Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the only person convicted in connection with the Lockerbie airline bombing that killed 259 people on board Pan Am Flight 103 and 11 on the ground, went to his grave protesting his innocence.Now, the Herald Scotland says it is going to publish evidence that the British government tried to suppress:
And there are others who believe that Megrahi, who died on Sunday from cancer, was not responsible for bringing down the jet over Scotland in 1988, including some of the victims' families.
...TV producer and author John Ashton has spent many years studying the case, and worked as a researcher with al Megrahi's defense team between 2006 and 2009. He believes al Megrahi was innocent and presents his reasons in his book "Megrahi: You are my jury - the Lockerbie evidence.'"
He believes that Iran is the likely suspect behind the bombing, using the Palestinian group The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) to carry out the attack.
He told CNN he believed the group operated from Damascus but had a cell inside Germany, and alleges the attack was in revenge for the accidental shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet by the Americans in July 1988 with the loss of 290 lives. Missiles from USS Vincennes hit the plane as it flew over the Persian Gulf.
It has been hidden, blocked and kept secret by the UK Government for more than 20 years, but The Herald can reveal for the first time the contents of the top-secret Lockerbie document that the UK tried to prevent us from publishing.There are no details in this article. But many others have pieced together evidence that the PFLP-GC was behind the bombing, as this 2007 London Review of Books article details.
The highly classified document, which has never even been aired in public or shared with the courts, originally came from Jordan and indicates that a Palestinian terrorist group was involved in the bombing that killed 270 people – something the UK Government has vehemently denied.
The UK Government has gone to considerable lengths to prevent details of the document – which casts further doubt on the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi – being published by The Herald.
It has threatened legal action to stop publication of the newspaper and asked the paper to sign up to a court-approved gagging order.
Our decision to publish details of the document, which was obtained by the Crown Office but never shown to the defence team, will prove highly embarrassing to the Crown, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Office of the Advocate General, whose lawyers have worked tirelessly to prevent it ever being even discussed in public.
The document incriminates the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) in the Lockerbie bombing.
The PFLP-GC were the original suspects in the investigation into the biggest terrorist atrocity ever to have been committed in mainland Britain. However, by 1991 police and prosecutors were entirely focused on Libya. Since then politicians and the investigating authorities have denied the possibility of their involvement, instead blaming the whole atrocity on Libya.
Repeated, high-level attempts to block the report indicate it is vital to unearthing the truth about the Lockerbie bombing. The UK Government arranged for the document to be covered by Public Interest Immunity on national security grounds. This prevented it from being shared with the defence but does not prevent publication by a newspaper.
The PFLP-GC works closely with Hezbollah in Lebanon. It had been responsible for a number of bomb attacks on airlines in the 1970s, as well as a number oof high-profile attacks in Israel including Kiryat Shmona and the Avivim School Bus Massacre.
(h/t Akusia)