Thursday, May 01, 2003

Unanswered Lockerbie questions

PV Vivekanand

This is an intriguing story that was never presented
in this format. The uninformed part of the world is
now convinced that Libya was behind the 1998 PanAm
bombing after Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi agreed to
pay compensation and accepted responsibility (but not
guilt -- there is a big distinction under
international terms between "responsibility" and
"guilt."). But many in the Arab World, and indeed the
international community, continue to believe that was
much more than met the eye in the episode. The answers
to the very valid questions raised by the sceptics
might never be answered. I am not suggesting Libya was
not behind the blast, but that there have been equally
strong indicators to show someone else was behind the
attack.
This report is about 2,200 words. Perhaps, in my
humble suggestion, it could be split into two or three
and run on consecutive days.
In any event, I leave it entirely to your decision
whether to use it at all..
Thanks and best regards


by pv vivekanand


THE LIBYAN agreement to pay £2.7 billion in
compensation and implicit acceptance of responsibility
for the 1998 bombing of an American airliner that
killed 270 people might close the diplomatic file and
rehabilate Libya into the international circuit, but
many questions remain unanswered.
Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi's acceptance of
responsibility and compensation payment was a
prerequisite in ending the UN and US sanctions imposed
against his country in 1990 when he refused to hand
over two Libyans suspected of having carried out the
bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over the Scottish town of
Lockerbie.
However, this does not imply acceptance of guilt since
without accepting responsibility and paying
compensation, Libya would have remained under the
sanctions and diplomatically isolated.
Libya, which has been suffering from the sanctions,
need foreign investments and technology to develop its
untapped oil reserves and therefore it was incumbent
upon Qadhafi to end the sanctions through whatever
means.
Now it is expected that at least four US oil companies
would 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.
However, the file remains open without the question
satisactorily answered who was behind the bombing of
the American airliner.
Even European experts and analysts have said that the
trial of two Libyans in 1999 after Qadhafi handed them
over to a special Scottish court set up in Camp Zeist
in the Netherlands was flawed. The trial led to one of
the Libyans sentenced to life in a Scottish prison and
the other being cleared of all charges.
Notwithstanding the trial and last month's Libyan
agreement to accept responsibility and pay damages,
many argue that doubts remain open whether Libya was
behind the bombing.
Several other theories remain as strong as the one
that the Panam blast was in revenge for a 1985
American bombing of the Libyan cities of Tripoli and
Bengazhi that killed five people, including Qadhafi's
adopted daughter of four years.
That bombing was ordered by the then president Ronald
Reagan as punitive measure against Libya for having
allegedly ordered a blast at a Berlin disco frequented
by American servicemen. A woman died in that blast.
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 and Eastern Europe.
Every theory appeared to be as strong as any, and a
widely-held argument in the Middle East was Libya was
the scapegoat in the case and the notorious Israeli
secret service, Mossad, helped fabricate the case
against Tripoli.
Indeed, the initial investigation into to the PanAm
blast brought out those theories. These include:
-- 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.
-- The blast was the work of fearful Central
Intelligence Agents (CIA) involved in illegal
activities or masterminded by anti-American elements
who penetrated a CIA-endorsed drug running operation;
-- The blast had nothing to do with the Middle East or
Libya since the target of the bombing was two Eastern
European politicians who were travelling to Washington
for talks on former Yugoslavia and that had their
talks been successful the course of events in that
country would have been totally different today.
Surprisingly, the US investigators shut off all other
investigations and focused on Libya instead without
explaining why others were eliminated as suspects.
It is believed that 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 non-Libya 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.
A careful scrutiny of the trial held at Camp Zeist
indicated major loopholes in the prosecution case and
it was surprising that the court found it fit to
approve the evidence.
The key piece of evidence introduced during the Camp
Zeist trial 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 told the court that similar
timers were supplied to several parties, including the
Stasi secret service of former East Germany.
Experts have questioned 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 the two Libyans who were
put on trial in Camp Zeist 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.
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 prosecution was not seen to have proved
conclusively that the suitcase containing the bomb was
indeed loaded to an Air Malta plane at Valetta airport
which was automatically moved to London's Heathrow
from Frankfurt because it had a "through to New York"
baggage tag. As long as that was not proved, the
Libyan connection should have been dropped altogether.
A key the PFLP—GC activist was present in Malta 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 linked to the Lebanon
undercover operation 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, where the exploded
pieces of the plane landed, 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.
"There have been many ambiguities in the case from the
very beginning, and they have not been cleared by the
trial...," says James Weatherby, a 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 scepticism.
"The prosecution swept off all that under the carpet
and zeroed in on Libya," he said.
The Libyan who was sentenced after the one-year trial
appealed the verdict after fresh evidence emerged that
the rigged suitcase could have been planted by those
who broke into a Heathrow cargo bay.
The defence 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.
Every theory is feasible and every piece of evidence
is as strong as the other.
As a British expert put it, the trial was a "process
intended for public consumption was played out
frontstage while thick curtains sealed off real drama
for no one to see."
And indeed, the world might never know who blasted
Flight 103 out of the skies.




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