Lockerbie Bomber may be innocent.

[Jim MacKenzie]

A Report in Sunday's British "Sunday Telegraph" states:

"Dr Jim Swire, the leading Lockerbie campaigner whose daughter Flora was
among 259 killed on the flight, has told the wife of the Libyan jailed for
the bombing that her husband may be innocent.  The retired GP, who helped
secure Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi's conviction met Aisha Megrahi in
Glasgow. 'I told her that I fear I may have played an important part in a
miscarriage of justice,' he said."

Up until late 1990 (to remind you, Pam Am 103 was bombed on December 21,
1988 over Lockerbie in Scotland) all evidence pointed towards PFLP-GC
carrying out the bombing, with Western intelligence sure that Iran paid
millions of dollars to Ahmed Jibril, leader of PFLP-GC, to carry out the
bombing. Jibril's power-base and headquarters was then in Syria, and he was
then believed to have used Hafez Kassem Dalkamoni, leader of the PFLP-GC
European cell, to set up the bombing team. A 44 year-old Jordanian
terrorist, Marwan Khreesat, was recruited to make the bomb.  The plot
thickens from there-on, with the bomb possibly smuggled out of a Frankfurt
flat by PFLP-GC terrorist, Ramzi Diab. It was then taken, via Vienna, to
Malta, where it was handled by a PFLP-GC cell operating in a bakery there.
The man who travelled to Malta to purchase the clothes put in the bomb
suitcase was identified as Mohammed Abu Talb, who was jailed in the
mid-1990's in Sweden for a terrorist bombing. Tabl was a known terrorist
who was in Malta at the time of the bomb being planted on a connecting Air
Malta flight to Frankfurt where the suitcase containing the bomb was
transferred to Pam Am 103. Surveillance records showed that Tabl owned a
brown Samsonite suitcase of the same type that contained the bomb. He was
probably aided by another PFLP-GC member, Marten Imandi, who was not only
in Malta at the same time, but was linked to the houses in Frankfurt where
the bomb was probably made.

We then leap ahead to late 1990, when reports start to emerge linking the
bombing to Libya. Relatives of the Pam Am 103 passengers viewed this turn
with skepticism,  fearing it was a direction that much better suited
President Bush's foreign policy goals at the time. Bus was attempting to
build a coalition against Iraq prior to the first Gulf War, and needed an
acquiescent Syria and Iran on-board. One of the relatives, John Root, said
at the time: " It's absolutely disgusting that the President of the United
States and Secretary of State are playing politics with the bodies of our
dead ones."

Here is not the place or the time to rehearse all the "evidence" that then
emerged indicating that 2 Libyan agents were responsible for planting the
bomb. However, for such a crusading campaigner as Jim Swire to come out now
and say there has been a miscarriage of justice must indicate that a
re-appraisal and a complete review of all the evidence must now be a
priority if the reputation and probity of Western intelligence agencies is
to be maintained. Else they will just be seen as a pawn in the hands of
Governments that will unhesitatingly corrupt the truth to meet their own needs.

Perhaps the down-fall yesterday of Spain's ruling party is a sign to all
Governments everywhere, not to attempt to bend the truth to meet their own
ends. They were just too quick to blame the Madrid bombings on ETA, simply
because it suited their own political aims, and all the time, right from
the start, the average man in the street could without much doubt point the
finger of blame towards a much more organized, ruthless and dedicated
terrorist organisation such as Al Queda.

Jim MacKenzie

Intelligence Forum (http://www.intelforum.org) is sponsored by Intelligence
and National Security, a Frank Cass journal (http://www.frankcass.com/jnls/ins.htm)