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Sunday Herald (Scotland), 3 March 2002
CIA evidence 'clears Libya' of Lockerbie
Megrahi's appeal team ignored 'evidence' from key CIA investigator that
claims Iran was behind PanAm 103 bombing
By Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor, John Ashton in Washington and Ian
Ferguson in Camp Zeist
ONE of the CIA's leading Lockerbie bomb investigators has come forward with
compelling evidence that Libya was not behind the downing of PanAm 103
which killed 270 people.
Robert Baer, a retired senior CIA agent, offered to meet the defence team
leading the appeal of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, who was convicted
last year of the bombing. However, his offer was not accepted and the new
evidence never raised in court.
The new evidence, according to Baer, shows Iran masterminded and funded the
bombing; implicates the Palestinian terrorist unit, the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), as the group behind
the plot; and reveals that just two days after the December 21 1988 bombing
the PFLP-GC received $11 million (£7.6m), paid into a Swiss bank account by
Iran.
Legal experts say the new evidence should have been brought before the
court, and are asking why Megrahi's defence didn't take up the offer.
Megrahi's appeal, which took place at a special Scottish court sitting at
Camp Zeist in Holland, adjourned on Thursday for judges to consider whether
to overturn the original verdict.
Baer claims he is breaking his silence now because of growing
disillusionment with the CIA's counter-terrorist operations and the war on
terror.
Baer, an anti-terrorist specialist, was one of the key CIA officers
investigating Lockerbie. He says the CIA received definitive evidence that
the PFLP-GC struck a deal with Iranian intelligence agents in July 1988 to
take down an American airliner.
Baer also has details of an $11m payment made to the PFLP-GC. On December
23 1988 the money was paid into a bank account used by the terror group in
Lausanne, Switzerland. It was transferred to another PFLP-GC account at the
Banque Nationale de Paris and moved to the Hungarian Trade Development Bank.
A terrorist linked to the PFLP-GC, Abu Talb, who was later jailed for
terrorist offences in Sweden, was also paid $500,000 (£350,000). The money
went into an account in Talb's name in Frankfurt four months after the
bombing, on April 25 1989.
Germany was a key base for the PFLP-GC in the late 1980s. Baer has the
number of at least one of these bank accounts.
Talb and the PFLP-GC were to have been implicated by lawyers working for
Megrahi and his co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, at the original trial,
but little evidence was ever raised to show they were part of the Lockerbie
plot.
On legal advice Baer is not disclosing his Lockerbie records, but the
Sunday Herald has seen CIA paperwork that supports his claims. British and
US intelligence have always publicly denied that the PFLP-GC played a part
in the Lockerbie plot, saying raids by German police two months before the
Lockerbie bombing took the terror group out of action.
Baer says, however, that these arrests were a mere hiccup in PFLP-GC plans
as other members of the German unit rem ained at large. This theory also
fits with claims that the bomb began its journey in Frankfurt, rather than
Malta, where Megrahi was based.
PFLP-GC leader Hafez Dalkamoni and the group's chief bomb-maker, Marwan
Khreesat, were arrested in Germany in October 1988 in possession of a
Toshiba radio-cassette player containing a bomb. PanAm 103 flew from
Frankfurt and was destroyed by a bomb built inside a Toshiba radio-cassette.
Timers matching the one used in the Lockerbie device were sold to both
Libya and the East German secret service, the Stasi, which had close links
to the PFLP-GC. 'I don't know what components the bomb contained,' Baer
said, 'but there was very reliable information from multiple sources that
(the PFLP-GC) were running around between East and West Germany and Sweden,
trying to get the operation back on track. It's conceivable that the Stasi
supplied components during a trip to East Germany.'
Baer said the components for the bomb were supplied by a terrorist known as
Abu Elias, who was for a time the CIA's prime suspect but was never caught.
'He was the big centre of the investigation, but he was very elusive,' Baer
said. Khreesat and Dalkamoni were on their way to meet Abu Elias when they
were arrested in Germany. Abu Elias was a close associate of Abu Talb. Both
lived in Sweden.
Talb had made a trip to Malta just weeks before the Lockerbie bombing.
Clothes from a shop in Malta were packed in the suitcase which contained
the PanAm 103 bomb.
Baer also claims the CIA has irrefutable intelligence that Talb and
Dalkamoni were Iranian agents and were on a government roll of honour for
their services to the 'Islamic revolutionary struggle against the west'.
Baer add ed: 'Although it was not specific, Dalkamoni's citation praised
him for achieving Iran's greatest- ever strike against the west'.
Iran had vowed 'the skies would rain with American blood' after a US battle
cruiser, the USS Vincennes, accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus over
the Persian Gulf, killing 290 people, six months before the Lockerbie bombing.
'It doesn't take a genius to figure out where the $11m came from,' says
Baer. He added that 'the information [would] be useful to the defence as
much of it was of a type that would be admissible in court. Once the
investigators had the timer evidence, which seemed to point to Libya, they
stopped pursuing other leads -- that's the way most criminal investigations
work. People sleep better at night if they think they have justice. Who
wants an unsolved airplane bombing?'
Edinburgh University law professor Robert Black, the architect of the
Lockerbie trial, said of Megrahi's defence not seeking to interview Baer:
'I don't know why they would act like this. Real hard evidence of a money
transfer from Iran to the PFLP-GC is so supportive of the alternative
theory behind the bombing that I'm at a loss to explain their actions.
'At the very least, you would interview the source of the information and
make a decision once you have spoken to him. A lawyer's job is to provide a
belt-and-braces defence for his client, so to refuse to even meet with Baer
requires a lot of explaining.'
http://www.sundayherald.com/22366
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