Ex-Stasi agents quizzed on Lockerbie

FORMER officers from East Germany’s Stasi secret police are being questioned about the Lockerbie bombing, it was revealed yesterday.

Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset alMegrahi was convicted in 2001 of carrying out the 1988 atrocity and jailed for life.

However, Scottish investigators and some bereaved relatives of those killed do not believe that he was solely responsible.

Now, at least seven retired Stasi agents are being interviewed about unanswered questions about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. German newspaper Bild reported that detectives believe Stasi officers could have helped supply the timer on the bomb and provided ‘logistical support’ for the attack.

Scottish detectives have reportedly sent dozens of requests to authorities in what used to be East Germany, asking to speak to retired agents. Seven former agents – now in their late seventies to late eighties – are said to have been handed over and questioned already, with investigators from Edinburgh present. In the past, Stasi agents have been linked to a 1986 bombing at a disco in West Berlin, which was also connected to Libya. Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer, was freed from a Scottish jail in 2009 on ‘compassionate grounds’ because he had terminal prostate cancer. He died in Tripoli in 2012.

However, his family are still pursuing a possible appeal against his conviction.

All 259 passengers aboard Pan Am Flight 103 – and 11 people on the ground – were killed when a bomb was detonated on board on December 21, 1988. It was the deadliest terror attack in UK history.