Alternative theories into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
Encyclopedia
Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories suggest a number of possible explanations for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
on 21 December 1988. Some of the theories preceded the official investigation
by Scottish police and the FBI; others arose from different interpretation of evidence presented at Libyan agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's 2000/2001 trial
; yet others have been developed independently by individuals and organisations outside the official investigation.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command
(PFLP-GC) was the first suspect, in light of a threat it issued against U.S. and Israeli interests before the bombing. The state of Iran
was also in the frame very early, with its motive thought to be revenge for the July 1988 shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655
by . This theory was later reinforced by Abolghasem Mesbahi, former head of Iranian intelligence operations in Europe, who stated after defecting to Germany that Iran had asked Libya and Abu Nidal, a Palestinian guerrilla leader, to carry out the attack on Pan Am 103. In his 1994 film The Maltese Double Cross, Allan Francovich
suggested that rogue CIA agents were implicated in a plot that involved them turning a blind eye to a drug running operation in return for intelligence. Evidence presented at Megrahi's trial, together with concerns about the reliability of his conviction, spawned a theory that Libya was framed. Abu Nidal
allegedly confessed to the bombing before his death, thereby triggering another theory, while Joe Vialls
put forward his own explanation that relied on the bomb being detonated remotely. Finally, in December 1989, Patrick Haseldine
suggested that the bombing was an assassination by South Africa's apartheid government of United Nations Commissioner for Namibia
, Bernt Carlsson
.
(PFLP-GC), a Damascus-based rejectionist group led by former Syrian army captain Ahmed Jibril
, sponsored by Iran
. In a February 1986 press conference, Jibril warned:
Secret intercepts
were reported by author, David Yallop
, to have recorded the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) in Baalbeck, Lebanon
making contact with the PFLP-GC immediately after the downing of the Iran Air Airbus. Israeli intelligence
allegedly intercepted a telephone call made two days after PA 103 by Mohtashemi-Pur
, Interior Minister in Tehran
, to the chargé d'affaires
at the Iranian embassy in Beirut
, instructing the embassy to hand over the funds to Jibril and congratulating them on the success of operation 'Intekam' ('equal and just revenge'). Jibril is alleged to have received $11 million from Iran - although a banking audit trail
to confirm the payment has never been presented.
Jibril's right hand man, Hafez Dalkamoni, set up a PFLP-GC cell which was active in the Frankfurt
and Neuss
areas of West Germany
in October 1988, two months before PA 103. During what Germany's internal security service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), called Operation Herbstlaub (Operation "Autumn Leaves"), the BfV kept cell members under strict surveillance. The plotters prepared a number of improvised explosive device
s (IEDs) hidden inside household electronic equipment. They discussed a planned operation in coded calls to Cyprus
and Damascus
: oranges and apples stood for detonating devices; medicine and pasta for Semtex
explosive; and, auntie for the bomb carrier. One operative had been recorded as saying: "auntie should get off, but should leave the suitcase on the bus" (Duffy and Emerson 1990). The PFLP-GC cell had an experienced bomb-maker, Jordanian Marwan Khreesat, to assist them. Khreesat made at least one IED inside a single-speaker Toshiba
Bombeat 453 radio cassette recorder, similar to the twin speaker model RT-SF 16 Bombeat that was used to blow up PA 103. However, unlike the Lockerbie bomb with its sophisticated timer, Khreesat's IEDs contained a barometric pressure device that triggers a simple timer with a range of up to 45 minutes before detonation.
Unbeknown to the PFLP-GC cell, its bomb-maker Khreesat was a Jordan
ian intelligence service (GID) agent and reported on the cell's activities to the GID, who relayed the information to Western intelligence and to the BfV. The Jordanians encouraged Khreesat to make the bombs but instructed him to ensure they were ineffective and would not explode. (A German police technician would however be killed, in April 1989, when trying to disarm one of Khreesat's IEDs). Through Khreesat and the GID, the Germans learned that the cell was surveying a number of targets, including Iberia Flight 888 from Madrid
to Tel Aviv
via Barcelona
, chosen because the bomb-courier could disembark without baggage at Barcelona leaving the barometric trigger to activate the IED on the next leg of the journey. The date chosen, Khreesat reportedly told his handlers, was 30 October 1988. He also told them that two members of the cell had been to Frankfurt airport
to pick up Pan Am timetables.
Acting upon this intelligence, the German secret police moved in to arrest the PFLP-GC cell on 26 October, raiding 14 apartments and arresting 17 men, fearing that to keep them under surveillance much longer was to risk losing control of the situation. Two cell members are known to have escaped arrest including Abu Elias, a resident of Sweden
who, according to Prime Time Live (ABC News November 1989), was an expert in bombs sent to Germany to check on Khreesat's devices because of suspicions raised by Ahmed Jibril. Four IEDs were recovered, but Khreesat stated later that a fifth device had been taken away by Dalkamoni before the raid, and was never recovered. The link to PA 103 was further strengthened when Khreesat told investigators that, before joining the cell in Germany, he had bought five Toshiba
Bombeat cassette radios from a smugglers' village in Syria
close to the border with Lebanon
, and made practice IED
s out of them in Jibril's training camp 20 km (12.4 mi) away. The bombs were inspected by Abu Elias, who declared them to be good work. What became of these devices is not known.
Some journalists such as Private Eye
's Paul Foot
and a PA 103 relative, Dr Jim Swire, believed that it was too stark a coincidence for a Toshiba cassette radio IED to have downed PA 103 just eight weeks after the arrest of the PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt. Indeed, Scottish police actually wrote up an arrest warrant for Marwan Khreesat in the spring of 1989, but were persuaded by the FBI not to issue it because of his value as an intelligence source. In the following spring, King Hussein of Jordan arranged for Khreesat to be interviewed by FBI agent, Edward Marshman, and the former head of the FBI's forensic lab, Thomas Thurman
, to whom he described in detail the bombs he had built. In the 1994 documentary film Maltese Double Cross, the author David Yallop
speculated that Libyan and Iranian-paid agents may have worked on the bombing together; or, that one group handed the job over to a second group upon the arrest of the PFLP-GC cell members. The former CIA head of counter-terrorism, Vincent Cannistraro
, who previously worked on the PA 103 investigation, was interviewed in the film and said he believed the PFLP-GC planned the attack at the behest of the Iranian government, then sub-contracted it to Libyan intelligence after October 1988, because the arrests in Germany meant the PFLP-GC was unable to complete the operation. Other supporters of this theory believed that whoever paid for the bombing arranged two parallel operations intended to ensure that at least one would succeed; or, that Jibril's cell in Germany was a red herring designed to attract the attention of the intelligence services, while the real bombers worked quietly elsewhere.
ian revenge motive (retaliation for the shooting down of the Iran Air Airbus
by USS Vincennes
) was prematurely dismissed by investigators. They drew attention to a comment by former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher
in her 1993 memoirs, where she seemed to discount the Libya revenge motive (for the 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi
by the United States air force):
Additionally, Abolghasem Mesbahi, former head of Iranian intelligence in Europe, eventually defected and "told [German] investigators that Iran had asked Libya and Abu Nidal, a Palestinian guerrilla leader, to carry out the attack on Pan Am 103."
The US Defense Intelligence Agency
alleges that Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur (Ayatollah Mohtashemi), a member of the Iranian government, paid US$ 10 million for the bombing:
Part of report, which is dated 1989-09-24, cites information acquired at Ft. Meade, MD
:
and
(CIA) agents had set up a protected drug route from Europe to the United States—allegedly called Operation Corea—that allowed Syrian drug dealers, led by Monzer al-Kassar
(who was involved with Oliver North
in the Iran-Contra scandal) to ship heroin to the U.S. using Pan Am flights, in exchange for intelligence
on Palestinian groups holding hostages in Syria. The CIA allegedly protected the suitcases containing the drugs and made sure they were not searched. On the day of the bombing, as the theory goes, terrorists exchanged suitcases: one with drugs for one with a bomb.
Time
introduced another version of this theory, claiming that the American intelligence officers on PA 103 – Matthew Gannon and Maj. Charles McKee – had found out about the drug operation, and were headed to Washington to raise their concerns about its impact on their hostage
rescue plans.
Juval Aviv
introduced a variation of this story in October 1989. Aviv was the owner of Interfor Inc, a private investigation company based on Madison Avenue, New York. Aviv claimed to be a former Mossad
officer who led the Operation Wrath of God
team that assassinated members of Black September
who were believed to have been responsible for the Munich Massacre
in 1972. According to his theory, the CIA knew in advance that the baggage exchange would take place, but let it happen anyway, because the protected drugs route was a rogue operation, and the American intelligence officers on PA 103 – Matthew Gannon and Maj. Charles McKee – had found out about it, and were on their way to Washington to tell their superiors.
After PA 103, Aviv was employed by Pan Am as their lead investigator for the bombing. He submitted a report (the Interfor report) in October 1989, blaming the bombing on a CIA-protected drugs route (Barrons December 17, 1989). This scenario provided Pan Am with a credible defense against claims for compensation by relatives of victims, since, if the U.S. government had helped the bomb bypass Pan Am's security, the airline could hardly have been held liable. The Interfor report alleged inter alia
that Khalid Jafaar, a Lebanese-American passenger with links to Hezbollah, had unwittingly brought the bomb on board thinking he was carrying drugs on behalf of Syrian drug dealers he supposedly worked for. However, the New York court, which heard the civil case lodged by the U.S. relatives, rejected the Interfor allegations for lack of evidence. Aviv was never interviewed by either the Scottish police or the FBI in connection with PA 103. The theory of the CIA-protected suitcase was detailed as well in Patrick Pesnot's Rendez-vous avec X radio program on June 1998.
In 1990 the protected suitcase theory was given a new lease of life by Lester Coleman
in his book Trail of the Octopus. Coleman was a former journalist-turned-intelligence agent working with the Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA) while employed by Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA) in Cyprus
. Coleman claimed to have seen Khalid Jafaar in the DEA office in Nicosia
, Cyprus once again implying that Jafaar was a drugs mule, but this time for the DEA instead of Syrian drug dealers. In 1997, Coleman pleaded guilty to five counts of perjury in a Federal court after admitting that he submitted a false testimony in a civil litigation brought on behalf of the families of passengers killed in the bombing.
Coleman's theory gained impetus when British journalist Paul Foot
wrote a glowing review of Coleman's book for the London Review of Books. But on March 31, 2004—four months before his death—Foot reverted to the orthodox Iran/PFLP-GC theory in an article he wrote for The Guardian
entitled "Lockerbie's dirty secret".
The previously-mentioned 1994 documentary film The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie
, which included interviews with Lester Coleman and Juval Aviv, seemed to favour a hybrid version embracing both the CIA-protected suitcase and the drugs mule versions of the theory. Shortly after the film was broadcast by Channel 4
television on 11 May 1995, Aviv was indicted on fraud charges. Aviv was quick to claim that these were trumped-up charges, and in due course they were dropped. The film can be viewed on the internet here by scrolling down to Allan Francovich - The Maltese Double Cross.
is based on the premise that key evidence presented at the trial (e.g. timer fragment, parts from a specific radio cassette model, clothing bought in Malta
, bomb suitcase originating at Luqa Airport) could have been fabricated by the U.S. and Britain for the "political" purpose of incriminating Libya
.
's regime in Libya has a long and well-documented history of support for rebel and paramilitary groups. During the 1970s and 1980s, Gaddafi supplied large quantities of Libyan weapons and explosives to the Provisional Irish Republican Army
. Other incidents that have been attributed to Libya are not so clear cut:
At the end of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial
an international observer appointed by the United Nations, Hans Köchler
, called the verdict a "spectacular miscarriage of justice". Even though Libya never formally admitted responsibility for Pan Am Flight 103
or UTA Flight 772
, Libya "accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials" and agreed to pay compensation to the relatives of the victims. In October 2008 Libya paid $1.5 billion into a fund which will be used to compensate relatives of the
, Lord Boyd, rejected any suggestion that Libya had been framed and denied that this was a politically-driven prosecution, instead blaming conspiracy theorists
for such allegations:
The Lord Advocate went on to list the various pieces of evidence found to prove that the PA 103 investigators' interest in Libya was "as a result of the evidence which was discovered and not as a result of any political interference in the investigation". He reiterated: "There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that there was political interference. The investigation was evidence-led." Lord Boyd dealt with each piece of evidence, as follows:
QC
, in the BBC Scotland
Frontline Scotland TV programme Silence over Lockerbie, broadcast on 14 October 1997, said he wanted to make just one point:
A number of news media also investigated the bombing and the various theories that were put forward to explain it. One news team headed by Pierre Salinger
accused the prosecution of disinformation
, and of attempting to steer the investigation toward Libya.
. The Boeing 747 that was destined to carry the 259 passengers and crew on the London-New York leg had arrived from San Francisco at noon on 21 December 1988, and stood unguarded on the tarmac for much of the period before PA 103's passengers began to board the aircraft after 17:00 (scheduled departure 18:00). The Iran Air terminal in Heathrow was adjacent to the Pan Am terminal, and the two airlines shared tarmac space. The lawyers invoked the 1990 Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry and the evidence it heard that the baggage container AVE 4041, into which the bomb suitcase had been loaded, was left unsupervised at Heathrow for about forty minutes that afternoon.
Abu Nidal
was widely regarded as the most ruthless international terrorist until that mantle was assumed by Osama bin Laden
. Nidal (aka Sabri al-Banna) was reported to have died in a shoot-out in Baghdad
on 16 August 2002. A former senior member of his group, Atef Abu Bakr, told journalists that shortly before his death Abu Nidal had confided to Bakr that he had orchestrated the PA 103 bombing.
After settling in Tripoli in 1985, Nidal and the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi
allegedly became close, Gaddafi sharing what The Sunday Times called "Abu Nidal's dangerous combination of an inferiority complex mixed with the belief that he was a man of destiny."
According to Atef Abu Bakr, Gaddafi asked Nidal to coordinate with the head of Libyan intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, an attack on the U.S. in retaliation for the 1986 bombing of Benghazi and Tripoli. Nidal then organized the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73
in Karachi on September 5, 1986 killing 22 passengers and wounding dozens of others. In August 1987, Abu Nidal allegedly tried again, this time using an unwitting bomb mule to carry a device on board a flight from Belgrade
(airline unknown), but the bomb failed to explode. For PA 103, Senussi allegedly told Nidal to supply the bomb, and Libyan intelligence would arrange for it to be put on a flight. No evidence has been produced in support of these theories.
, who died in July 2005, the bomb on PA 103 was triggered not by a simple timing device, but by a more complex technique of radio detonation.
The Vialls theory relies on the assumption that the aircraft was handed over to a different air traffic control center when it passed over the Dean Cross navigational beacon
, requiring it to communicate on one of the 22 frequencies used by Shanwick Oceanic Control
. Maid of the Seas would then have been flying at about 500 mph between Dean Cross beacon and where it crashed on the town of Lockerbie
, an overall distance of 30 miles (48.3 km) representing a point-to-point flight time of barely four minutes. As PA 103 passed overhead the Dean Cross beacon, a light would have flashed on in the cockpit alerting the pilots to change frequency in order to obtain permission for the Atlantic crossing from Shanwick Oceanic Control at Prestwick
, Scotland. Using standard reaction times, according to Vialls, it would have taken between three and five minutes for the crew to be ready to communicate on the new frequency. In its PA 103 report, the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) stated:
The Vialls radio detonation theory puts forward two different triggering mechanisms:
Vialls cited the following example of how the Israelis used the technique of radio detonation: In the late 1980s, Israeli intelligence managed to obtain the cellular phone of Yahya Ayyash
by fooling him into believing that his phone had a fault; the phone was booby-trapped with explosives when he brought it in for repairs, then subsequently detonated by a signal sent over the Israeli-controlled mobile phone network when he answered it.
According to Vialls, the inside of a Boeing 747 is a Faraday cage
, which would ensure that secondary emissions—from the captain's radio message to Shanwick Oceanic Control, for example—would be sufficient to activate the radio trigger of the bomb. Thus, the PA 103 bomb could have been triggered by an internally-generated command radio signal transmitted to or received from Shanwick. However, Vialls believed that the extent of the damage caused to the aircraft meant that the bomb was probably positioned close to the fuselage, rather than—as the prosecution maintained at the trial—being wrapped in clothing, packed in a suitcase and loaded inside a baggage container.
Vialls himself blamed the Israeli Mossad
for the PA 103 bombing. This fitted with the general theme of Vialls's investigations: he blamed Israel and Mossad for a variety of international disasters and events, including the 2004 Asian Tsunami and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales
.
According to another theory, suggested by UK's Patrick Haseldine
, apartheid South Africa
was responsible for the sabotage of Pan Am Flight 103
. The theory is rooted in an allegation made in the film the The Maltese Double Cross
and by Die Zeit
that the United States government knew of the bomb and warned staff from its embassies in Helsinki
and Moscow
, as well as a high-level South African delegation, to avoid the flight. Someone allegedly contacted the US embassy in Helsinki, Finland
16 days before the bombing, warning of a bomb on a Pan Am aircraft departing Frankfurt for the US; none of the staff at the Moscow embassy took the flight, despite it being a popular route for them over Christmas. The allegation prompted a strong statement in November 1994 from the private secretary of Pik Botha
, then South African Foreign Minister, stating that "Had he known of the bomb, no force on earth would have stopped him from seeing to it that flight 103, with its deadly cargo, would not have left the airport."
Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from London Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport...
on 21 December 1988. Some of the theories preceded the official investigation
Investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
The investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 began at 19:03 on December 21, 1988 when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The perpetrators had intended the plane to crash into the sea, destroying any traceable evidence, but the late departure...
by Scottish police and the FBI; others arose from different interpretation of evidence presented at Libyan agent Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's 2000/2001 trial
Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial
The Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial began on 3 May 2000, 11 years, 4 months and 13 days after the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988...
; yet others have been developed independently by individuals and organisations outside the official investigation.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command is a Palestinian nationalist organization, backed by Syria and Iran...
(PFLP-GC) was the first suspect, in light of a threat it issued against U.S. and Israeli interests before the bombing. The state of Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
was also in the frame very early, with its motive thought to be revenge for the July 1988 shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655
Iran Air Flight 655
Iran Air Flight 655 was a civilian jet airliner shot down by U.S. missiles on 3 July 1988, over the Strait of Hormuz, toward the end of the Iran–Iraq War...
by . This theory was later reinforced by Abolghasem Mesbahi, former head of Iranian intelligence operations in Europe, who stated after defecting to Germany that Iran had asked Libya and Abu Nidal, a Palestinian guerrilla leader, to carry out the attack on Pan Am 103. In his 1994 film The Maltese Double Cross, Allan Francovich
Allan Francovich
Allan Francovich was an American film producer and director who made a series of films purporting to expose Central Intelligence Agency covert operations....
suggested that rogue CIA agents were implicated in a plot that involved them turning a blind eye to a drug running operation in return for intelligence. Evidence presented at Megrahi's trial, together with concerns about the reliability of his conviction, spawned a theory that Libya was framed. Abu Nidal
Abu Nidal
Abu Nidal , born Sabri Khalil al-Banna , was the founder of Fatah–The Revolutionary Council , a militant Palestinian group more commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization...
allegedly confessed to the bombing before his death, thereby triggering another theory, while Joe Vialls
Joe Vialls
Joe Vialls was a conspiracy theorist and internet journalist based in Perth, Western Australia. His claims that major incidents such as the Port Arthur massacre, terror attacks in Bali and Jakarta and the 2004 Asian Tsunami were the work of Israeli and American secret agents gained a measure of...
put forward his own explanation that relied on the bomb being detonated remotely. Finally, in December 1989, Patrick Haseldine
Patrick Haseldine
Patrick John Haseldine is a former British diplomat who was dismissed in August 1989 by the then Foreign Secretary, John Major, for "various disciplinary offences constituting breaches of the Diplomatic Service Regulations"...
suggested that the bombing was an assassination by South Africa's apartheid government of United Nations Commissioner for Namibia
United Nations Commissioner for Namibia
United Nations Commissioner for South-West Africa was a post created by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966 to assert the UN's direct responsibility for South-West Africa which was then under illegal occupation by apartheid South Africa....
, Bernt Carlsson
Bernt Carlsson
Bernt Wilmar Carlsson was Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations and United Nations Commissioner for Namibia from July 1987 until he died on Pan Am Flight 103, which was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December 1988.-Social democrat:A native of Stockholm, Carlsson joined the...
.
PFLP-GC
For many months after the bombing, the prime suspects were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General CommandPopular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command is a Palestinian nationalist organization, backed by Syria and Iran...
(PFLP-GC), a Damascus-based rejectionist group led by former Syrian army captain Ahmed Jibril
Ahmed Jibril
Ahmed Jibril is the founder and leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command , part of the left-wing, Palestinian national liberation movement....
, sponsored by Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
. In a February 1986 press conference, Jibril warned:
- "There will be no safety for any traveler on an Israeli or U.S. airliner" (Cox and Foster 1991, p28).
Secret intercepts
SIGINT
Signals intelligence is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether between people , whether involving electronic signals not directly used in communication , or combinations of the two...
were reported by author, David Yallop
David Yallop
David Anthony Yallop is an agnostic British author who writes chiefly about unsolved crimes. In the 1970s he also contributed scripts for a number of BBC comedy shows...
, to have recorded the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) in Baalbeck, Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
making contact with the PFLP-GC immediately after the downing of the Iran Air Airbus. Israeli intelligence
Mossad
The Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....
allegedly intercepted a telephone call made two days after PA 103 by Mohtashemi-Pur
Ali Akbar Mohtashami-Pur
Hojatoleslam Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipur or Mohtashemi is a Twelver Shia Hojatoleslam cleric who was active in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and later became interior minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran He is "seen as a founder of the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon" and one of the "radical .....
, Interior Minister in Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...
, to the chargé d'affaires
Chargé d'affaires
In diplomacy, chargé d’affaires , often shortened to simply chargé, is the title of two classes of diplomatic agents who head a diplomatic mission, either on a temporary basis or when no more senior diplomat has been accredited.-Chargés d’affaires:Chargés d’affaires , who were...
at the Iranian embassy in Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
, instructing the embassy to hand over the funds to Jibril and congratulating them on the success of operation 'Intekam' ('equal and just revenge'). Jibril is alleged to have received $11 million from Iran - although a banking audit trail
Audit trail
Audit trail is a sequence of steps supported by proof documenting the real processing of a transaction flow through an organization, a process or a system.....
to confirm the payment has never been presented.
Jibril's right hand man, Hafez Dalkamoni, set up a PFLP-GC cell which was active in the Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
and Neuss
Neuss
Neuss is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located on the west bank of the Rhine opposite Düsseldorf. Neuss is the largest city within the Rhein-Kreis Neuss district and owes its prosperity to its location at the crossing of historic and modern trade routes. It is primarily known...
areas of West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
in October 1988, two months before PA 103. During what Germany's internal security service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), called Operation Herbstlaub (Operation "Autumn Leaves"), the BfV kept cell members under strict surveillance. The plotters prepared a number of improvised explosive device
Improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...
s (IEDs) hidden inside household electronic equipment. They discussed a planned operation in coded calls to Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
and Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
: oranges and apples stood for detonating devices; medicine and pasta for Semtex
Semtex
Semtex is a general-purpose plastic explosive containing RDX and PETN. It is used in commercial blasting, demolition, and in certain military applications. Semtex became notoriously popular with terrorists because it was, until recently, extremely difficult to detect, as in the case of Pan Am...
explosive; and, auntie for the bomb carrier. One operative had been recorded as saying: "auntie should get off, but should leave the suitcase on the bus" (Duffy and Emerson 1990). The PFLP-GC cell had an experienced bomb-maker, Jordanian Marwan Khreesat, to assist them. Khreesat made at least one IED inside a single-speaker Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
Bombeat 453 radio cassette recorder, similar to the twin speaker model RT-SF 16 Bombeat that was used to blow up PA 103. However, unlike the Lockerbie bomb with its sophisticated timer, Khreesat's IEDs contained a barometric pressure device that triggers a simple timer with a range of up to 45 minutes before detonation.
Unbeknown to the PFLP-GC cell, its bomb-maker Khreesat was a Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
ian intelligence service (GID) agent and reported on the cell's activities to the GID, who relayed the information to Western intelligence and to the BfV. The Jordanians encouraged Khreesat to make the bombs but instructed him to ensure they were ineffective and would not explode. (A German police technician would however be killed, in April 1989, when trying to disarm one of Khreesat's IEDs). Through Khreesat and the GID, the Germans learned that the cell was surveying a number of targets, including Iberia Flight 888 from Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
to Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
via Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
, chosen because the bomb-courier could disembark without baggage at Barcelona leaving the barometric trigger to activate the IED on the next leg of the journey. The date chosen, Khreesat reportedly told his handlers, was 30 October 1988. He also told them that two members of the cell had been to Frankfurt airport
Frankfurt Airport
Frankfurt Airport may refer to:Airports of Frankfurt, Germany:*Frankfurt Airport , the largest airport in Germany*Frankfurt Egelsbach Airport, a general aviation airport*Frankfurt-Hahn Airport , a converted U.S...
to pick up Pan Am timetables.
Acting upon this intelligence, the German secret police moved in to arrest the PFLP-GC cell on 26 October, raiding 14 apartments and arresting 17 men, fearing that to keep them under surveillance much longer was to risk losing control of the situation. Two cell members are known to have escaped arrest including Abu Elias, a resident of Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
who, according to Prime Time Live (ABC News November 1989), was an expert in bombs sent to Germany to check on Khreesat's devices because of suspicions raised by Ahmed Jibril. Four IEDs were recovered, but Khreesat stated later that a fifth device had been taken away by Dalkamoni before the raid, and was never recovered. The link to PA 103 was further strengthened when Khreesat told investigators that, before joining the cell in Germany, he had bought five Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
Bombeat cassette radios from a smugglers' village in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
close to the border with Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
, and made practice IED
Improvised explosive device
An improvised explosive device , also known as a roadside bomb, is a homemade bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action...
s out of them in Jibril's training camp 20 km (12.4 mi) away. The bombs were inspected by Abu Elias, who declared them to be good work. What became of these devices is not known.
Some journalists such as Private Eye
Private Eye
Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
's Paul Foot
Paul Foot
Paul Mackintosh Foot was a British investigative journalist, political campaigner, author, and long-time member of the Socialist Workers Party...
and a PA 103 relative, Dr Jim Swire, believed that it was too stark a coincidence for a Toshiba cassette radio IED to have downed PA 103 just eight weeks after the arrest of the PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt. Indeed, Scottish police actually wrote up an arrest warrant for Marwan Khreesat in the spring of 1989, but were persuaded by the FBI not to issue it because of his value as an intelligence source. In the following spring, King Hussein of Jordan arranged for Khreesat to be interviewed by FBI agent, Edward Marshman, and the former head of the FBI's forensic lab, Thomas Thurman
Thomas Thurman
In the late 1980s and for most of the 1990s, James Thomas Thurman was employed at the FBI forensics laboratory, which investigated explosives-related crimes...
, to whom he described in detail the bombs he had built. In the 1994 documentary film Maltese Double Cross, the author David Yallop
David Yallop
David Anthony Yallop is an agnostic British author who writes chiefly about unsolved crimes. In the 1970s he also contributed scripts for a number of BBC comedy shows...
speculated that Libyan and Iranian-paid agents may have worked on the bombing together; or, that one group handed the job over to a second group upon the arrest of the PFLP-GC cell members. The former CIA head of counter-terrorism, Vincent Cannistraro
Vincent Cannistraro
Vincent Cannistraro was Director of Intelligence Programs for the United States National Security Council from 1984 to 1987; Special assistant for Intelligence in the Office of the Secretary of Defense until 1988; and Chief of Operations and Analysis at the Central Intelligence Agency's ...
, who previously worked on the PA 103 investigation, was interviewed in the film and said he believed the PFLP-GC planned the attack at the behest of the Iranian government, then sub-contracted it to Libyan intelligence after October 1988, because the arrests in Germany meant the PFLP-GC was unable to complete the operation. Other supporters of this theory believed that whoever paid for the bombing arranged two parallel operations intended to ensure that at least one would succeed; or, that Jibril's cell in Germany was a red herring designed to attract the attention of the intelligence services, while the real bombers worked quietly elsewhere.
Iran
A number of journalists considered that the IranIran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
ian revenge motive (retaliation for the shooting down of the Iran Air Airbus
Iran Air Flight 655
Iran Air Flight 655 was a civilian jet airliner shot down by U.S. missiles on 3 July 1988, over the Strait of Hormuz, toward the end of the Iran–Iraq War...
by USS Vincennes
USS Vincennes (CG-49)
The fourth USS Vincennes is a U.S. Navy Ticonderoga class Aegis guided missile cruiser. On July 3, 1988, the ship shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 civilian passengers on board, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children.The ship was launched 14 April 1984 and...
) was prematurely dismissed by investigators. They drew attention to a comment by former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
in her 1993 memoirs, where she seemed to discount the Libya revenge motive (for the 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi
Operation El Dorado Canyon
The 1986 United States bombing of Libya, code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon, comprised the joint United States Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps air-strikes against Libya on April 15, 1986. The attack was carried out in response to the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing.-Origins:Shortly after his...
by the United States air force):
"It turned out to be a more decisive blow against Libyan-sponsored terrorism than I could ever have imagined. ...There were revenge killings of British hostages organized by Libya, which I bitterly regretted. But the much-vaunted Libyan counter attack did not and could not take place... There was a marked decline in Libyan-sponsored terrorism in succeeding years" (Thatcher 1993, pp448-9).
Additionally, Abolghasem Mesbahi, former head of Iranian intelligence in Europe, eventually defected and "told [German] investigators that Iran had asked Libya and Abu Nidal, a Palestinian guerrilla leader, to carry out the attack on Pan Am 103."
The US Defense Intelligence Agency
Defense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Intelligence Agency is a member of the Intelligence Community of the United States, and is the central producer and manager of military intelligence for the United States Department of Defense, employing over 16,500 U.S. military and civilian employees worldwide...
alleges that Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur (Ayatollah Mohtashemi), a member of the Iranian government, paid US$ 10 million for the bombing:
- Ayatollah Mohtashemi: (...) and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am Flight 103 in retaliation for the US shoot-down of the Iranian Airbus.
Part of report, which is dated 1989-09-24, cites information acquired at Ft. Meade, MD
Fort Meade, Maryland
Fort Meade is a census-designated place in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, United States. The population was 9,882 at the 2000 census. It is the home to the National Security Agency, which is located on the US Army post Fort George G...
:
- The mission was to blow up a Pan Am flight that was to be almost entirely booked by US military personnel on Christmas leave. The flight was supposed to be a direct flight from Frankfurt, GE, to New York, not Pan Am flight 103 which was routed through London, UK. The suitcase containing the bomb was labeled with the name of one of the US passengers on the plane and was inadvertently placed on the wrong plane possibly by airport ground crew members in Frankfurt. The terrorist who last handled the bomb was not a passenger on the flight.
and
- The bomb was designed by Mu'Ay Al-Din ((Mughanniya)), a Lebanese national who lives in IR and who is supposedly Iran's expert on aircraft bombing and high-jacking operations. The bomb was constructed in LY and then shipped to GE for placement on the aircraft (NFI).
CIA drug smuggling
This theory suggests that U.S. Central Intelligence AgencyCentral Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA) agents had set up a protected drug route from Europe to the United States—allegedly called Operation Corea—that allowed Syrian drug dealers, led by Monzer al-Kassar
Monzer al-Kassar
Monzer al-Kassar , also known as the "Prince of Marbella", is an international arms dealer. He has been connected to numerous crimes, including the Achille Lauro hijacking and the Iran-Contra scandal. On November 20, 2008, he was convicted in U.S. federal court as part of a U.S...
(who was involved with Oliver North
Oliver North
Oliver Laurence North is a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer, political commentator, host of War Stories with Oliver North on Fox News Channel, a military historian, and a New York Times best-selling author....
in the Iran-Contra scandal) to ship heroin to the U.S. using Pan Am flights, in exchange for intelligence
Military intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
on Palestinian groups holding hostages in Syria. The CIA allegedly protected the suitcases containing the drugs and made sure they were not searched. On the day of the bombing, as the theory goes, terrorists exchanged suitcases: one with drugs for one with a bomb.
Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
introduced another version of this theory, claiming that the American intelligence officers on PA 103 – Matthew Gannon and Maj. Charles McKee – had found out about the drug operation, and were headed to Washington to raise their concerns about its impact on their hostage
Lebanon hostage crisis
The Lebanon hostage crisis refers to the systematic kidnapping in Lebanon of 96 foreign hostages of 21 national origins – mostly American and western European – between 1982 and 1992...
rescue plans.
Juval Aviv
Yuval Aviv
Juval Aviv is an Israeli-American writer and security consultant. He may be best-known for his claim that he is the source of the 1984 book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by George Jonas, on which Steven Spielberg's 2005 film Munich was based...
introduced a variation of this story in October 1989. Aviv was the owner of Interfor Inc, a private investigation company based on Madison Avenue, New York. Aviv claimed to be a former Mossad
Mossad
The Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....
officer who led the Operation Wrath of God
Operation Wrath of God
Operation Wrath of God ,This title was an invention of later writers, and was most likely not used by the Mossad itself. also called Operation Bayonet, was a covert operation directed by Israel and the Mossad to assassinate individuals alleged to have been directly or indirectly involved in the...
team that assassinated members of Black September
Black September (group)
The Black September Organization was a Palestinian paramilitary group, founded in 1970. It was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes and officials, and fatal shooting of a West German policeman, during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, their most publicized event...
who were believed to have been responsible for the Munich Massacre
Munich massacre
The Munich massacre is an informal name for events that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Bavaria in southern West Germany, when members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually killed by the Palestinian group Black September. Members of Black September...
in 1972. According to his theory, the CIA knew in advance that the baggage exchange would take place, but let it happen anyway, because the protected drugs route was a rogue operation, and the American intelligence officers on PA 103 – Matthew Gannon and Maj. Charles McKee – had found out about it, and were on their way to Washington to tell their superiors.
After PA 103, Aviv was employed by Pan Am as their lead investigator for the bombing. He submitted a report (the Interfor report) in October 1989, blaming the bombing on a CIA-protected drugs route (Barrons December 17, 1989). This scenario provided Pan Am with a credible defense against claims for compensation by relatives of victims, since, if the U.S. government had helped the bomb bypass Pan Am's security, the airline could hardly have been held liable. The Interfor report alleged inter alia
Inter Alia
-Track listing:# Inter Alia# Outfox'd # Righteous Badass # The Altogether feat. Bix, Apt, UNIVERSE ARM and Cal# The Day-to-Daily# Trouble Brewing # The Prestidigitator# The Force...
that Khalid Jafaar, a Lebanese-American passenger with links to Hezbollah, had unwittingly brought the bomb on board thinking he was carrying drugs on behalf of Syrian drug dealers he supposedly worked for. However, the New York court, which heard the civil case lodged by the U.S. relatives, rejected the Interfor allegations for lack of evidence. Aviv was never interviewed by either the Scottish police or the FBI in connection with PA 103. The theory of the CIA-protected suitcase was detailed as well in Patrick Pesnot's Rendez-vous avec X radio program on June 1998.
In 1990 the protected suitcase theory was given a new lease of life by Lester Coleman
Lester Coleman
Lester Knox Coleman II is an American who was the co-author of the 1993 book Trail of the Octopus, The Untold Story of Pan Am 103, in which he claimed that a secret drug sting enabled terrorists to evade airport security in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan American World Airways Flight 103...
in his book Trail of the Octopus. Coleman was a former journalist-turned-intelligence agent working with the Drug Enforcement Administration
Drug Enforcement Administration
The Drug Enforcement Administration is a federal law enforcement agency under the United States Department of Justice, tasked with combating drug smuggling and use within the United States...
(DEA) while employed by Defense Intelligence Agency
Defense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Intelligence Agency is a member of the Intelligence Community of the United States, and is the central producer and manager of military intelligence for the United States Department of Defense, employing over 16,500 U.S. military and civilian employees worldwide...
(DIA) in Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
. Coleman claimed to have seen Khalid Jafaar in the DEA office in Nicosia
Nicosia
Nicosia from , known locally as Lefkosia , is the capital and largest city in Cyprus, as well as its main business center. Nicosia is the only divided capital in the world, with the southern and the northern portions divided by a Green Line...
, Cyprus once again implying that Jafaar was a drugs mule, but this time for the DEA instead of Syrian drug dealers. In 1997, Coleman pleaded guilty to five counts of perjury in a Federal court after admitting that he submitted a false testimony in a civil litigation brought on behalf of the families of passengers killed in the bombing.
Coleman's theory gained impetus when British journalist Paul Foot
Paul Foot
Paul Mackintosh Foot was a British investigative journalist, political campaigner, author, and long-time member of the Socialist Workers Party...
wrote a glowing review of Coleman's book for the London Review of Books. But on March 31, 2004—four months before his death—Foot reverted to the orthodox Iran/PFLP-GC theory in an article he wrote for The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
entitled "Lockerbie's dirty secret".
The previously-mentioned 1994 documentary film The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie
The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie
The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie is a documentary film about the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.Produced, written, and directed by Allan Francovich and financed by Tiny Rowland, the film was released by Hemar Enterprises in November 1994....
, which included interviews with Lester Coleman and Juval Aviv, seemed to favour a hybrid version embracing both the CIA-protected suitcase and the drugs mule versions of the theory. Shortly after the film was broadcast by Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
television on 11 May 1995, Aviv was indicted on fraud charges. Aviv was quick to claim that these were trumped-up charges, and in due course they were dropped. The film can be viewed on the internet here by scrolling down to Allan Francovich - The Maltese Double Cross.
Alleged framing of Libya
This conspiracy theoryConspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...
is based on the premise that key evidence presented at the trial (e.g. timer fragment, parts from a specific radio cassette model, clothing bought in Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
, bomb suitcase originating at Luqa Airport) could have been fabricated by the U.S. and Britain for the "political" purpose of incriminating Libya
Libya
Libya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
.
Recent Libyan history
Muammar al-GaddafiMuammar al-Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi or "September 1942" 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.He seized power in a...
's regime in Libya has a long and well-documented history of support for rebel and paramilitary groups. During the 1970s and 1980s, Gaddafi supplied large quantities of Libyan weapons and explosives to the Provisional Irish Republican Army
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
. Other incidents that have been attributed to Libya are not so clear cut:
- The 1984 murder of police constable Yvonne FletcherYvonne FletcherWPC Yvonne Joyce Fletcher was a British police officer fatally shot during a protest outside the Libyan embassy at St. James's Square, London, in 1984. Fletcher, who had been on duty and deployed to police the protest, died shortly afterwards at Westminster Hospital...
outside the Libyan embassy in London was blamed on Libya and led to a long-term rupture of diplomatic relations. No prosecution has taken place, but Libya has paid compensation to WPC Fletcher's family and recently allowed Scotland YardScotland YardScotland Yard is a metonym for the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, UK. It derives from the location of the original Metropolitan Police headquarters at 4 Whitehall Place, which had a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The Scotland Yard entrance became...
to interview suspects in that country. - US president Ronald ReaganRonald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
was convinced that Libya was responsible for the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing1986 Berlin discotheque bombingThe 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing was a terrorist attack on the La Belle discothèque in West Berlin, Germany, an entertainment venue that was commonly frequented by United States soldiers...
– in which two American servicemen were killed and another 50 injured – and, in retaliation, ordered the bombing of TripoliTripoliTripoli is the capital and largest city in Libya. It is also known as Western Tripoli , to distinguish it from Tripoli, Lebanon. It is affectionately called The Mermaid of the Mediterranean , describing its turquoise waters and its whitewashed buildings. Tripoli is a Greek name that means "Three...
in Operation El Dorado CanyonOperation El Dorado CanyonThe 1986 United States bombing of Libya, code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon, comprised the joint United States Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps air-strikes against Libya on April 15, 1986. The attack was carried out in response to the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing.-Origins:Shortly after his...
. In 2001, a Libyan and two Palestinians were convicted and imprisoned by Berlin's Supreme Court, and in 2004 Gaddafi agreed to pay $35 million in compensation to the non-American victims of the Berlin bombing. - A French court convicted six Libyans nationals (some members of Libyan Intelligence) in absentiaIn absentiaIn absentia is Latin for "in the absence". In legal use, it usually means a trial at which the defendant is not physically present. The phrase is not ordinarily a mere observation, but suggests recognition of violation to a defendant's right to be present in court proceedings in a criminal trial.In...
of the 1989 bombing of French UTA Flight 772UTA Flight 772UTA Flight 772 of the French airline Union des Transports Aériens was a scheduled flight operating from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, via N'Djamena in Chad, to Paris CDG airport in France....
. The bomb bore remarkable similarities to the one that brought down Pan Am 103, since it was also consisted of PETN (Semtex) carried in a SamsoniteSamsoniteThe Samsonite Corporation makes luggage with its products ranging from large suitcases to small toiletries bags and briefcases. It was started in Denver, Colorado, USA in 1910 byJesse Shwayder, as the Shwayder Trunk Manufacturing Company. Shwayder named one of his initial cases "Samson", after the...
suitcase and detonated by a timing device. FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
at the time supported Libya's neighbour ChadChadChad , officially known as the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west...
in a border dispute. A ParisParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
court convicted six Libyan. With remarkable parallels to the Lockerbie trial, the Paris court heard that UTA Flight 772 was brought down by a bomb triggered by a sophisticated timing device. - Libya supplied the Provisional Irish Republican ArmyProvisional Irish Republican ArmyThe Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
(PIRA) with tonnes of SemtexSemtexSemtex is a general-purpose plastic explosive containing RDX and PETN. It is used in commercial blasting, demolition, and in certain military applications. Semtex became notoriously popular with terrorists because it was, until recently, extremely difficult to detect, as in the case of Pan Am...
— amongst other weapons. See also Provisional IRA arms importation#Libyan arms.
At the end of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial
Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial
The Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial began on 3 May 2000, 11 years, 4 months and 13 days after the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988...
an international observer appointed by the United Nations, Hans Köchler
Hans Köchler
Hans Köchler is a professor of philosophy at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and president of the International Progress Organization, a non-governmental organization in consultative status with the United Nations...
, called the verdict a "spectacular miscarriage of justice". Even though Libya never formally admitted responsibility for Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from London Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport...
or UTA Flight 772
UTA Flight 772
UTA Flight 772 of the French airline Union des Transports Aériens was a scheduled flight operating from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, via N'Djamena in Chad, to Paris CDG airport in France....
, Libya "accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials" and agreed to pay compensation to the relatives of the victims. In October 2008 Libya paid $1.5 billion into a fund which will be used to compensate relatives of the
- Lockerbie bombing victims with the remaining 20% of the sum agreed in 2003 ($2.7 billion);
- American victims of the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing1986 Berlin discotheque bombingThe 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing was a terrorist attack on the La Belle discothèque in West Berlin, Germany, an entertainment venue that was commonly frequented by United States soldiers...
; - American victims of the 1989 UTA Flight 772UTA Flight 772UTA Flight 772 of the French airline Union des Transports Aériens was a scheduled flight operating from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, via N'Djamena in Chad, to Paris CDG airport in France....
bombing; and, - Libyan victims of the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli and BenghaziOperation El Dorado CanyonThe 1986 United States bombing of Libya, code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon, comprised the joint United States Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps air-strikes against Libya on April 15, 1986. The attack was carried out in response to the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing.-Origins:Shortly after his...
.
Lord Advocate's comment
In an address to a conference of law officers in August 2001 (seven months after the PA 103 verdict) the Scottish Lord AdvocateLord Advocate
Her Majesty's Advocate , known as the Lord Advocate , is the chief legal officer of the Scottish Government and the Crown in Scotland for both civil and criminal matters that fall within the devolved powers of the Scottish Parliament...
, Lord Boyd, rejected any suggestion that Libya had been framed and denied that this was a politically-driven prosecution, instead blaming conspiracy theorists
Conspiracy theory
A conspiracy theory explains an event as being the result of an alleged plot by a covert group or organization or, more broadly, the idea that important political, social or economic events are the products of secret plots that are largely unknown to the general public.-Usage:The term "conspiracy...
for such allegations:
- "Conspiracy theorists have alleged that the investigators' move away from an interest in the PFLP-GC was prompted by political interference following a re-alignment of interests in the Middle East. Specifically it is said that it suited Britain and the United States to exonerate SyriaSyriaSyria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
and others such as IranIranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
who might be associated with her and to blame LibyaLibyaLibya is an African country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west....
, a country which we know trained the IRAProvisional Irish Republican ArmyThe Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
. Accordingly, evidence was 'found' which implicated Libya. This is best answered by looking at the evidence."
The Lord Advocate went on to list the various pieces of evidence found to prove that the PA 103 investigators' interest in Libya was "as a result of the evidence which was discovered and not as a result of any political interference in the investigation". He reiterated: "There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that there was political interference. The investigation was evidence-led." Lord Boyd dealt with each piece of evidence, as follows:
- Toshiba radio cassette fragment:
- "evidence was obtained from Toshiba [by DERA
DERADERA may refer as an abbreviation or acronym to:*Defence Evaluation and Research Agency*Downtown Eastside Residents Association – in Vancouver, British Columbia*Direct Epitope Recognition Assay*Disaster preparedness and Emergency Response Association...
's Alan Feraday] which showed that during October 1988 20,000 black Toshiba RT-SF 16 radio cassettes, the type used in the Pan Am bomb, were shipped to Libya. Of the total world-wide sales of that model 76% were sold to the General Electric Company's subsidiary in Libya, whose chairman was Said Rashid.[information added]"
- Mebo timer fragment:
- "In June 1990, with the assistance ultimately of the CIA and FBI, Alan Feraday of the Explosives Laboratory was able to identify the fragment as identical to circuitry from an MST-13 timer. It was already known to the CIA from an example seized in Togo
TogoTogo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...
in 1986 and photographed by them in SenegalSenegalSenegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
in 1988. That took investigators to the firm of Mebo in ZurichZürichZurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
. It was discovered that these timers had been manufactured to the order of two Libyans Ezzadin Hinshin, at the time director of the Central Security Organisation of the Libyan External Security Organisation and Said Rashid, then head of the Operations Administration of the ESO."
- Clothing material:
- "In September 1989 Tony Gauci
Tony GauciTony Gauci is a former proprietor of a clothes shop in Malta. According to evidence given at the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial in 2000, Mr Gauci sold the clothes which were said to have been wrapped around the improvised explosive device that brought the aircraft down...
, the shopkeeper, was interviewed by Scottish police officers. He convincingly identified a range of clothing which he had sold to a man sometime before Christmas 1988. Among the items he remembered selling were two pairs of Yorkie trousers, two pairs of striped pyjamas, a tweed jacket, a blue babygro, two slalom shirts collar size 16 and a half, two cardigans, one brown and one blue and an umbrella. He described the man, and subsequently identified him as Megrahi. More importantly at the time he was in no doubt that he was a Libyan."
Reliance on forensic science
Warning against over-reliance upon forensic science to secure convictions, one of Britain's foremost criminal lawyers, Michael MansfieldMichael Mansfield
Michael Mansfield QC is an English barrister. A republican, vegetarian, socialist, and self-described "radical lawyer", he has participated in prominent and controversial court cases and inquests involving accused IRA bombers, the Bloody Sunday incident, and the deaths of Jean Charles de Menezes...
QC
Queen's Counsel
Queen's Counsel , known as King's Counsel during the reign of a male sovereign, are lawyers appointed by letters patent to be one of Her [or His] Majesty's Counsel learned in the law...
, in the BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland is a constituent part of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the publicly-funded broadcaster of the United Kingdom. It is, in effect, the national broadcaster for Scotland, having a considerable amount of autonomy from the BBC's London headquarters, and is run by the BBC Trust, who...
Frontline Scotland TV programme Silence over Lockerbie, broadcast on 14 October 1997, said he wanted to make just one point:
- "Forensic science is not immutable. They're not written in tablets of stone, and the biggest mistake that anyone can make—public, expert or anyone else alike—is to believe that forensic science is somehow beyond reproach: it is not! The biggest miscarriages of justice in the United Kingdom, many of them emanate from cases in which forensic science has been shown to be wrong. And the moment a forensic scientist or anyone else says: 'I am sure this marries up with that' I get worried."
A number of news media also investigated the bombing and the various theories that were put forward to explain it. One news team headed by Pierre Salinger
Pierre Salinger
Pierre Emil George Salinger was a White House Press Secretary to U.S. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson...
accused the prosecution of disinformation
Disinformation
Disinformation is intentionally false or inaccurate information that is spread deliberately. For this reason, it is synonymous with and sometimes called black propaganda. It is an act of deception and false statements to convince someone of untruth...
, and of attempting to steer the investigation toward Libya.
Iran and the London angle
Towards the end of the bombing trial, lawyers for Megrahi argued that the PA 103 bomb could have started its journey at Heathrow, rather than at Luqa Airport in MaltaMalta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
. The Boeing 747 that was destined to carry the 259 passengers and crew on the London-New York leg had arrived from San Francisco at noon on 21 December 1988, and stood unguarded on the tarmac for much of the period before PA 103's passengers began to board the aircraft after 17:00 (scheduled departure 18:00). The Iran Air terminal in Heathrow was adjacent to the Pan Am terminal, and the two airlines shared tarmac space. The lawyers invoked the 1990 Scottish Fatal Accident Inquiry and the evidence it heard that the baggage container AVE 4041, into which the bomb suitcase had been loaded, was left unsupervised at Heathrow for about forty minutes that afternoon.
Libya and Abu Nidal
Abu Nidal
Abu Nidal , born Sabri Khalil al-Banna , was the founder of Fatah–The Revolutionary Council , a militant Palestinian group more commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization...
was widely regarded as the most ruthless international terrorist until that mantle was assumed by Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
. Nidal (aka Sabri al-Banna) was reported to have died in a shoot-out in Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
on 16 August 2002. A former senior member of his group, Atef Abu Bakr, told journalists that shortly before his death Abu Nidal had confided to Bakr that he had orchestrated the PA 103 bombing.
After settling in Tripoli in 1985, Nidal and the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar Gaddafi or "September 1942" 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011.He seized power in a...
allegedly became close, Gaddafi sharing what The Sunday Times called "Abu Nidal's dangerous combination of an inferiority complex mixed with the belief that he was a man of destiny."
According to Atef Abu Bakr, Gaddafi asked Nidal to coordinate with the head of Libyan intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, an attack on the U.S. in retaliation for the 1986 bombing of Benghazi and Tripoli. Nidal then organized the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73
Pan Am Flight 73
Pan Am Flight 73, a Pan American World Airways Boeing 747-121, was hijacked on September 5, 1986, while on the ground at Karachi, Pakistan, by four armed men of the Abu Nidal Organization...
in Karachi on September 5, 1986 killing 22 passengers and wounding dozens of others. In August 1987, Abu Nidal allegedly tried again, this time using an unwitting bomb mule to carry a device on board a flight from Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
(airline unknown), but the bomb failed to explode. For PA 103, Senussi allegedly told Nidal to supply the bomb, and Libyan intelligence would arrange for it to be put on a flight. No evidence has been produced in support of these theories.
Radio detonation
According to conspiracy theorist and self-styled private investigator Joe ViallsJoe Vialls
Joe Vialls was a conspiracy theorist and internet journalist based in Perth, Western Australia. His claims that major incidents such as the Port Arthur massacre, terror attacks in Bali and Jakarta and the 2004 Asian Tsunami were the work of Israeli and American secret agents gained a measure of...
, who died in July 2005, the bomb on PA 103 was triggered not by a simple timing device, but by a more complex technique of radio detonation.
The Vialls theory relies on the assumption that the aircraft was handed over to a different air traffic control center when it passed over the Dean Cross navigational beacon
VHF omnidirectional range
VOR, short for VHF omnidirectional radio range, is a type of radio navigation system for aircraft. A VOR ground station broadcasts a VHF radio composite signal including the station's identifier, voice , and navigation signal. The identifier is typically a two- or three-letter string in Morse code...
, requiring it to communicate on one of the 22 frequencies used by Shanwick Oceanic Control
Shanwick Oceanic Control
Shanwick is the Air Traffic Control name given to the area of International Airspace which lies above the northeast part of the North Atlantic...
. Maid of the Seas would then have been flying at about 500 mph between Dean Cross beacon and where it crashed on the town of Lockerbie
Lockerbie
Lockerbie is a town in the Dumfries and Galloway region of south-western Scotland. It lies approximately from Glasgow, and from the English border. It had a population of 4,009 at the 2001 census...
, an overall distance of 30 miles (48.3 km) representing a point-to-point flight time of barely four minutes. As PA 103 passed overhead the Dean Cross beacon, a light would have flashed on in the cockpit alerting the pilots to change frequency in order to obtain permission for the Atlantic crossing from Shanwick Oceanic Control at Prestwick
Prestwick
Prestwick is a town in South Ayrshire on the south-west coast of Scotland, about south-west of Glasgow. It adjoins the larger town of Ayr, the centre of which is about south...
, Scotland. Using standard reaction times, according to Vialls, it would have taken between three and five minutes for the crew to be ready to communicate on the new frequency. In its PA 103 report, the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) stated:
- "At 18.58 hrs the aircraft established two-way radio contact with Shanwick Oceanic Control on frequency 123.95 MHz. At 19.02:44 hrs the clearance delivery officer at Shanwick transmitted to the aircraft its oceanic route clearance. The aircraft did not acknowledge this message and made no subsequent transmission." The AAIB report continued: "The cockpit voice recorder tape was listened to for its full duration and there was no indication of anything abnormal with the aircraft, or unusual crew behaviour. The tape record ended, at 19.02:50 hrs ± 1 second, with a sudden loud sound on the cockpit area microphone channel followed almost immediately by the cessation of recording whilst the crew were copying their transatlantic clearance from Shanwick ATC."
The Vialls radio detonation theory puts forward two different triggering mechanisms:
- A remotely controlled bomb in the aircraft that was triggered by a radio signal sent from outside the aircraft
- A sophisticated device onboard the aircraft that monitored multiple variables including time and the use of specific air-traffic control frequencies by the aircraft.
Vialls cited the following example of how the Israelis used the technique of radio detonation: In the late 1980s, Israeli intelligence managed to obtain the cellular phone of Yahya Ayyash
Yahya Ayyash
Yahya Abd-al-Latif Ayyash was the chief bombmaker of Hamas and the leader of the West Bank battalion of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
by fooling him into believing that his phone had a fault; the phone was booby-trapped with explosives when he brought it in for repairs, then subsequently detonated by a signal sent over the Israeli-controlled mobile phone network when he answered it.
According to Vialls, the inside of a Boeing 747 is a Faraday cage
Faraday cage
A Faraday cage or Faraday shield is an enclosure formed by conducting material or by a mesh of such material. Such an enclosure blocks out external static and non-static electric fields...
, which would ensure that secondary emissions—from the captain's radio message to Shanwick Oceanic Control, for example—would be sufficient to activate the radio trigger of the bomb. Thus, the PA 103 bomb could have been triggered by an internally-generated command radio signal transmitted to or received from Shanwick. However, Vialls believed that the extent of the damage caused to the aircraft meant that the bomb was probably positioned close to the fuselage, rather than—as the prosecution maintained at the trial—being wrapped in clothing, packed in a suitcase and loaded inside a baggage container.
Vialls himself blamed the Israeli Mossad
Mossad
The Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....
for the PA 103 bombing. This fitted with the general theme of Vialls's investigations: he blamed Israel and Mossad for a variety of international disasters and events, including the 2004 Asian Tsunami and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
.
South-West Africa (Namibia)
Patrick Haseldine
Patrick John Haseldine is a former British diplomat who was dismissed in August 1989 by the then Foreign Secretary, John Major, for "various disciplinary offences constituting breaches of the Diplomatic Service Regulations"...
, apartheid South Africa
History of South Africa in the apartheid era
Apartheid was a system of racial segregation enforced by the National Party governments of South Africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority 'non-white' inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and white supremacy and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained...
was responsible for the sabotage of Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from London Heathrow Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport...
. The theory is rooted in an allegation made in the film the The Maltese Double Cross
The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie
The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie is a documentary film about the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.Produced, written, and directed by Allan Francovich and financed by Tiny Rowland, the film was released by Hemar Enterprises in November 1994....
and by Die Zeit
Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
that the United States government knew of the bomb and warned staff from its embassies in Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
and Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, as well as a high-level South African delegation, to avoid the flight. Someone allegedly contacted the US embassy in Helsinki, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
16 days before the bombing, warning of a bomb on a Pan Am aircraft departing Frankfurt for the US; none of the staff at the Moscow embassy took the flight, despite it being a popular route for them over Christmas. The allegation prompted a strong statement in November 1994 from the private secretary of Pik Botha
Pik Botha
Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha is a former South African politician who served as the country's foreign minister in the last years of the apartheid era...
, then South African Foreign Minister, stating that "Had he known of the bomb, no force on earth would have stopped him from seeing to it that flight 103, with its deadly cargo, would not have left the airport."
Review by American RadioWorks
In a special pre-trial report by American RadioWorks, the strengths and weaknesses of the case against Libya were explored. The report also examined in detail the evidence for and against the other main suspects in the first five alternative theories of this article. No evidence was offered in the report against either the radio detonation or the South-West Africa (Namibia) theory.External links
- Parliamentary debate led by Tam Dalyell MP, July 1997
- Taking the blame by Paul FootPaul FootPaul Mackintosh Foot was a British investigative journalist, political campaigner, author, and long-time member of the Socialist Workers Party...
, a review of Lester Coleman's book - "Setting Up" Libya for the Lockerbie bombing
- "Setting Up" Libya - Part 2
- The bomb trigger on Pan Am 103
- Libya offers $2.7 billion Lockerbie settlement by Patrick Rizzo, The Namibian, May 29, 2002
- Focus: Was justice done?
See also
- Investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103Investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103The investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 began at 19:03 on December 21, 1988 when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The perpetrators had intended the plane to crash into the sea, destroying any traceable evidence, but the late departure...
- Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trialPan Am Flight 103 bombing trialThe Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial began on 3 May 2000, 11 years, 4 months and 13 days after the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988...
- UTA Flight 772UTA Flight 772UTA Flight 772 of the French airline Union des Transports Aériens was a scheduled flight operating from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, via N'Djamena in Chad, to Paris CDG airport in France....
- Hans Köchler's Lockerbie trial observer missionHans Köchler's Lockerbie trial observer missionHans Köchler's Lockerbie trial observer mission stemmed from the dispute between the United Kingdom, the United States, and Libya concerning arrangements for the trial of two Libyans accused of causing the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.The dispute was resolved on...
- Korean Air Lines Flight 007 alternate theoriesKorean Air Lines Flight 007 alternate theoriesKorean Air Lines Flight 007 alternative theories concerns the various theories put forward regarding the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007...
- Timeline of airliner bombing attacksTimeline of airliner bombing attacksPassenger airliners as well as cargo aircraft have been the subject of plots or attacked by bombs and fire since the near the start of air travel. Many early bombings were suicides or schemes for insurance money, but in the latter part of the 20th century, political and religious militant terrorism...