POLICE TO QUIZ NEW LOCKERBIE SUSPECTS
Two Libyans to be interviewed by Scottish officers and FBI over blast that killed 270
TWO men languishing in jail in Libya have been formally identified as the first new suspects in the Lockerbie bombing in more than 20 years. Prosecutors confirmed yesterday they were seeking permission for Scottish police and FBI officers to interview the men about the 1988 atrocity in which 270 died. The Crown Office would not confirm the men’s identities but the Mail understands they are Abu Agila Mas’ud and Abdullah Al Senussi.
Chillingly, both men were part of the welcoming party in Libya for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi – the only person convicted of the bombing – when he was released from prison in Greenock in 2009 on compassionate grounds.
Megrahi, who died of cancer in 2012, still protesting his innocence, climbed into a car on the tarmac in Tripoli moments after stepping off the plane from Scotland.
In the front seat was Libya’s former spy chief Senussi, known as the
‘black box’ of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime and suspected of masterminding the bombing of Pan Am 103.
In the back seat was Mas’ud, a technical expert now serving a ten-year sentence for making explosives.
The flight was on its way from London to New York when it exploded above Lockerbie on the evening of December 21, 1988, killing everyone on board and 11 people on the ground.
Not since 1991 has anyone been formally identified as a suspect in the bombing, the biggest mass murder committed on UK soil.
It was in that year that Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah were first named as suspects and not until ten years later that Megrahi was found guilty and his co-accused cleared.
Since then, families of the Lockerbie dead have split into two camps – those who feel Megrahi was guilty as charged and those who believe he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
A Crown Office spokesman said: ‘ The Lord Advocate and the US Attorney General have agreed there is a proper basis in law in Scotland and the US to entitle Scottish and US investigators to treat two Libyans as suspects in the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103.
‘The Lord Advocate has today, therefore, issued an International Letter of Request to the Libyan attorney general in Tripoli, which identifies the two Libyans as suspects in the bombing of flight Pan Am 103.
‘The Lord Advocate and the US Attorney General seek the assistance of the Libyan judicial authorities for Scottish police officers and the FBI to interview two named suspects in Tripoli.
‘The two individuals are suspected of involvement, along with Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, in the bombing of flight Pan Am 103 in December 1988 and the murder of 270 people.’
Colonel Gaddafi’s brother-inlaw Senussi was one of the most senior members of the late Libyan leader’s regime. He was convicted in France in 1999 for his involvement in the bombing of a French airliner over Niger in 1989, which killed 170 people. In July, he was convicted in his own country of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death.
A US documentary made by Ken Dornstein, whose brother David was on board Pan Am 103, presented evidence last month which suggested Mas’ud was the Lockerbie bombmaker.
Mr Dornstein tracked down a former Libyan operative, Mus- bah Eter, who had confessed to the 1986 bombing of Berlin’s La Belle disco, which left three dead. Eter told the US film maker Mas’ud brought the bomb into Berlin’s Libyan Embassy and showed him how to arm it.
Megrahi was on the same flight as Mas’ud on at least three occasions before Lockerbie.
Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, QC, has met US Attorney General Loretta Lynch to review progress made in the investigation, a joint operation between Police Scotland and the FBI.
The Letter of Request to interview the two new suspects has been issued under the treaty between the UK and Libya on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters.
Last year, 26 years after the atrocity, the Lord Advocate led a delegation of Scots law officers at a memorial at the Arlington cemetery in Washington.
Mr Mulholland said he had no concerns about Megrahi’s guilt. No Crown Office investigator or prosecutor had raised doubts about the evidence in the case, he said and he vowed to track down Megrahi’s accomplices.
Dr Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the bombing, said he had ‘tremendous problems’ hearing news of the two new suspects from the Crown Office. He said the reason some families had applied for a posthumous appeal against conviction for Megrahi was because ‘we don’t believe the evidence that led to his conviction is correct’.
‘Tremendous problems’