Abu Nidal and Pan Am 103

[What follows is the text of an article published on the website of Al-Ahram Weekly on this date in 2002:]

Abu Nidal is reported to have said that his organisation was behind the Lockerbie bombing. The news emerged after a series of interviews with Atef Abu Bakr, a one-time aide to the terrorist mastermind, published by the Arabic-language Al-Hayat newspaper last week. Abu Nidal was found dead in Baghdad last week. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

Abu Bakr is a former spokesman for the group and was one of Abu Nidal's closest aides between 1985 and 1989. He subsequently split with him over management of the organisation. "Abu Nidal said during an inner-circle meeting of the leadership of the Revolutionary Council, 'I will tell you something very important and serious, the reports which link the Lockerbie act to others are false reports. We are behind what happened,"' Abu Bakr was quoted by the newspaper as saying.

Abu Nidal's organisation has been blamed for many terrorist attacks in the 70s and 80s, in which hundreds were killed or wounded.

Abu Nidal set up his organisation's headquarters in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, in 1987. He was put under house arrest when the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, came under pressure to crack down on militants after the Lockerbie bombing.

Abu Bakr's statements are shocking because, if true, they jeopardise the verdict given by a Scottish court, in the Netherlands, which sentenced Libyan Abdel-Basset Al-Megrahi to life in prison in 2000. Another Libyan suspect, Lamine Khalifa [Fhimah], was acquitted. In March this year, a Scottish appeals court upheld the murder conviction of Al- Megrahi.

Commenting on the new revelations, Tam Dalyell, the longest serving member of Britain's parliament, called on the government to investigate Abu Bakr's allegations "as a matter of the utmost urgency". He said that "if these allegations are true they blow everything relating to Lockerbie out of the water, including the trial in Holland."

If Abu Bakr's statements prove to be true, they would also demonstrate the unfairness of sanctions imposed on Libya, in 1992, for its failure to hand over its two suspects. The United Nations, supported by the US and Britain, imposed sanctions on air travel and arms sales to Libya in 1992. The sanctions were suspended, but not lifted, in 1999, when Gaddafi handed over Al-Megrahi and Khalifa.

Abu Bakr's accounts were surprising but not new. After the bombing took place on 21 December 1988, the US State Department said that an unidentified person had telephoned the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, on 5 December, saying there would be a bombing attempt within two weeks against a Pan Am aircraft flying from Frankfurt to the United States. The caller claimed to belong to the Abu Nidal group, the State Department said at the time.

Also in 1995, Youssef Shaaban, a Palestinian member of Abu Nidal's group confessed responsibility for the bombing before judicial authorities in Lebanon, where he stood trial for the assassination of a Jordanian diplomat in Beirut.

However, Shaaban's words were not taken seriously. The investigating magistrates did not document his confession. The US and Britain reacted by saying that they had clear evidence against the Libyan suspects. Even the Libyan suspects' defence team never made use of Shaaban's statements or the State Department's Helsinki evidence.

British MP, Dalyell, has long argued that the Libyans were not behind the attack and that it was carried out by Abu Nidal.

Accordingly, relatives of the Lockerbie victims have renewed their calls on Friday for an independent inquiry into the attack.

Indeed, many of the relatives and legal observers who attended the trial, echoed their dissatisfaction with its outcome. They claim that many questions remain unanswered.

Jim Swire, a spokesman for the families of British victims, said the reports bolstered calls for an independent inquiry into the bombing, lapses in airport security and why Britain had not acted on warnings that an attack might occur.

Swire added that Palestinian militant Abu Nidal's possible involvement was "one more of the many questions which we feel absolutely demand an independent inquiry into Lockerbie". Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the bombing, has long demanded an independent inquiry into Lockerbie to uncover how much British intelligence services knew about the attacks.

"We certainly have part, or all, of at least eight intelligence warnings, all of which were received in good time, some of them incredibly detailed. I think we have a right to know why these didn't lead to any form of special protection for our loved ones," he said.

The same view was echoed by Hans Koechler, one of five UN observers who followed the trial as part of the deal with Libya. He believes that Abu Bakr's comments underline the urgency of calls he has made for an independent public inquiry into the entire Lockerbie case.

"The fact that Libya had hired a defence team that grossly neglected its professional duties and chose not to use most of the legal means available to Al-Megrahi's defence requires an explanation," Koechler said in a statement released in Vienna this week.

Koechler also criticised the legal proceedings and documented his remarks. He argued in his report that in the aftermath of the original verdict, the trial did not proceed fairly and was not conducted in an objective manner.

Ibrahim Legwell, former head of the Libyan consortium of jurists, acknowledged the poor performance of the defence team. However, he urged them not to ignore the new evidence. "Al- Megrahi's defence team should investigate claims [by any member of Abu Nidal's group]. If they find new evidence they should demand that the Scottish crown refer the case to the Scottish case review commission."

However, Al-Megrahi's lawyer, Eddie MacKechnie, has a different view. He said he was applying to the European Court of Human Rights to challenge Al-Megrahi's life sentence.

According to him, the allegations about Abu Nidal's involvement offered little new evidence for his client's legal battle.

"I'm not aware of there being any usable evidence arising from this second-hand confession, although I do know that Abu Nidal was thought to have links to the Lockerbie bombing right from the very beginning," MacKechnie said.

Abu Nidal 'behind Lockerbie bombing'

[This is the headline over a report published on this date in 2002 on the BBC News website. It reads in part:]

A former aide of Abu Nidal says the militant Palestinian leader, who was found dead in Iraq this week, was behind the 1988 bombing of a passenger plane over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.

In an interview, Atef Abu Bakr says Abu Nidal told a meeting of his Fatah-Revolutionary Council that he had organised the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people.

He told London-based Arabic daily al-Hayat that Abu Nidal had threatened to kill anyone who revealed his responsibility for the attack.

A special Scottish court in the Netherlands convicted a former Libyan government agent, Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, of the Lockerbie bombing and sentenced him to life in prison.

Mr Abu Bakr, a former spokesman for the group, split with Abu Nidal in 1989, a year after the bombing.

"Abu Nidal said during an inner-circle meeting of the leadership of the Revolutionary Council, 'I will tell you something very important and serious, the reports which link the Lockerbie act to others are false reports. We are behind what happened'," Mr Abu Bakr is quoted by the newspaper as saying.

Abu Nidal told the meeting that if anyone leaked what he had said, "I will kill him even if he is in the arms of his wife".

Al-Hayat did not make clear when or where the meeting took place, or who attended apart from Abu Nidal.

A senior British parliamentarian has urged the Foreign Office to investigate the claims "as a matter of the utmost urgency".

Tam Dalyell, a left-wing Labour MP, has long argued that the Libyans were not responsible for the attack and that it was carried out by Abu Nidal.

"If these allegations are true they blow everything relating to Lockerbie out of the water, including the trial in Holland," he said.

The group led by Abu Nidal, one of the world's most wanted men before Iraqi authorities announced that he had killed himself in his Baghdad apartment, has been blamed for attacks in which hundreds were killed or wounded in the 1970s and 1980s.

Abu Nidal set up his headquarters in the Libyan capital Tripoli in 1987. He was put under house arrest when Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi came under pressure to crack down on militants after the Lockerbie bombing.

Mr Abu Bakr has given a series of exclusive interviews to the Saudi-owned, London-based al-Hayat since the first accounts of Abu Nidal's death emerged.

Abu Nidal and Lockerbie

[On this date in 2008 a long article entitled Lockerbie: The Man Who Was Not There by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer was published on the OhmyNews International website. It contains lots of interesting material, including extensive quotes from Richard Marquise, the FBI’s chief Lockerbie investigator. The following is just one short excerpt from the article:]

Atef Abu Bakr is a former spokesman for the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) and one of Nidal's closest aides between 1985 and 1989. In a series of interviews published in the Arabic Al Hayat newspaper Bakr said that Abu Nidal told him that his organization was behind the explosion on Pan Am flight 103*.

"Abu Nidal told a meeting of the Revolutionary Council leadership: I have very important and serious things to say. The reports that attribute Lockerbie to others are lies. We are behind it."

"If any one of you lets this out, I will kill him even if he was in his wife's arms,"' Abu Nidal added, according to Bakr.

Having become persona non grata in Syria, Abu Nidal started his move from Syria to Libya in the summer of 1986. His operations, and those he falsely claimed, were bringing discomfort to Damascus. His move to Libya was completed by March 1987.

Settling in Tripoli, Abu Nidal and Libya's leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi, allegedly became close friends sharing, according to some observers, "a dangerous combination of an inferiority complex mixed with the belief that they were men of great destiny."

In the aftermath of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing, Gaddafi, seeking to distance himself from Nidal, expelled him in 1999**.

* "Abu Nidal Behind Lockerbie, Says Aide."

** Abu Nidal Organization

The Abu Nidal Organization and Lockerbie

[On this date in 2008 a long article entitled Lockerbie: The Man Who Was Not There by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer was published on the OhmyNews International website. It is full of interesting material, including extensive quotes from Richard Marquise, the FBI’s chief Lockerbie investigator. The following is just one short excerpt from the article:]

Atef Abu Bakr is a former spokesman for the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) and one of Nidal's closest aides between 1985 and 1989. In a series of interviews published in the Arabic Al Hayat newspaper Bakr said that Abu Nidal told him that his organization was behind the explosion on Pan Am flight 103*.

"Abu Nidal told a meeting of the Revolutionary Council leadership: I have very important and serious things to say. The reports that attribute Lockerbie to others are lies. We are behind it."

"If any one of you lets this out, I will kill him even if he was in his wife's arms,"' Abu Nidal added, according to Bakr.

Having become persona non grata in Syria, Abu Nidal started his move from Syria to Libya in the summer of 1986. His operations, and those he falsely claimed, were bringing discomfort to Damascus. His move to Libya was completed by March 1987.

Settling in Tripoli, Abu Nidal and Libya's leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi, allegedly became close friends sharing, according to some observers, "a dangerous combination of an inferiority complex mixed with the belief that they were men of great destiny."

In the aftermath of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing, Gaddafi, seeking to distance himself from Nidal, expelled him in 1999**.

* "Abu Nidal Behind Lockerbie, Says Aide."

** Abu Nidal Organization

Abu Nidal chief jumps on the bandwagon

[The following are excerpts from a reportby Ben Borland in today's edition of the Sunday Express:]

The full details of how Colonel Gaddafi colluded with the Lockerbie bomber to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 can today be revealed by the Sunday Express.

Explosive new revelations emerging from crisis-torn Libya last night included:

- Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s threat to confess and expose Gaddafi unless Tripoli found a way to get him home to his family.
- The Libyan dictator ordering the execution of other agents involved to cover up the Lockerbie trail.
- Specific details of how the bomb was made in Lebanon and smuggled through the Congo.
- Gaddafi personally sanctioning Palestinian mercenary Abu Nidal to assist the terror attack.

The new allegations have come from former terror general Atef Abu Bakr, who has broken his silence as Gaddafi’s brutal 40-year reign enters its final days.

His confession could finally end the doubts surrounding Megrahi’s conviction and even see further charges brought in Scotland against a host of co-conspirators. So far, Megrahi is the only man ever convicted over the December 1988 bombing, which killed all 259 passengers and crew on board the New York-bound Boeing 747 and 11 people in Lockerbie.

Bakr also predicted the collapse of the regime would “open the door” to Gaddafi’s involvement in a number of other bombings and assassinations.

Now a frail, balding man in his 60s, he was once second-in-command to Abu Nidal, a Palestinian terrorist who was the world’s most wanted man in the Eighties. His feared militia was linked to more than 100 murders, aircraft hijackings and bombings, as well as the kidnap of journalist John McCarthy and machine gun attacks on passengers at Rome and Vienna airports.

The group, called the Abu Nidal Organisation (ANO), had a base in Tripoli until 1999, shortly before Megrahi was handed over to the British authorities.

Nidal was shot dead in Iraq in 2003 and Bakr said he had decided to speak out because be believes Gaddafi is now powerless to punish him.

He revealed the attack on an American passenger jet was ordered in retaliation for the 1986 US bombing of Benghazi and Tripoli, in which Gaddafi’s daughter was killed.

The bomb itself was built by the ANO’s “scientific committee” in a village “in the southern part of Mount Lebanon”.

Bakr said: “I can assure you categorically that the two processes [making the bomb and destroying the plane] were the outcome of a partnership between the Abu Nidal group and the security of the Libyan Jamahiriya.

“The committee, which was run by a Palestinian, prepared explosive radios of around three or four inches in thickness and put a rule of Semtex of less than four hundred grams in the vacuum in the speakers and under the metal plate.

“Then they put the explosive in the form of a gift and sent them to Tripoli, with timers. As always in such cases, the gift carrier did not know the nature of the gift.”

Bakr, who did not explain his own role in the operation, said the deadly “gifts” were smuggled into Libya via Brazzaville, the Congolese capital, and the couriers were later murdered by Gaddafi and Nidal.

He said: “Two of the group were met by members of Libyan intelligence and under the cover of the son of leader Patrice Lumumba. The killing of the two people who belong to the group took place later, the first in Beirut and the second in Libya.”

Lumumba, a Congolese prime minister who was murdered in a coup in 1961, had four sons – Francois, now leader of his father’s party, as well as Patrice Jr, Roland and Guy-Patrice.

The bomb was then taken from Tripoli to Malta, which fits with the case built by Scottish police and proved by the Crown during Megrahi’s trial.

Bakr said: “The Lockerbie explosive came from Tripoli to Malta and was then shipped from Malta. I want to emphasise the shipment came from Malta. There were members of the group visiting Malta, sometimes using Libyan passports and cards for the Libyan Aviation Office in Malta to be able to access and to facilitate shipping.”

He added: “The Abu Nidal group has subsequently liquidated a number of elements who have played a role in this process, including an official in the intelligence community.

“For their part, the Libyans had to liquidate a number of elements, including a former official in the intelligence.”

Bakr said the head of Libyan intelligence Abdullah al-Senussi was also involved in the plot. And he claimed that Megrahi, who worked for Senussi and may have played only a minor part, promised on the night before his extradition to keep silent about Gaddafi’s involvement.

However, he later went back on his word and recently “threatened to expose the whole process unless the Libyan authorities made efforts to secure his release, which is what has happened.”

Bakr, who led a rebel faction that split from the ANO in the 1990s, also recalled how Nidal ordered his men not to reveal their role in the bombing.

He said: “Abu Nidal laughed at the meeting and said, ‘No responsibility can be claimed. I will tell you this process was for us and our Muslim brothers in Libya. But discretion must be complete.’”

Bakr himself issued a statement to reporters in Beiruit in December 1988, denying any ANO involvement and expressing his condolences to the victims. His new confession was made yesterday to Al Hayat, one of the most respected newspapers in the Arab world. (...)

[On Caustic Logic's blog The Lockerbie Divide there is a recent post headed Rats, sinking ship, etc which is well worth reading, along with the Ian Bell article featured on this blog yesterday.]

Aide says Nidal confessed to Lockerbie bombing

[This is the headline over a report published in The Guardian on this date in 2002. It reads as follows:]

The Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal admitted to a meeting of his most trusted colleagues that he was behind the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing and the culprits were not Libyans, it is claimed today in a leading Arabic newspaper.

In an interview with the London daily, Al-Hayat, a former colleague, Atef Abu Bakr, says Nidal made the confession to the inner circle of his revolutionary council some time before his death earlier this week.

Bakr, once a politburo member of Nidal's Fatah-Revolutionary Council, told the paper that Nidal had said: "I will tell you something very important and serious. The reports which link the Lockerbie act to others are false reports. We are behind what happened."

According to Bakr, Nidal threatened anyone who leaked what he said with death, "even if he is in the arms of his wife".

Last night a spokesman for Al Hayat confirmed that the interview with Bakr was conducted some time before Nidal's death.

The Lockerbie disaster happened when a New York-bound Pan Am plane blew up over the town in Scotland, in December 1988, killing 259 passengers and crew, and 11 local residents. A Scottish court sitting in Holland convicted a former Libyan agent, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, over the bombing and in January 2001 gave him a life sentence.

The group led by Nidal, once one of the world's most wanted men, has been blamed for a series of horrific attacks in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Iraqi authorities have claimed that Nidal, found dead in his Baghdad apartment, committed suicide. Members of the Fatah-Revolutionary Council, better known as the Abu Nidal organisation, said he committed suicide as he was suffering from cancer.

Nidal set up his headquarters in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, in 1987. He was put under house arrest when Libya's leader, Muammar Gaddafi, came under pressure to crack down on militants after the Lockerbie bombing.

Bakr and another dissident split from Nidal's group in late 1989, almost a year after the bombing. After the attack, Bakr was quoted as extending condolences to victims on behalf of Nidal's group.

Tam Dalyell, Labour MP for Linlithgow, has long maintained that Nidal was to blame, and not Libyans. Last night he said: "If true, this is a hugely important development. If he has said that no one else had anything to do with it, where does that leave Mr al-Megrahi? I believe the Libyans had nothing to do with it. This is one hell of a thing."

He said that the Foreign Office must now investigate Bakr's claims "as a matter of the utmost urgency".

He added: "If these allegations are true they blow everything relating to Lockerbie out of the water, including the trial in Holland."

[RB: Further information about Abu Nidal’s alleged involvement in Lockerbie can be found here.]

Lockerbie bombing: story of a fake conviction

[This is the headline over an article published today on the Top Conspiracies website. It reads in part:]

Pan Am Flight 103 was a scheduled flight from Frankfurt to Detroit. In December 1988 the plane was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers.The explosion took place over Scotland after taking off from London, and thus Europe had jurisdiction over the explosion. In 1999 Two Lybian nationals were handed over by General Gadaffi (the then leader/dictator of Lybia) for trial in a Scottish court in the Netherlands. The bomb was said to have been made out of Semtex plastic. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was jailed for life in connection with the bombing, released by the Scottish government in 2009 on compassionate grounds due to a diagnosis of prostate cancer. There was a significant lack of protest in the wake of his release, suggesting that many of the family of the victims do not believe him to be behind the bombing. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi died in 2012.

Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, the other Libyan handed over for the case, was found not guilty. Gadaffi accepted responsibility for the bombings in 2003. The CIA and the FBI worked with intelligence officers in Europe when processing the case. Over 15,000 people were questioned in over 30 countries. The explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 is also known as the Lockerbie bombing.

It is almost certain that the Libyan convicted had little to do with the Lockerbie bombing and that the real players are unknown. Just about only thing that remains uncontested is that a bomb went off in a suitcase and killed 243 passengers and 16 crew members. In a Report on and evaluation of the Lockerbie trial conducted by the Special Scottish Court in the Netherlandat Kamp Van Zeist, Dr Hans Köchler, University Professor, International Observer of the International Progress Organization stated that:

“ It was a consistent pattern during the whole trial that – as an apparent result of political interests and considerations – efforts were undertaken to withhold substantial information from the Court. “

The Opinion of the Court is exclusively based on circumstantial evidence and on a series of highly problematic inferences. As to the undersigned knowledge, there is not one single piece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime.

On the basis of the above observations and evaluation, the undersigned has – to his great dismay – reached the conclusion that the trial, seen in its entirety, was not fair and was not conducted in an objective manner. Indeed, there are many more questions and doubts at the end of the trial than there were at its beginning”

Conspiracy Theory #1 – Revenge

One theory contends that it was an act of revenge stemming from Iran. Over 290 passengers were killed when US forces shot down an Iran Airbus over the Strait of Hormuz, including over 66 children. This was less than 6 months before Pan Am Flight 103. Investigative reporter Paul Foot believes that this is the most likely scenario and that Libya was actually framed by the British and Americans, with political factors coming into play: Libya openly backed Saddam Hussein and Iran were needed during the first Gulf War. A number of journalists have drawn attention to the fact that Margaret Thatcher dismissed the idea in her memoirs that the Lockerbie bombing an act of Iranian revenge.

Conspiracy Theory #2 – CIA drug smuggling cover up

Not the first and most definitely not the last link between the U.S Central Intelligence Agency and illegal substances. This theory is backed up through Lester Coleman, a former member of the US Drug Enforcement Agency. Allegedly there was a route of drug smuggling between the US and Europe through Syrian drug dealers, who were allowed keep the ring going in return for CIA intelligence. The agency managed to ensure that the suitcases were not checked so the regime could continue; however, the scheme backfired when a bomb was put into the suitcase instead of the narcotics. In the 1994 film The Maltese Double Cross, it was suggested that the CIA agents were to blame for turning a blind eye to the drug smuggling ring between Europe and the US in return for information.

Conspiracy Theory #3 – Abu Nidal on behalf of Gadaffi

Abu Nidal was an internationally renowned terrorist around the time of the Lockerbie bombing. US bombings in 1986 killed large numbers of Libyan civilians and Gadaffi’s response was to engage the services of Abu Nidal. Nidal moved his organization to Libya in 1987. It is also contended that Abu Nidal warned US intelligence that a flight on route to Detroit would be blown up. Abu Nidal allegedly confessed to the bombing on his deathbed. The former head of Iranian intelligence was reported to have told German intelligence that Iran asked Libya/Gaddafi and Abu Nidal for help in bombing the American airline. Part of that report states:

The mission was to blow up a Pan Am flight 103 that was to be almost entirely booked by US military personnel on Christmas leave. The flight was supposed to be a direct flight from Frankfurt, GE, to New York, not Pan Am Flight 103 which was routed through London, UK. The suitcase containing the bomb was labeled with the name of one of the US passengers on the plane and was inadvertently placed on the wrong plane possibly by airport ground crew members in Frankfurt. The terrorist who last handled the bomb was not a passenger on the flight.

Conspiracy Theory #4 – PFLP-GC & Pan Am Flight 103

In the aftermath of the bombing, the prime suspects in the Lockerbie bombing were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command. These were a warlike revolutionary group led by a former Syrian military officer. Mohammed Abu Talb was the head of the Swedish cell of the PFLP-GC and was one of a number of suspects before the focus shifted to Al Megrahi. PFLP-GC had a bomb maker at their disposal who was meant to be investigated by Scottish police until the FBI persuaded them to call off the warrant for the purposes of intelligence information. Khreesat was a Jordanian intelligence officer unknown to the PFLP-GC and relayed intelligence back to HQ, which relayed it to Western Intelligence. Allegedly, Khreesat relayed information that there would be a bomb planted on a Pan Am flight in October 1988, around 6 months before the actual crash. German intelligence raided the PFLP-GC acting on this information but did not progress further with regard to the bombing. (...)

Conclusion to the Pan Am Flight 103 Explosion

It is certain at this stage that the official story of a lone Libyan civilian conducting the bombing is false. He did not bring down Pan Am Flight 103 alone. However, no-one is any the wiser to what actually happened. There are simply too many conflicting theories, too many intelligence agencies, too many countries involved and too many variables to construct a credible theory as to what went on. Even the theories listed above tend to blend and mix together with different variants. It is possible that the PFLP-GC, Gadaffi and Abu Nidal all had a role in some fashion, but separating what happened exactly and who is responsible is just impossible. One theory is that Iran asked Libya/Gadaffi and Abu Nidal to bomb Pan Am 103 in revenge, a mixing of two theories. It gets more complex the more that it is investigated with all the difference information from the intelligence agencies and reports from investigative journalists.

Will NATO resurrect Operation Gladio to frame Gaddafi?

[This is the headline over an article published today on the Prison Planet website. It reads in part:]

Libyan leader’s threat to attack Europe could provide NATO with the perfect pretext to launch a full ground invasion

Given the fact that NATO itself was one of the pioneers of false flag terror to frame political enemies under Operation Gladio, a CIA-supported terror campaign that was responsible for a series of bloody attacks in Europe throughout the cold war years, we shouldn’t be surprised if NATO ressurects the legacy of Gladio in its desperation to justify a final decapitation strike to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi’s threat to attack Europe in retaliation for the NATO bombing campaign in Libya prompted the establishment media to react with contrived outrage, eliciting sharp intakes of breath at the mere thought that Gaddafi, whose country has been under constant bombardment for over three months, would dare to even speak about fighting back. (...)

Gaddafi himself is no stranger to being the focus of international condemnation for bloody terror attacks blamed on his government.

Although Libyan government agents working at the behest of Gaddafi were accused of carrying out the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 over Scotland, evidence that emerged both before and after the 2001 trial and conviction of alleged former intelligence office Abdelbaset al-Megrahi strongly indicates that the attack was a false flag event.

“Former Labor MP Tam Dalyell and Edinburgh law professor Robert Black urged the Scottish and UK governments to answer reports there is evidence Abu Nidal, aka Hasan Sabri al-Banna, was a US agent,” The Scotsman reported on October 27, 2008. “They have long believed Abu Nidal, who died in Iraq in 2002, and his Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command were responsible for co-ordinating the bomb that blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December, 1988 with the loss of 270 lives.”

“Intelligence reports, said to have been drawn up for Saddam Hussein’s security services, said Kuwaitis had asked Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri al-Banna, to find out if al-Qaeda was present in Iraq,” David Maddox wrote for the newspaper. The reports referred to Abu Nidal’s “collusion with both the American and Kuwaiti intelligence apparatuses in co-ordination with Egyptian intelligence.” [RB: A comment on this story that I wrote at the time can be read here.]

MP Dalyell said the reports added weight to the theory that Lockerbie was a “tit-for-tat” attack for the shooting down of an Iranian passenger airliner by the warship USS Vincennes in 1988, and was allowed by the US administration. (...)

In May of 2000, a gag order added weight to the theory that Libya was not behind the Lockerbie bombing. Dr Richard Fuisz, a CIA agent and a potential key trial witness, was gagged by the US government under state secrecy laws and faced 10 years in prison if he revealed any information about the terrorist attack, the Sunday Herald reported. Fuisz, a multi-millionaire businessman and pharmaceutical researcher, was, according to US intelligence sources, the CIA’s key operative in the Syrian capital Damascus during the 1980s where he also had business interests.

“One month before a court order was served on him by the US government gagging him from speaking on the grounds of national security, he spoke to US congressional aide Susan Lindauer, telling her he knew the identities of the Lockerbie bombers and claiming they were not Libyan,” Neil Mackay wrote. “Fuisz’s statements to Lindauer support the claims of the two Libyan accused who are to incriminate a number of terrorist organizations, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which had strong links to Syria and Iran,” in short Abu Nidal.

Nidal was either killed by the Iraqi secret police for his role as an American double agent or he committed suicide after the Iraqis learned of his betrayal, according to The Independent. (...)

At the foundation of the Lockerbie fiction is the claim that Gaddafi had Pan Am flight 103 blown of the sky as revenge for Reagan’s 1986 bombing of Triopli, allegedly in response to the bombing of a night club in West Berlin that killed one US soldier. Reagan’s illegal attack on October 18, 1985, was at the time the largest air assault since the Vietnam War. 120 aircraft rained destruction on points around the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi. At least 100 civilians were killed, including Gaddafi’s 15-month-old adopted daughter, Hana.

Former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky revealed the truth behind the bombing in his 2002 book, By Way of Deception: The Making of a Mossad Officer — it was orchestrated by Israel.

A special communications device, Ostrovsky claims, was planted by naval commandos deep inside Libya by the Mossad. “The device would act as a relay station for misleading transmissions made by the disinformation unit in the Mossad, called LAP, and intended to be received by American and British listening stations,” write Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy. “The listeners would have no doubt they had intercepted a genuine communication” and “the content of the messages, once deciphered, would confirm information from other intelligence sources, namely the Mossad.”

“After the bombing of Libya, our friend Qadhafi is sure to stay out of the picture for some time. Iraq and Saddam Hussein are the next target. We’re starting now to build him up as the big villain. It will take some time, but in the end, there’s no doubt it’ll work,” a Mossad agent told the author. (...)

Gaddafi steadfastly refused to accept responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing for over a decade and made it a condition of Libya’s $2.7 billion payout to the families affected in 2002 that it was “the price of peace” and not an admission of guilt.

The story of how Libyan patsies were framed for the Lockerbie attack should give Gaddafi pause for thought and remind him to be a little more sophisticated in his rhetoric. Should there be a staged event in Europe that gets blamed on Libya, NATO powers will confidently point to Gaddafi’s own public statement as evidence for his culpability.

Questions that demand an answer

[What follows is the text of an item posted on this blog on this date in 2008:]

Lockerbie questions demand an answer

This is the headline over an article in today's issue of The Times by Magnus Linklater, the newspaper's Scotland Editor (and the editor of The Scotsman in the bygone days when that title was still a serious and responsible journal).

The article reads in part:

'You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognise that nagging questions have gnawed away at the Lockerbie case since the first investigations began. The veteran campaigner, Tam Dalyell, who describes himself as a “professor of Lockerbie studies”, is convinced that neither al-Megrahi nor the Libyan Government had any involvement. He, along with the Rev John Mosey and Dr Jim Swire, who both lost daughters in the atrocity, believe that there has been a spectacular miscarriage of justice.

'They have raised questions about basic evidence in the original case. They have challenged eyewitness accounts offered by the chief prosecution witness, the Maltese shopowner who originally identified Megrahi as a suspect. They have raised doubts about the forensic evidence, and have pointed out that al-Megrahi, a civilised and intelligent man, is a most unlikely terrorist.

'Last weekend, their campaign was given fresh impetus when Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East correspondent, reported that Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist responsible for some of the worst attacks of the 1970s and 1980s, may have been working for the Americans before the invasion of Iraq. Secret documents - the very phrase is a conspiracy idiom - written by Saddam Hussein's security services state that he had been colluding with the Americans trying to find evidence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda. Abu Nidal's alleged suicide in 2002 may have been an execution by the Iraqis for his betrayal.

'From this tenuous connection stems the idea that the US security services may have had previous contacts within Abu Nidal's terrorist organisation, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which many experts have long believed was the real perpetrator of Lockerbie.

'Mr Dalyell, who thinks there may be some weight to this theory, points to incidents such as notices that went up in the US Embassy in Moscow in the days before the bombing, warning diplomats not to travel on PanAm flights, and how senior South African figures were hauled off the plane before the flight, almost as if there had been advance warning.

'For me, this kind of evidence strays into the territory of “the second gunman theory” that bedevilled the Kennedy assassination. But there is one aspect of the case that I have never understood: why was it that, for the first 18 months of the investigation, Scottish police, US investigators and European security agents were convinced that the perpetrators were Abu Nidal's PFLP? And why was it that, in the run-up to the Gulf War, when good relations with Syria and Iran were important to Western interests, attention switched abruptly from Abu Nidal's terrorists, and on to Libya?

'These matters have never satisfactorily been explained, and in the interests of common justice they should be addressed. For the sake of the Flight 103 victims, for the wider interests of Western security, and for the man now dying in a Scottish prison, there is a need for a proper inquiry. It does not have to be as wideranging as the Warren Commission that examined the Kennedy case, but it does need to be international, and to have US backing. The appeal in Edinburgh next year will examine legal aspects of the case, but it cannot extend to the wider issues that demand resolution.

'Just possibly a new president taking office next January will find in his in-tray persuasive evidence pointing to a reopening of the case. There are powerful moral reasons for dusting it off and asking a basic question: who was responsible for Britain's worst terrorist outrage?'

[RB: Although this article is mentioned on Mr Linklater’s page on journalisted, it no longer appears on the website of The Times. The most recent article by Magnus Linklater in The Times can be read here. A very different stance is adopted. What has changed over the past seven years? Certainly no new evidence has emerged supporting Megrahi’s guilt. And much evidence has surfaced that further undermines the conviction. What is it, then, that has changed Mr Linklater’s mind? It’s a mystery.]