
              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 6  Num. 69
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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LOCKERBIE: CRACKS IN THE COVER-UP
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[From The London Sunday Telegraph, 29 January 1995]
[My thanks to "D.C. Dave" for sending me this.]
 
Within hours of Pan Am flight 103 devastating the Scottish border 
village of Lockerbie in December 1988, a team of American secret 
agents was methodically working its way through the crash site.
 
By the following morning a small area on the outskirts of the 
town had been sealed off. The Americans removed a suitcase full 
of heroin and some incriminating documents from a U.S. undercover 
agent, who died in the crash, and was taking part in a "sting" 
drug smuggling operation in Lebanon.
 
Two months prior to Lockerbie, the worst civilian atrocity 
committed on British soil since the last war, the German security 
services had rounded up a Palestinian terrorist cell in 
Frankfurt.
 
The ringleaders of the cell, sent to Germany to conduct terrorist 
operations, were caught red-handed. A primed bomb, almost 
identical to the one which destroyed the Pan Am flight, was found 
in the back of their car.
 
After five days of questioning, and following a bitter dispute 
between rival German security agencies, 12 of the 14 Palestinians 
arrested were released in October 1988, together with their bomb- 
making equipment.
 
One of those released, Marwan Khreesat, a known Jordanian bomb- 
maker, is believed by many experts on the case, with the key 
exceptions of American and British officialdom, to be the man who 
masterminded the placing of the bomb on the Pan Am flight at 
Frankfurt airport, which resulted in the murder of 270 people.
 
This is not idle supposition. These are the conclusions that have 
been reached following numerous, exhaustive inquiries which have 
sought to establish the truth about the disaster.
 
But tell any of the above to the governments responsible for 
bringing the culprits to justice, and they will respond either 
with an outright denial or sullen silence.
 
Far from actively seeking the truth about Lockerbie, the British, 
German and American governments appear to engage in a contest to 
deny any new evidence about the disaster.
 
Take last week. A top secret report, compiled by the intelligence 
wing of the American Air Force, was finally made public.
 
The report, written *two* *years* after the Lockerbie bombing, 
stated that a prominent Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Akbar 
Mohtashemi, paid L6.5 million [6.5 million British pounds] for 
the Palestinian group arrested in Frankfurt to carry out the 
bombing.
 
No sooner had the report been made public than the respective 
spokesmen for the British and American governments denied its 
authenticity.
 
In Washington, it was dismissed as a "dud", the result of third- 
hand information which had been "mistakenly" channelled into the 
system. In Whitehall it was discounted as "old hat", nothing to 
get excited about.
 
At no point did any of the various agencies involved in the 
Lockerbie investigation suggest the American report might be 
worthy of further attention.
 
The primary objective of any murder inquiry is to establish 
motive. The Iranians had more than enough reason to bomb an 
American passenger jet after an Iranian Airbus, with 290 people 
on board, was shot down by an American warship in the Gulf in the 
summer of 1988.
 
The Americans never apologised, and Mrs. Thatcher inflamed 
Iranian ire by appearing to justify the American action. 
Mohtashemi, who founded the Islamic fundamentalist Hizbollah 
militia in Lebanon in the 1980s and masterminded the Lebanon 
hostage crisis, openly vowed to seek revenge.
 
That Mohtashemi has a record of sponsoring state terrorism should 
in itself be reason enough to investigate him. To claim that 
allegations of the nature contained in the U.S. report were 
published by mistake is also stretching the bounds of 
credibility. Intelligence services, more than any other 
government department, are required to sift, assess and analyze 
information before it is committed to print.
 
Whenever it relates to Lockerbie, however, this process, if the 
spokesmen are to be believed, is unaccountably overlooked. A more 
rigorous intelligence assessment is applied only when the 
information, belatedly and often with embarrassing consequences, 
becomes public.
 
The German government responded in similar vein last week when 
The Sunday Telegraph revealed that a key figure in the Lockerbie 
investigation had been freed from jail in Frankfurt and 
repatriated to Syria as part of a secret deal with Iran.
 
Scottish detectives were keen to interview Abdel Ghadanfar, 53, 
one of the Palestinians rounded up in Frankfurt before the 
Lockerbie bombing and jailed for 12 years for terrorist offences. 
But Ghadanfar was spirited out of Germany last November before 
the Scottish inquiry team received satisfactory answers to the 
questions they wanted to put to him.
 
The first the Scottish inquiry team, not to mention the Foreign 
Office and the British government, knew about Ghadanfar's release 
was when they read about it in The Sunday Telegraph last week. So 
much for the much-vaunted international co-operation on 
Lockerbie.
 
And as Ghadanfar's confession to the German authorities, 
published for the first time today, has revealed, Ghadanfar and 
his accomplice, Hafez Dalkamoni, were deeply involved with 
Khreesat in setting up a bomb-making ring in Frankfurt in the 
months immediately preceding the Lockerbie disaster.
 
Despite the protestations of the German Embassy in London that 
its government has done nothing wrong, these revelations show 
that the Germans, for reasons that remain totally inexplicable to 
the victims' relatives, set free an active, bomb-making terrorist 
cell.
 
It is not difficult to understand why the Germans would prefer to 
keep their security limitations to themselves. Their discomfort 
will be alleviated if they are successful in repatriating 
Dalkamoni, Ghadanfar's sole remaining accomplice, in the summer. 
Then no one will ever know the real truth about what happened in 
Frankfurt.
 
What is more difficult to explain is why both the British and 
American governments continue, in the face of mounting evidence 
to the contrary, to persist with their line that culpability for 
the disaster should rest entirely with two Libyans.
 
Warrants were served for the arrest of the Libyans, both members 
of Col. Gaddafi's intelligence service, in 1991 after Scottish 
and American investigators jointly concluded that they were 
involved in placing a suitcase bomb on a flight from Malta, which 
was subsequently transferred to Pan Am 103 at Frankfurt.
 
Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, said shortly after the 
charges were initially made: "The investigation has revealed no 
evidence to support suggestions of involvement by other 
countries. This matter does not, therefore, affect our relations 
with other countries in the region."
 
This is a highly convenient excuse for the government. The fact 
that the Libyan charges are still pending means that all those 
involved in Scotland in the inquiry are unable to make any 
comment about new developments.
 
So when Sir Teddy Taylor, the Conservative MP for Southend, says 
he has "new and disturbing" information that the bombing was 
carried out by Syrian, not Libyan, terrorists, there is no 
official response.
 
And when Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP for Linlithgow, produces 
compelling evidence that the Americans actually "stole" a body 
from the Lockerbie wreckage, all he receives are gratuitous 
insults from Douglas Hogg, Mr. Hurd's lieutenant at the Foreign 
Office, when he raises the matter in the Commons.
 
There are many reasons why the British and Americans have sought 
to protect both Syria and Iran from being implicated in 
Lockerbie. First there was the fate of the Western hostages held 
in Lebanon; then there was the need to keep Damascus and Teheran 
sweet during the Gulf war.
 
The warrants against the two Libyans were served after Iran and 
Syria had co-operated with the successful liberation of Kuwait. 
But as new evidence, which seriously undermines both the Libyan 
and Maltese connections, continues to mount, the government is 
under pressure to set up a commission of inquiry, with the same 
wide-ranging scope as the Scott Inquiry, to investigate 
Lockerbie. This, the relatives of the victims argue, is the very 
least that they deserve.
 
They want to know, for example, precisely what the American 
secret agents did at Lockerbie the day after the crash and to 
have explained the true extent of the communication breakdown 
between the German and Scottish authorities.
 
Dr. Jim Swire, the official spokesman for relatives of the 
Lockerbie victims, said: "It is more than six years since 
Lockerbie, and we still have not received a proper explanation 
about what happened."
 
"Our lives were ruined by what happened that night, and our 
government has a duty to tell us why these innocent people died."
 
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