Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Lockerbie mystery added or unveiled

by pv vivekanand

CONTENTIONS that Sabri Al Banna, or Abu Nidal, was behind the 1998 mid-air bombing of an American airliner that killed 270 people and for which a Libyan is serving a life sentence in Scotland have thrown a new element to the never-say-die speculation about who was actually responsible for the blast.
The special trial of two Libyans held in the Netherlands under Scottish laws as a compromise to end the crisis between Libya, which was accused of masterminding the attack, and the UN and the conviction of an alleged Libyan intelligence agent have never really convinced many since many questions were never answered during the trial.
Similarly, the claim by Atef Abu Bakr, a one-time Abu Nidal associate, that the leader of the Fateh Revolutionary Group had told his followers that his group was behind the blast has not been substantiated by any physical evidence. If anything, it raises more questions, and, if true, pulls the rug from under the feet of the very elaborate process of the trial, conviction, appeal and reaffirmation of the verdict in the case.
At this stage, Abu Bakr's revelation is simple hearsay and, if we accept it as true, it could even be construed as Abu Nidal's way of impressing upon his people he could pull such meticulous operation as organising the bombing of an aircraft of a high-security-minded American airline and getting away with it.
However, it does not preclude the possibility that the Abu Nidal group had indeed planted the explosives that ripped PanAm flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in the night of Dec.22, 1988. The blast killed 259 people aboard the flight and 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie.
What we have now is only Abu Bakr's "revelation" that his former boss, who was reportedly either shot dead or committed suicide in Baghdad two weeks ago, had claimed that he was behind the attack.
"Abu Nidal told a ... meeting of the Revolutionary Council leadership: I have very important and serious things to say. The reports that attribute Lockerbie (bombing) to others are lies. We are behind it," Abu Bakr was quoted as saying in an interview with the London-based Al Hayat daily.
He said Abu Nidal threatened those present against speaking of the group's responsibility for the bombing.
"If any one of you lets this (word) out, I will kill him even if he was in his wife's arms," Abu Bakr quoted Abu Nidal as saying.
The apparent contradiction in Abu Bakr's account is clear: Abu Nidal was never known to have dealt directly with any of his henchmen and always used his close lieutenants to direct operations and convey his "instructions." As such, it seems doubtful that the four people that Abu Bakr says were present when Abu Nidal made the claim were being told of such a major operation for the first time and that too after it took place -- unless of course Abu Bakr was speaking part truth with a view to disassociating himself and the others, whoever they are, from the blast.
In any case, it clearly indicates that there is much more to the episode than Abu Bakr's version carried by Al Hayat.
Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohammed Al Megrahi is serving a life sentence in Glasgow's Barlinnie prison after being convicted of having planted the explosives aboard Flight 103.
Megrahi was convicted by a special court in the Netherlands in 2000. The court acquitted another Libyan. In March this year, a Scottish appeals court upheld the conviction of Megrahi.
Why the revelation of the alleged Abu Nidal link with the bombing at this juncture in time?
An argument that it was made following Abu Nidal's death that removed the risk of his threat appeared to have been quashed when Ghassan Sharbal, Al Hayat's assistant editor who conducted the interview, said he spoke to Abu Bakr before Abu Nidal's death was "reported."
There were two other instances when Abu Nidal's group was linked to the Pan Am blast, but both times the assertions never sparked a serious independent inquiry.
Shortly after the Dec.21/22 bombing, the US State Department said that the US embassy in Helsinki, Finland, had received a call 16 days before the blast from a man who claimed to be an Abu Nidal agent and warned that there would be a bombing attempt within two weeks against a Pan Am aircraft flying from Frankfurt to the United States.
The finding of the inevitable US investigation that would have followed was never revealed, and the claimed Abu Nidal connection appeared to have died a natural death as far as public State Department comments on the issue were concerned.
In 1996, a self-confessed Abu Nidal agent standing trial for the 1994 murder of senior Jordanian diplomat Naeb Imran Maaytah in Beirut told the court that the Abu Nidal group was behind the blast and he was part of the operation.
That claim was rejected as a ruse to get Libya off the hook, with the media speculating that the man stood to lose nothing by making the claim. If anything, went the speculation, he was already headed for prison after confessing to the Jordanian diplomat's killing and he had made the claim in return for a large amount paid to his family by Libya.
What is no clear at this point is what motive Abu Nidal had to blow up the plane except the conventional argument that the avowed anti-West hard-liner simply wanted to make another attack against Westerners and that it was his way of registering his opposition to US efforts to involve the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in indirect peace negotiations with Israel.
The revelation of the Abu Nidal connection to the blast comes amid reports that Libya is considering making an announcement that it accepts "general responsibility" for the bombing of Flight 103, and is now ready "in principle" to take steps to compensate the relatives of the 270 victims.
These two steps would pave the way for the formal lifting of United Nations sanctions against Libya.
Tripoli has made no comment on Abu Bakr's assertions.
Libya reportedly hosted Abu Nidal around the time of the bombing after he was expelled from Iraq in 1993 and from Syria in 1987.
Libya, which was under intense international pressure over Lockerbie, asked him to leave the country in 1999 after he reportedly went on a spree of "eliminating" dozens of followers whom he did not trust.
At one point, Atef Abu Bakr himself was quoted as saying that Abu Nidal buried the bodies under and around the villa where he was staying in Libya. It was also alleged that he had employed some of his people to "spy" on Libya and this had infuriated Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi into expelling him.
If media accounts were true, he was in Egypt for some time after leaving Libya and then slipped out of the country to Iran and entered Iraq across the border.
If indeed Abu Nidal was behind the PanAm bombing, it is then highly unlikely that Libya was not aware of it. And if Libya was aware it, why did Tripoli use that information at least to lay a red herring in the trial that was held in the Netherlands in 2000, after Abu Nidal had left Libya?
Lawyers for the two Libyans who were tried at the specially set up Scottish court in Camp Zeist in the Netherlands suggested that the Syria-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) could have been behind the bombing. What stopped them from pointing the finger at Abu Nidal if they could have done so at the PFLP-GC?
In London, senior Labour Member of parliament Dalyell, who had consistently insisted that Abu Nidal was responsible for the blast, has renewed his demand for a investigation into the affair. Dalyell has long argued that the Libyans were not behind the attack and now he says the Foreign Office must now investigate Abu Bakr's claims "as a matter of the utmost urgency."
"If these allegations are true they blow everything relating to Lockerbie out of the water, including the trial in Holland," he said last week.
The Scottish prosecutors' office has dismissed Abu Bakr's claim. But then that was only expected since acknowledging that anyone other than the convicted Libyan -- and by extension Libya -- could be responsible for the blast would demolish their credibility.
"We deal, and have dealt with, evidence not rumour or speculation, especially about allegedly dead terrorists," an unidentified Scottish Crown Office spokeswoman was quoted as saying in response to Abu Bakr's comments.
Not many have accepted as true the prosecution version of the case, and Western and Arab legal experts have asserted that the court overlooked several strong indicators that someone other than the convicted Libyan was behind the blast.
What could establish or at least throw some light into the mystery of the blast could be an independent investigation authorised and backed by the British government in co-ordination with other European and Arab governments and agencies.
But London has consistently rejected MPs' calls for such an investigation, and there is little sign that the Blair government would change it mind after Abu Bakr made the claim.,
Even Members of the UK Families Flight 103 say many important questions remain unanswered. They are demanding to know the motive behind the bombing, why it was not prevented and why it had taken 13 years to investigate the case and to conclude legal proceedings.
The demand was warded off by the government until Megrahi's appeal, with the argument that a wide-ranging inquiry had not been possible because it could have jeopardised a criminal trial, and families of the blast victims say that now that the trial and appeal have been concluded, the reasons for postponing any further inquiries have been removed.
Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the Lockerbie explosion, has said the trial in the Netherlands only considered the guilt or innocence of the defendants, and the court's conclusion that Megrahi was involved did not mean Abu Nidal might not also have participated.
"In my view, in those days most of the groups knew what the other groups were doing," said Swire, a spokesman for the UK Families Flight 103 Group. "Abu Nidal in those days was in Tripoli. ... I think it's likely he would have known what was going on but I have no way of knowing" whether he was behind the bombing.
And it is unlikely that anyone would know either unless Abu Bakr or someone else speaks up and tears down the veil of mystery over the blast.