[A-List] Lockerbie verdict

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

Private Eye

No. 1051, 5-18 April 2002

Lockerbie: Who Paid the Bombers?

The decision of five Scottish appeal judges in the Lockerbie case was
entirely predictable. The five were exceedingly unlikely to overturn the
absurd conclusions of three of their brethren, especially as there was
no jury to blame.

The five decided simply that there was enough evidence to convict the
one Libyan left in the frame, and proceeded to reject his lawyers'
objections one by one at inordinate length. But if anyone really
believes the conviction of Abdul Ali Basset Ali Megrahi is justified,
they should read the Eye pamphlet of nearly a year ago (it is still
available).

The judges' decision, however, is not the end of the Lockerbie story. It
will be subject to continual challenges and disclosures. Among these in
recent weeks has been the publication of See No Evil, the True Story of
a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War Against Terrorism. The book is
introduced in a foreword by the US investigative journalist Seymour
Hersh, who describes it as "the story of one man's disillusionment and
anger at an agency we've come to rely upon."

That man is Robert Baer, a former CIA expert in the Middle East, who
confesses "few things have left me more frustrated than the Pan-am
investigation". He then outlines the early view of the CIA that the
Lockerbie bombing was the work of a terrorist group -- the PFLP-GC --
recruited by Iran to avenge the shooting down of an Iranian airbus in
the Gulf in July 1988, five months before Lockerbie.

Mr Baer concentrates on one of the PFLP-GC's leaders, Muhammed Hafiz
Dalqamuni (sometimes spelt Dalkamoni). The terrorist was in a German
prison, facing terrorist charges, at the time of the Lockerbie bombing.
Mr Baer suspects that "the operation was handed over to one of his
cell's members". He goes on:

"On December 23 1988, two days after the bombing, an $11m transfer
showed up in a General Command bank account in Lausanne, Switzerland. It
moved from there to another General Command account at the Banque
Nationale de Paris, and then to yet another at the Hungarian Trade
Development Bank. The Paris account number was found in Dalqamuni's
possession upon arrest. What's more, Mohammed Abu Talib, one of
Dalqamuni's associates suspected of having a role in the bombing,
received a payment of $500,000 on April 25, 1989. Did that and the other
payments originate in Iran? Were they success fees for Pan Am 103?
Certainly none of these are illogical conclusions."

Mohammed Abu Talib will be known to Eye readers as Mohammed Abu Talb,
one of the first suspects for the Lockerbie bombing. Indeed, it was
Talb's visits to Malta in the months and weeks before the bombing that
established the links between the PFLP suspects and Malta -- links that
ironically later helped to convict Megrahi. The suggestion that Talb had
been handsomely paid by the Iranians so soon after the Lockerbie bombing
had not been made before Mr Baer's book was published.

What happens now? The Libyan government still insists Megrahi is
innocent -- but it is prepared to pay "compensation" to the families of
the Lockerbie dead if such payments buy them out of sanctions and into
the wealthy world of trade with America. In the meantime, will there be
a full-scale independent inquiry into the bombing, a demand made
consistently by the British families? Only if the government accedes to
such a demand in the face of the most furious opposition from across the
Atlantic.