Scottish prosecutors interview ex-stasi officers over Lockerbie bombing
THE Scottish prosecution service has interviewed former officers of communist East Germany’s Stasi secret police in connection with the Lockerbie bombing, it has emerged.
Prosecutors in the city of Frankfurt an der Oder confirmed yesterday that they had arranged for five former Stasi officers to be interviewed by Scotland’s Crown Office prosecution service.
No details of the new investigation have been released, but there are longstanding allegations that the Stasi may have supplied the detonator used in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.
Abdelbaset al-megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer, remains the only person ever convicted over the bombing, in which 270 people died.
But the Crown Office announced last December that it was pursuing new leads “in relation to the pursuit of other individuals involved in the conspiracy to commit the atrocity”.
“As this is a live criminal investigation, it would not be appropriate to comment,” a spokesman for the Crown Office said yesterday.
“The former Stasi officers were interviewed as witnesses, not as suspects,” a spokesman for the Frankfurt an der Oder prosecutor’s office said.
The Crown Office first asked to question the former Stasi officers in June last year, and has made a number of follow-up requests, the most recent a few days ago, the spokesman said.
As many as 20 former officers have been interviewed in connection with the case, according to Bild, but only prosecutors in Frankfurt an der Oder were prepared to comment in detail.
Prosecutors in the city of Potsdam confirmed that they were “providing assistance to the Crown Office”.
It has long been known that the Stasi had access to the type of detonator used in the Lockerbie bomb.
Allegations that it may have supplied the one used in the bombing were discussed in the trial that convicted al-megrahi in 2001 – but those allegations were put forward by the defence to suggest he was not responsible.
They suggested the Stasi could have supplied the detonator to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), a group with which it had close links and was an early suspect.
But the Crown Office was at pains yesterday to stress that the aim of the current investigation is not to cast doubt on al-megrahi’s guilt.
Alison Di Rollo, the Scottish Solicitor General, pledged in December to pursue any new evidence in the case.
She said: “Abdelbaset al-megrahi was convicted of acting with others in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. I can give you a commitment from Scotland that if new evidence about the involvement of others with al-megrahi in the murder of the 270 victims becomes available we will reassess the case in co-operation with our US colleagues.”