Lockerbie - too many questions

by pv vivekanand


Most people in are now convinced that Libya was behind the 1998 PanAm bombing after Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi agreed to pay compensation and accepted responsibility for the blast. 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.
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 rehabilitate 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 satisfactorily 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.
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 be convicingly told who blasted Flight 103 out of the skies.