged a top PFLP-GC official, plus the Jordanian national Marwan Khreesat, a veteran bomb-maker who is believed to have played a part in an unsolved terrorist attack in 1970 that took down a Swissair jetliner, killing 47 people. Before long, Khreesat was released from custody, apparently because he was an informant for Jordanian intelligence.
German police seized four bombs from the PFLP-GC’s Frankfurt cell, but a fifth IED went missing. Western intelligence agencies assumed that may have been the device that took down Pam Am 103. Neither was it difficult to ascertain a motive for the attack. Only months before, on July 3, the cruiser USS Vincennes, on station in the Persian Gulf, shot down an Iran Air Airbus, killing all 290 aboard, 66 of them children. It was a terrible accident, but hotheads in Tehran promised revenge. Had they gotten it in the skies over Scotland?
That was hardly a far-fetched idea. In the 1980s, Iranian-backed terrorists left a trail of bombings across the Middle East and beyond, several of which killed large numbers of Americans. Not to mention that the Syrian regime was friendly with the mullahs in Tehran, and outsourcing Iran’s vengeance for the downed Airbus to the PFLP-GC seemed plausible to seasoned Middle East-watchers.
That was the conclusion of US intelligence, particularly when the National Security Agency provided top-secret electronic intercepts which demonstrated that Tehran had commissioned the PFLP-GC to down Pan Am 103, reportedly for a $10 million fee. One veteran NSA analyst told me years later that his counterterrorism team “had no doubt” of Iranian culpability. Bob Baer, the veteran CIA officer, has stated that his agency believed just as unanimously that Tehran was behind the bombing. Within a year of the attack, our Intelligence Community assessed confidently that Lockerbie was an Iranian operation executed by Syrian cut-outs, and that take was shared by several allies with solid Middle Eastern insights, including Israeli intelligence.
American spies were therefore profoundly shocked in November 1991 when the American and British governments indicted two Libyans for the bombing. It took nine years for a trial to commence, since Libya was reluctant to hand over its nationals, and it began in May 2000 in the Netherlands, although the proceedings took place under Scottish law. In January 2001, only one of the defendants, Abdelbaset el-Megrahi, reported to be a Libyan intelligence officer, was convicted on 270 murder charges.
Megrahi professed his innocence and he was sent back to his native country in the summer of 2009 on compassionate grounds since he had terminal prostate cancer. He died in May 2012, not long after Libya’s revolution felled his former boss, dictator Muammar Gaddafi. In 2003, as part of his effort to curry Western favor, Gaddafi admitted responsibility for the Lockerbie attack and paid compensation to victims’ families, but he never conceded that he ordered the bombing. [RB: Libya did not admit "responsibility for the Lockerbie attack" -- it accepted "responsibility for the actions of its officials". The full text of the relevant document can be read here.]
Libya, too, perpetrated a rash of terrorist attacks in the 1980s, and some of them killed Americans, so it was never implausible that Lockerbie was executed by Libyan intelligence. Indeed, U.S. intelligence never excluded the possibility that Libyan spies played some role in the attack. Such multinational collaboration in terrorism happens in the real world, with spies employing foreign terrorists, sometimes from multiple groups, as cut-outs. However, the evidence for Megrahi as the lead Lockerbie terrorist was never especially firm, and the case has weakened over time, as stories have changed.
While Libyan intelligence veterans have claimed that Gaddafi was behind Lockerbie, Iranian intelligence veterans have just as adamantly pointed the finger at Tehran. Revealingly, Jim Swire, an English doctor who lost his daughter on Pam Am 103, has devoted the last three decades to Lockerbie victims’ advocacy, becoming over time a vehement defender of the late Megrahi, believing the Libyan was a patsy. Like all sides in this mystery, Swire has assembled a convincing, if ultimately circumstantial, case for his theory of the crime.
The number of people who know the truth about Lockerbie is dwindling as time takes its toll. It is troubling that what U.S. intelligence confidently believed about the attack never translated into judicial or political action. The atrocity that took place over Scotland 30 years ago remains the deadliest terror attack on American civilians except for 9/11. In 2014, Marwan Khreesat was living freely in Jordan, posting pictures on Facebook of the blown-apart Pam Am 103 and a replica of the bomb which took her down. He died two years ago and Khreesat’s daughter recently told the media that her father left behind proof that he was responsible for Lockerbie due to his “deal with Iran.” Time is running out to let the public know what really happened to Clipper Maid of the Seas and 270 innocent people.
Friday 22 July 2016
The Lockerbie secret doc: Khreesat and the Swiss
[This is the headline over an article published today on Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer’s PT35B website. It reads in part:]
“Marwan Khreesat is still wanted in connection with the bomb on the El Al flight. There can be little doubt that Khreesat is the bomb-maker for the PFLP-GC, that he was brought to West Germany for that purpose and there is a possibility that he prepared the IED which destroyed PA 103. As such he should not be at liberty but should be closely questioned regarding his activities with a view to tracking his associates in the attack.” Supt Connor Report — June 1989
Swiss investigative journalist Otto Hostettler has uncovered a very interesting piece of information.
According to his research:
Khreesat Marwan Abdel-Razzaq Mufdi applied on 6.9.1988 at the Swiss Embassy in Amman for a visa to travel to Switzerland.
Despite being a “person of interest” in Switzerland [unexplained Swissair-Crash from 1970 (Würenlingen)] and being wanted in Italy (El Al Flight August 1972), he was indeed granted a 15 days visa from Switzerland on 12.9.1988. (...)
We know that the secret doc alleges that MST-13 timers had been provided to the PFLP-GC organization.
Nothing more is known at this point. But this trip – if it indeed occurred — could very well be the source of the story covered in the secret doc sent from the King of Jordan to John Major in 1996.
A particularly interesting aspect of this visa is the fact that the paperwork at the Federal Police was handled by Inspector Fluckiger.
Does that name ring a bell?
On June 6, 2008, Lumpert told me that he gave a MST-13 timer prototype to Swiss Commissioner Peter Fluckiger
According to Lumpert, Fluckiger requested this device and other material at the demand of a “friendly Intelligence Agency.”
“During a recent investigation in Switzerland our team managed to get our hands on an official government document which confirms that in June 1989 Swiss Police did receive from a MEBO–source documents and materials in relation to MST timers. THE DOCUMENT GOES ON TO CONFIRM THAT THIS MATERIAL WAS THEN HANDED OVER TO THE AMERICANS.”
REMEMBER: This is one full year BEFORE super FBI genius Tom Thurman identified the link between PT/35(b) and MEBO (June 15 1990). Things are looking up!
Saturday 17 September 2016
Terrorism, Spies, Palestinians and the FBI
[This is part of the headline over an article by John R Schindler published yesterday on the US Observer website (not connected to the British Sunday newspaper The Observer). The following are excerpts:]
We have smoke on board—I can’t see anything” were the panicked, halting words transmitted from the cockpit of Swissair Flight 330 shortly before it hit the ground. Less than a minute later came the final message from the captain: “We are crashing—goodbye, everybody.” Then the four-engine airliner, a Convair Coronado, came down hard in a forest near Würenlingen, west of Zürich Airport, where the airplane had taken off less than 20 minutes before. There were no survivors.
The crash of Flight 330 on February 21, 1970, which killed 47 people—38 passengers and nine crew—remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Swiss history. Nine minutes after takeoff, shortly after the Coronado passed 14,000 feet on its climb-out from Zürich, a bomb exploded in the rear cargo hold. (...)
Swiss media this week is abuzz with revelations from a declassified American intelligence assessment which points the finger at one or more groups who may have assisted the Middle Eastern terrorists who blew up the Swissair jet. The truth about what befell Flight 330 appears to be far more complicated than anyone might have guessed.
First, the facts. The bomb which brought the Coronado to earth was placed inside a radio and had a barometric pressure trigger designed to explode at a fixed altitude. On the very same day that Flight 330 was destroyed, an identical bomb detonated in the cargo hold of an Austrian Airlines Caravelle jetliner shortly after takeoff from Frankfurt, West Germany, bound for Vienna. The lucky pilots managed to land their aircraft safely back in Frankfurt, with a hole blown through the fuselage. The Caravelle’s 33 passengers and five crew survived unscathed.
It was immediately apparent that the same terrorist cell was likely behind both bombings. Palestinian terrorism was new on the scene in 1970, having captured the world’s attention with a wave of airplane hijackings and bombings across Europe and the Middle East. (...)
Suspicion soon fell on the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a radical terrorist group that was founded in 1968 by Ahmed Jibril, under Syrian patronage. Practically an appendage of Syrian intelligence, PFLP-GC had cells operating in several countries in the Middle East and Europe and specialized in attacks on airliners. That Swissair Flight 330 was bound for Tel Aviv made it a logical target for Jibril’s killers.
Before long, investigators in Switzerland and West Germany determined that the bombs which exploded on February 21 had been assembled by a PFLP-GC cell operating in the Frankfurt area. They were disguised as mail packages being sent to an address in Israel—a fake address, as it turned out. Police were looking for four Palestinians known to be affiliated with the PFLP-GC: two Jordanians, Sufian Radi Kaddoumi and Badawi Mousa Jawher, plus their helpers Yaser Qasem and Issa Abdallah Abu-Toboul. The men had purchased several altimeters in Frankfurt and were the prime suspects in the bombings.
They had fled to the Middle East, however, out of the reach of European police. Swiss authorities never seemed especially motivated to find them either, leading to longstanding whispers of a conspiracy, perhaps even a back-room deal between Swiss officials and the PFLP-GC to ignore the wanted men in exchange for no more Palestinian terrorism against Switzerland.
That Switzerland may have something to hide is illustrated by the suspicious case of Marwan Khreesat, a top PFLP-GC bomb-maker whom investigators early on believed played a key role in the downing of Flight 330, but strangely he was never officially considered a suspect. Only two decades later, when Khreesat was a suspect in the bombing of Pam Am Flight 103, which was blown apart over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people, did Swiss authorities seem to acknowledge that Khreesat had a hand in the downing of Flight 330. Even then, nothing was done.
Therefore, significant unanswered questions linger in the Swissair case—including who was really behind the bomb plot. The investigation has now been blown wide-open by the sensational revelations contained in an intelligence assessment produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation way back in June 1970.
Titled The Fedayeen Terrorist—A Profile, the short document, just seven pages of text, was classified Secret and intended for internal FBI use only. (...)
… according to the FBI, the prime movers of the attacks were two unidentified West Germans, who contacted the PFLP-GC at their headquarters in Amman, Jordan, in September or October 1969. They showed up unannounced, claimed to be sympathetic to the Fedayeen cause, and wanted to help. As the FBI study explains:
One of them was an electrical engineer and PFLP-GC sought his advice on electrical problems connected with explosives, which he readily provided. They then returned to West Germany, and PFLP-GC maintained contact.
The two mystery men played a pivotal role in the downing of Flight 330, as the FBI knew:
On February 10, 1970, the West Germans were contacted in Frankfurt by [Kaddoumi] and [Jawher], two PFLP-GC members who had flown to West Germany on a terrorist mission. A discussion was held as to what device should be used to blow up a plane. One of the West Germans suggested an altimeter rigged to an explosive and set to give an electrical charge at 3,000 meters. All agreed that this was a satisfactory technique. The altimeters were then purchased in Frankfurt and the West Germans helped the terrorists wire them to the explosives which were then placed in a hollowed-out used radio set and packaged for mailing to Israel.
In other words, two unidentified West Germans reached out to the PFLP-GC, offered their help with terrorism, then provided their expertise on how to blow up civilian airliners in midflight. The mystery deepens, since the FBI notes that, after the downing of Flight 330, the West Germans disappeared. Even the PFLP-GC could not locate them, despite several attempts.
The Palestinians suspected they had been played by the “West Germans” too. According to the FBI, one of the PFLP-GC operatives (presumably Kaddoumi) detected an Israeli hand behind the plot. From the safety of Amman, after his escape from Europe, he stated that their anonymous helpers were actually Israeli agents who had reached out to them to keep the bombs off El Al jetliners while tarring the Palestinian cause with mass murder.
Seeing an Israeli false flag behind the downing of Flight 330 sounds fanciful, even allowing that terrorists are paranoid by their nature—especially Arab ones, who see Mossad lurking in every dark corner. That said, any reinvestigation of the case would want to examine any possible foreign intelligence ties to this mass killing, even if only to rule them out.
Is a serious relook at the Flight 330 massacre possible, so many decades later? Based on Swiss reports, Sufian Kaddoumi died in Jordan several years ago, while Badawi Jawher may not be in Jordan at all. All traces of him have gone cold. Marwan Khreesat lives in Jordan too. Just two years ago he was boasting on Facebook about his bomb-making exploits for the PFLP-GC back in the 1970s, while bizarrely posting photos of the Lockerbie disaster.
The best source of information for anybody wanting to know what really happened to Flight 330 may be American intelligence files. The FBI’s assessment was clearly derived from solid spy information on the Swissair case (to the trained eye, it looks like some of it comes from signals intelligence from the National Security Agency, which the FBI masked to protect sources and methods). Perhaps when those classified reports are eventually released to the public the full story of how and why 47 innocent people died will be known.
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