Retired Stasi agents asked questions on Lockerbie

Former East German secret police officers have been interviewed as part of continuing investigations into the Lockerbie bombing, it has been reported.

German prosecutors are said to have confirmed they arranged interviews with exstasi officers on behalf of the Crown Office in Frankfurt an der Oder, on the Polish border. The Stasi is alleged to have

supplied the detonator used in the Pan Am jet explosion in 1988 that killed 270 people.

The German newspaper Bild said as many as 20 former officers had been interviewed across the country.

Prosecutors in Potsdam are also said to have confirmed they were “providing assistance to the Crown Office”.

The Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-megrahi was convicted of involvement in the bombing in 2001, but the Crown Office announced in December it was pursuing new leads. It said these were “in relation to the pursuit of other individuals involved in the conspiracy to commit the atrocity”.

The Crown Office had requested interviews with the former Stasi officers several times since June last year.

A spokesman for the Frankfurt an der Oder prosecutor’s office is reported to have said: “The former Stasi officers were interviewed as witnesses, not as suspects.”

A Crown Office spokesman said: “Prosecutors and police, working with UK government and US colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing those who acted along with Al Megrahi to justice. As this is a live criminal investigation, it would not be appropriate to comment.”