Handover of a Libyan suspect opens a new chapter in Lockerbie bombing horror story

Remains of the 747 Pan Am airliner that exploded and crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 22, 1988. All 243 passengers and 16 crew were killed as well as 11 Lockerbie residents. (AFP)
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Updated 20 December 2022
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Handover of a Libyan suspect opens a new chapter in Lockerbie bombing horror story

  • Many believe Libyans were accused of a crime that the Iranian regime had a motive to perpetrate
  • For others, the arrest of Masud offers the prospect of long overdue justice for the 270 victims of the disaster

LONDON: It happened more than three decades ago, but the horror that was the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 lives on, for the families of the slain, for the Scottish community torn apart when the flaming wreckage crashed down in pieces on their town and for the first responders who arrived to find hellish scenes none would ever forget.

For some, the arrest last week of a Libyan man charged with having made the bomb that downed the jumbo jet over Lockerbie on Dec. 21, 1988, offers the prospect of long overdue justice for the 270 victims of the disaster and their families.

For others, though, confidence in the judicial system and the joint US-Scottish investigation that has led to the latest arrest was shaken long ago by uncertainties that continue to hang over the trial and conviction in May 2000 of another Libyan, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi, who in 2001 was found guilty of carrying out the bombing.

The undisputed facts of the case, which will doubtless be rehearsed again during the upcoming trial, are harrowing.

The Boeing 747, en route from London to New York City, was just half an hour into its flight and cruising at 31,000 feet when the bomb exploded shortly after 7 p.m., scattering aircraft parts, luggage and bodies over a wide area. The investigators would be faced with a crime scene of 2,200 square kilometers.

On board the doomed aircraft were 259 passengers and crew of 21 nationalities. The oldest victim was 82, the youngest a two-month-old baby, found held tight in her dead mother’s arms.




A man looks at the main memorial stone in memory of the victims of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, in the garden of remembrance near Lockerbie, Scotland Friday Dec. 21, 2018. (AFP)

The 190 Americans on the flight included a party of 35 students from Syracuse University, returning home for Christmas after an overseas study tour.

Eleven more people died in their homes on the ground. Among them were the Flannigans, mother and father Kathleen, 41, Thomas, 44, and their daughter Joanne, aged 10.

Joanne’s body was eventually found in the deep crater gouged out of the street where the family lived, but her parents’ remains were never recovered.

Last week, 71-year-old Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir Al-Marimi, an alleged former intelligence officer for the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, appeared in a US court accused of being the bombmaker.

It is a stunning development in a case which, for many relatives of the dead, has never been satisfactorily settled. Masud’s anticipated trial represents an unexpected opportunity for the many remaining doubts surrounding the Lockerbie disaster to be resolved once and for all.




Paul Hudson of Sarasota, Fla., holds up a photo of his daughter Melina who was killed at 16 years old along with the photos of almost a hundred other victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, as he speaks to members of the media in front of the federal courthouse in Washington, Monday, Dec. 12, 2022. (AFP)

Key among them is the suspicion, which has persisted for three decades, that the Libyans were falsely accused of a crime that was actually perpetrated by the Iranian regime.

Iran certainly had a motive. On July 3, 1988, five months before the bombing, Iran Air flight 655, an Airbus A300 carrying Iranian pilgrims bound for Makkah, had been shot down accidentally over the Strait of Hormuz by a US guided-missile cruiser, the Vincennes.

All 290 people on board were killed, including 66 children and 16 members of one family, who had been traveling to Dubai for a wedding.

In 1991, a subsequently declassified secret report from within the US Defense Intelligence Agency made it clear that from the outset Iran was the number-one suspect.

Ayatollah Mohtashemi, a former Iranian interior minister, was “closely connected to the Al-Abas and Abu Nidal terrorist groups,” it read.

He had “recently paid $10 million in cash and gold to these two organizations to carry out terrorist activities and ... paid the same amount to bomb Pam Am flight 103, in retaliation for the US shoot-down of the Iranian Airbus.”

The evidence implicating Iran piled up. It emerged that two months before the bombing, German police had raided a cell of the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command and seized a bomb hidden in a Toshiba cassette player, just like the one that would be used to blow up Pan Am flight 103.

Yet in November 1991 it was two Libyan intelligence operatives, Abdel Baset Ali Al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, who were charged with the murders. The case against them was circumstantial at best.




The artist sketch depicts Assistant U.S. Attorney Erik Kenerson, front left, watching as Whitney Minter, a public defender from the eastern division of Virginia, stands to represent Abu Agila Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, accused of making the bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. (AFP)

After years of negotiations with Qaddafi’s government, the two men were eventually handed over to be tried in a specially convened Scottish court in the Netherlands. Their trial began in May 2000, and on Jan. 31, 2001, Al-Megrahi was found guilty and Fhimah was acquitted.

The crown’s case was that an unaccompanied suitcase containing the bomb had been carried on an Air Malta flight from Luqa Airport in Malta to Frankfurt. There, it was transferred to a Pan Am aircraft to London, where it was loaded onto flight 103.

Inside the suitcase, wrapped in clothing, was the Toshiba cassette player containing the bomb.

A small part of a printed circuit board, believed to be from the bomb timer, was found in the wreckage, along with a fragment of a piece of clothing. This was traced to a store in Malta where the owner, Tony Gauci, told police he remembered selling it to a Libyan man.

Gauci, who died in 2016, was the prosecution’s main witness, but from the outset there were serious doubts about his evidence. He was interviewed 23 times by Scottish police before he finally identified Al-Megrahi — and only then after seeing the wanted man’s photograph in a newspaper article naming him as a suspect.

In their judgment, even the three Scottish judges conceded that “on the matter of identification of the … accused, there are undoubtedly problems.”

Worse, in 2007 Scottish newspaper The Herald claimed that the CIA had offered Gauci $2 million to give evidence in the case.

FASTFACTS

• Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir Al-Marimi recently appeared in the US District Court of the District of Columbia to face charges over the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

• Masud allegedly confessed to role as bombmaker while in Libyan custody the day after the US ambassador was killed in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012.

• Five months before Lockerbie bombing, 290 people died when Iran Air flight 655 carrying pilgrims was accidentally shot down by US guided-missile cruiser.

Another part of the prosecution’s case was that the fingernail-sized fragment of circuit board found in the wreckage, believed to have been part of the timer that triggered the bomb, matched a batch of timers supplied to Libya by a Swiss company in 1985.

However, the company insisted the timer on the aircraft had not been supplied to Libya, and in 2007 its CEO claimed that he had been offered $4 million by the FBI to say that it had.

Many have denounced the trial as a sham, suggesting that Qaddafi agreed to surrender Al-Megrahi and Fhimah, accept responsibility for the attack and pay compensation to the families of the victims, only because the US promised that the sanctions that had been imposed on Libya would be eased.

After Al-Megrahi’s appeal against his conviction was rejected in March 2002, one of the independent UN observers assigned to the case as a condition of Libya’s cooperation condemned what he called the “spectacular miscarriage of justice.”




Jim Swire, spokesman for relatives of victims of the Lockerbie plane crash and father of a daughter who died in the terrorist attack, carries a document marked 'Judgement Day' as he arrives at the Scottish court at Camp Zeist 10 January 2001. (AFP)

Professor Hans Kochler said that he was “not convinced at all that the sequence of events that led to this explosion of the plane over Scotland was as described by the court. Everything that is presented is only circumstantial evidence.”

It remains to be seen what evidence will be presented in the upcoming trial of Masud.

Reports say that he was released only last year from prison in Libya, having been jailed for a decade for his part in the government of Qaddafi, who was overthrown in 2011.

Last week, Libya’s Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah said that his government had handed Masud over to the Americans.

“An arrest warrant was issued against him from Interpol,” he said on Dec. 16. “It has become imperative for us to cooperate in this file for the sake of Libya’s interest and stability.”




Last week, Libya’s Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah said that his government had handed Masud over to the Americans. (AFP)

As Dbeibah put it, Libya “had to wipe the mark of terrorism from the Libyan people’s forehead.”

From the very beginning, one of the strongest advocates for the innocence of Al-Megrahi was Jim Swire, a British doctor whose daughter Flora died in the bombing on the eve of her 24th birthday. Now 86, Swire has spent the past three decades campaigning tirelessly to expose what he believes was a miscarriage of justice.

Al-Megrahi, suffering from prostate cancer, was released from prison on compassionate grounds in 2009. Shortly before his death in Libya in 2012, he was visited in his sick bed by Swire, who in an interview last year recalled Al-Megrahi’s last words to him: “I am going to a place where I hope soon to see Flora. I will tell her that her father is my friend.”

Last week, Swire called for the trial of Masud not to be held in the US or Scotland.

“There are so many loose ends that hang from this dreadful case, largely emanating from America, that I think we should … seek a court that is free of being beholden to any nation directly involved in the atrocity itself,” he said.

“What we’ve always been after amongst the British relatives is the truth, and not a fabrication that might seem to be replacing the truth.”

 


Palestine’s Red Crescent chief tells UK’s Prince William of humanitarian crisis in Gaza

Updated 4 sec ago
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Palestine’s Red Crescent chief tells UK’s Prince William of humanitarian crisis in Gaza

  • The prince meets representatives of the organization and the British Red Cross to discuss the challenges aid workers face in the territory
  • They tell of the worsening conditions in Gaza, increasingly urgent humanitarian requirements, and the need to protect medical teams

LONDON: Younis Al-Khatib, the president of the Palestine Red Crescent Society, held talks with the UK’s Prince William during an official visit to Kensington Palace in London on Monday.

William, the Prince of Wales, met Al-Khatib and other representatives of his organization, along with members of the British Red Cross, to discuss the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and explore ways in which international humanitarian efforts might be enhanced.

The prince’s guests described the worsening conditions in Gaza, the increasingly urgent humanitarian needs in the territory, the challenges faced by aid workers and the need to protect medical teams, the Palestine News Agency reported. They also reviewed the efforts being made to help those affected by ongoing Israeli attacks.

Al-Khatib said that more than 1,600 Palestine Red Crescent Society employees and volunteers continue to work under extremely hazardous conditions in Gaza to provide emergency medical services and distribute relief supplies. Since the war in Gaza began in late 2023, he added, 28 Red Crescent personnel have been killed amid the Israeli attacks or while performing their duties.

The meeting was part of ongoing coordinated efforts by the Red Crescent to highlight the escalating crisis in Gaza, where more than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed during the ongoing conflict, most of them women and children.


Week of heavy rains and floods across Pakistan kills 46 people

A boy pushes his cousin on wheelchair through a flooded road caused by heavy monsoon rains, in Lahore, Pakistan, Sunday, June 29
Updated 8 min 27 sec ago
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Week of heavy rains and floods across Pakistan kills 46 people

  • The deaths from the past week include 13 tourists from a family of 17 who were swept away Friday
  • Other four family members were rescued from the flooded Swat River in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province

PESHAWAR: Nearly a week of heavy monsoon rains and flash floods across Pakistan has killed at least 46 people and injured dozens, officials said Monday.
The fatalities caused by abnormally strong downpours since Tuesday include 22 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 13 in eastern Punjab province, seven in southern Sindh, and four in southwestern Balochistan, the National Disaster Management Authority and provincial emergency officials said.
“We are expecting above-normal rains during the monsoon season and alerts have been issued to the concerned authorities to take precautionary measures,” said Irfan Virk, a Pakistan Meteorological Department deputy director.
Virk said that forecasters cannot rule out a repeat of extreme weather like the devastating floods in 2022. Rains inundated a third of the country, killing 1,737 people and causing widespread destruction.
The deaths from the past week include 13 tourists from a family of 17 who were swept away Friday. The other four family members were rescued from the flooded Swat River in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Rescuers found 12 bodies from the group and divers continued searching Monday for the remaining victim, said Bilal Faizi, a provincial emergency service spokesman.
The incident drew widespread condemnation online over what many called a slow response by emergency services.
On Sunday, the National Disaster Management Authority had warned of potential hazards and advised people against crossing rivers and streams.


Dalai Lama expected to reveal succession plan during 90th birthday celebrations

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama (L) attends a Long Life Prayer offering ceremony at the Main Tibetan Temple.
Updated 50 min 43 sec ago
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Dalai Lama expected to reveal succession plan during 90th birthday celebrations

  • Nobel laureate and one of the world’s most influential figures, the Dalai Lama turns 90 on Sunday
  • Spokesman of Tibetan government-in-exile says a statement by Dalai Lama expected this week

NEW DELHI: The Dalai Lama announced on Monday that he was preparing to share details about his succession, as followers gathered to attend a public ceremony ahead of his 90th birthday celebrations in Dharamshala in northern India.

The 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism, has been living in India since 1959, after he fled Tibet with thousands of others following a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

His residence is in Dharamshala, a town in the state of Himachal Pradesh, which also hosts the Tibetan government-in-exile.

A Nobel peace laureate and one of the world’s most influential figures, the Dalai Lama will turn 90 on Sunday.

“The rest of my life I will dedicate ... for the benefit of others, as much as possible,” he told his followers through a translator as they offered prayers for his long life.

“There will be some kind of a framework within which we can talk about the continuation of the institution of the Dalai Lamas.”

When a Dalai Lama dies, Tibetan Buddhists believe he is reincarnated.

Senior monks and members of the Tibetan government-in-exile search for the child who is the reincarnation, relying on dreams and visions, rituals at sacred lakes, signs at the Dalai Lama’s death, and other omens.

“For the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it’s not about succession, it’s about reincarnation,” Tenzin Lekshay, spokesperson of the Tibetan government-in-exile, told Arab News.

“There’ll be a written statement by his holiness on July 2.”

The 14th Dalai Lama was 2 years old when a search party decided he was the 14th reincarnation of Tibet’s spiritual leader.

Over the years, he has indicated that the continuation of the Dalai Lama institution was ultimately up to the Tibetan people and if they no longer found it relevant, it could cease to exist, and there would be no 15th Dalai Lama.

“His holiness has said many times also that if the Tibetan people wish the Dalai Lama institution to remain, then the Dalai Lama institution will remain,” Lekshay said.

In his autobiography published in March 2025, the Dalai Lama said he had been receiving petitions requesting that the lineage be carried on, and that when he turns 90, he would “consult the high lamas of the Tibetan religious traditions as well as the Tibetan public, and if there is a consensus that the Dalai Lama institution should continue.”

If they decide in favor, “then formal responsibility for the recognition of the 15th Dalai Lama should rest with the Garden Phodrang Trust (the office of the Dalai Lama).”


Law firm that helped ban pro-Palestine protests on UK campus assisting other universities

Updated 30 June 2025
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Law firm that helped ban pro-Palestine protests on UK campus assisting other universities

  • Shakespeare Martineau LLP helped Cardiff University obtain 12-month ban on protests
  • Students, staff face unlimited fines, up to 2 years in prison amid ‘chilling precedent for academic institutions’

LONDON: A law firm in the UK that helped a university ban pro-Palestine protests on campus has been assisting other higher education institutions considering legal action against their students.

Shakespeare Martineau LLP represented Cardiff University in a case that resulted in a year-long ban on unauthorized campus protests from June.

The case could result in unlimited fines for staff and students found in breach of the injunction, as well as prison terms of up to two years.

Those wishing to hold protests on Cardiff’s campus will be required to apply for permission up to three weeks in advance.

Earlier this year, similar 12-month injunctions were granted to two colleges at Cambridge University

The Guardian reported on Monday that the law firm promoted the type of injunction, known as a “newcomer injunction” because it can be used “against persons unknown,” to other universities during a webinar held in October.

According to a freedom of information act obtained in conjunction with Liberty Investigates, it was found that representatives of Reading, Exeter, Northumbria, Hertfordshire, Birkbeck, Bath Spa and Liverpool John Moores universities registered for the webinar.

The Guardian reported that lawyers acting in the case against Cardiff warned that the injunction was too broad and could affect industrial action.

A UN watchdog, the newspaper reported, said the move is a “flagrant violation of international human rights law,” while Gina Romero, UN special rapporteur for freedom of assembly, said: “Profiting from the … curtailing of human rights is despicable.”

A spokesperson for Shakespeare Martineau said the injunction relates to “unlawful encampments,” and “lawful” protest would not be affected.

Smita Jamdar, head of education at Shakespeare Martineau, said: “Universities are dealing with complex situations on campus every single day. Understandably, many institutions are seeking guidance on how to manage a whole host of situations effectively and safely, while upholding the law and balancing the rights and freedoms of the whole campus community.”

But the European Legal Support Centre called the use of the injunctions a “chilling precedent for academic institutions,” adding that they are “legally complex and financially impractical for affected students to challenge in court.”

Last week, England’s Office for Students warned universities against “sweeping” limits on protest in a new set of guidelines due to take effect in August.


Most Filipinos in favor of rejoining ICC, study shows

Updated 30 June 2025
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Most Filipinos in favor of rejoining ICC, study shows

  • Philippines withdrew from the ICC in 2019 under ex-president Rodrigo Duterte
  • 57 percent of respondents support rejoining the court, while 37 percent are against it

MANILA: The majority of Filipinos support the Philippines rejoining the International Criminal Court, the results of a new opinion poll showed on Monday.

The Philippines withdrew from the ICC in 2019 under ex-president Rodrigo Duterte, as the court’s prosecutors began to look into his “war on drugs” campaign in 2016-22, which they estimate has resulted in the extrajudicial killings of 30,000 Filipinos.

Despite the Philippines’ withdrawal, the court has issued an arrest warrant against Duterte, as it keeps jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed while a country was a member.

The current administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. complied with the arrest warrant and Duterte has been in ICC custody since March, awaiting trial. The Marcos’s spokesperson, Claire Castro, said earlier this month that he was also “open to talking about” rejoining the ICC.

The move would be supported by 57 percent of Filipinos, according to the latest survey by OCTA Research.

“A clear 57 percent of Filipinos support the Philippines rejoining the ICC. In contrast, 37 percent are opposed, and 6 percent remain undecided, indicating broad, though not unanimous, public backing for renewed engagement,” the Quezon City-based polling and research firm said in its report.

The study was conducted between April 20 and April 24, on 1,200 respondents in Metro Manila, Balance Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

In Mindanao, where Duterte traces his political roots and despite detention won the mayoral election last month, the support for rejoining the ICC was the lowest.

“In Metro Manila, Balance Luzon, and the Visayas, at least 60 percent of respondents express support,” the OCTA Research report said. “In Mindanao, however, is an exception — with only 30 percent supporting the move and 66 percent expressing opposition, the highest rate of opposition recorded across regions.”

The highest rate of support for reengagement with the ICC was among people aged 25-34, with 62 percent of them in favor of the move, while the lowest support was among those aged 45-54, at 50 percent.

Duterte’s arrest has likely contributed to awareness about the ICC across the Philippines, with 85 percent of adult Filipinos claiming to have seen, read, or heard about the court and only 13 percent reporting being unaware of it.

“This widespread awareness sets the stage for significant national conversations on justice, accountability, and the Philippines’ potential reengagement with the ICC,” OCTA Research said.

“Awareness levels are consistently high nationwide. In Metro Manila, 89 percent of respondents indicated familiarity with the ICC, followed closely by Balance Luzon (86 percent), Mindanao (85 percent), and the Visayas (77 percent).”