The Truth about Lockerbie - MartinFrost.ws

A tale of three atrocities
group whose daughter had died at Lockerbie – had come on television to invite UTA relatives to contact
him. At that time, the Lockerbie families were trying to understand what had happened to their loved
ones, from a position of little knowledge. But they had started thinking about culpability.
We UTA families were able to stop looking for explanations much quicker than the Lockerbie families.
Within two years, we had a positive outcome that has stood the test of time. They have had no such
satisfaction.
Two years after the downing of UTA Flight 772, I remember calling Jim Swire from a public phone box
outside the Palais de Justice, Paris, after the UTA examining magistrate, Juge Jean-Louis Bruguière,
named four Libyans as the culprits (two more were accused in 1996). Jim said the UTA suspects, or
indeed any other Libyan suspects, were "not on my radar" – not considered as the culprits for
Lockerbie. So I was astonished when, on 13 th November 1991, the US Department of Justice and
Scottish prosecuting authorities issued murder charges for Lockerbie against two Libyans - Abdelbaset
Ali al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah.
Even then, I wasn't in a mind to accept something simply because I was told it by someone in authority.
I questioned the Libyan connection to Lockerbie. And I was right. As we know, Abdelbaset Ali al-
Megrahi has always claimed he did not carry out the Lockerbie bombing. He has appealed twice
against his conviction. On 28 th June 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission announced
it would refer the second appeal to Edinburgh's Court of Criminal Appeal because Megrahi “may have
suffered a miscarriage of justice”.
On 20 th August 2009, Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds following reports that he had
terminal prostate cancer and less than three months to live. But, to be released, he had to drop his
appeal and thereby implicitly accept his conviction.
There was a period, which lasted from 1991 to 1999, where I couldn't make sense of Lockerbie. But
slowly it occurred to me. After twenty years of investigation, I am confident I have now found some of
the truth about Lockerbie.
Why Megrahi didn't do it
It is the strangest thing. If four Libyans carried out UTA and two carried out Lockerbie, then surely they
must have been working for the same organisation. But only tentative links were ever drawn between
the Libyan personnel involved in UTA and those allegedly involved in Lockerbie. Abdullah Senussi,
Gaddafi's brother-in-law, was the only Libyan referred to during the Lockerbie trial who was convicted
of the UTA bombing. He was repeatedly mentioned by a witness in Megrahi's trial, Abdul Giaka, but
Giaka's evidence was rejected by the court. Indeed, the only official connection between the two
tragedies was the imposition of sanctions against Libya in 1992 by the UN, a situation which was
explained in a private letter to me from the FCO.
Furthermore, it is quite clear that the modi operandi of the two bombings is entirely different. In
particular, the bombs are quite different.
The Libyans didn't lack the ability to create two identical bombs. They had materials for a UTA-style
bomb in 1988, according to case notes submitted in Pugh vs Libya – the US UTA victims' claim for
compensation 1 . These say that Juge Bruguière, the examining magistrate in the UTA case, received a
replica of the suitcase used in the UTA bombing from Libyan officials on a visit in July 1996:
“The Libyans told Juge Bruguière that the suitcase had been recovered from a thwarted attack by
Libyan oppositionists. For the French, it was proof that the Libyan security services had suitcase
bombs exactly like the one that exploded on UTA Flight 772.”
If they had the materials available, why didn't they use the same technique for Lockerbie as for UTA?
1 Pugh vs Libya news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/pughlibya101602cmp.pdf
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