Friday, February 01, 2002

Lockerbie - the real story?

This was written on Feb. 1, 2002 as Libyan Abdel Baset Megrahi's appeal was being heard.
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IT SEEMS unlikely that the world would ever know the real story behind the 1988 mid-air bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie..
Several theories have been floating around about who was behind the blast, all of them with their own merits. These included suggestions that the bombing was Iranian revenge for the downing of an Iranian passenger airline in the Gulf by an American warship at the height of the Iran-Iraq war in the mid-80s; that it was the work of fearful Central Intelligence Agents (CIA) involved in illegal activities: that the blast was masterminded by anti-American elements who penetrated a CIA-endorsed
drug running operation; and that the target of the bombing was two Eastern European politicians.
A special court of Scottish judges is hearing the appeal of an alleged agent of Libyan intelligence sentenced to 20 years last year after he as convicted of planting the bomb that exploded in mid-air, killing all the 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground.
The general expectation was that the Libyan government would unveil "shocking" revelations of the mid-air blast during the appeal.
Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi had said that Libya had in its possession evidence that pointed the figure at the "real culprit" behind the bombing, which the US says was Libya's revenge for a 1985 US bombing of Libyan cities.
He asserted that when he produced the purported evidence, it would leave the trial judges with the choice of quitting their profession or committing suicide.
Two Libyans were indicted by the special court, which functions out of a former US military base, Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, and the court acquitted one of them, Al Amin Khalia Fhima, but convicted and sentenced Abdel Baset Megrahi on circumstantial evidence.
The evidence was based on shreds of clothing that was used to wrap the radio cassette player which was rigged with the explosives that went off and brought down the Pan Am flight on its way from London to New York.
US and British forensic experts traced the clothing to a shop in the Mediterranean island of Malta and the shop's owner testified that Megrahi "could have been" the man who bought the clothes. Apart from that, there was no direct evidence linking Megrahi to the bombing.
Megrahi's appeal is based on an argument that the shopkeeper's testimony was not enough to convict him, and that the trial judges made several errors in arriving in their judgment found him guilty as charged.
During the trial, the defense had argued that the shopkeeper could not positively identify the purchaser as Megrahi and the description he provided fitted another man, Mohammed Abu Talb, a member of a Palestinian group which was mysteriously dropped as a suspect after investigations.
The defense is also seeking to introduce as evidence the testimony of a security guard at London's Heathrow airport that a high-security cargo bay was broken in shortly before the ill-fated plane took in cargo and flew off headed for New York. The guard's evidence emerged after the trial was over in January 2001. The implication is that whoever had carried out the break-in could have planted the bomb-rigged suitcase among other pieces of baggage to be loaded onto Flight 103.
If the appeals court accepts the guard's testimony as evidence, then it rips open the prosecution contention that Megrahi had planted the bomb-laden suitcase with a New York tag in the baggage ramp at Malta's Liqua airport. From Liqua, the suitcase went to Frankfurt and onto London and aboard the Pan Am plane without security checks, the prosecution contented.
No clear explanation has been given why it was not subject to security inspections, particularly that European and American intelligence circles had gotten wind that a bomb attack was being planned against an American airliner.
The trial was held in Camp Zeist after a decade of a tug-of-war between Libya and the US that ended in a compromise worked out in 2000 under which Qadhafi agreed to allow the two Libyans to be tried in "neutral" territory by Scottish judges under Scottish law. In return, the UN lifted sanctions against Libya.
Many assertions and unanswered questions were raised in the wake of the mid-air explosion.
The US has maintained that the bombing was in retaliation for a 1985 April US air attack on the Libyan cities of Benghazi and Tripoli, which killed up to five people, including the adopted daughter of Qadhafi.
That air raid, which fitted into a pattern of US-Libyan confrontations, was ordered by the then president Ronald Reagan to punish Libya for its alleged role in the bombing of a disco in Berlin frequented by US Marines.
But the alleged Libyan connection to the Pan Am bombing is only one of the many theories that were raised at the very outset of investigations into the crash. These theories varyingly pointed the accusing fingers at Iran, Syria, Libya, the Lebanese drug underworld, and even the CIA.
Every theory appeared to be as strong as any, and a widely-held argument in the Middle East was Libya is the scapegoat in the case and the notorious Israeli secret service, Mossad, helped fabricate the case against Tripoli.
Iran was conveniently removed as a potential suspect because taking on Tehran would have been too heavy for the US at that point. Washington was also seeking to pacify the Iranians after having extended support to Iraq during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
Syria, which supported the US in the 1991 war that ended Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, was off the hook since Washington needed Damascus to enter the Middle East peace process launched in late 1991.
All other theories about the bombing would have dented what the US saw as an opportunity to have a stranglehold on Qadhafi's Libya, one of the most vociferous critics of US policy in Africa and the Middle East.
The Pan Am trial at Camp Zeist was attended by relatives of passengers, and some of them have stated that they were not at all convinced by the evidence presented against Megrahi.
Marina de Larracoechea, whose stewardess sister died in the crash, had formally demanded to know why the plane was only two-third full although it was peak Christmas time, and why some people apparently were warned not to travel on Flight 103.
The court found the submission "incompetent" and rejected it.
The defense strategy during the trial was based on laying out a well-built case where the accusing fingers pointed in several directions. The defense sought to prove that several other parties had as good motives and opportunity (supported by circumstantial evidence) as Libya to carry out the bombing.
But none of those arguments worked in favor of Megrahi.
The key piece of evidence was a tiny piece of a timer that allegedly helped detonate explosives in the suitcase aboard Pan Am Flight 103. The timer was rigged into a Toshiba cassette player and the fragment was found in part of the wreckage of the airliner in Lockerbie.
That timer, according to the prosecutor, was manufactured and supplied to Libya by a small electronics company called MEBO based in Zurich, Switzerland.
But a company official said that similar timers were supplied to several parties, including the Stasi secret service of former East Germany.
Major Owen Lewis, a former British army explosive expert and now an independent security consultant, said he could not fathom how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reached the conclusion that the fragment came from the MEBO timers supplied to Libya because of some fundamental differences in the construction of the devices bought by Libya and those sold by MEBO to others.
Also challenged in court was the record of misguided conclusions and lack of scientific qualifications of an FBI operative who "established" the alleged link between the timer and Libya.
Edwin Bollier, head of MEBO, said that the fragment could have come from one of two timers he had sold to Stasi. He also reported the theft of blueprints for the timer from his office and affirms that whoever had those blueprints could have manufactured a similar timer.
The Stasi connection opened up another avenue.
A Syrian-based group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), which was among the first suspects named by US authorities in the case but dropped eventually despite other circumstantial evidence, did have close links with the Stasi and could have obtained the MEBO timer from the East Germans.
Also challenged was the testimony of a former Libyan intelligence that he had seen Megrahi and Fhima at Malta airport on the day of the explosion.
The testimony was challenged on grounds that he has a vested interest in lying because he was living under a witness protection program in the US and stood to be rewarded by up to $4 million from the US government.
Air Malta has categorically rejected the possibility of an unaccompanied baggage being aboard the concerned flight to Frankfurt and affirmed that all procedures were strictly followed and the suitcase was not aboard that flight.
Air Malta also said that if anyone had substituted the suitcase for one belonging to a passenger on the flight, the airline would have had a claim for a lost bag when the passengers reached Frankfurt. But no such claim was made and every one of the 39 passengers aboard the flight were individually interviewed and they confirmed that there was nothing amiss.
In essence, even in the hypothesis that there was an unaccounted piece of baggage at Frankfurt that was could have eventually found its way to the Pan Am flight, there was no concrete evidence that the baggage came from Air Malta - another major dent in the prosecution case.
During the trial the defense highlighted suspicions that the PFLP was behind the bombing and cited the repeated instances where the Syrian-based group's name cropped up during the investigations.
Initial reports citing US intelligence sources said the PFLP-GC could have carried out the bombing on behalf of Iran, which was seeking revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian plane with 290 passengers aboard by an American warship, USS Vinceness, in the Gulf at the height of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
PFLP-GC leader Ahmed Jibril, a Syrian colonel, was named as having personally undertaken the alleged "contract" to bomb an American passenger plane in Europe several months before the Pan Am attack.
Reports spoke of warnings emanating from Finland and several other European countries, months before the Pan Am explosion, of an impending attack of similar nature.
Figuring high in the reports was a German police raid of a Frankfurt apartment where several men said to have been PFLP-GC members were staying. The raid yielded several weapons, and, most significantly, a Toshiba radio cassette player rigged with a bomb similar to the one that blasted Flight 103 over Lockerbie.
The Palestinians detained during the raid were freed shortly thereafter.
The presence in Malta of the PFLP—GC'S Abu Talb, who is now serving term in Sweden on unrelated charges, at the time of the purchase of the clothes used to wrap the Pan Am bomb and the shopkeeper's description of the buyer was seen as another strong nail in the prosecution's case.
If there was enough ground to warrant an investigation whether PFLP-GC — and by implication Syria and Iran — were involved in the blast, why did the US move away from that direction?
Explanations a theory that the US wanted to "neutralize" Iran in the crisis triggered by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and "secure Syrian support" for the US-led coalition against Iraq. It meant excluding the two countries from the investigations.
Other theories raised in connection with the bombing involved a covert CIA operation involving drug lords in Lebanon whose help the US wanted in order to secure the release of American hostages in that country. This involved allowing drugs to allowed aboard US-bound airplanes without inspection — something the CIA could do with its connections in Europe, said one theory, which was partially supported by the findings of an investigation carried by a private agency hired by Pan Am.
According to the theory, the CIA believed the suspect suitcase contained drugs and allowed its passage through Frankfurt onto the Pan Am flight. Somewhere along the line, someone switched the suitcase with one containing the bomb. It could have been the PFLP-GC or another group with links to the drug lords and this group might have been seeking to eliminate the CIA station chief in Beirut, Charles McKee, who was aboard the same flight.
Closely linked to this theory is another which says that CIA agents knew that the suitcase contained explosives and that McKee was the target but they allowed the blast to take place since the CIA station chief was headed for home with a complaint against them that could have led not only to their dismissal from service but prosecution in the US.
"The inference was obvious - Pan Am 103 was sacrificed by the intelligence community to get rid of Major McKee," according to a detailed report carried by the British Guardian newspaper after extensive investigations.
A local farmer from Lockerbie had reported finding a suitcase containing cellophane packets containing white powder among the debris in his fields, but the suitcase was taken away and no explanation was given. It was also discovered that the name the farmer saw on the suitcase did not correspond with any of the names on the passenger list of the crashed plane.
It was expected that the "evidence" that Qadhafi claimed to possess would be unveiled during the appeal process and throw out the verdict.
But, if reports in the US press are accurate that the US and Libya are involved in secret negotiations on a deal that would see Tripoli owning up "complicity" of its agents in the bombing in return for an end to the US sanctions against Libya, then no such revelations could be expected in Camp Zeist.
According to the reports, the "deal "being negotiated by American and Libyan officials will lead to the lifting of US sanctions against Libya. Although the UN lifted its sanctions, the US is maintaining its own trade curbs on Libya.
If the "deal" is made, then at least four US oil companies could return to Libya and resume their operations and Libya would also be removed from a US list of countries supporting "terrorism."
That is too strategic a prize for Qadhafi to let go.

Analytical report based on hard news on March 15, 2002.


Legal experts are skeptical over the rejection of the appeal filed by the Libyan convicted of the 1988 bombing of an American airliner when seen in light of Scottish criminal procedures and framework of prosecution and defense.
On Thursday, a panel of five Scottish judges announced that they were upholding the conviction of Libyan Abdel Baset Megrahi at a special court set up in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands.
The panel ruled that the defense failed to establish grounds to question the evidence presented by the prosecution at the trial court, which was also held at Camp Zeist under a compromise reached with Libya after a 10-year stand-off.
But legal experts are skeptical.
"Scottish law says that the defense has only to show that the crime could have been committed by another party, and this appears to have been done in this trial," said Albert Hickinson, a prominent Scottish criminal lawyer.
"The defense presented reasonable grounds to believe that someone who broke into the cargo bay at Heathrow could have planted the bomb-laded suitcase among the baggage to be loaded on Flight 102. This is enough reasonable ground to indicate that someone had the opportunity and circumstances to carry out the crime."
Under Scottish law, said Hickinson, it is enough for the defense to show grounds to believe that someone other than their client could have committed the crime.
"The defense does not have to prove the case," said Hickinson. "That is a prosecution responsibility."
The lawyer hastened to add that he was not "questioning" the competency of the panel of judges at Camp Zeist, but that "some questions remain unanswered and answers provided by the prosecution to some other questions were unsatisfactory."
Megrahi, 49, was convicted of causing the explosion aboard Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish town of Lockerbie by planting a suitcase rigged with explosives in a cargo bay at Malta that found it way to the ill-fated aircraft.
This suitcase, according to the prosecution, bore a forged Pan Am New York tag and was sent to Frankfurt and then to Heathrow where it was loaded onto Flight 103 in the evening of Dec. 22, 1988.
"There have been many ambiguities in the case from the very beginning, and they have not been cleared by the trial or at the appeal," said James Weatherby, another British lawyer.
Weatherby cited the "many suggestions and reports indicating other groups or government(s) had the motive to carry out the attack and could have been behind those who planted the bomb" as one of the reasons for skepticism.
"The prosecution swept off all that under the carpet and zeroed in on Libya," he said.
The "key" Libyan witness, a defected intelligence agent, was discredited in court because of questions over his motivation, noted Weatherby. "The questions are too many in the case and none has been answered satisfactorily."
"The witness who identified Megrahi as the person 'who could have bought' an umbrella and clothing from his shop (in Malta) has been found to have enjoyed Scottish police hospitality," which is against the law, noted Weatherby.
Megrahi, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in January 2001, filed an appeal, and Thursday's ruling rejected that appeal.
The appeal was based on the argument that the rigged suitcase could have been planted by those who broke into a Heathrow cargo bay.
The defense lawyers produced two witnesses, a security guard and his supervisor who were on duty at that time, who testified in court that there was a break-in at the cargo bay some 16 hours before the flight took off, that those who broken in had access to genuine Pan Am baggage tags and could have stashed the suitcase among the baggage lined up to be placed aboard Pan Am 103. The plane exploded en route from London to New York .
Megrahi's alleged accomplice, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, also a Libyan, was cleared of all charges by the trial court in January 2001.
However, that ruling had the "clear inference" that Libya was behind the "conception, planning and execution" of the bombing.
The Libyan government and the Arab Lawyers Association have rejected Thursday' verdict as politically motivated.
Megrahi "was convicted for political reasons and ... will be considered a political captive according to international law and codes," said the Libyan government.
The verdict will mount pressure on Libya to pay compensation for the victims of the crash. Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi's son has said that his country was willing to pay compensation if only for the sake of lifting completely the UN sanctions imposed on the country and ending its isolation.
A UN resolution demands not only that Libya pay compensation but also that it own up responsibility for the bombing, renounce terrorism and disclose all it knows of the crime, a demand that Libya is unlikely to accept.
The rejection of the appeal said The five-judge court ruled unanimously that the prosecution's circumstantial case against Megrahi was convincing, and the defense had failed to produce evidence to undermine the conviction.
"None of the grounds of appeal is well founded," it said.
Shortly after the verdict was announced, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw welcomed the ruling and called on Libya to take steps to pay compensation.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the decision should prompt Libya to comply with the Security Council requirements.
Speculation has been rife that Washington and Tripoli had been in secret contacts aimed at facilitating the compensation payment in return for the US lifting the ban on American oil companies dealing with Libya and ending the diplomatic isolation of Libya.
US officials have acknowledged that Washington envoys had met with Libyan representatives in London in the presence of British officials, but rejected that this indicated a "rapprochement" between the West and Libya. They said the talks aimed at sorting out the procedures of compensation.
However, Libya has rejected demands for up to $4 billion in compensation presented by lawyers for the victims of the crash.
Qadhafi, who had described Megrahi a "hostage," has said any compensation deal would be conditional on payment of damages "to all victims of the United States." That would mean, among others, victims of an April 1985 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in which five people, including Qadhafi's adopted daughter, was killed.
Notwithstanding the diplomatic imperatives, the intensity to ward off questions related to the Lockerbie, including suggestions that someone or country or group other than Libya, "has left a sour taste....," said Hickinson, the Scottish lawyer.
"It is as if a process intended for public consumption was played out frontstage while thick curtains sealed off real drama for no one to see," he said.