More widely believed was the theory that American and Scottish investigators worked with until 1991: that the plane was bombed by Syrian-backed Palestinians working for Iran, which was seeking revenge for the downing of an Iranian passenger jet by an American warship in July 1988.

That had plausibility because in October 1988, two months before the plane went down, the West German police arrested a dozen Palestinians with Syrian passports, a Toshiba boom box, detonators, barometric fuses, a bazooka and other arms.

But most of them, including a known bomb-maker named Marwan Khreesat, were released by a German judge and disappeared. Later, the Germans found three more bombs packed in Toshibas, one of which killed the man dismantling it.

The Palestinian groups have repeatedly denied blowing up Pan Am 103.

Investigators changed their minds about them after finding bits of a timer embedded in a charred shirt in the debris. The timer was traced to a Swiss company that is said to have identified its customer as the Libyan government, although it later said it had sold the timers to others too and had lost some in a burglary.

Note the other issue – real bomb-makers with real bombs were released by the German court – irrespective of their responsibility for Lockerbie, that was extraordinary.

The Libyian theory of the crime surfaced years later, and always seemed pasted together to me.

Judges hearing an appeal by Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi said the prosecution’s claim of where and how the bomb was loaded onto the airplane was contradicted by airport luggage records presented at evidence during the original trial.

One of the five-strong panel said the prosecution’s version of events was “difficult to follow rationally.”

Prosecutors say the bomb, hidden in a radio cassette player concealed in a brown suitcase, was checked in at Malta by al-Megrahi and transferred to Pan Am Flight 103.

But Judge Kenneth Osborne told the prosecution team: “There is considerable and quite convincing evidence that that could not have happened.”

We may never know what happened at Lockerbie, but the police handling of the case has stunk, from beginning to end.

A Scottish MSP has used parliamentary privilege to name a naturalized US citizen, known under the pseudonym “Abu Elias”, as a person of interest in the bombing; the person in question has long been under suspicion both for the Lockerbie bombing, and as a potential CIA mole in the PFLP-GC.

Thanks, bmaz, for showing us yet another lower and older act of dishonor by lying leaders who never knew or cared about the meaning of Justice.

New York Magazine – Sep 21, 1992 – 112 pages – Magazine
THAT ’GOVERNMENT ROLE1 IN THE BOMBING OF FLIGHT 103 WAS AN INSURANCE PLOY Pan Am needed a defense strategy capable of overcoming its own misconduct. …
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