In 1988 a Pan Am jumbo exploded on its way from London to New York and crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland.
In the official version, the Libyan dictator Gaddafi was seen as the culprit. The deed was said to be a response to the U.S. bombing of Libyan cities in 1986. A lot of pressure, including United Nations sanctions, were put on Libya. In 2000 it finally agreed to allow a Libyan agent to be tried in the case in a Scotish court. Libya also paid some reparations. It is now again a friend of the "west" with newly signed oil and gas contracts between "western" companies and Gaddafi.
But the case against the Libyan agent Megrahi was based on doubtable evidence and one shady witness and is now going to appeal:
A key part of the prosecution’s case was that the bomb had been wrapped in clothing in a briefcase traced back to a clothes shop in Malta. The shop’s then-owner, Tony Gauci, identified Mr Megrahi and a colleague as the buyers.
However, in a detailed press release today the review commission revealed elements of its review that cast doubt on some of the Malta evidence, including that: Mr Gauci crucially identified Mr Megrahi and a colleague in an identity parade but the defence at the trial did not know the shopkeeper had earlier seen an image of Mr Megrahi in a magazine article linking him to the bombing.
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Mr Megrahi had been in Malta, but new evidence indicated that the clothes linked to the bomb were bought before December 6 1988 when there was no evidence he was there.
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Mr Gauci changed his story several times in the course of inquiries, first identifying another man who had entered his shop, then contradicting his evidence about individual items he had sold.
As the evidence against Libya is shrinking away, a new culprit has to be found:
Five months before Lockerbie, the US navy mistakenly shot down an Iranian Airbus passenger jet in the Gulf, killing 290 people. Some experts believe the Lockerbie bomb was put on the Pan Am jet by Syrian and Iranian-backed Palestinian terror groups at Frankfurt.
The bombing was widely seen as an attack on the US – 189 of the passengers who perished were American nationals.
"Iran had the most potent motive of anybody for destroying an American airliner," said Jim Swire, a British doctor whose daughter Flora was killed on Flight 103.
Isn’t this a bit weird? When Libya was an "enemy", everything was done to claim it was guilty of Lockerbie. Now that Libya is no longer an "enemy", blame can (and will) be put elsewhere.
Today there are other "enemies" who, without any evidence but a possible motive, will now be blamed for the incident. How about some Palestinians said to be backed by Syria and Iran?
Doesn’t this sound a bit like a convinient "enemy of the day" charade?
Former UK ambassador Craig Murray today adds this rumor:
On one occasion […], I was told something remarkable by a colleague in Aviation section.
At this time we suddenly switched from blaming Iran and Syria for the Lockerbie bombing to blaming Libya. This was part of a diplomatic drive to isolate Iraq from its neighbours in the run-up to the invasion. Aviation section were seeing all the intelligence on Lockerbie, for obvious reasons. A colleague there told me, in a deeply worried way, that he/she had the most extraordinary intelligence report which showed conclusively that it was really Syria, not Libya, that bombed the Pan Am jet, and that the switch was pure expediency.
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I never saw the report myself, and I do not know what it said, or why it was so conclusive.
But what motive would Syria have had?
I certainly have no idea who did blow up Pan Am Flight 103. But after Libya has been officially blamed and intensly pressured over it for some 15 years, why should I now believe in any accusations that point to some other organizations and countries?
Especially when these conveniently are those that top the current U.S. "axis of evil" list-of-the-day?