New documents blame Libya for Lockerbie bombing | UK News

Scottish detectives are examining what is alleged to be the first written evidence from inside Libya’s intelligence service that it murdered 270 people in the Lockerbie bombing 36 years ago.

The newly revealed documents are said to provide further proof that Colonel Gaddafi’s Jamahiriya Security Organisation (JSO), was also behind the destruction of a French airliner, killing another 170 victims.

One former FBI agent described the material as potential “dynamite”.

If authenticated, American prosecutors are expected to use the documents during the Washington trial of Abu Agila Mas’id Kheir Al-Marimi, known as Masud, who is accused of building the bomb.

Pan Am Flight 103 was brought down on 21 December 1988, killing its 259 passengers and crew and another 11 residents in the Scottish town.

Ten months later, a French airliner, UTA 772, crashed into the desert in Niger as it flew from Chad to Paris.

Scottish and French courts have already convicted Libyan agents over both attacks but, if they are genuine, the newly revealed documents would bolster those convictions and could even lead to fresh prosecutions.

The files have been published in a new book, The Murderer Who Must Be Saved, by French investigative journalists Karl Laske and Vincent Nouzille, and Libyan activist Samir Shegwara.

Mr Shegwara – who took part in the uprising against Gaddafi in 2011 – told the reporters the documents were retrieved from the archives of Libya’s former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi, who was named as a Lockerbie suspect in 2015.

The journalists spent four years checking their contents with contacts and against information already in the public domain.

Mr Nouzelle said: “Samir Shegwara’s not interested in money or in revenge.

“He just wants these documents to be go public for truth and for history and for justice.

“We have no doubts that they are accurate and could be used in court.

“The US, Scottish and French authorities are very interested in them.”

According to the book the dossier primarily concerns preparations for the attacks on the two passenger planes.

It implicates Senussi, Masud and the two Libyans who faced trial over Lockerbie at a Scottish Court in the Netherlands more than 20 years ago.

Three Scottish judges convicted Abdelbasset al-Megrahi of playing a central role in a Libyan plot to bomb Pan Am 103.

Megrahi was freed from HMP Greenock in 2009 on compassionate grounds as he had terminal cancer.

He died in Tripoli, aged 60, in May 2012.

His 2001 conviction over Lockerbie has been upheld twice on appeal.

The judges found Megrahi’s co-accused, Al Amin Khalifah Fhimah, not guilty due to a lack of evidence. He returned to Libya and a hero’s welcome.

In January, Mr Nouzille contacted Scotland’s chief law officer, the Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, to inform her of the book’s allegations.

Last month he travelled to Edinburgh to be interviewed by Police Scotland.

He has sent detectives copies of 20 documents said to be from the Senussi archive.

If they are what they are claimed to be, the papers would counter longstanding claims that Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and could even lead to serious consideration of a bid for a retrial of Fhimah.

That would be possible under Scots Law if the Crown can show the documents represent new evidence which substantially strengthens the case against him.

However Fhimah’s extradition would be enormously controversial in Libya, where many people regard Lockerbie as a matter that has been dealt with.

An American indictment against Fhimah dating back to 1991 is still outstanding.

The bomb which destroyed Pan Am 103 was concealed inside a radio cassette player in a suitcase in the jet’s forward hold.

A copy of one of the Libyan documents, seen by the , records its subject matter as: “Experiments on the use of the suitcase and testing its effectiveness.”

The handwritten report is labelled “top secret” and dated 4 October 1988, with the sender given as the Information and Strategic Studies Centre in Tripoli, headed at the time by Megrahi.

The document says: “Major Abu-Ajailah Khair from the agency, Major Ali Abdulsalam from the intelligence department and Maj Misbah [surname not clear] conducted experiments on a suitcase similar to the suitcase that will be used in the mission.

“We reached the following conclusions: The explosion was very powerful and effective; the quantity [of explosives] contained in the suitcase is enough for the mission; the use of a radio device to trigger the explosion was good; no trace of a foreign body was detected when the suitcase went through an X-ray scanner.

“Several trials were carried out, including one in the presence of Lt-Colonel Abdullah al-Senussi, the “Doctor,” as well as agents from the technical department who oversee preparations. The Doctor voiced his admiration for the technical way the suitcase was prepared.”

The book’s authors say “Major Abu-Ajailah Khair” was Masud, who is alleged to have confessed to priming the bomb which brought down Pan Am 103.

Another document dated 1 January 1987, is said to concern the transfer of “10kg explosives materials stored with Libya airlines Malta station manager Brother Lamin [Khalifah] Fhimah personally”.

That would appear to go some way towards corroborating evidence given at the Lockerbie trial by a CIA informant.

Abdul Majid told the court Fhimah had explosives in his drawer in his Libyan Arab Airlines office in Malta but his testimony was almost entirely rejected by the trial judges.

Former FBI special agent Richard Marquise led the agency’s investigation into Lockerbie alongside Scottish detectives

He said the documents, if authenticated, would represent one of the biggest developments in the 36-year history of the case.

Mr Marquise added: “The FBI and the US Department of Justice have been aware of this and I know they’re working closely with their colleagues at the Crown Office and Police Scotland to see if this is something that can be used in court.

“I’m very hopeful that it can be used and will lead to at least one more conviction.

“We’ll have to see what goes beyond that, depending on what they can find.”

Masud has pled not guilty to the charges in Washington.

His American lawyer has been approached for comment on the book’s allegations.

Fhimah always denied any involvement in bombing Pan Am 103.

Colonel Gaddafi’s brother-in-law, Senussi is in custody in Libya, facing charges over the suppression of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion in 2011.

In 1999, he was one of six Libyans convicted in their absence by a French court, over the bombing of the French airliner UTA 772 over Niger in September 1989.

Senussi was sentenced to life but has never spent a single day in a French jail.

The Murderer Who Must Be Saved largely concerns allegations over former French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s relationship with the Gaddafi regime.

Sarkozy is currently on trial in Paris accused of taking millions of euros from Gaddafi to fund an election campaign.

He denies the charges.

Asked about the newly revealed documents, the Crown Office and Police Scotland said it would be inappropriate to comment on an ongoing investigation.