US media on the death of Megrahi

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2012.

The American press on the death of the "Lockerbie bomber"

[This is the heading over an article by Ambassador Andrew I Killgore just published on the website of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.  It reads as follows:]

The Washington Post, New York Times and the US edition of the Financial Times all carried articles on the May 20 death in Tripoli, Libya of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted of bombing Pan American Flight 103 on Dec 21, 1988.

The Post, whose pro-Israel sympathies cause its Middle East coverage to be unreliable at best, had a straight one-column article. It expressed no doubts that the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 was transported from Valletta, Malta to Frankfurt, Germany to London, where it was loaded onto the doomed plane.

Determined to publish as little as possible on the Lockerbie tragedy, the news of Megrahi's death was published in the Post's little-read obituary section—alongside the death of singer Robin Gibb of the disco group the Bee Gees. In a stunning example of the paper's priorities, the Post devoted nearly twice as much space to Gibb's obituary as it did to Megrahi's.

The Financial Times article is better, and much less linear. "Discrepancies at the trial led many to believe in Megrahi's innocence," it informs its readers. The former Scottish lord advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, in expressing his doubts about Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci's identification of Megrahi as having bought certain clothes from his shop in Valletta, remarked that Gauci was "an apple short of a picnic." The Financial Times also notes that "there were reports that Gauci received at least $2 million from the US, possibly via the CIA."

As a result, the paper concludes, "we may never know who placed the bomb that brought down terror and death to a planeload of passengers, to the crew that served them, and civilians in a sleepy Scottish town [Lockerbie] below."

The New York Times carried two articles on Megrahi's death, one by John F Burns and the other by Robert D McFadden. Neither is bad, given the American media's strange silence on the Lockerbie issue. Burns writes, "Even Megrahi's death may not end the saga of Flight 103."

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the Pan Am 103 crash, is mentioned by name, but Dr Robert Black is not. It was Black, professor emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, who originated the idea of holding the Lockerbie trial in The Netherlands with Scottish judges under Scottish law. Nor is any mention made of the Justice for Megrahi Committee (of which this writer is a member).

Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, noted in a television interview that the Scottish police investigation of the bombing had never been closed, and that Libya's new government had "promised to cooperate" in an effort to settle who was responsible.

Dr Swire, whom Burns describes as "the most persistent — and most controversial — of Megrahi's defenders in Britain," fainted in court when Megrahi was convicted and his indicted co-defendant Lamen Khalifa Fhimah acquitted. Swire is a vigorous advocate of an independent inquiry into the bombing, Burns writes, and was reported to have said in broadcast interviews on May 20 that there were two false pieces of evidence in Megrahi's conviction. According to Swire, shopowner Gauci had been paid "millions of dollars" by Western intelligence agencies. Also, the bomb's circuit board was one used by Iranian — not Libyan — intelligence.

McFadden provides much evidence on doubts about Megrahi's guilt. The Lockerbie court "found the case circumstantial, the evidence incomplete and some witnesses unreliable," he writes, but nevertheless left "no reasonable doubt" on Megrahi's guilt. He quotes Hans Koechler, a United Nations observer at the trial, as calling it "a spectacular miscarriage of justice." McFadden continues: "Many legal experts and investigative journalists challenged the evidence, calling Megrahi a scapegoat for a Libyan government long identified with terrorism." While denying involvement, he writes, Libya paid $2.7 million to the victims' families in 2003 in a bid to end years of diplomatic isolation. 

The American press on the death of the "Lockerbie bomber"

[This is the heading over an article by Ambassador Andrew I Killgore just published on the website of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.  It reads as follows:]

The Washington Post, New York Times and the US edition of the Financial Times all carried articles on the May 20 death in Tripoli, Libya of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted of bombing Pan American Flight 103 on Dec 21, 1988.

The Post, whose pro-Israel sympathies cause its Middle East coverage to be unreliable at best, had a straight one-column article. It expressed no doubts that the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 was transported from Valletta, Malta to Frankfurt, Germany to London, where it was loaded onto the doomed plane.

Determined to publish as little as possible on the Lockerbie tragedy, the news of Megrahi's death was published in the Post's little-read obituary section—alongside the death of singer Robin Gibb of the disco group the Bee Gees. In a stunning example of the paper's priorities, the Post devoted nearly twice as much space to Gibb's obituary as it did to Megrahi's.

The Financial Times article is better, and much less linear. "Discrepancies at the trial led many to believe in Megrahi's innocence," it informs its readers. The former Scottish lord advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, in expressing his doubts about Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci's identification of Megrahi as having bought certain clothes from his shop in Valletta, remarked that Gauci was "an apple short of a picnic." The Financial Times also notes that "there were reports that Gauci received at least $2 million from the US, possibly via the CIA."

As a result, the paper concludes, "we may never know who placed the bomb that brought down terror and death to a planeload of passengers, to the crew that served them, and civilians in a sleepy Scottish town [Lockerbie] below."

The New York Times carried two articles on Megrahi's death, one by John F Burns and the other by Robert D McFadden. Neither is bad, given the American media's strange silence on the Lockerbie issue. Burns writes, "Even Megrahi's death may not end the saga of Flight 103."

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the Pan Am 103 crash, is mentioned by name, but Dr Robert Black is not. It was Black, professor emeritus of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, who originated the idea of holding the Lockerbie trial in The Netherlands with Scottish judges under Scottish law. Nor is any mention made of the Justice for Megrahi Committee (of which this writer is a member).

Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, noted in a television interview that the Scottish police investigation of the bombing had never been closed, and that Libya's new government had "promised to cooperate" in an effort to settle who was responsible.

Dr Swire, whom Burns describes as "the most persistent—and most controversial—of Megrahi's defenders in Britain," fainted in court when Megrahi was convicted and his indicted co-defendant Lamen Khalifa Fhimah acquitted. Swire is a vigorous advocate of an independent inquiry into the bombing, Burns writes, and was reported to have said in broadcast interviews on May 20 that there were two false pieces of evidence in Megrahi's conviction. According to Swire, shopowner Gauci had been paid "millions of dollars" by Western intelligence agencies. Also, the bomb's circuit board was one used by Iranian—not Libyan—intelligence.

McFadden provides much evidence on doubts about Megrahi's guilt. The Lockerbie court "found the case circumstantial, the evidence incomplete and some witnesses unreliable," he writes, but nevertheless left "no reasonable doubt" on Megrahi's guilt. He quotes Hans Koechler, a United Nations observer at the trial, as calling it "a spectacular miscarriage of justice." McFadden continues: "Many legal experts and investigative journalists challenged the evidence, calling Megrahi a scapegoat for a Libyan government long identified with terrorism." While denying involvement, he writes, Libya paid $2.7 million to the victims' families in 2003 in a bid to end years of diplomatic isolation.

Many still question Megrahi conviction in bombing of Pan Am 103

[This is the headline over an article in the current issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs by the magazine's publisher, Ambassador Andrew I Killgore. It reads as follows:]

Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted on Jan 31, 2001 of destroying Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec 21, 1988, killing the plane's 259 passengers, including 179 Americans, and 11 people on the ground. Megrahi was tried under Scottish law by Scottish judges in a special court sitting at Camp Zeist, a former American military base in The Netherlands.

As readers of the Washington Report are aware, the American media coverage of the Lockerbie trial was very thin, despite the heavy loss of American lives. There seems to be a determined silence about even the existence of an organization called "Justice for Megrahi," whose members include (full disclosure) this writer and several distinguished Britons, including Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the crash, and Dr. Robert Black, former professor of criminal law at Edinburgh University and creator of the idea of trying Megrahi and his co-defendant, Lamen Fhimah, in The Netherlands under Scottish law.

The revolution in Libya, and particularly the defection to Britain of former Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, has stirred some peripheral interest in Lockerbie. Before he became foreign minister, Koussa was head of Libyan intelligence, and close to Muammar al-Qaddafi. He would know what was in Qaddafi's mind when he agreed to turn over Megrahi and Fhimah for trial. Was it because the Libyan leader thought the two men were guilty, or because he knew he was obliged to do so to gain sufficient Western approval for the development of his country, including increased oil production?

The April 9 Washington Post ran an article saying that Scottish officials had "met" with Koussa, who they think may have crucial information about Lockerbie. According to the article, "Prosecutors said that they would offer no additional details of their conversations with Koussa." Just what did Koussa tell them, and why is no more information about the meeting forthcoming?

So far as this writer has seen, no American newspaper has mentioned that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled that Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice—a finding that presumably remains valid despite Megrahi's release from prison on compassionate grounds. Yet, the Washington Post article writes that "the case remains open despite Megrahi's conviction."

The heavy lethargy of the American media on Lockerbie includes no word that many outstanding Britons who lost relatives or friends in the Lockerbie crash do not believe that Megrahi is guilty. If members of "Justice for Megrahi," who obviously think he is not guilty, could possibly arrange a discussion with Moussa, it could clear up a lot of questions. Depending on Koussa's answers, it could reopen the question of who really bombed Pan Am 103.

[Yesterday, for the first time in its history, this blog had more visitors from the United States than from the United Kingdom. The most-read item was MSPs call for independent inquiry into Lockerbie.]

“I wonder who killed our relatives?”

[The following are excerpts from an article published on this date in 2000 on the website of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs by Ambassador Andrew I Killgore, the magazine’s editor and publisher:]

“I wonder who killed our relatives?”—A middle-aged American man on a BBC-TV program about the Lockerbie trial.

Pan American Flight 103 was destroyed by an on-board explosive device over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec 21, 1988. All 259 persons on board, most of them Americans, and 11 people on the ground were killed.

Two Libyans, Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, are on trial for the crime. The trial is being conducted, by Scottish judges under Scottish law, at Camp Zeist, a former US military base near Amsterdam, the Netherlands. According to Scottish law, the three judges may reach a finding of guilty, not guilty or not proven.

The prosecution’s operating theory is that the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was in retaliation for the US bombing of Tripoli in 1986, which itself was in retaliation for Libyan involvement in the bombing of a Berlin disco frequented by American servicemen. As often seems to be the case, however, the US and Libya were not the only countries involved in the ever-ratcheting rounds of retaliation. (...)

The trial of the two accused Libyans has taken some bizarre turns. The most astonishing development is that the prosecution’s highly touted key witness, the pseudonymous Libyan intelligence service defector Abdul Majid Giaka, proved on the witness stand to lack any credibility. Moreover, CIA cables reluctantly made available to the Court depicted Giaka as an unsavory character whom CIA personnel themselves had distrusted.

A BBC television broadcast showed a group of people leaving the courtroom on the day Giaka performed so badly on the witness stand. Many in the group were relatives of Pan Am 103’s victims attending the trial at the expense of the US Department of Justice’s Office of Victim Services. The quote at the beginning of this article, by a member of the group who appeared to be an American, reflected a puzzled doubt of the Libya-did-it scenario.

Even more puzzling, if that is possible, is that CIA agent Harold M Hendershot, brought to the stand to buttress Giaka’s shaky testimony, himself turned out to be vague and not very credible. In view of the fact that Hendershot had been deeply involved in the case from the time of the crash in December 1988, one is left with a growing sense of confusion, rather than answers, about Lockerbie.

The Lockerbie trial recessed at the end of October for several days while the Court considered how to handle a mass of new material on Lockerbie presented by an “unnamed country.” Whether the material in this weird new turn in the trial is helpful to the prosecution or defense is unknown, although University of Edinburgh criminal law professor Robert Black speculates that it must help the defense.

The twists and turns of Lockerbie raise intriguing questions, some of them troubling. If Libya did not bomb Pan Am 103, who did? Why would the United States present a case that didn’t hold up? Was the case ever expected to be brought to trial? Or was it basically a device for keeping Qaddafi in the doghouse with unproven charges?

Perhaps these twists and turns should not be unexpected, however—for the most significant surprise occurred on the day of the crash itself. According to its normal flight plan, Pan Am 103 “should” have blown up over the sea, where evidence of criminality never would have been found. Instead, unusually strong gale force winds that day led the pilot to fly north to get “above” the tempests—and thus to be over Scotland when the bomb exploded. Are the real criminals who blew up Pan Am 103 trembling in fear lest a fluke of nature that left evidence on the ground eventually will point to them?

Convicted Lockerbie bomber probably not guilty—so who is the real criminal?

[This is the headline over an article in the current issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs by the magazine's publisher, Ambassador Andrew I Killgore. The following are excerpts.]

On Aug 21 Scotland freed Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi—convicted under Scottish law at a special court in The Netherlands of destroying Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on [December] 21, 1988. Killed were 259 persons, including 189 Americans on board and 11 people on the ground. The terminally ill Megrahi, after dropping his second appeal, was released on compassionate grounds. Back in Libya, he continues to protest his innocence. (...)

At the Lockerbie trial so-called “key witness” [Tony] Gauci would identify Megrahi as the purchaser of certain items of clothing found at the crash site that Gauci claimed were purchased at his shop in Valetta, Malta. But on the witness stand Gauci proved to be a flop at identification. An FBI officer, Harold Hendershot, called to the witness stand to bolster Gauci’s testimony, also appeared to lack credibility.

Another puzzling aspect of the Lockerbie trial was that, despite the prosecution’s insistence that the bombing could only have been a two-man job, Megrahi’s co-defendant, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted. No explanation was ever forthcoming. A middle-aged American (judging by his accent) attending the trial was overheard by this writer on a BBC broadcast expressing uncertainty about the testimony: “I wonder who killed our relatives?”

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the crash, is sure that Gauci identified the wrong man. Swire is an unusual man. As an officer in the British army, he was trained in the use of plastic explosives. After completing his army national service, he worked for the BBC as an electronics engineer before studying medicine and becoming a practicing physician. Dr Swire cannot accept as credible the Lockerbie trial’s technical details about the explosives that brought down Pan Am 103. He became a spokesman for relatives of British nationals killed in the crash. Overwhelmingly these relatives do not believe that Megrahi is guilty.

Dr Swire is convinced that shopkeeper Gauci identified an innocent man as the bomber. In a Dec 27, 2007 e-mail from Swire to this writer, Swire quoted Gauci as saying that Megrahi was “like” the man who bought clothes in his shop, but that the age and height were “very different.” Nevertheless, the Scottish judges accepted Gauci’s testimony.

Gauci reportedly now lives in Australia with a $2 million (some reports say $4 million) reward from the American government. According to the State Department’s “Rewards for Justice” Web site, since its inception in 1984 the program has paid $77 million to more than 50 people.

But the biggest reason for questioning the validity of the “Libya-did-it” scenario is the sheer improbability of placing a bomb on a plane in Valetta, Malta, bound for Frankfurt, Germany, there to be offloaded on a second plane bound for London, where it would be offloaded on a third plane bound for New York, to explode 38 minutes later. Common sense would dictate a far more simple scheme: load the bomb aboard a plane in London with a simple pressure mechanism to go off when the plane was safely out to sea (...)

In the aforementioned e-mail, from which I am free to quote, Dr Swire said the Lockerbie court heard of a “specialized timer/baroceptor bomb mechanism” made by the PFLP-GC in the Damascus suburbs. This device would explode within 30 to 45 minutes after takeoff, but was stable indefinitely at ground level. The court heard that these devices could not be altered. “Yet the court believed,” Swire wrote, “that Megrahi ‘happened’ to set his Swiss timer in such a way that it went off in the middle of the time window for the Syrian device, surviving changes of planes at Frankfurt and London.”

Dr Swire told the BBC News of Aug 20, 2009 that the prosecution at the Lockerbie trial failed to take into consideration the reported break-in of the Pan Am baggage area at Heathrow in the early morning hours of the day of Pan Am 103’s doomed flight.

Many of the British relatives of Pan Am 103 victims have come to believe that the bomb was loaded in London, and thus that Megrahi could not be guilty. These relatives and Dr Swire were opposed to Megrahi’s withdrawing his second appeal on the grounds that further evidence would come out that might have pointed to the real culprit.

In a Jan 4, 2008 e-mail, Dr Swire warned that “there is some deep secret hidden in this tragedy which evokes virulent responses...when questions are raised.”

In an Aug 20, 2009 e-mail response to this writer’s inquiry, Dr Swire said “that it appears that the Iranians used the PFLP-GC as mercenaries in this ghastly business.” According to this theory, held by many who doubt Megrahi’s guilt, including CounterPunch’s Alexander Cockburn, Iran hired the PFLP-GC to avenge the July 3, 1988 shooting down by the USS Vincennes of an Iranian Airbus passenger plane, killing 290 passengers, including 66 children. The US ship’s officers later received medals for heroism in combat.

Having lost his daughter in the Pan Am crash, and as an expert in explosives, Dr Swire is uniquely qualified to examine the Pan Am tragedy. America and its mainstream media did not reflect credit on themselves by refusing to acknowledge questions about Megrahi’s guilt.

Dr Swire may well be right in blaming the PFLP-GC for the tragedy. But this writer still has his doubts — because the ineptness of the trial and Washington’s fanaticism in pushing such a flimsy case against Libya leave an impression that it must be covering up for the real criminals. Somehow it seems unlikely that the US would go to such lengths to protect Iran, much less the PFLP-GC.

Taking another look at the destruction of Pan Am 103

[This is the headline over an article in the March 2010 edition of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs by the magazine's publisher, Ambassaador Andrew I Killgore. It reads in part:]

In February 1986 Israeli Mossad operatives installed a “Trojan” communications device on the top floor of an apartment house in Tripoli, Libya. The six-foot-long device was able to receive messages on one frequency and automatically rebroadcast the same message on a different frequency—in this case, one used by the government of Libya.

Israeli naval commandos arriving in miniature submarines in the middle of the night had delivered the Trojan, only seven inches in diameter, to the lone Mossad agent in Tripoli, who drove a rented van to their rendezvous point on a deserted beach outside Tripoli. The agent, along with four of the commandos, then took the Trojan to an apartment building in the Libyan capital where he had rented the top floor, and installed the device. By March the Trojan was broadcasting a series of “terrorist” orders to Libyan embassies around the world. (...)

Less than two months after the Trojan was installed, on April 5, 1986, the La Belle nightclub in then-West Berlin was bombed, killing two American soldiers and a Turkish woman. At the same time a false “success” signal was sent, apparently from the device in Tripoli.

“False-flagged” by Israel, President Ronald Reagan on April 14 sent American bombers from Britain and from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean to strike Tripoli and Benghazi, killing 101 people, including the adopted young daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi when his house in Tripoli was bombed. (...)

The proximity in time between the Lockerbie crash and the shooting down by the USS Vincennes on July 3 of that year of an Iran Air passenger plane over the Persian Gulf, with the loss of 290 lives, presented a perfect “revenge” scenario. That, clearly, was the initial premise of the investigators at Lockerbie. Dr Robert Black, professor of criminal law at Edinburgh University in Scotland, told this writer that, for the first two years following the Pan Am crash, investigators were focused on Iran as having hired Ahmad Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command to carry out a retaliatory bombing.

In a Jan 28, 2009 article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, however, the late Russell Warren Howe cited the book Gideon’s Spies by Gordon Thomas. Thomas quotes a Mossad source as saying, “Within hours after the [Pan Am 103] crash Mossad’s LAP [psychological warfare or disinformation] staff were working their media contacts, urging them to blame and publicize that ‘Libya-did-it.’”

They could have blamed Iran, of course, but that would have gone against the Israeli grain. Iran was a large, non-Arab Muslim nation — and, as such, always of potential benefit to an Israel heavily outnumbered by the Arabs. Israel had even “done business” with the Islamic Republic a few years earlier, in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair. It’s also possible, of course, that the Israelis know Iran was not the guilty party.

The perpetrators of the crime against the passengers and crew of Pan Am Flight 103 had intended that it crash at sea, leaving no physical evidence and no bodies to tell the tale. But turbulent weather over Heathrow Airport had led the pilot of the giant Boeing 747 to steer slightly more northward than usual, so the plane was still over land when it crashed at Lockerbie, Scotland.

The criminals thus had to think fast. A fragment from the alleged bomb trigger device was “found” several days after the crash. However, as the BBC program “Newsnight” reported on Jan 8 of this year, tests aimed at reproducing the blast indicated that no such fragment would have survived the mid-air explosion. The “evidence,” moreover, was placed in a sack which was labeled in a certain way—but the label was subsequently changed by an unknown person, causing suspicion that evidence was being altered. As Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the crash, has written: “Coming from a scientific educational background, I found that it was the forensic evidence at [the trial at Camp] Zeist…which first convinced me that the prosecution case was a fabrication.”

Another astonishing factor was that the Crown (the prosecutors) ignored evidence of a break-in of the Pan Am luggage area at Heathrow early in the morning of that fatal December day. One wonders whether Pan Am had been alerted to security problems at Heathrow by Isaac Yeffet, the former head of security at Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport, where security is airtight. In an article in the March 1989 issue of the now-defunct Life magazine entitled “The Next Bomb,” Edward Barnes wrote, “in 1986 Yeffet was part of a team commissioned by Pan Am to survey 25 of its branches around the world…Yeffet now runs a security consulting business in New Jersey.”

Dr. Swire, who has described the Court’s conviction of Megrahi as “a cock and bull story,” is not alone in his skepticism. Hans Köchler, the UN observer at the trial, has described the verdict as “incomprehensible,” and Dr Robert Black has denounced the guilty verdict in equally dismissive language.

Thus the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 remains a mystery. If two years of investigating Iran produced no evidence, and the evidence used to convict Megrahi was fake, who was responsible for the horrific crime?

[The past week's absence of posts on this blog was due to my having taken a trip across the border to Namibia. But as far as I can see, little worthy of mention has appeared in the media during my absence.

For those with the stomach for it, a nasty little story in today's edition of the Sunday Mirror headed "The man who will not die ..." can be read here.

Since I posted the link to the piece in the Sunday Mirror, the headline over the report on the newspaper's website has been altered to "Lockerbie bomber Abdul-Basset Al-Megrahi has 30,000 visitors and babies named after him". Can it be that a humble blogger can arouse feelings of shame in a tabloid journalist or sub-editor? Surely not.]

There is some deep secret hidden in this tragedy

[What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2009:]

Convicted Lockerbie bomber probably not guilty—so who is the real criminal?

[This is the headline over an article in the current issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs by the magazine's publisher, Ambassador Andrew I Killgore. The following are excerpts.]

On Aug 21 Scotland freed Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi—convicted under Scottish law at a special court in The Netherlands of destroying Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on [December] 21, 1988. Killed were 259 persons, including 189 Americans on board and 11 people on the ground. The terminally ill Megrahi, after dropping his second appeal, was released on compassionate grounds. Back in Libya, he continues to protest his innocence. (...)

At the Lockerbie trial so-called “key witness” [Tony] Gauci would identify Megrahi as the purchaser of certain items of clothing found at the crash site that Gauci claimed were purchased at his shop in Valetta, Malta. But on the witness stand Gauci proved to be a flop at identification. An FBI officer, Harold Hendershot, called to the witness stand to bolster Gauci’s testimony, also appeared to lack credibility.

Another puzzling aspect of the Lockerbie trial was that, despite the prosecution’s insistence that the bombing could only have been a two-man job, Megrahi’s co-defendant, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted. No explanation was ever forthcoming. A middle-aged American (judging by his accent) attending the trial was overheard by this writer on a BBC broadcast expressing uncertainty about the testimony: “I wonder who killed our relatives?”

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the crash, is sure that Gauci identified the wrong man. Swire is an unusual man. As an officer in the British army, he was trained in the use of plastic explosives. After completing his army national service, he worked for the BBC as an electronics engineer before studying medicine and becoming a practicing physician. Dr Swire cannot accept as credible the Lockerbie trial’s technical details about the explosives that brought down Pan Am 103. He became a spokesman for relatives of British nationals killed in the crash. Overwhelmingly these relatives do not believe that Megrahi is guilty.

Dr Swire is convinced that shopkeeper Gauci identified an innocent man as the bomber. In a Dec 27, 2007 e-mail from Swire to this writer, Swire quoted Gauci as saying that Megrahi was “like” the man who bought clothes in his shop, but that the age and height were “very different.” Nevertheless, the Scottish judges accepted Gauci’s testimony.

Gauci reportedly now lives in Australia with a $2 million (some reports say $4 million) reward from the American government. According to the State Department’s “Rewards for Justice” Web site, since its inception in 1984 the program has paid $77 million to more than 50 people.

But the biggest reason for questioning the validity of the “Libya-did-it” scenario is the sheer improbability of placing a bomb on a plane in Valetta, Malta, bound for Frankfurt, Germany, there to be offloaded on a second plane bound for London, where it would be offloaded on a third plane bound for New York, to explode 38 minutes later. Common sense would dictate a far more simple scheme: load the bomb aboard a plane in London with a simple pressure mechanism to go off when the plane was safely out to sea (...)

In the aforementioned e-mail, from which I am free to quote, Dr Swire said the Lockerbie court heard of a “specialized timer/baroceptor bomb mechanism” made by the PFLP-GC in the Damascus suburbs. This device would explode within 30 to 45 minutes after takeoff, but was stable indefinitely at ground level. The court heard that these devices could not be altered. “Yet the court believed,” Swire wrote, “that Megrahi ‘happened’ to set his Swiss timer in such a way that it went off in the middle of the time window for the Syrian device, surviving changes of planes at Frankfurt and London.”

Dr Swire told the BBC News of Aug 20, 2009 that the prosecution at the Lockerbie trial failed to take into consideration the reported break-in of the Pan Am baggage area at Heathrow in the early morning hours of the day of Pan Am 103’s doomed flight.

Many of the British relatives of Pan Am 103 victims have come to believe that the bomb was loaded in London, and thus that Megrahi could not be guilty. These relatives and Dr Swire were opposed to Megrahi’s withdrawing his second appeal on the grounds that further evidence would come out that might have pointed to the real culprit.

In a Jan 4, 2008 e-mail, Dr Swire warned that “ which evokes virulent responses...when questions are raised.”

In an Aug 20, 2009 e-mail response to this writer’s inquiry, Dr Swire said “that it appears that the Iranians used the PFLP-GC as mercenaries in this ghastly business.” According to this theory, held by many who doubt Megrahi’s guilt, including CounterPunch’s Alexander Cockburn, Iran hired the PFLP-GC to avenge the July 3, 1988 shooting down by the USS Vincennes of an Iranian Airbus passenger plane, killing 290 passengers, including 66 children. The US ship’s officers later received medals for heroism in combat.

Having lost his daughter in the Pan Am crash, and as an expert in explosives, Dr Swire is uniquely qualified to examine the Pan Am tragedy. America and its mainstream media did not reflect credit on themselves by refusing to acknowledge questions about Megrahi’s guilt.

Dr Swire may well be right in blaming the PFLP-GC for the tragedy. But this writer still has his doubts — because the ineptness of the trial and Washington’s fanaticism in pushing such a flimsy case against Libya leave an impression that it must be covering up for the real criminals. Somehow it seems unlikely that the US would go to such lengths to protect Iran, much less the PFLP-GC.

A Libyan perspective on the overlooked side of the Lockerbie bombing

[This is the headline over a long and important article by Dr Mustafa Fetouri just published in the May 2025 edition of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It reads as follows:]

The trial of Libyan citizen Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, 74, was due to begin in Washington, DC on May 12, but has been postponed at the request of the prosecution and defense due to Mas’ud’s health issues and the complexity of the case. He is accused of making the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec 21, 1988. Many observers believe if Mas’ud gets a fair trial and good defense, he will not be convicted.

KIDNAPPED AND SMUGGLED TO US CUSTODY

Septuagenarian Mas’ud has been in and out of the hospital almost 20 times since he was kidnapped and smuggled into the US in 2022. He suffers from chronicle illnesses including type one diabetes and had to undergo two operations: first for spine issues and then to amputate three gangrene-affected toes. His family told the Washington Report that they doubt he will survive the trial. The entire episode is outside of any legal framework, and Mas’ud is very unlikely to change the not guilty plea he entered when first arraigned in February 2023.

Back in 2001, two other Libyans were tried in special court in The Netherlands which ended in convicting Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and acquitting Lamin Fahima. Al-Megrahi, who died in 2012, protested his innocence until his last breath. Most observers and legal experts, including Dr Hans Köchler, the United Nations-appointed expert, believed that al-Megrahi and Libya were framed and the court in The Netherlands was neither objective nor fair.

COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT

The US accused the two Libyans of involvement in the disaster in 1991. In accordance with the 1971 Montreal Convention on Civil Aviation, the Libyan government offered to try both men in its courts and invited the US and the UK to submit their evidence; both countries rejected the idea. Libya in turn refused to hand over its citizens. The standstill continued for years. 

The Security Council adopted several resolutions calling on Libya to hand over its citizens to stand trial—not in Scotland where the crime took place but in the US. Many legal experts questioned the merits of the Security Council involvement in a purely criminal act. 

On midnight of April 15, 1992, Security Council Resolution 748 came into effect, imposing stringent restrictions on Libya including a ban on all civilian flights in and out of Libya while obliging all UN member states to close offices of Libyan Airlines, the national carrier.

That effectively isolated Libya and its people for a crime their government has always denied. In later years several pieces of evidence completely exonerated Libya from the Lockerbie disaster. 

Between 1992 and 1999, when sanctions were suspended, the UN Security Council passed three Lockerbie-related resolutions. Nonbinding resolution 731 (1992) called on Libya to hand over the two suspects. In 2003 Security Council Resolution 1506 ended all sanctions. Libya waited another year for the US to lift is own sanctions, some imposed as early as 1986.

NATION IN AGONY

The resolution was only the third time the Security Council had imposed collective punishment on an entire nation. And unlike apartheid South Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and later apartheid South Africa, Libya was sanctioned in the absence of any proof linking the government to the crime. 

While much has been written over the last 37 years about the Lockerbie crime, very little has been written about how Libya’s 4.6 million citizens (the estimated population at the time) coped with the harsh sanctions, which affected every aspect of their daily lives, including medicines and equipment for essential services. Travel became cumbersome; people had to travel overland to neighboring countries and then board flights to their final destination. Hundreds of students studying abroad, like myself, had to give up going home during school breaks either because it was too expensive or too time-consuming. To reach Tripoli, one had to fly to Tunisia’s Southern Djerba, take a boat from Malta or fly to Cairo, and then take ground transportation to Libya.

ACCUMULATING LOSSES

The Washington Report spoke to several former Libyan officials, all speaking anonymously, to put together a broader picture of how the country functioned while under almost complete sanctions and how its people went about their lives.

Precise figures of the economic impact of the sanctions are lacking either because of lack of documentation or because much of the government files were looted and destroyed during the upheavals of 2011 and the civil war that followed, again facilitated by the UN Security Council. The former deputy foreign minister estimates that Libya’s overall economic losses between 1992 and 2003 amounted to more than $100 billion.

The former deputy foreign minister said, “Libya took certain steps” to “document” the overall losses incurred because of the sanctions. Asked why not many countries came to Libya’s help, he explained that “many countries tried but could not because UN binding resolutions” are like “international law” and compliance is mandatory. He added, “behind the scenes the US, UK and France scared every country that considered helping Libya.” The three countries have veto power in the Security Council.

His colleague, another Qaddafi-era minister responsible for the Lockerbie losses file, said: “we documented all details including how many people died and were injured” as they took circuitous routes to catch flights to reach their destinations. 

The oil sector, the main source of revenue for the state, lost between $18 billion and $33 billion during that period. After Security Council Resolution 883 targeted the oil industry, the country’s production dropped from 1.4 mp/d (thousand barrels a day) to below 1.2 mp/d and the downward trend continued, hitting less than 1 mp/d in some months. The long-term effect was significant: the return to pre-sanction oil production levels entailed raising prices, which affected competitiveness.

Low oil prices and higher production cost meant less cash for the government which, in turn, affected its ability to import things like machinery, consumer goods, food and medicine. Medicine in particular was badly affected; patients continued to receive them for free, even as the cost to the government increased substantially, and certain medications became scarce. In general the healthcare system was disrupted and accumulated an estimated loss of some $92 million. Many Libyans sought treatment abroad, which requires hard currency, increasing demand for dollars and forcing the government to heavily regulate the availability of the dollar. This gave rise to the black market, where the price of the dollar was nearly 10 times that of government-controlled prices. 

The transportation sector lost some $900 million as spare parts become more expensive. Government control of hard currency affected both the agriculture and industry sectors, whose combined estimated losses totalled $10 billion. 

After the oil industry, the second most impacted sector was aviation. Many Libyan Airlines aircraft were stranded in airports around the world because they were already out of the country when the sanctions hit. It took the company decades to renew its fleet and resume normal services after the sanctions were lifted. Some sources estimate that the sector lost nearly $30 billion during the seven years of sanctions.

Increased road travel led to higher road accidents. An estimated 5,000 to 6,000 deaths were recorded every year during the sanction period. Lack of spare parts, restrictions on importing new cars, crumbling roads and weaker road safety made a bad situation even worse. 

By the time sanctions were completely lifted in 2003, every economic sector in the country was in need of heavy government cash injections to revive it. On top of that, Libya had  to pay $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of the Lockerbie victims, as part of the settlement with the United States.

WILL LIBYA BE COMPENSATED?

The abduction and subsequent trial of Mas’ud has opened old wounds in Libya. Many Libyans protested what they considered the illegal incarceration of Mas’ud, accusing the Tripoli-based government of selling out after the Lockerbie case had already been settled. In 2008, and as part of the larger agreement to re-establish diplomatic relations between Libya and the US, the two countries signed a Claims Settlement Agreement, ending all claims against each other including all claims arising from the Lockerbie disaster. The agreement does not say anything about possible compensation for Libyan losses.

Many Libyans question how the UN’s highest body, the Security Council, could take aggressive measures against Libya without any hard facts. 

Will Libya one day be compensated as a victim of an unjust international system? This is beyond the purview of the Washington court and is likely to remain an open question after the current case is concluded.

'No question' Gadhafi ordered Pan Am bombing, ex-CIA official says

[This is the headline over a report on the MSNBC News website on 7 March. It reads in part:]

A former top CIA official who helped oversee the agency’s investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, tells NBC News there is "no doubt" that Moammar Gadhafi personally approved the bombing.

"There are two things that you can take to the bank," said Frank Anderson, who served as the agency's Near East affairs chief between 1991 and his retirement in 1995. "The first one is, Pan Am 103 was perpetrated by agents of the Libyan government. And the second thing is, that could not have happened without Moammar Gadhafi's knowledge and consent.

"There is no question in my mind that Moammar Gadhafi authorized the bombing of Pan Am 103." (...)

Anderson acknowledged that the CIA never had direct evidence tying Gadhafi to the bombing. But during Anderson's tenure as chief of the CIA's Near East affairs division U.S. and British officials were able to wrap up an investigation that uncovered forensic and other evidence linking the planting of the bomb to Abdelbasset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer.

While there have long been suspicions of Gadhafi's involvement, Anderson has particular credibility on the issue. As one of the CIA's top experts on Libya — he had served as a case officer in Tripoli in the early 1970s after Gadhafi first came to power — Anderson dismissed the possibility that Megrahi could have been acting as a "rogue" agent without the knowledge of the regime's top leader. By the time of the bombing, he said, Gadhafi had so consolidated his hold over the regime that there was "absolutely no way" for Libyan intelligence officials to have carried out the bombing without the dictator's authorization.

Geopolitical and other realities led U.S. officials to handle the matter as a criminal case, resulting in a federal indictment of Megrahi and an alleged co-conspirator, rather than with military force, noted Anderson, who now serves as the president of the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington-based think tank. President Ronald Reagan ordered a bombing of Libya in 1986 after U.S. officials linked Libya's intelligence service to an earlier terrorism bombing in Berlin that killed two U.S. servicemen.

In a separate interview, Richard Marquise, who was the chief FBI agent on the Lockerbie case, said he and other bureau officials always assumed that senior Libyan officials were complicit in blowing up the aircraft, but never had enough evidence to build a case against them.

When Megrahi and an alleged co-conspirator, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, were indicted by a federal grand jury in 1991, FBI officials were eager to convict them in a U.S. court – and then get them to finger the higher level officials who gave them their orders, said Marquise. Some evidence against higher level Libyan intelligence officials had surfaced in the course of the probe, said Marquise. He even considered seeking "material witness" warrants that would authorize FBI agents to apprehend the suspects and force them to testify.

"We always hoped that had we gotten (access to Megrahi and Fhimah) they would start to roll," said Marquise. "There was always an expectation that we would get further up the chain."

But much to the frustration of U.S. officials, that never happened. As part of a deal to get the Libyans to turn over Megrahi and Fhimah, the U.S. agreed to allow them to be tried in Scotland — and Scottish officials agreed to restrict the case only to them, preventing the disclosure of any evidence that might point to higher-ups. (...)

[Posted to the blog from Oudtshoorn, the ostrich capital of South Africa, indeed the world.]

Surely Mr Marquise should know the answer?

[What follows is a response by Dr Jim Swire to a comment by Richard Marquise on the article "Taking Another Look at the Destruction of Pan Am 103" that recently appeared in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. The article, and Mr Marquise's comment, can be read here.]

How remarkable that a man of your stature, Mr Marquise, should publish a comment which starts by claiming that those who wrote this article and those who do not believe that the Megrahi verdict was correct 'Have no knowledge other than what they have read in blogs on the internet offering an "opinion" of the evidence at Lockerbie....'

I sat, Mr Marquise, in the court at Zeist throughout the main trial and the first appeal: were you there? Frequently I still refer to the full set of transcripts to try to ensure that I make as few mistakes as possible. But I would add that it is what is not there that is often so interesting.

I presume you know, sir, that the trial judges were forced to report that it was 'a difficulty for the prosecution case that no evidence was led as to how Megrahi breached security in Malta'. Perhaps with your resources Mr Marquise, you can tell me, why was it that the break-in the night before Lockerbie at Heathrow airport was concealed from the main trial? It only emerged after 12 years: too late for the trial court to use.

Why was that? If you were indeed in charge of the case, presumably you know the answer. The Crown Office tell me they didn't know about it during that time either, what do you think? Did you know about it yourself? You were in charge you say of the investigation. If you knew, why didn't you tell, if you didn't know then it can't have been a very careful investigation can it? One or the other must be true. Did you know or not?

You must know by now that the break-in gave an unknown intruder access to Heathrow airside close to where the PanAm baggage container (later shown in court evidence to have contained the IED) had stood unguarded the following evening. Where the man loading that container gave evidence at Zeist that he had seen an unauthorised bag which he failed to remove, and that he'd seen it before the Frankfurt feeder flight (PA103A) had even landed at Heathrow.

What verdict do you think their Lordships at the main trial would have reached had they been required to compare the evidence from Luqa airport with the break-in evidence at Heathrow? Would they really then have been able to surmount the hurdle of 'reasonable doubt'? Their Lordships in the trial knew from the evidence led that terrorists had access to IEDs stable at ground level for days or even weeks, but designed always to explode around 40 minutes after take off, courtesy of their air pressure sensitive switches. No human intervention required in airside, except to get one into the target airplane. What if the Heathrow intruder brought one of those in with him? What if he left it with a message in the IranAir facility nearby?

So many queries because there was no scrap of evidence that the break-in was responsibly investigated at the time, that was not your fault, sir, because proper investigation, to be effective, would have had to start before the disaster had occurred, would it not?

Yes, I know that President Bush was trying back-channel negotiations with the Iranians in those days, despite the embarrassing shoot-down of an Iranian airbus by the US Cruiser Vincennes six months before, for which Iran had sworn revenge. That attempted negotiation wouldn't be a legitimate reason for interfering with a criminal trial would it? Not unless one was working in intelligence on one's country's behalf rather than as a criminal investigator.

Might not that break-in be the reason why my daughter's life was snuffed out in an explosion over Lockerbie 38 minutes after take-off from Heathrow with its now proven failed security perimeter?

Before you say 'Ah, but despite the Heathrow evidence, the first appeal failed' let me point out that Megrahi's defence had decided they would not challenge the 'sufficiency of evidence' led in the main trial. That extraordinary decision meant that their Lorships of appeal had no obligation to sift through that main trial evidence. That in turn meant that their belief that the 16 hours between the break-in and the take-off meant that it might be too long for it to be relevant may have been reached without the detailed knowledge of the nature of the available IEDs of which the main trial knew so much.

Did you know about the Heathrow break-in while the trial was in progress Mr Marquise, or did you not?

Do not fear, we are only after the truth, and I don't blog on the internet either. The fact that other well informed people do, makes it very difficult to conceal things for ever these days, doesn't it?

Trial of kidnapped Libyan could unravel entire US Lockerbie bombing narrative

[This is the headline over an article by Dr Mustafa Fetouri published in the current issue of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It reads in part:]

Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, 74, a Libyan national, appeared in a federal court in Washington, DC, on Dec 12, 2022, charged in connection with the bombing that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland while flying from London to New York.

 According to US prosecutors, Mas’ud made the bomb that blew up the plane on Dec 21, 1988, killing 270, including 11 people on the ground. Two other Libyans have been tried for the same crime: Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted while his co-accused Lamin Fahima was acquitted in 2001. Al-Meghrahi protested his innocence until his 2012 death from prostate cancer in his Tripoli home. In fact, his conviction was widely criticized by the legal community and by United Nations observer Hans Kochler, who cited “foreign governmental and intelligence interference in the presentation of evidence.” 

Mas’ud’s kidnapping and subsequent “extradition” to the US started in the poor suburb of Abu Salim, south of the Libyan capital Tripoli, where armed militias roam freely. 

On the night of Nov 16, 2022, Mas’ud was getting ready for bed when half a dozen unmarked cars pulled up in front of his home. Four masked and armed men forced their way into his bedroom, dragged him out in his pajamas, shoved him into one of the cars and drove away. One of the masked men told the small crowd that quickly formed in the street that Mas’ud would be back soon. Abdel Moneim Al-Maryami, the family’s spokesman and Ma’sud’s nephew, described the shock for onlookers who “watched helplessly.” 

That evening Mas’ud had just returned from his third visit to the hospital in a week. The septuagenarian suffers from a host of illnesses made worse during his decade-long incarceration in the notorious Al-Hadba prison in Tripoli, accused of preparing car bombs in Libya’s 2011 civil war. The US Justice Department alleges that Mas’ud first confessed to making the Lockerbie bomb in Al-Hadba prison, but the former director of that prison, Khalid Sharif, denies that Mas’ud ever made such a confession while he was there. Sharif, now living in exile in Turkey, was one of the top leaders of the organization known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. In 2004 the US listed this Afghanistan-based group as terrorists but unlisted it in 2015 after it participated in the 2011 US-NATO supported armed revolt that toppled former leader Muammar Qaddafi’s government.

The following morning the family started searching for Mas’ud, a daunting task because different militias have different detention centers. After a week and multiple visits to the headquarters of different militias, the offices of the prime minister and the prosecutor general, and different detention centers around Tripoli, Abdel Moneim was told where he was and allowed to visit him. 

In detention Mas’ud told his visitors that nobody “interrogated him,” let alone explained why he was detained or by whom. Family members continued visiting until one day his son, Essam, went for a visit but was told his father had been taken to Misrata, some 186 miles (300 km) east of Tripoli. “He was handed over” to Joint Force, a notorious and powerful militia, Essam said. 

No one mentioned the idea of handing him over to the US. In fact, Essam said, “they assured us that he was being kept there for his own safety.” Other family members had filed a kidnapping report with the police. Government officials denied knowing anything about the kidnapping. The prosecutor general denied issuing an arrest warrant and promised to investigate the matter. 

Mas’ud made headlines on Dec 21, 2020, the 32nd anniversary of the bombing, when then-US Attorney General William Barr accused him of assembling the bomb and handing it over to Al-Megrahi in Malta. 

Libyan laws do not permit the extradition of its citizens to stand trial abroad, and it has no extradition treaty with the US. In a BBC interview in 2021, Libya’s US-educated foreign minister, Najla El-Mangoush, said her government was “open” to the idea of extraditing suspect Mas’ud but “within the law.” Faced with a huge public outcry, El-Mangoush denied that she ever said she was open to Mas’ud’s extradition, forcing the BBC to release the video clip of the interview in which she made that claim.

The US and Libyan governments knew that Mas’ud could not legally be transferred to the US so they colluded with Joint Force, a militia loyal to Tripoli’s government, to grab him.

Just before midday on Dec 11, 2022, some Pan Am Flight 103 victims’ families received an “urgent update” email from the Scottish authorities updating them on their efforts to prosecute Mas’ud. The message’s closing line said the US “has obtained custody” of him. 

I was in Paris, waiting for news because a friend had already alerted me to expect some. His family first heard the news from me after I spoke to their spokesman Abdel Moneim that morning.

On Dec 12, Mas’ud limped into Judge Robin Meriweather’s DC courtroom where he told the judge that he “cannot talk” before meeting his attorney. A day later, a Libyan businessman told me that he was ready to fund a defense team. But appointing the right defense team thousands of miles away is not an easy task for his family who are still in shock and confused by the conflicting advice they are getting from friends and volunteers trying to help them. 

The fact that he was kidnapped should be reason enough to halt any further legal proceedings against him. But the US has a history of kidnapping suspects and sending them for interrogation to countries that use torture liberally. 

On two previous occasions, US commandos kidnapped suspects from Libya to try them in the US. Ahmed Abu Khatallah,  was kidnapped in 2014, and tried and convicted in the US for participating in the 2012 attack on the US compound in Benghazi, which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. In 2013 Abu Anas al-Libi was snatched and taken to US for trial accused of planning the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. He died of cancer in custody days before his trial. For this third kidnapping the US outsourced the dirty work to a local militia.

The news that Mas’ud had been kidnapped was condemned by Libya’s parliament, High Council of State (a consultative body), the national security adviser and the minister of justice. They also warned that handing him over to the US would be illegal and an infringement of Libyan sovereignty. However, none of them knew exactly what happened, and Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Debeibeh kept silent. The uproar was repeated when Mas’ud was reported to have been sent to the US.

The public reaction has been supportive of Mas’ud and critical of the government in Tripoli. In a clumsy televised speech, Debeibeh attempted some damage control but instead made things worse. He said that “this man [Mas’ud] killed 270 innocent souls in cold blood,” but did not provide any evidence. Most Libyans mocked him and asked whether more Libyans would be sent to the US for Lockerbie bombing trials. 

Rumors of more extraditions of Libyans intensified in the wake of a Jan. 12, 2023 unannounced visit of CIA Director William Burns. (...)

A second Lockerbie bombing trial is very unlikely. US prosecutors will try to avoid such a scenario because it could lead to re-examining the whole Lockerbie trial evidence of 2001, as well as evidence that has emerged since Al-Megrahi’s conviction. Doing so could unravel the entire case and cast serious doubts about the evidence used to convict Al-Megrahi 22 years ago and raise questions about Libya’s responsibility for the bombing.

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the bombing and now represents UK victims’ families, argues that the United Nations, not the US, should try Mas’ud. He said “no one country can be the plaintiff, the prosecutor and the judge” in this case. His compatriot, law professor Robert Black, thinks Mas’ud can still “get a fair trial” in a US court. The professor believes that US prosecutors must prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Mas’ud made the device that destroyed the jumbo jet on that cold December night in 1988, that his bomb, and no other, caused the disaster and that Mas’ud knew that his bomb would be used for that purpose.

Professor Black, the primary figure behind the previous Lockerbie bombing trial in Camp Zeist under Scots law in The Netherlands, thinks it is not “essential” for US prosecutors to show how the bomb got on the plane in order to get a conviction. In such a scenario the evidence to convict Mas’ud will rest, heavily, on the analysis of the fragment of circuit board that the US claims was part of the timer that set the bomb off in midair. That tiny fragment, US investigators claim, was found in a Scottish field where debris from the plane was scattered. However, since that first Lockerbie trial, evidence has emerged demonstrating that the fragment was actually planted to frame Libya.

George Thompson, a former Scottish police officer turned private investigator, who has worked extensively on the case, claims to have the evidence to show exactly that. Thompson told me that he is ready to be a witness in the upcoming US trial, whenever that might be.

If convicted, Mas’ud is certain to face life imprisonment. In his first court appearance on Dec 12, prosecutors told him that they will not be seeking the death penalty. US former Attorney General Barr, in a BBC interview published the next day, said Mas’ud should receive the death penalty. Barr also said that Mas’ud’s alleged confession, should be admissible in court, despite concerns by others that it may have been coerced. 

Mas’ud’s trial could take months to start and weeks to end. Regardless of the outcome, most Libyans believe it will not bring us any closer to the truth about Lockerbie.