Pan Am Flight 103 Saga Nears an End—Sort Of

By Andrew I. Killgore

The appeal trial of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi may have ended by March 12. Megrahi is the Libyan intelligence service officer sentenced to 20 years in prison on Jan. 31, 2001 for destroying Pan American flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988, killing 269 passengers, most of them Americans, and 11 persons on the ground. Dr. Robert Black, professor of criminal law at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland—who devised the unique arrangements for trying the two accused Libyans (one of whom was acquitted in the lower court) under Scottish law in the Netherlands—told the Washington Report on March 4 that, in contrast to the lower courts’ soft questioning, defense lawyers appealing the case had asked prosecutors “some tough questions.”

Professor Black reiterated his view, which is widely held, that the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 was put aboard in London—not, as the prosecution maintains, in Valetta, Malta. He confirmed that testimony had been introduced in the Court of Appeals that the storage area at Heathrow for Pan American baggage had been broken into the day before the fateful flight. This had not been done in the lower court. Black described two general types of bombs that might bring down an airplane: one is exploded by “barometric” pressure, the other is an “electronic” device.

Pan Am 103, Dr. Black noted, blew apart 38 minutes after it took off from London’s Heathrow Airport. Eight minutes after take-off the plane would have achieved sufficient altitude to trigger a barometric timer with a 30-minute timer: a total of 38 minutes from take-off to explosion in the air over Lockerbie.

An Improbable Scenario

While an electronic timer conceivably could have been set and placed on the aircraft in Valetta, Malta to cause Pan Am 103 to explode at the moment it did, Professor Black continued, the unpredictability of a supposedly unaccompanied suitcase (bearing the bomb) being transferred from Malta to Frankfurt to London, and part way to New York, would have made the chances “one in a million.” While Black considers the prosecution’s Libya-did-it scenario all but impossible (see box), he did not venture a guess of the chances for reversal of the lower court verdict.

Dr. Jim Swire, a former explosives specialist in the British army who later became a physician, and whose daughter was killed in the crash, told this writer also on March 4 that, in his opinion, the “thumbnail-size” circuit board, on which the lower court prosecution based its “electronic” bomb scenarios, must have been “planted.” In Dr. Swire’s opinion, it was impossible that an electronic device caused the explosion. Asked his opinion of the chances for a reversal of the lower court’s verdict, he put the odds at 50-50.

On Feb. 28, a Washington radio broadcast reported that relatives of the Americans who died in the Lockerbie tragedy were meeting the next day, March 1, at the Department of State for a “briefing.” No account of that briefing was seen in the press.

It may have been connected, however, to a Feb. 28 Reuters article, carried on The New York Times Web site, in which Seif al-Islam al-Qaddafi, son of the Libyan leader, was quoted as saying that Tripoli would pay compensation to the families of the Lockerbie victims even if Megrahi’s appeal succeeds. Talks were taking place in Paris between representatives of Libya and of the relatives, Qaddafi said, but, he insisted, Libya would not submit to American “blackmail” and pay the $4 billion allegedly being demanded by the U.S.

The same Reuters item reported that in January Washington had said that American sanctions against Libya as a “state sponsor of terrorism” could be lifted by Libya’s payment of compensation for the Lockerbie bombing. The United States, according to the item, “insisted” that it was not “involved” in the negotiations for payment.

Thus the tragic saga of Pan American Flight 103 may be drawing to some kind of a ragged close—or, rather, one phase of it may be drawing to an end.

If the appeals court reverses the conviction of Megrahi, he will walk. As far as he is concerned, the Pan Am saga will be over.

But what about Libya? Will it really pay very large sums to the surviving relatives—reckoning that, in the long run, a certain number of billions paid to the relatives will be cheaper than an indefinite continuation of the costly American sanctions?

If, on the other hand, Megrahi’s conviction is upheld, his lawyers could appeal to Britain’s Privy Council, the country’s highest judicial review, or to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, since Britain is a member of the European Community.

Whatever happens in Megrahi’s case, however, many people—including the relatives of the British crash victims, for whom Dr. Swire is the spokesman—do not accept the Libya-did-it explanation. Moreover, the U.S. is seen by some as exerting such pressure on the lower court to find Libya guilty that the whole prosecution is suspect.

Martin Cadman, who lost a son in Lockerbie, is one of the few to explicitly reject the lower court’s finding of Megrahi’s guilt. Cadman was quoted in the Feb. 4, 2001 London Sunday Telegraph as saying, “The appeal will hold us up for another year or so before we can have an inquiry into the truth of who was responsible and what the motive was.”

The circumstances of the case leave open the mystery of who really brought Pan Am 103 down. Both Professor Black and Dr. Swire lean toward Iran as the culprit, because the crime occurred only a few months after the U.S. Navy shot down an Iran Air passenger plane over the Persian Gulf, mistaking it for a military plane.

According to Dr. Black, who closely followed the investigations, for two and a half years after the Pan Am disaster the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command seemed to be the primary suspect. Suddenly, however, he said, the U.S. and Britain shifted the focus to Libya.

Whatever Libya’s role may have been, Israel is involved in the events leading to the Pan Am 103 bombing because of a trick played on the United States that ultimately led to the Pan Am bombing. That trick is described by former Mossad case worker Victor Ostrovsky in his book, The Other Side of Deception.

Pan Am 103 blew apart 38 minutes after it took off from London’s Heathrow Airport.

Around February 1986 Israel installed a communications device in a Tripoli, Libya apartment house. It could receive messages broadcast by Mossad on one frequency and automatically relay the broadcasts on another frequency used by the Libyan government. Soon the device seemed to be broadcasting terrorist orders to Libyan embassies around the world. Israel assured the U.S. that the broadcasts were not fake, when in fact our ally knew they were.

Soon the LaBelle Discothèque in West Berlin was bombed, killing two American soldiers and a Turkish woman. On the assumption that Libya was responsible, in April 1986 U.S. planes from Britain and from U.S. 6th Fleet carriers retaliated, bombing Libya and killing scores of Libyans, including Muammar al-Qaddafi’s young adopted daughter.

The cycle of deception continued, with Libya presumed to have downed Pan Am 103 in revenge for the 1986 American bombing (see executive editor Richard H. Curtiss’ article in the November 1999 issue of this magazine).

No one can predict when the Lockerbie saga will conclude. But the real culprit still has reason to worry about being caught, because Pan Am 103 crashed to earth, leaving evidence on the ground. It “should” have crashed into the all-concealing ocean, but stormy winds on Dec. 21, 1988 led the pilot to fly northward to get “above” the tempests.

Whatever the verdict of the appeals court, then, only a small portion of the Lockerbie tragedy is coming to an end.

Andrew I. Killgore is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

SIDEBAR

Professor Robert Black on The Lockerbie Verdict

On Jan. 31, 2001 the three judges in the Lockerbie trial returned unanimous verdicts of guilty of murder in respect of the first accused, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, and of not guilty in respect of the second accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhima.

The prosecution conceded that the case against the accused was entirely circumstantial. That, of course, is no bar to a verdict of guilty. Circumstantial evidence can be just as persuasive and just as damning as the direct evidence of eyewitnesses to the commission of a crime. But to many observers, including the present writer, it seemed that the case presented by the prosecution was a very weak circumstantial one, and was further undermined by the additional prosecution concession that they had not been able to prove how the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 got into the interline baggage system and onto the aircraft.

In paragraph 89 of the Opinion of the Court the judges stated: “We are aware that in relation to certain aspects of the case there are a number of uncertainties and qualifications. We are also aware that there is a danger that by selecting parts of the evidence which seem to fit together and ignoring parts which might not fit, it is possible to read into a mass of conflicting evidence a pattern or conclusion which is not really justified.” Regrettably, their intellectual recognition of the danger does not appear to have enabled the judges to avoid it. This is demonstrated particularly clearly in their approach to two crucial issues.

1. Who was the purchaser of the clothing and when did he do it?

The judges held it proved (a) that it was Megrahi who bought from Mary’s House in Sliema the clothes and umbrella which were in the suitcase with the bomb and (b) that the date of purchase was Dec. 7, 1988 (when Megrahi was on Malta) and not the only other possible date, Nov. 23, 1988 (when he was not).

As regards (a), the most that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, would say (either in his evidence in court or in a series of police statements) was that Megrahi “resembled a lot” the purchaser, a phrase which he equally used with reference to Abu Talb, one of those mentioned in the special defense of incrimination lodged on behalf of Megrahi. Gauci had also described his customer to the police as being six feet tall and over 50 years of age. The evidence at the trial established (i) that Megrahi is five feet eight inches tall and (ii) that in late 1988 he was 36 years of age. On this material, the judges found in fact that Megrahi was the purchaser.

As regards (b), the evidence of Tony Gauci was that when the purchaser left his shop it was raining to such an extent that his customer thought it advisable to buy an umbrella to protect himself while he went in search of a taxi. The unchallenged meteorological evidence established that while it had rained on Nov. 23 at the relevant time, it was unlikely that it had rained at all on Dec. 7; and if there had been any rain, it would have been at most a few drops, insufficient to wet the ground. On this material, the judges found in fact that the clothes were purchased on Dec. 7.

2. Did the bomb start from Malta?

The judges held it proved that the bomb was contained in a piece of unaccompanied baggage which was transported on Air Malta Flight KM 180 from Luqa to Frankfurt on Dec. 21, 1988, and was then carried to Heathrow, where Pan Am Flight 103 was loaded from empty. The evidence supporting the finding that there was such a piece of unaccompanied baggage was a computer printout which could be interpreted to indicate that a piece of baggage went through the particular luggage coding station at Frankfurt Airport used for baggage from KM 180, and was routed toward the feeder flight to Heathrow, at a time consistent with its having been offloaded from KM 180. Against this, the evidence from Luqa Airport in Malta (whose baggage reconciliation and security systems were proven to be, by international standards, very effective) was to the effect that there was no unaccompanied bag on that flight to Frankfurt. All luggage on that flight was accounted for. The number of bags loaded into the hold matched the number of bags checked in (and subsequently collected) by the passengers on the aircraft. The court nevertheless held it proved that there had been a piece of unaccompanied baggage on flight KM 180.

Conclusion

Before the verdicts were delivered, I expressed the view (on the Web site <www.thelockerbietrial.com>) that for the judges to return verdicts of guilty they would require (i) to accept every incriminating inference that the Crown invited them to draw from evidence that was on the face of it neutral and capable of supporting quite innocent inferences, (ii) to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, positively identified Megrahi as the person who bought from his shop in Sliema the clothes and umbrella contained in the suitcase that held the bomb, and (iii) to accept that the date of purchase of these items was proved to be Dec. 7, 1988 (as distinct from Nov. 23 1988, when Megrahi was not present on Malta). I rashly predicted that, for the judges to be satisfied of all these matters on the evidence led at the trial, they would require to adopt the posture of the White Queen in Through the Looking-Glass, when she informed Alice, “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” In convicting Megrahi, this is precisely what the judges did.

—Robert Black is a Professor of Scots Law at the University of Edinburgh
Published in CAABU Focus, Vol. 7 Issue 2, May 2001