Lockerbie questions that US Attorney General William Barr needs to answer

[What follows is excerpted from an article by John Schindler published today on the Top Secret Umbra website:]

With just six weeks left for the Trump administration, speculation is swirling that Attorney General William Barr may step down before the official presidential transition on January 20. Barr has fallen out of favor with the White House since his admission last week that the Department of Justice’s investigation of our November 3 election has uncovered no significant voting fraud, contrary to the loud claims of President Donald Trump and his enraged surrogates. A longtime liberal bugbear, Barr suddenly became the Oval Office’s new whipping boy instead, and the attorney general is reportedly tired of the public presidential abuse. 

That would be the second time that Barr steps down as the attorney general (...)

Before we get to his decisions as Trump’s attorney general, we should first ask Bill Barr about what happened the last time he headed the Justice Department.

Above all, why did Attorney General Barr back in mid-November 1991 decide to indict two Libyan spies for the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988, a terrible crime that killed 270 innocent people. Barr’s announcement stunned our Intelligence Community, which had investigated that terrorist atrocity for nearly three years in voluminous detail, yet never suspected that Libya stood behind the attack.

Three decades ago, the Lockerbie tragedy loomed large in American news. A bomb inside a suitcase stowed in the Boeing 747’s forward left luggage container tore the airliner apart as it cruised at 31,000 feet, headed for New York. All 243 passengers and 16 crew on the Pan Am jumbo jet died, as did 11 people in the town of Lockerbie, which was showered by the flaming wreckage of the shattered 747. One hundred and ninety of the dead were Americans, including 35 Syracuse University students headed home for Christmas after a European semester abroad.

It didn’t take long for diligent British investigators to find the remnants of the Samsonite suitcase which contained less than a pound of Semtex plastic explosive manufactured in Czechoslovakia and hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette recorder. That trail quickly led to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, a radical Arab terrorist group that was headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army officer. In the eyes of Western intelligence, the PFLP-GC was little more than an extension of Syria’s security services.

Intriguingly, less than two months before the Lockerbie attack, West German police rolled up a PFLP-GC bomb-making cell around Frankfurt, seizing four bombs made of Semtex hidden in Toshiba radios. Since Pan Am 103 originated in Frankfurt and that was the exact same kind of bomb which took down the doomed airliner, none of this seemed coincidental. Western intelligence circles heard chatter in the autumn of 1988 that the PFLP-GC, whose fifth Frankfurt bomb was never found by police, was planning to blow up U.S. airliners. Plus, one of the men taken into custody was Marwan Khreesat, a veteran bomb-maker who was believed to be behind the downing of a Swissair jetliner back in 1970, a terrorist attack which killed 47 people.

Before long, American intelligence believed that Iran was really behind the downing of Flight 103, given known close connections between Syrian intelligence and Iranian spy agencies. Neither was Tehran’s motive difficult to ascertain. A few months before, on July 3, 1988, the cruiser USS Vincennes, on station in the Persian Gulf, mistakenly shot down an Iran Air Airbus, a terrible accident which killed all 290 people aboard, including 66 children. Iran’s revolutionary regime promised revenge, and the Intelligence Community assessed that they got it over Scotland. As I explained on the thirtieth anniversary of the Lockerbie horror, that Iran stood behind the attack:

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 (...) 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.

The IC was therefore taken aback on November 14, 1991, when Attorney General Barr announced the indictment of two Libyan spies, Abdelbaset el-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, for the downing of Pan Am 103. Libya denied the accusations, as did the two Libyan intelligence officers, and it took Britain almost a decade to bring the men to trial. In a unique arrangement, the trial was held in the Netherlands under Scottish law. In the end, the court did not convict Fhimah but did find Megrahi guilty of 270 counts of murder in early 2001. Megrahi maintained he was framed and, suffering from cancer, he was released on compassionate grounds in 2009. He returned to Libya and succumbed to cancer there in May 2012, protesting his innocence to the end.

Quite a few people who looked at the evidence believed that Megrahi really may have been innocent, including some relatives of Pan Am 103 victims. Many in intelligence circles had doubts too, particularly because the prosecution’s star witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, was another Libyan intelligence officer who became a CIA asset. Giaka claimed to have witnessed Megrahi and Fhimah’s preparations in Malta to take down Pan Am 103 with a bomb made by Libyan intelligence. The Scottish court found Giaka less than credible, yet his claims against Megrahi stood up adequately to produce a conviction.

CIA made Giaka available to the court as the star witness, while obscuring some of their clandestine relationship with the Libyan spy. Langley offered several of its own officers to the court as well, something CIA recounted with pride in its official telling of their support to the Lockerbie trial, but the agency was careful to only produce officials who endorsed the Libya-did-it hypothesis.

There was the rub. Some CIA officers who were close to Giaka did not find his claims about Pan Am 103 and his own intelligence service’s involvement to be credible; in fact, they considered their “star” to be an unreliable fabricator. However, this secret – which raises fundamental questions about the US government’s official position on Lockerbie since late 1991 – was kept confined to spy circles for decades. Until now.

John Holt, a retired CIA officer who served as Giaka’s handler three decades ago, has broken his silence, granting a detailed interview to British media about his role in this sensational case. The 68-year-old Holt spoke out for the first time about what really happened behind the scenes with Giaka, whom he dismissed as an asset who was prone to “making up stories.” Giaka was far from a reliable source and the former American spy opined that CIA kept Holt away from the trial, since agency leaders knew that his account contradicted the official US position on Lockerbie. As he explained:

I handled Abdul-Majid Giaka in 1989 for a whole year during which he never mentioned Libyan involvement in the bombing. My cables [back to CIA headquarters] showed he was a car mechanic who was placed by Libyan Intelligence as Malta Airport office manager with Libyan Arab Airlines and had very little information about anything to do with bombs – or Lockerbie. He felt humiliated by Megrahi, who was an official with the Libyan Intelligence Service. “I was treated,” he said, “like a dog when Megrahi came to the office.” That's all reported in my cables, so CIA knew Giaka had a grudge against Megrahi.

This was a personal vendetta, in other words, one that was driven by Giaka’s needs and his changing memory, as Holt elaborated:

Every time I met Giaka, which was each month or two, I would also ask him if he had any information at all about the Pan-Am bombing. All of us CIA and FBI field officers were asked by the CIA to keep pressing our assets for any answers or clues.  His answer was always: No.

I expressed my opinion to the FBI that Giaka was nothing more than a wannabe who was not a real Intel Officer for the Libyans. He had no information [about] Lockerbie, and I told the CIA all this in comments I made in my cables. He went back to Libya at the end of 1989 and I moved on to another assignment.  

In 1991, Giaka told the CIA that he had been exposed and the Libyans would kill him. When he was told he was useless to our intelligence services, he began making up stories. It was only when he needed desperately to get some financial and logistical support from the US to flee Libya in 1991 that he started telling the CIA things relevant to the Pan Am 103 bombing.

This fix was in, however, and Holt found his first-hand view of the case sidelined by his own agency. His cables which illuminated Giaka’s unreliability as a source were not shared by CIA with the Scottish court, while Langley declined to let Holt provide evidence at the trial. “We now all need to admit we got the wrong man, and focus on the real culprits,” Holt explained, pointing a finger at Bill Barr:

I have reason to believe there was a concerted effort, for unexplained reasons, to switch the original investigations away from Iran and its bomb-making Palestinian extremist ally the PFLP—General Command. Now we should focus a new investigation on the Iranians and their links with the bomber…I would start by asking the current attorney general, William Barr, why he suddenly switched focus in 1991, when he was also attorney general, from where clear evidence was leading, toward a much less likely scenario involving Libyans.

In May of this year, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ordered a fresh look into Abdelbaset el-Megrahi’s conviction. So far, this review has revealed claims that the prosecution presented a distorted version of the late Megrahi’s alleged role based on “cherrypicked” evidence in order to obtain a conviction. Bill Barr won’t be attorney general for much longer and he ought to avail himself of the opportunity to explain why credible information from veteran intelligence officers like John Holt was ignored to make a case against Megrahi, who may not be guilty of his supposed role in the murder of 270 innocent people.

Nearly a year ago, Attorney General Barr delivered remarks about the Pan Am 103 tragedy at a memorial service held at Arlington National Cemetery. He commemorated the dead of Lockerbie: “The Americans who died that day were attacked because they were Americans. They died for their country. They deserve to be honored by our nation.” Barr added that the case remains far from over for him: “In 1991, I made a pledge to you on behalf of the American law-enforcement community: ‘We will not rest until all those responsible are brought to justice.’ That is still our pledge. For me personally, this is still very much unfinished business.” The thirty-second anniversary of the Lockerbie attack is two weeks from today. If Barr meant what he said about resolving that tragedy’s unfinished business, John Holt’s testimony is an excellent place to commence the search for the full truth about what happened to Pan Am 103.

Why now?

[What follows is the texr of a statement by Aamer Anwar Lockerbie appeal lawyer for the family of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, Dr Jim Swire and the Rev'd John Mosey:]

On Thursday information was released through The Wall Street Journal that the US Attorney General William Barr was due to unseal indictments against two other possible suspects for the Lockerbie Bombing.

On Friday evening we were informed by some of the British relatives that instruct us, that they had received an email from the Crown Office Lockerbie Appeal Team that the US Department of Justice, the US Attorney’s Office, the FBI, Attorney General William Barr was inviting all the families of the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 attack, to join him for an important public announcement and update regarding the investigation on Monday December 21, 2020, at 10:30 am EST/3:30 pm GMT. Internet live stream: http://www.justice.gov/live.

The families I represent are horrified at the intrusion on their grief, on the day that they wish to remember their loved ones. The fact that the outgoing Attorney General William Barr thinks it is appropriate to invite families to watch his ‘grandstanding’ at a press conference is deeply disrespectful to the families and victims.

Many of the families will refuse to do so and suspect the motivation of choosing to prosecute 32 years after the bombing.

The Rev'd John Mosey father of 19 year old Helga who was murdered on Pan Am Flight 103 wrote to the Crown Office and Attorney General to express his disgust at the invitation:

We consider the timing and particularly the choice of this specific day, which is special to many of us, to be bizarre, disrespectful, insensitive and extremely ill considered.

Why exactly when the Attorney General is about to leave office, has he waited 32 years to bring charges?

Why would you use the anniversary of our daughter Helga’s death along with 269 others to parade once more a highly suspect prosecution…..

Your own Department, and perhaps some parts of the Scottish legal system, should also investigated for spending over three decades trying to divert the course of justice and hide the truth.

Ali Megrahi the son of the late Abdelbasset Al-Megrahi whom I represent in the appeal had the following to say:

Monday is just another desperate excuse to accuse Libya and after 32 years want to accuse another Libyan. Why now?

Where were they in the past 32 years, especially when we have been fighting for an appeal over the last 6 years, so why release this information now? 

They want to perpetuate lies against Libya and will not let us live in peace- I lost my father and yet America continues to cause our family as well as those of the victims more pain.

As for the  American families of the victims of this atrocity, you lost loved ones and I lost my father, I am not against what you are doing, but I assure you that your government have lied to you for the past 32 years and my family and I will not give up  fighting for truth and justice.

Robert Black QC stated:

I wonder... why now? Masud’s name (and Senussi's) has featured in the Lockerbie case since the very beginning, when charges were brought against Megrahi and Fhimah in 1991. I think the answer is that Bill Barr, the US Attorney General, is wanting to go out with a bang.

He’s now about to leave the scene and he wants his name to be remembered: Lockerbie at the beginning of his career and Lockerbie at the end. 

The other possibility is that it is a blatant attempt to influence the Scottish judges when they have got the latest Megrahi appeal before them and we await their judgement.

To conclude, the actions of the US Department of Justice can only be described as a cynical attempt to use 270 dead victims for propaganda purposes.

The Attorney General must know that if the conviction of the late Al-Megrahi is overturned then the case against Abu Agila Masud is likely to fall apart. The real questions at 3.30pm will be is why now and what ‘dirty deals’ have taken place behind closed to doors to engineer these indictments.

Both the British and US Governments know that if the conviction is overturned then real questions would need to be answered as to why an innocent man Al-Megrahi was sent to prison whilst also punishing the people of Libya for a crime they did not commit.  

As we await the decision of the appeal court on the Megrahi case it would be inappropriate to comment any further.

Go on, Mr Barr, surprise us with more lies

[This is the headline over an article by Libyan journalist and author Dr Mustafa Fetouri. I am grateful to him for allowing me to publish it here.]

Whatever the United States Attorney General, William Barr, plans to throw in our faces around 15:30 GMT today he will find us patiently waiting for his Hollywood-like bang that usually precedes the release of any new action movie. Except this time we have already seen the movie and it is hardly new!

Those who have been closely following the Lockerbie tragedy, like victims’ families, lawyers and independent observers like me already know what is coming tomorrow, is another unreliable, arbitrary and groundless accusations targeting new one or two Libyans as being culprits in the tragedy—continuation of the twisted Lockerbie narrative the US has been very good at alas with little success.

Whatever William Barr will throw at the world tomorrow will be much about lying and far less about the truth which his department, government and the UK authorities has made as elusive as ever. Yet it has been very obvious for last 32 years.

Libya today is so weak and chaotic. This means it is susceptible to blackmail even by its own criminal gangs and armed militias, as is the case everyday, let alone by imperialist hegemonic superpowers like the US. Let’s remember here that Mr. Barr’s own government, and more than 30 others, made sure in 2011 that Libya will never be viable independent state ever again.

Even worse Libya’s own so called Government of National Accord (GNA), the only one recognized by the United Nations, lacks any patriotic credentials and viewed, by the majority of Libyans, as a gang imposed on them by the West in a UN package.

Most GNA politicians, and those rivalling it in the east of the country, know very little about the Lockerbie bombing. On top of that they do not want anything to do with it. We have seen GNA defunded the defence team and I have firsthand account of how that happened and why.

GNA knew, long ago, that the third appeal was coming and it has great chances of succeeding in throwing out AL-Meghahi’s 2001 guilty verdict. While the lawyers stood at the court’s door GNA betrayed them by refusing to resume funding despite its repeated promises. This is actually against Libya’s domestic laws which oblige the government to help, financially, citizens abroad, should they face legal issues.

After Al-Meghrahi’s legal team launched their his appeal, posthumously, I started writing about the case in Arabic, the only Libyan journalist so far, I have been warned off at least twice and I risk being harmed once I return to Libya.

After the defence lawyers setup crowd funding page, I tried to do the same inside Libya but could not. Privately I have received hundreds of message from ordinary Libyan willing to help but I could not do anything really! It is not only GNA’s stooges that prevented me but also the financial and administrations issues it has failed to tackle in the country. Banks, for example, do not have cash in a country where other payment systems or credit cards unheard of. I could not publically announce funding campaign inside Libya except on my social media accounts.

On top of that some GNA linked individuals and supporters have been prejudiced towards my Facebook posts when I write about Lockerbie— something I do extensively nowadays.

I consider the entire country as victim of the Lockerbie tragedy. To me the case is much bigger than Gaddafi and Al-Meghrahi, both dead now, but the scars of Lockerbie still with every Libyan just as they are still with the families of the 270 innocent people who died in the tragedy. It is about Libya, its people and the injustice done to them.

The entire 6 million-plus Libyans paid heavily, in one way or another, as a result of crippling economic sanctions and ban of air travel imposed on them, for over ten years, in the wake of the Lockerbie bombing.

Gaddafi, however villain many see him, was a patriotic proud man full of dignity and love for his country and despite being the weakest link in the international power game he always maintained his self esteem and that of his people.

Today Gaddafi is gone and whatever legacy he left behind, at least as strong dignified leader to many, is being wiped out or distorted by western stooges, criminals, double agents, traitors, and outright terrorists he once kept at bay making Libya one of the safest countries in the most troubled parts of the world. To those who do not know Libya, this sounds like cheap nostalgic outburst but in fact it sums up the feelings of most of my fellow Libyans.

No wonder the majority of Libyans, including Gaddafi’s staunchest enemies, never dispute his loyalty to Libya nor his protection of its citizens and sovereignty.

Today Libya not only lacks strong and independent leadership but lacks the fundamentals of the normally functioning state courtesy, in part, of Mr. Barr’s government.

Most of those in power in Tripoli know very little about Lockerbie bombing and those few who know prefer to see Libya continue to be synonymous to the tragedy as if that is a victory for them against a murdered man –Gaddafi!

Mr Barr, on his way out of the justice department, maybe seeking to create false feeling of heroism, to chew on in his retirement.

Instead he is about to destroy another Libyan family and anger some victims’ families by intruding on their grief on the anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing.

His announcement, in couple of hours, is no more than yet another attempt to divert the search as away as possible from the truth we all seek.

[RB: A version of this article has now been published in The National.]

System cannot admit it made mistake with Lockerbie

[Yesterday's decision by the High Court of Justiciary dismissing the posthumous appeal on behalf of Abdelbaset Megrahi receives extensive coverage in UK and overseas media. A selection, courtesy of Google News, can be found here. 

What follows is excerpted from reports by Mike Wade here and here on the website of The Times:]

An attempt by the family of the only man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing posthumously to clear his name has been rejected by the Court of Criminal Appeal in Scotland.

The family of Abdul Ali Baset al-Megrahi had appealed his conviction after a ruling by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) that “it was in the interests of justice” that his case was reconsidered.

Mr Anwar said that Ali al-Megrahi, the convicted man’s son, said that his family had been “left heartbroken by the decision of the Scottish courts, (but) maintained his father’s innocence and is determined to fulfil the promise he made to clear his name and that of Libya”.

The family has instructed its legal team to appeal to the UK Supreme Court and an application will be lodged within two weeks. (...)

Megrahi previously lost an appeal against his conviction in 2002. Five years later the SCCRC recommended that he should be granted the second appeal, which he later dropped.

Al-Megrahi insisted in his authorised biography, published in the year of his death, that a Scottish government decision to agree his early release from prison was conditional on his decision to drop his second appeal.

He said that Kenny MacAskill, who was then the Scottish justice secretary, had suggested the deal to a Libyan government official.

In the latest appeal the court was not asked by the SCCRC to consider a tiny fragment of circuit board, believed to have been from the bomb’s timer. This, campaigners insist, was a key piece of evidence that could have cleared al-Megrahi’s name.

After this morning’s decision the al-Megrahi family demanded the release of secret evidence held by the UK government that they believe incriminates others such as Iran and a Syrian-Palestinian group. (...)

In December, on the 32nd anniversary of the bombing, William Barr, the US attorney-general, announced new criminal charges against an alleged bombmaker involved in the atrocity.

Abu Agila Masud, another former Libyan intelligence officer, allegedly admitted to assembling the bomb that blew up the plane as it passed over Lockerbie en route from London to New York. Masud was the third person to face charges in the attack after al-Megrahi and another Libyan, Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, were charged nearly 30 years ago. Fhimah was found not guilty in 2001.

It was Mr Barr who announced the charges against al-Megrahi and Fhimah in 1991, saying at the time: “This investigation is by no means over.” Al-Megrahi’s supporters claim that Mr Barr’s recent intervention weighed heavily on the appeal court judges.

A source said: “For the judges to overturn the conviction would be absolutely momentous and I don’t think they have the stomach for that. William Barr piled on the pressure by announcing new indictments. It was too much of a hot potato for them.”

Mr Anwar said the first ground for appeal — that “no reasonable jury properly directed could have convicted” — was built largely around the evidence of Tony Gauci, who died in 2016.

In the 2001 trial, Mr Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper, identified al-Megrahi as the man who bought clothes from him that were later packed in a suitcase containing the bomb. After the trial it was disclosed that he had received $2 million from the US authorities.

In his judgment Lord Carloway said the original trial had given due consideration to Mr Gauci’s identification.

Mr Anwar said the second ground of appeal — the failure to disclose information to the defence — hinged on a “compatibility issue” arising from a question relating to a breach of human rights. This will be the basis for the application to the Supreme Court.

[A further article in The Times, headlined System cannot admit it made mistake with Lockerbie, says lawyer who designed first trial contains the following:]

The Scottish court system is unable to acknowledge that a mistake has been made, the lawyer who designed the 2001 Lockerbie trial has said.

Robert Black, emeritus professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh, drew up plans to enable a Scottish court to sit on neutral territory in the Netherlands but when the trial ended he was convinced that he had witnessed a miscarriage of justice.

He said yesterday that the Scottish criminal justice system was unable to acknowledge “a mistake has been made” in the conviction of Abdul Baset al-Megrahi and it was “a matter of grave concern” that the most recent appeal had been so narrowly restricted to certain legal areas. The Scottish Criminal Case Review Committee allowed al-Megrahi’s posthumous appeal on only two grounds: that the verdict had been unreasonable and that some evidence had not been disclosed to the defence.

Four other grounds for appeal were rejected by the committee, including evidence about a fragment from a circuit board and a theory that the suitcase that contained the bomb had not been loaded onto an aircraft in Malta.

The Crown argued that the circuit board, part of a timing device, was one of many sold to the Libyan government by Mebo, a Swiss company. It was found in the remains of a shirt collar, which in turn led to a shop in Malta owned by Tony Gauci. Campaigners for al-Megrahi say forensic analysis has shown the circuit board was coated in pure tin and not in a tin-lead alloy, the only kind supplied by Mebo. Independent scientists, consulted by the Crown, had noticed the difference but maintained the tin fragment and the tin-lead amalgam were “similar in all respects”.

Professor Black also cited evidence the bomb suitcase was put on at Heathrow before luggage from Malta arrived.

The search for justice goes on and William Barr's actions are unlikely to help

[This is part of the headline over a long article by Kim Sengupta in The Independent. It reads in part:]

With great fanfare, on the anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, the US has announced charges against the supposed bomb maker who blew up Pan Am flight 103, the worst act of terrorism in this country, with 270 lives lost.  

One of William Barr’s final acts as Donald Trump’s Attorney General, a deeply controversial tenure, is supposed to fit one of the final pieces of the jigsaw in the hunt for the killers.  

There are historic links between the Lockerbie investigation and the current, turbulent chapter of American politics. Barr was also the Attorney General in 1991, in the George W Bush administration, when charges were laid against two Libyans, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, over the bombing. The inquiry was led at the time by Robert Mueller, the head of the Department of Justice’s criminal division.  

Mueller, of course, became the Special Counsel who examined if Trump was the Muscovian candidate for the White House. Barr was the Attorney General, in his second term in the post, accused of distorting the findings of Mueller’s report to protect Trump from accusations of obstruction of justice, which he denies.  

The charges which have been laid against Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, another Libyan, are intrinsically connected to Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who is the only person to have been found guilty by a court of the bombing.  

Megrahi is now dead. There are good reasons to hold that the investigation, trial and verdict which brought his conviction were flawed and a miscarriage of justice has taken place. This is a view shared by bereaved families, international jurists, intelligence officers and journalists who had followed the case.  

Last month, an appeal hearing began at the High Court in Edinburgh to posthumously clear Megrahi’s name. This was the third appeal in the attempt to prove that the verdict against him was unsound, with his legal team focusing on the veracity of the prosecution evidence at his trial. 

Much of the case against Masud, a former Libyan intelligence officer, now charged, comes from an alleged confession he made in jail, where he had ended up after the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Masud, according to the FBI, named Megrahi and Fhimah as co-conspirators, who had together manufactured an explosive device using Semtex during a trip to Malta. Masud has said that he had bought the clothing which had been wrapped around the bomb, hidden in a radio-cassette player, before being placed in a Samsonite suitcase which was put on the flight.  

There are two points which are immediately relevant. The same trial which convicted Megrahi had acquitted Fhimah of all charges. And one of the key allegations against Megrahi, which the judges said made them decide on the verdict of guilt, was that it was he who had bought the clothing put around the explosive device.  

These contradictions are among many, big and small, which have marked the official narrative presented by the US and UK authorities of what lay behind the downing of the airliner.  

I went to Lockerbie on the night of the bombing, attended the trial of the two Libyan defendants, and met Megrahi at his home in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, where he had been allowed to return after suffering from cancer. I have followed the twists and turns of the case throughout.   

Soon after the downing of the Pan Am flight, American and British security officials began laying the blame on an Iran-Syria axis. The scenario was that Tehran had taken out a contract in revenge for the destruction of an Iranian civilian airliner, Iran Air Flight 655, which had been shot down by missiles fired from an American warship, the USS Vincennes, a few months earlier. The theory went that the contract had been taken up by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), which specialised in such operations.  

But the blame switched to Libya, then very much a pariah state, around the time Iran and Syria joined the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War. Robert Baer, the former American intelligence officer and author, was among those who held that the Iranian sponsored hit was the only plausible explanation for the attack. This was the firm belief held “to a man”, he stated, by his former colleagues in the CIA.  

After years of wrangling, Megrahi, the former head of security at Libyan Airlines and allegedly in the Libyan security service, and Fhimah, allegedly a fellow intelligence officer, were finally extradited in 1999. (...)

The two men were charged with joint enterprise and conspiracy. Yet only Megrahi was found guilty. (...)

So, deprived of finding a partner in crime for Megrahi, the prosecutor switched to claiming, and the judges accepting, that he had conspired with himself.  

The prosecution evidence was circumstantial; details of the bomb timer on the plane were contradictory; and the testimony of a key witness, a Maltese shopkeeper, extremely shaky under cross-examination. Five years on from the trial, the former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmville – who had been responsible for initiating the Lockerbie prosecution – described the witness, Tony Gauci, as “an apple short of a picnic” and “not quite the full shilling”. Gauci was, however, flush in dollars: the Americans paid him for his testimony.  

The performance and evidence of a supposedly prime “CIA intelligence asset”, Abdul Majid Giaka, codenamed “Puzzle Piece” who turned up in a Shirley Bassey wig, was widely viewed as risible. It emerged later that important evidence had not been passed on to the defence lawyers. Ulrich Lumpert, an engineer who testified to the validity of a key piece of evidence, admitted later in an affidavit of lying to the court.  

It has also emerged that Giaka had been described by his CIA handler, John Holt, in an official report as someone who had a “history of making up stories”.

Holt was denied permission to appear at court. Earlier this month he reiterated in an interview that, like his CIA colleagues, he believes the Libyan connection was a concocted red herring and culpability lay with PFLP (GC). "I would start by asking the current Attorney General, William Barr, why he suddenly switched focus in 1991, when he was also Attorney General, from where clear evidence was leading, toward a much less likely scenario involving Libyans”, he said.  

The observer for the UN at the trial, Hans Kochler severely criticised the verdict. Writing later in The Independent, he described a case based on “circumstantial evidence”; the “lack of credibility” of key prosecution witnesses who “had incentives to bear false witness against Megrahi”; the fact that one was paid cash by the Americans; and that “so much key information was withheld from the trial”.    

Robert Black, a law professor born in Lockerbie, who played an important role in organising the Camp Zeist proceedings, later became convinced that a great injustice had taken place, as have many other eminent jurists.  

Some who were in Lockerbie on that terrible night and dealt with the aftermath also felt the same way. Father Patrick Keegans, the parish priest at the time, joined the “Justice for Megrahi” campaign after meeting the convicted man’s family and has backed appeals to clear his name.  

Many members of the bereaved families feel that justice has not been done, among them Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing and became a spokesman for “UK Families 103”.  

When there were objections to the severely ill Megrahi being allowed to return to Tripoli, he pointed out “the scandal around Megrahi is not that a sick man was released, but that he was even convicted in the first place. All I have ever wanted to see is that the people who murdered my daughter are brought to justice.”  

After the charging of Masud, Dr Swire said: “I'm all in favour of whatever he's got to tell us being examined in a court, of course I am. The more people who look at the materials we have available the better.”  

He wanted to stress: “There are only two things that we seek, really. One is the question of why those lives were not protected in view of all the warnings and the second is: what does our government and the American government really know about who is responsible for murdering them.”  

Some bereaved families have criticised the presentation and motivation of the US move. The State Department had sent an invitation for livestreaming of the event.  

Reverend John Mosey, who lost his 19-year-old daughter Helga in the bombing, said the “timing and particularly the choice of this specific day, which is special to many of us, to be bizarre, disrespectful, insensitive and extremely ill considered”. He added: “Why exactly, when the Attorney General is about to leave office, has he waited 32 years to bring charges?”  

Behind the controversy over who carried out the attack, the political manoeuvres and legal actions, lay the human tragedy of Lockerbie, a scene which is difficult to forget, even after three decades, for many of us who went there.  (...)

There is also the memory of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, at his home in Tripoli in 2012. He lay in his bed attached to a drip, on red sheets stained by dark splashes of blood he had coughed up. An oxygen mask covered his skeletal face; his body twitched as he drifted in and out of consciousness. He was in the advanced stages of cancer: medicine he desperately needed had been plundered by looters; the doctors who had been treating him had fled. He died a few months later.  

The bitter accusations and recriminations over Lockerbie are unlikely to cease. But the search for justice for this terrible act of violence which took so many lives, and caused so much pain and grief, continues to remain elusive among the secrets and lies. 

Crown Office not happy for US to take lead on new Lockerbie trial

[The following article has been contributed by Marcello Mega and expands upon his report in The Mail on Sunday yesterday:]

Scotland will argue that any future trial relating to the Lockerbie bombing should be conducted under Scots Law before Scottish judges. 

Outgoing US Attorney General William Barr appeared to stake his country’s claim by announcing, just before he left office last month, that efforts would be made to extradite and try two more Libyans. 

But well-placed sources in law enforcement have revealed that Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC believes that while both Scotland and the US can claim jurisdiction as both countries lost many citizens, Scotland has the greater claim. 

Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, allegedly bomb-maker for the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and Abdullah al-Senussi, former intelligence chief and Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, are the untried suspects. 

Mr Barr was Attorney General in 1991 when the blame for the Lockerbie bombing, which claimed 270 lives on 21 December 1988, was first shifted from Iran to Libya.  

In virtually his final act in his final stint as Attorney General, he again put the spotlight on Libya, and appeared to presume the US would lead efforts to prosecute either or both of the suspects. 

One source said: “It’s early days but already there have been discussions among senior figures in the Crown Office and the Lord Advocate seems to have arrived at a position where he would not be happy to see the US lead on this. 

“Both countries lost many citizens, but the crime happened over Scottish soil. Primacy has to be decided, but our argument should be the stronger.” 

He added that it was unlikely a Scottish trial would involve a jury and would be more likely to follow the precedent established by the trial of the late Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the only man convicted of the atrocity. 

He and his co-accused, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, who was acquitted, were tried under Scots law in the Netherlands, a neutral third country, by a panel of three Scottish judges without a jury. 

The source said: “Lockerbie was a unique event in Scottish criminal history, and the extraordinary measures taken were partly out of necessity to persuade the accused they would have a fair trial. 

“If there were to be a second trial, it would be very unlikely that ordinary people would be put under pressure to decide a trial involving international terrorism.” 

He added that only two of Scotland’s current crop of High Court judges had no prior involvement with Lockerbie – five are currently considering a posthumous appeal brought by Megrahi’s family – but more judges could be appointed. 

Robert Black QC, Professor Emeritus of Scots Law at Edinburgh University and the architect of the first trial in a neutral country, said that Libya would be far more likely to co-operate with Scotland than the US. 

He said: “There is no way Libya could be seen to send one or more of its citizens to be tried abroad in a country that has the death penalty. 

“There would also be an absolute certainty among Libyans that America would find a way to convict. 

“We did not cover ourselves in glory with the conduct of Megrahi’s trial, with so much evidence that would have helped his case being withheld from the defence, but I still think Libya is more likely to trust Scotland than the US.” 

Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora on Pan Am 103 a day short of her 24th birthday, marked the 32nd anniversary last month by saying he was sick of the ‘charade’ of blaming Libya. 

He said: “I have already written to William Barr warning him that if the US persists on pursuing a second trial against Libya for Lockerbie, he’d be as well building a palace on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. It will crumble soon enough.” 

He argued that the International Criminal Court would be the only tribunal that could guarantee a fair trial.  

He added: “Any future prosecution certainly should not be in the hands of US prosecutors. The accused would not get a fair trial, and you cannot have that when the death penalty is likely to follow. 

“The prosecution of Megrahi was a disgrace, but at least he was treated humanely and when diagnosed with advanced cancer, he and his family were shown compassion and he was allowed to go home to his loved ones. 

“The Americans would not have allowed that. 

“Scottish and American prosecutors need to stop posturing. None of the evidence they used against Libya stands up to scrutiny, yet they persist when there is a much stronger case against Iran.” 

The Crown Office said it had no comment to make ‘given that the Scottish criminal investigation is ongoing and there is an appeal before the court in relation to this crime’. 

Campaigners write to Lord Advocate about 'prejudicial' US Lockerbie briefing

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

Campaigners who believe that the only man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing was innocent, have written to the Lord Advocate criticising a briefing by the US which they say is prejudicial to the family of the late Abdelbaset al-Megrahi as they try to clear his name.

The committee of Justice for Megrahi (JfM) – which includes professor Robert Black QC – architect of the Camp Zeist trial that saw Megrahi convicted, and Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing – wrote to James Wolffe QC saying the briefing by outgoing US attorney general William Barr on December 21, its 32nd anniversary, caused “extreme distress” to the bereaved UK families.

Barr said the US had charged a “third conspirator” – Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir Al-Marimi – who allegedly acted along with Megrahi and his acquitted co-accused Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, to bring down Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.

Scots lawyer Aamer Anwar, who represents the Megrahi family in their appeal, accused Barr of “grandstanding”.

JfM said they agreed with John Mosey – whose daughter died in the bombing – that Barr’s action was, “bizarre, disrespectful, insensitive and extremely ill-considered”.

In their letter to Wolffe, JfM said Barr and others had referred to the Megrahi family appeal, identifying him as an accomplice of the new suspect, along with Fhimah, who was cleared of all charges in the Lockerbie trial.

“We, and many other commentators, consider the statements made by Mr Barr and others, and the contents of the affidavit, to be prejudicial to the Megrahi family’s appeal, and that had they been made in Scotland they would have been deemed to be in contempt of court,” JfM wrote.

“Over many years Justice for Megrahi has, alongside other individuals and groups, consistently raised doubts about Mr Megrahi’s conviction and provided detailed evidence in support of these doubts.

“We have been in regular correspondence with yourself and Crown Office and in 2010 lodged a petition with the Scottish Parliament calling for an independent inquiry.

“That petition is still being considered by the Parliament’s Justice Committee.”

They added: “If the American statements are accurate, it would appear that you and Crown Office are closely linked to the American actions and conclusions, as outlined in their briefing and in the affidavit, and have agreed to them.”

JfM asked why Masud was not indicted in Scotland given the disaster happened here; why was a media briefing not held in Scotland and if the Lord Advocate agreed that the briefing should have been held on the 32nd anniversary of the bombing.

“Given that Kara Weipz, president of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, was fully briefed on the American enquiry and was present at the briefing, why did Crown Office not ensure that the interests of UK groups like ‘UK Families Flight 103’ were similarly updated and represented?”

JfM asked if Wolffe agreed that statements in the US briefing were prejudicial to the Megrahi family appeal.

They added: “Do you agree that had this media briefing been held in Scotland some of the statements made at it would have been deemed to be in contempt of court?"

“Is this an American attempt to influence the judges?"

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Tom Peterkin in today's edition of The Press and Journal:]

The FBI agent who led the original Lockerbie investigation has revealed the atrocity’s latest suspect was on his “radar” 30 years ago but there was a struggle to prove the case against him.

Richard Marquise said it was strongly suspected Abu Agila Mohammad Masud was the “technician” responsible for the bomb that killed 270 people in the worst terrorist outrage committed on UK territory.

Mr Marquise was reacting to reports suggesting that US prosecutors will seek the extradition of Mr Masud and he will be charged in a matter of days, to stand trial in America.

As the man who led the US side of the inquiry into the bombing, Mr Marquise welcomed reports that Mr Masud could face justice, claiming any progress would be appreciated by the families who lost loved ones on Pan Am Flight 103.

“If there is going to be another trial, I’m sure the families will be… I’m not going to use the word thrilled…. because it doesn’t bring a loved one back. But I am sure they will be grateful,” Mr Marquise said. (...)

“He’s been on my radar for around 30 years,” Mr Marquise said. “He was someone we were very interested in, but we never quite found out who he was. The Libyans disavowed any knowledge of him. We knew he existed but he was never really identified.

“Back in 1991, we knew his name. We knew what he looked like and we knew what he allegedly was responsible for. He was the technician.”

The retired FBI agent added: “In my mind I always felt he was connected to it somehow But we didn’t have the clues to prove it.”

Kenny MacAskill, the former Justice Secretary who controversially released Megrahi on compassionate grounds, agreed.

“He was the one with the skills. He was on the original indictment, I’m led to believe. So he was always a wanted man,” Mr MacAskill said. “The idea that Megrahi did this on his own was absurd.”

Reports from the other side of the Atlantic suggest Mr Masud had been in custody in Libya on unrelated charges but his current whereabouts are unknown.

Since Mr Marquise’s official involvement in the investigation, there have been some developments. At the forefront of these have been the work of Ken Dornstein, a journalist whose brother David was on the London to New York flight.

In 2015 Mr Dornstein produced a investigative documentary, Lockerbie: My Brother’s Bomber, which linked Mr Masud to the bombing of Berlin’s La Belle nightclub in 1986.

Mr Dornstein interviewed a Libyan intelligence officer who said Mr Masud was involved in the bombing before the unification of Germany, which killed two US servicemen.

The same source alleged Mr Masud, by then in jail in Tripoli, was involved in the Lockerbie bombing and said he was still alive.

Mr Dornstein also claimed Mr Masud met Megrahi after the latter was freed from a Scottish jail in 2009 and given a hero’s welcome when he landed back in Libya. (...)

Mr MacAskill has already made it plain that he believes that people other than Megrahi should be held to account for the bombing.

“Question arise as to why, if they are going for Masud, aren’t they going for Senussi?” asked the former Justice Secretary. 

Mr MacAskill was referring to Abdullah Al Senussi, the late Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi’s brother-in-law and former spy chief who has long been associated with the crime. (...)

“I heard over recent years the view of the Libyans was they don’t like Senussi and they don’t like Masud, but giving them up to the Americans is a step too far,” Mr MacAskill said.

“I think this is probably the juncture for Britain and America to be a bit more open in information they do have and produce it, as opposed to hiding it.”

What can be read into the timing of Masud’s extradition?

That is an interesting question, according to Professor Robert Black, an the Edinburgh University legal academic who has been a keen student of the Lockerbie case.

Professor Black is regarded as the architect of the Scottish court that was set up in Camp Zeist, Netherlands, to try Megrahi and his co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who was found not guilty.

“I wonder…. why now?” asked Professor Black. “Masud’s name has featured in the Lockerbie case since the very beginning, when charges were brought against Megrahi and Fhimah in 1991.”

“I think the answer to that is William Barr, the US Attorney General, is wanting to go out with a bang.”

This week it was announced that Mr Barr, who has been one of Donald Trump’s staunchest allies, is to step down as head of the US’s Justice Department.

Professor Black pointed out that Mr Barr was actually acting Attorney General way back in 1991 and was the one to announce that Megrahi and Fhimah were being charged.

“Now that he’s about to leave the scene, I think he wants to go out and his name to be remembered: Lockerbie at the beginning and Lockerbie at the end,” Professor Black said. (...)

Professor Black, who has long argued that Megrahi should not have been convicted on the evidence brought before Camp Zeist, suggested cynics might view attempts to extradite Musad as an attempt to make an impact on the appeal process.

“The other possibility is that it is a blatant attempt to influence the Scottish judges because they have got the latest Megrahi appeal before them and we await their judgement,” Professor Black said.

The argument would be that the existence of another high-profile Libyan suspect, alongside Megrahi, would back up the case for Libyan involvement in the crime.

“Is this an American attempt to influence the judges to uphold the Megrahi conviction? That’s a very, very cynical view.”

But cynicism was how the development was greeted by Megrahi family’s lawyer, Aamer Anwar.

“It’s difficult not to be cynical about the motivation of the Americans, that on the eve of the anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing as well as the appeal decision, the US now wish to indict an individual, 32 years after the bombing, what exactly have they been doing up until now?” said Mr Anwar

“Why would the Attorney General William Barr wait until just as he is about to step down from the Justice Department, considering that he was involved with this case since 1991.”

Lockerbie bombing: US said to be near charges for another suspect in 1988 plane crash

[This is the headline over a report just published on the website of The Wall Street Journal. It reads in part:]

US prosecutors are expected to unseal charges against a suspect they allege was a top bomb-maker for the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and assembled the device that blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, opening a new chapter in one of the world’s longest and most sprawling terrorism investigations.

The Justice Department is expected to unseal a criminal complaint against Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, who is currently held by Libyan authorities, in the coming days and to seek his extradition for trial on charges in US federal court, according to senior department officials. (...)

The case, filed by prosecutors in the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC, is based largely on a confession that Mr Masud gave to Libyan authorities in 2012, which was turned over to Scottish authorities in 2017, as well as travel and immigration records of Mr Masud, US officials said.

Libyan officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the charges against Mr Masud.

Only one man — Abdel Baset al-Megrahi — was convicted by Scottish judges of playing a role in the attack, leaving many of the victims’ families saying they felt robbed of justice for the crimes. Megrahi was released eight years after his 2001 conviction on “compassionate grounds” and he died in 2012.

His family is appealing the verdict, which was made by a special panel of judges without a jury. Some prominent Scottish jurists and family members of the victims have questioned the evidence presented and the procedure used for the trial, which was held at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in a bid to find a neutral locale. UK prosecutors have argued that the case was properly prosecuted and the judges’ initial verdict should stand and US law-enforcement authorities have long supported the guilty verdict.

The case is also of personal significance to Attorney General William Barr, who had announced US charges against Megrahi and another Libyan official in his first major press conference in his first stint in the job in 1991. He is expected to unveil the new case at a press conference in the next few days, officials said, in what will be one of his last official public acts before he steps down from serving in the post a second time later this week.

In announcing the case as acting attorney general in the Bush administration in 1991, Mr Barr said: “we will not rest until all those responsible are brought to justice.” The efforts to prosecute the men drifted for years. Scottish prosecutors had brought a parallel case, and it wasn’t until 1999—after years of wrangling among the US, the UK and Libya—that the Gadhafi regime handed over Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah. Mr Fhimah was acquitted, and Megrahi was given a life sentence.

Evidence in the Megrahi prosecution included the remains of clothing from a suitcase thought to have carried the bomb. Investigators traced the clothing to a shop in Malta, whose owner identified Megrahi as the man who purchased it. Investigators also found remnants of a thumb-size timer, which they traced to a Swiss company that had contacts with Libya.

Mr Masud faces charges of destruction of an aircraft resulting in death and destruction of a vehicle of interstate commerce resulting in death. US officials said he traveled to Malta just before the bombing, constructed the bomb there and filled the suitcase with clothing before it was ultimately placed on Pan Am 103.

In Libya, the charges against a former Gadhafi regime official recall an era of an era of terror and repression under the former government. (...)

Some Libyans still believe their country was falsely accused. But many regard any accusations against the former regime as the work of a deposed and discredited government.

The United Nations Security Council put sanctions on Libya over the Lockerbie attack, isolating the country internationally. The UN lifted the sanctions in 2003 after the government agreed to pay out compensation to the victims, easing Libya’s isolation. (...)

Libyan authorities have questioned jailed former regime officials in connection with the bombing, according to Mohammed Ali Abdullah, an adviser to the Tripoli government. Among those questioned was Abdullah Senussi, Gadhafi’s former intelligence chief, who is being held in a prison in Tripoli and also has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

The Lockerbie bombing wasn’t the only international act of terror the Gadhafi regime was accused of carrying out. In 1986, Libyan agents bombed a nightclub in West Berlin, killing three people including two American soldiers and injuring more than 200 others. In 2001, a German court convicted a former Libyan diplomat and three accomplices over the attack.

[RB: A last throw of the dice over Lockerbie by William Barr before he demits office as US Attorney General. Abu Agila Masud's name has long featured in speculation about the Lockerbie case. The most balanced consideration of his position comes in (a) John Ashton's article about the Ken Dornstein film in the Scottish Review "The coverage of the film is more notable for what it omits than what it reveals" and (b) Kevin Bannon's A response to the Dornstein documentary, both in November 2015.]

Embellishing intelligence reporting to fit a preconceived outcome

[What follows is excerpted from an article by John Holt published today in The Blogs section of the website of The Times of Israel:]

As a former CIA operations officer, I am breaking 20 years of silence about one of the most heinous plane bombings on record, Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988. I can now tell you, as I have been telling the CIA and FBI since being interviewed by them in early 2000, that I and many other intelligence officers do not believe that Libya is responsible for the bombing. Iran, as the original evidence clearly showed, is the true perpetrator of this deadly attack and should be brought to justice.

Two weeks ago, just before stepping down as US attorney general, William Barr, who was also AG in 1992 and oversaw the investigation and indictment of the case, announced new charges against a Libyan man known as Masud for supposedly constructing the bomb that detonated on the plane. I believe Barr and the Justice Department announced this new indictment purely for the purpose of shoring up Barr’s original, faulty 1991 indictments.

The evidence and logic in the current case against Mr Masud are as flimsy as the cases were two decades ago when Barr steered focus away from the obvious culprit, Iran.

I know Libya is not behind the bombing because I was the long-time handler for the principal US government witness Abdul Majid Giaka, a Libyan agent who never provided any evidence pointing to Libya or any indication of knowing anything about that nation’s involvement in the two years after the bombing. Yet years later, he testified against the convicted Libyan intelligence officer, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, at the Lockerbie bombing (Pan Am 103) trial conducted at The Hague in 2000.

The US Government prevented my testimony and hid from evidence the cables I wrote that proved Giaka knew nothing. When my cables were finally released to the trial at the demand of the defense, the court dismissed Giaka along with the two CIA operations officers sent to the trial to testify to his credibility.

Yet today, the charade continues. The FBI acknowledges they have not even interviewed Mr Masud themselves and are entirely dependent on an 8-year-old statement by an unnamed Libyan police officer from a country in the midst of a devastating civil war. Moreover, Masud had no history or signature for making the type of bomb that brought down Pan Am 103 nor for concealing bombs in Toshiba radios. The PFLP-GC (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command) did.

We just observed the 32nd anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am 103. It is time to drop the routine CIA procedure of embellishing intelligence reporting to fit a preconceived outcome rather than following the facts. The families of Pan Am flight 103 victims have suffered long enough and deserve to now be able to rest assured that the real perpetrators of this act of terrorism, Iranian actors, are brought to justice.

I am asking that the case be reexamined due to the availability of evidence against Iran and irregularities in the US government presentation of evidence at the first trial. The son of the man convicted made a similar request. He recently appealed the conviction of his father to the High Court in Scotland. The panel of five judges is currently reviewing the appeal, which was presented in late November 2020.

Now is the time for former Attorney General Barr, who signed the original warrants against Megrahi, and former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who led the DOJ investigation, to answer some questions: If Libya is truly the culprit, why did the US not indict Libyan intelligence chief Sanussi, who has reportedly been sitting in a Libyan jail since that nation’s revolution in 2011, and would have been in charge of any such high profile operation at the time of the bombing? And why was credible evidence pointing toward Iran ignored, given Iran’s clear motive for the attack as retaliation for the downing of a civilian Iran Air Airbus and its proven capacity to carry out attacks similar to the bombing over Lockerbie? (...) 

US charges third suspect in 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland

[This is the headline over a report just published on the website of The Washington Post. It reads in part:]

The Justice Department on Monday announced it had charged a suspected participant in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people and is considered one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in US history.

Abu Agila Mas’ud was charged in a criminal complaint with helping make the bomb used in the attack, Attorney General William P Barr said at a news conference. Barr said the operation was ordered by the leadership of Libyan intelligence, and that then-Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi personally thanked Mas’ud for his work.

“At long last, this man, responsible for killing Americans and many others, will be subject to justice for his crimes,” Barr said.

The charges were unsealed on the anniversary of the attack, which brought down a flight from London bound for New York. (...)

Mas’ud has been on US and foreign law enforcement’s radar since at least 2015, when a three-part series on PBS’s “Frontline” named potential suspects. US prosecutors had decades earlier charged two others in the case: Libyan intelligence operative Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and his alleged accomplice Lamen Khalifa Fhimah. At the time, Barr was serving his first stint as attorney general under President George H W Bush.

Barr said a breakthrough came when law enforcement learned in 2016 that Mas’ud had been arrested after the fall of the Gaddafi regime and interviewed in 2012. Though Mas’ud remains in Libyan custody, authorities turned over that interview to law enforcement, who used it to build a case, Barr said.

Acting DC US Attorney Michael Sherwin said Mas’ud described his role and the role of his conspirators. He said travel records also showed Mas’ud traveling from Tripoli to Malta around the same time as his co-conspirators.

It’s unclear what the likelihood is of the United States taking Mas’ud into custody for trial. Barr said he was optimistic that Libyan authorities would turn him over. (...)

The case has long vexed federal law enforcement. Libya resisted extraditing the charged men to the United States for years, and in response, the United Nations and the United States imposed stiff economic sanctions and penalties on the country.

In 1999, Libya agreed to an unusual arrangement to turn the men over to be put on trial in the Netherlands before Scottish judges. Megrahi, who maintained his innocence, was convicted and sentenced to 27 years to life in prison, while his co-defendant Fhimah was acquitted.

In 2009, Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison on medical grounds after a prostate cancer diagnosis, and he returned home to a hero’s welcome in Libya. He died three years after his release.

[RB: The US Department of Justice press release can be read here; and the US Attorney General's speech here.

As far as Scotland is concerned, the Lord Advocate has issued a statement today which reads as follows:]

“For 32 years the families of the 270 people murdered in this atrocity have shown extraordinary and enduring dignity in the face of the loss they suffered on the terrible night of 21 December 1988. Today, our thoughts are with them once again.

“Scottish prosecutors and police have had a long-established and strong working relationship with US law enforcement agencies throughout this investigation.

“This relationship will continue to be important as the investigation progresses with the shared goal of bringing all those who committed this atrocity to justice.

“Scottish prosecutors will continue to work with US colleagues but we will not comment in detail on today’s announcement given that the Scottish criminal investigation is ongoing and there is an appeal before the court in relation to this crime.” 

[RB: A statement from Chief Constable Iain Livingstone reads as follows:]

“This announcement by the US Department of Justice is a significant development for the families of the victims, and my thoughts remain with them, particularly today, the 32nd anniversary of the bombing.

“Since 1988, policing in Scotland has been committed to carrying out the largest terrorist investigation ever undertaken in this country. Police Scotland will continue to work closely on this investigation, under the direction of the Crown Office, with our American law enforcement colleagues and other international partners.

“As judicial proceedings continue in Scotland, it would be inappropriate to comment further."

The house of cards that is the legal frame-up of Megrahi

[What follows is taken from an article by Steve James published today on the WSWS.org website:]

Five Scottish judges have upheld the 2001 verdict against Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the only person convicted for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.

Last week's decision is the second time an appeal on Megrahi's behalf has been rejected by the courts amid the continued suppression of contradictory evidence.

In 2002, an initial appeal was thrown out. In 2009, Megrahi, already terminally ill, was tacitly offered release from Greenock prison on compassionate grounds if a contemporary appeal was dropped as part of rapprochement between the Libyan and British governments. The most recent appeal was launched by Megrahi's son, Ali Al-Megrahi, to clear his father's name posthumously.

The appeal hearing heard from Claire Mitchell QC that Megrahi's original conviction hinged on Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci’s uncorroborated identification of Megrahi. She pointed to contradictions in Gauci’s testimony and challenged the trial judges' decision that the clothing was purchased on 7 December 1988, rather than 23 November, which was supported by the evidence. Megrahi was not in Malta in November.

Mitchell noted that while the trial verdict "cherry picked" items from a mass of conflicting evidence, no evidence existed that the bomb started its journey from Malta.

The appeal was allowed to go forward following a decision by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), that a miscarriage of justice may only have occurred because of the manner in which Megrahi was identified by Gauci. Gauci first identified someone else, appeared confused, and was found to have been coached by police in expectation of a huge reward. $2 million was duly paid, a matter about which the trial defence was not informed.

The SCCRC did not consider (...) analysis of the metallurgical characteristics of the alleged bomb timer--proving it was not part of a batch sold to Libya--or devastating evidence of the bomb suitcase entering the luggage system at Heathrow Airport, London, as grounds for appeal.

The reason for the appeal being restricted to Megrahi's identification by Gauci is increasingly clear. Any broader querying of the original verdict threatens to bring down the house of cards that is the legal frame-up of Megrahi.

It is worth recalling some of the contradictions and unconfirmed assertions in the official version of events leading to PA103's destruction, upheld at the 2001 trial and again on two subsequent appeals.

Megrahi was found guilty of loading a suitcase, containing a bomb armed with a complex electronic timer, in Luqa airport, Malta, onto a flight to Frankfurt, Germany. No viable evidence has been presented confirming that such a suitcase existed. No explanation has been given of how Megrahi overcame Luqa's tight security. (...) No explanation has been offered of how Frankfurt airport's X-ray scanning missed a bomb in a cassette recorder when staff had been advised to look out for one.

From Frankfurt, the feeder flight travelled to London’s Heathrow airport, where the bomb was allegedly transferred to Pan Am 103. No such suitcase has been identified.

Not accounted for is the fact that a suitcase closely resembling the one containing the bomb appeared unexpectedly at Heathrow airport before the feeder flight from Frankfurt arrived and was reportedly inserted onto PA103 at Heathrow.

This suitcase was seen by witnesses on the floor of the luggage container in which the explosion later occurred. No explanation or significance has been attached to a break in at Heathrow airport, where security was poor, the night before, adjacent to the luggage loading area for PA103.

The explosion that destroyed the Boeing 747 took place 38 minutes after take-off from Heathrow. This is exactly the time at which a well-known design of barometric bomb, triggered by a fall in air pressure, would explode had one been loaded at Heathrow.

Barometric bombs of this design were, at the time, being manufactured in Germany by a Syrian backed Palestinian group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a group with a history of aircraft bombing. Four of these bombs were seized by German police, a fifth went missing for unexplained reasons.

No explanation has been offered of why the stated design of electronic timer, an MST-13 manufactured by Swiss company MeBo-AG, would not be set to explode at a time much later, over the Atlantic, where any evidence would sink to the ocean floor.

Nor has an explanation been offered as to why evidence relating to the belated appearance of a fragment of MST-13 timer in the Lockerbie wreckage showed evidence of having been doctored, as had the records relating to its discovery. Or why this timer fragment has subsequently been proved NOT to be part of a consignment of timers admittedly sold to Libya by Mebo-AG.

Days before the appeal hearing, the judges ruled that documentation in the possession of the British government since shortly after PA103 was brought down should remain hidden, upholding a public interest immunity certificate signed by Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab in August this year. One of Raab's predecessors, Labour's David Miliband, signed a similar order in 2008 before Megrahi's previous appeal was dropped.

Carloway upheld Raab's view that the documentation was relevant but revealing it would "damage counter-terrorism liaison and intelligence gathering between the UK and other states".

The documentation is reportedly a letter from then Jordanian ruler, King Hussein, an ally of the Western powers and a CIA asset, implicating Jordanian intelligence agent and PFLP-GC supporter Marween Khreesat in making the bomb. King Hussein claimed the attack was revenge commissioned by the Iranian government for the US Vincennes' shoot-down of an Iran Airbus at the cost of 255 lives in July 1988. Khreesat was arrested as part of the group that was making bombs in Germany in 1988, but was quickly released. He died in Syria in 2016.

Another remarkable intervention on the eve of the appeal, which coincided with the December 21 anniversary of the disaster, came from outgoing US Justice Secretary William Barr.

Barr announced charges against the hitherto little-known Libyan, Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi (Masud), whom Barr accused of helping Megrahi make the bomb used in the attack and whose extradition to the US is now being sought. Barr claimed the then-Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi personally thanked Masud for his efforts. Masud has been held in a Libyan jail since 2012. Gaddafi's government was violently overthrown by the US and European war machine, and Libya pitched into a catastrophic and ongoing civil war in 2011, but this claim of involvement only surfaced years later.

Barr has a history with the Lockerbie case. Prior to his installation by Donald Trump in 2019, he was known for a series of cover-ups arising from his first period as US Attorney General, between 1991 and 1993, during George H W Bush's term as US President, arising from the successive debacles of US foreign policy in the Middle East.

It was on Barr's watch that Bush handed out pardons to senior state officials involved in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, including former defence secretary Caspar Weinburger, who had been charged with crimes of perjury, lying to Congress and obstruction of justice.

Barr oversaw a fundamental shift in the focus of investigation into the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 from the PFLP-GC and Iran to Libya, and announced the November 14, 1991 indictments against Megrahi, and his then co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah.

The transition took place during US preparations for the assault on Iraq in the first Gulf War, launched earlier in 1991. Prior to the war, US officials shuttled around the various Arab regimes in the Middle East seeking support and acquiescence in the planned bloodbath. Then Secretary of State James Baker visited Syria repeatedly and extracted regime support for the assault on neighbouring Iraq. Iran remained neutral.

Speaking of Lockerbie when the war was over and days after the unexpected indictment of the two Libyans, Bush said, "A lot of people thought it was the Syrians. The Syrians took a bum rap on this."

None of this mattered to the Scottish judges. Instead, the 64-page verdict sought to strengthen the case against Megrahi by attributing sinister significance to entries in co-accused Fhimah's diary referring to "luggage tags". Fhimah, however, was acquitted in the original 2001 trial. Both men worked at the airport.

Speaking outside the court, lawyer Aamer Anwar said Megrahi's family were heartbroken by the verdict and intend to take the case to the UK Supreme Court. Jim Swire, 84, whose daughter Flora died in the disaster said, "For a long time I have been persuaded that it isn’t likely the truth will come out during my time left on the planet."

[RB: Another recent article can be read here: Lockerbie 32 years on: imperialism, framings and cover-ups.]