New Lockerbie suspect’s hands dirty, says man who traced him

A DOCUMENTARY maker whose investigations led police to a new Lockerbie suspect said last night he was convinced the bomb had been i n Abu Agila Mas’ud’s hands.

Ken Dornstein has spent years researching the 1988 atrocity in which his brother David was killed along with 269 others.

In 2011, the American travelled to Libya and began piecing together a trail that led him to Mas’ud, one of two men Scottish police and the FBI now want to interview.

The Crown Office’s announcement this week that two new suspects had been formally identified came only two days after the third and final part of Mr Dornstein’s documentary, My Brother’s Bomber, was broadcast in the US.

Although the Crown Office has not named the suspects, they are known to be Mas’ud, a bomb-making expert, and Abdullah Al Senussi, the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s brother-in-law.

Mr Dornstein said: ‘I have little doubt at this point that Abu Agila Mas’ud had his hands on that device before it made its way onto Flight 103.’

Mr Dornstein said Senussi was already well-known, but his own work flushed out Mas’ud and established a compelling case for his involvement in the bombing.

Mr Dornstein discovered both Senussi and Mas’ud were in the welcoming party in Tripoli which greeted Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi – the only person convicted of the bombing – when he was released from prison in Greenock i n 2009 on compassionate grounds.

Yet at the start of his investigation Mr Dornstein could not even be sure that Mas’ud existed. Previously investigators had known only that someone using the name had accompanied Megrahi on several flights before the Lockerbie bombing on December 21, 1988.

Mr Dornstein said: ‘ I think I developed the paper trail that established that Mas’ud… was a technical expert, that he was more

‘I developed the

paper trail’

specifically a kind of bomb expert who had been involved in an earlier case, an attack on Americans in Berlin.’

That was the La Belle disco bombing, which left three people dead. In Berlin, Mr Dornstein tracked down a former Libyan operative called Musbah Eter who confirmed Mas’ud had been an accomplice in that atrocity.

‘I think I made the connection to the disco bombing and that opened up a whole new source of documentary evidence and led me to the only person who was admitting that Abu Agila Mas’ud even existed.’

He added: ‘ The Libyans had denied at every turn that he existed, which is why he wasn’t indicted in the disco bombing or the Lockerbie case. He was a non-entity. I spent most of the last few years proving that he existed.’

Ultimately Mr Dornstein discovered Mas’ud was in jail in Libya for bomb- making. Senussi i s also behind bars. He has been told he will face a firing squad for crimes against the Libyan people.

Many families of the Lockerbie dead have welcomed the new developments but some are sceptical about the prospect of any new suspects being put on trial.

Frank Duggan, president of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, said: ‘Libya is not going to turn anybody over. These are people who are already in jail and will be tried for worse matters against their own people than Lockerbie.’

Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, said Senussi was ‘the biggest fish in the pond’ in Libya and the authorities would be unwilling to hand him over.