20 Years Later, the Lockerbie Terror Attack Is Not as Solved as We Think
Corrected on 01/12/09: An earlier version of this article misstated the number of American victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. There were 189 American victims.
Yet the more likely outcome is that Megrahi will die just before or after his second appeal and that with the closure of his death, like that of Libya's payments, most will forget that the Lockerbie case remains unsolved.
Nathan Thrall has written on U.S. foreign policy and Middle Eastern politics for Commentary, the Jerusalem Post, the Middle East Review of International Affairs, and the New York Times.
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Reader Comments
The wrong time for conspiracy theories
It's bad enough that so many died. But why are those on the net making it worse by relying on conspiracy theories? One person here believes the (white) South Africans did it; another that it was the Iranians.
Lockerbie was not some underlying secret Illuminati-type conspiracy. There were escalating tensions from the mid 1980's between Libya and the west. It's fact that Libya supplied the IRA with modern weaponry; Libya also bombed a French airliner (UTA 772), and Libyan agents were convicted in the courts for it, just like Megrahi.
Why does it seem to make (some) people feel better to imagine hidden forces at work, rather than facts we can establish? Evidence is rarely perfect, that's the real world. But these days it seems any gap in evidence is rapidly filled by a conspiracy-monger with an axe to grind.
Instead, why not remember and respect the relatives: they are the ones who are suffering here.
Frank Duggan
Frank Duggan is an apologist for the US Government who knew Iran was behind the bombing (and still know). He wants evidence of this? Try this, extract from US Defence Intelligence Agency final report on Lockerbie: “The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorized and financed by Ali-Akbar (Mohtashemi-Pur), the former Iranian Minister of Interior. The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmad (Jabril), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC)) leader, for a sum of 1,000, 000 US dollars. One hundred thousand dollars of this money was given to Jabril up front in Damascus, by the Iranian Ambassador to Sy [i.e. Syria], Muhammad Hussan (Akhari) for initial expenses. The remainder of the money was to be paid after successful completion of the mission.” The Intelligence Brief also considered that at this time the PFLP-GC was “fast becoming an Iranian proxy” and that the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 to avenge the July 1998 U.S. shoot-down of an Iran Air 655 airbus may have been the result of such Iranian and PFLP-GC co-operation. The Brief, amongst other things, stated that analysis of materials confiscated at the Autumn Leaves raid of a PFLP-GC cell in Germany in October 1988 provided strong circumstantial evidence linking the cell to the bombing and that Iran had reportedly made a large payment to the PFLP-GC following the bombing. Libya was specifically discounted in the report as being involved in the bombing on the basis that there was “no current credible intelligence” implicating her. The Intelligence Brief considered that: “following a brief increase in anti-US terrorist attacks after the US airstrike on Libya, Qadhafi has made an effort to distance Libya from terrorist attacks.”
The CIAs former Middle East senior analyst Bob Baer also stated to Dutch TV that the reason the US didnt go after Iran was that this state could shut the Straits of Hormuz in 3 minutes and the price of gas in the US would go to $30 a gallon and the economy nosedive. Frank Duggan doesnt want to know the truth, because the real truth implicates his own government in this atrosity. Shame on you Duggan, you are misleading the relatives.
Lockerbie
How many US citizens died at Lockerbie? The official death toll was 270 of whom 189 were US citizens. Aaron S. refers to an AP story stating there were 269 victims.
My Lockerbie blog at http://e-zeecon.com postulates that the alternative to Al-Megrahi's guilt is that the authorities colluded in the bombing for intelligible political motives. As US officials were filmed carrying what appeared to be a coffin at Longtown Airfield, Cumbria and in view of the experience of Dr John Fieldhouse (whose numbering of corpses was removed) the official death toll may not be definitive.
Your correspondent "of VA", whose identity is obvious, makes some good points particularly concerning the witness who retracted his evidence. He is also correct to say that the supposedly discredited FBI forensic witness did not give evidence and his findings were corroborated by RARDE. Indeed as I pointed out in part 10 of my blog on the UTA case not one but two RARDE scientists claimed to have discovered the key exhibit, the fragment of MSTY timer at different times and from different portions of the debris!
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