On the day of the crash one piece of luggage was transferred on the Pan Am feeding flight from an Air Malta flight – a check revealed no passenger had been transferred with it. The bag had travelled unaccompanied. And there was another link to Malta. These fragments of clothing recovered from the crash site. The police concluded the scorching meant they had been in a suitcase with the bomb. One of the fragments had Made in Malta on the label. But why would Malta be linked to the Lockerbie attack? Libya is a short hop from the Mediterranean island. Colonel Gaddafi’s regime restrained by sanctions used it as a back door to the West. Gaddafi had long supported terrorism in Europe and the Middle East. Two years before Lockerbie President Reagan had ordered a bombing raid on Libya in reprisal for a terrorist attack which killed two American servicemen. Gaddafi escaped unhurt. But among those killed was his four-year-old adopted daughter. Like the Iranians he too had a motive to hit back at America just before President Reagan left office. The investigators built a case against two Libyans with links to Malta. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi had been head of airline security for Libyan Arab airlines. ibid.
It was found among debris about twenty-two miles downwind of the crash site. A fragment embedded in a piece of burnt cloth. It was the breakthrough. The investigators said it came from an electronic circuit-board. ibid.
The [Toshiba] manual appeared to have changed from being an almost complete and legible piece of paper ... The strange disintegration of the Toshiba manual wasn’t the only discrepancy to do with the evidence at the trial. When the court turned to the timer fragment it became clear something unusual had happened here too ... The label had been changed. The word cloth had been overwritten with the word debris. ibid.
In one of the containers was the device in a suitcase, and when it went off, the initial shock from the blast blew a hole about the size of a window, maybe a bit more ... In that process it put enough stress into this part of the skin to work upon the cracks ... and blow outwards this huge hole you see here. Peter Claiden, Air Accidents Investigation Branch
Shortly before lunchtime and the phone rang so I picked it up. And there was a very guttural Arab-sounding-speaking man speaking broken English on the phone, saying he knew of a plot to bomb an American airliner ... a horrible coincidence. Ken Luzzi, Special Agency US Embassy Helsinki
This fragment is the most important piece of evidence in the whole Lockerbie affair. And this piece of evidence was fabricated by some official body in order to implicate Libya in the case. According to my investigation, this could only have been done by the FBI or the Scottish police. Edwin Bollier, Mebo telecommunications
And we kept watching this aircraft explode, and then we would be asked to go back again to re-live it again, to go right back to the moment just before it exploded again to try to pinpoint where this explosion took place. What we were looking at was Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which we were forced to re-live over and over again. And it was literally within hours of that aircraft exploding in mid-air that the remote viewers were providing information to the defence intelligence agency that stated that there was an explosion that took place on the front left quadrant of this aircraft, below the passenger line and in front of the wings. David Moorhouse
Lockerbie is Britain’s worst terrorist atrocity. And one of the most controversial cases in legal history. It took three years to investigate, and another ten to bring two suspects to court. But critics describe the co-defendants as fool guys in a game of international politics. It’s claimed instead that the masterminds behind the plot remain un-named and un-punished. Conspiracies: Lockerbie
In December 1988 just four days before Christmas a bomb exploded on an American passenger jet bound for New York. Twelve years later two suspects stood trial: only one of the men was found guilty of murder; the other was acquitted. Yet doubts remain about the involvement of either man. ibid.
Within days of the Lockerbie air disaster investigators had worked out why, how and who had carried out the attack. A bomb made of plastic explosive built inside a Toshiba tape-recorder had brought down Flight 103. The motive was revenge: most of the passengers were American. And the prime suspect was Iran aided and abetted by Syria. Earlier in the year a US warship had mistakenly shot down an Iranian passenger plane killing all two hundred and ninety-eight passengers. Iran immediately called for vengeance. And America had been bracing itself for an attack ever since. ibid.
But the police had only recovered four bombs in total; that left one bomb still unaccounted for. So could it be Jebril’s gang just carried on as planned and smuggled the missing bomb on to the Pan Am flight? Throughout the whole of the investigation Iran and Syria had been the prime suspects. But after three years Western security services came up with a shocking and unexpected conclusion: instead of targeting Iran and Syria, they suddenly pointed the finger of blame elsewhere: Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya. ibid.
The bombs that had been recovered in Germany weeks before also contained pressure timers. So this all points back once again to Iran and Syria. And the night before the Lockerbie disaster there had been a break-in at Heathrow Airport. ibid.
But how did US agents get to Lockerbie so quickly, and what were they doing there? ibid.
Rumours at the time suggested Flight 103 was being used for drug smuggling. The claim is that US Intelligence knew about it which is why they were in Lockerbie so quickly. It’s even been suggested a body was spirited away. It’s claimed there was a lot of tampering with the evidence. ibid.
What if Flight 103 was targeted not as an attack on America but to assassinate a group of rival spies instead? At least six of the victims were US Intelligence agents, which is too much of a coincidence for some ... One of the victims was a military intelligence officer called Major Charles McKee. He was running a secret mission to Lebanon. ibid.
A witness said that he saw the co-defendants at Malta Airport on the day of the bombing. He claims he saw the two men with the bomb-bag. But the trail judges had doubts about much of his evidence because the witness was in the pay of US Intelligence. ibid.
The DEA were supposedly running a controlled drug route between Frankfurt and Detroit through Heathrow. Stewart Nicol, journalist
There was a rumour that the arms for hostages deal was in the air. Stewart Nicol
Early on in the police investigation into what had happened they came up with what was then a very credible line of inquiry that the flight had been targeted purely and simply to get rid of McKee. An indication as to just how correct this story was was that they offered me as the author of the story an interview with anyone I felt I was able to share the secret of the source with, including the then prime minister Mrs Thatcher. David Johnston, journalist
The official version is just downright wrong; Libya had nothing to do with it. Tam Dalyell, former MP
A police sergeant came to me to say that he was very uncomfortable that there were so many Americans sort of ruffling round searching for things in a way that would be quite unacceptable in a British murder investigation. Tam Dalyell
Had it been known in the United States that the government knew enough to pull the VIPs of – the Moscow Embassy, the South Africans, the servicemen – and left the youngsters, the students, to travel to their death, the American public would have been furious that the government could have done any such thing. Tam Dalyell
Colonel Gaddafi paid compensation because he desperately wanted to get back into the international trading circuit and have sanctions lifted. Tam Dalyell
I’m angry at the injustice of it. I also don’t understand how those judges ever arrived at that conclusion which will be proved unsafe one day. Tam Dalyell
I think it’s highly unlikely that one group of CIA officers would try to assassinate another group of CIA officers and kill lots of civilians in the process. David Shayler
It’s also Britain’s worst miscarriage of justice. The wrong man was convicted. And the real killers are still out there. John Ashton, investigator
Using the labels police traced the damaged clothing back to a clothes shop in Malta called Mary’s House. Lockerbie – The Lost Evidence, BBC Scotland 2012
The dying man [Megrahi] who has always protested his innocence feels evidence was hidden from him. ibid.
If it was dry on December 7th [purchase of brolly from shop] that couldn’t have been the day the clothes were bought ... Before December 7th there was no evidence Megrahi was in Malta. ibid.
Tests raise doubts that the fragments matches the timers sent to Libya. ibid.
Malta: an island of ancient legend and warrior knights. A link between Europe and north Africa. And in 1940 a pivotal British base in the Mediterranean. For two years during the Second World War the people of the island were forced underground in terror as the Axis powers unleashed on them one of the greatest bombardments in history. The Battle For Malta, BBC 2013
The most bombed place on Earth. ibid.
There was no let-up in the raids. ibid.
Nixon ordered the most intensive bombing of the entire war ... The Christmas Bombing. The raids went on for twelve days. The American Experience: The Presidents: Nixon III: The Fall, PBS 1990