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.”

 


UK watchdog announces probe into Prince Harry charity

Updated 51 min 31 sec ago
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UK watchdog announces probe into Prince Harry charity

  • The watchdog added that it would be examining whether the charity’s current and former trustees had “fulfilled their duties and responsibilities under charity law“
  • The row at Sentebale escalated on Sunday after its chairperson Sophie Chandauka accused the prince of “bullying“

LONDON: The UK’s charity watchdog on Thursday opened a probe into Sentebale, the African organization co-founded by Prince Harry, after a bitter boardroom row led King Charles III’s younger son to step down as patron.
“After a period of assessing the initial concerns raised with the Commission, the regulator informed the charity on 2 April 2025 it has opened a regulatory compliance case,” the Charity Commission said in a statement.
The watchdog added that it would be examining whether the charity’s current and former trustees had “fulfilled their duties and responsibilities under charity law.”
The row at Sentebale escalated on Sunday after its chairperson Sophie Chandauka accused the prince of “bullying” and being involved in a “cover up.”

Earlier, Harry and Sentebale’s co-founder, Lesotho’s Prince Seeiso, announced their departure from the charity they established in 2006, following a “devastating” dispute between trustees and Chandauka.
Relations with Chandauka, who was appointed in 2023, “broke down beyond repair,” they said in a joint statement last week, prompting trustees to leave and demand that Chandauka resign.
Harry founded the charity in honor of his mother, Princess Diana, with Seeiso to help young people with HIV and AIDS in Lesotho and later Botswana.
The latest accusations are a fresh blow for the prince, who kept up only a handful of his private patronages including with Sentebale after a dramatic split with the British royals in 2020.
While Harry was integral to the founding vision of the charity, to which he once said he was “committed for the rest of my life,” Chandauka has said “Sentebale has a future” beyond the prince.
Harry chose the name Sentebale as a tribute to Diana, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997 when the prince was just 12. It means “forget me not” in the Sesotho language and is also used to say goodbye.


Thousands of innovators gather in New Delhi for India’s largest startup event

Updated 03 April 2025
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Thousands of innovators gather in New Delhi for India’s largest startup event

  • With 160,000 startups, India is world’s third-largest startup ecosystem after US, China
  • Startup Mahakumbh 2025 focuses on AI, cybersecurity, health, energy, gaming, space tech

NEW DELHI: India’s largest startup event began in New Delhi on Thursday, bringing together thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders from across the country and abroad.

Dubbed Startup Mahakumbh, the expo is organized by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, and the Indian government’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade.

Around 3,000 startups are participating in the three-day event at Bharat Mandapam — the venue of the 2023 G20 summit — where they are presenting their innovations across sectors including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, health, biotechnology, energy, gaming, finance, mobility, defense, agri tech and space tech.

Jitin Prasada, the minister of state for commerce, industry, electronics and IT, opened the expo, saying that India had strong policies in place to support the development of the startup ecosystem.

“India is ready for the challenge. We have the talent, we have the skills. We have an agile government,” he told the participants.

“We’re going to showcase to the world what India is about. Together with the government, the stakeholders, and you above all in front of me, together we will collaborate, work for a better, stronger, creative, and more vibrant India.”

The number of companies participating in Startup Mahakumbh has doubled from its inaugural edition last year. It will also feature exhibitors and delegates from 50 countries, compared with about a dozen in 2024.

Sanjiv Singh, joint secretary at the DPIIT, told reporters: “At one end we will have a flying taxi made in India on display; at the other we have countries like Korea setting up a pavilion of 11 startups, and Nepal putting up the largest pavilion with one of its startups showcasing a two-stage rocket powered by sustainable hybrid propulsion rocket engines.

“The event will be a great opportunity to connect and collaborate.”

India has about 160,000 registered startups, according to DPIIT data. Among these, more than 100 have achieved unicorn status, which means they are valued at $1 billion or more.

With the rapid growth in the sector over the past few years — from 500 DPIIT-recognized startups in 2016 and fewer than 10 unicorns — India has emerged as the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, after the US and China.

Rajesh Nambiar, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies, said: “We also witnessed tech startup IPOs triple in 2024 compared to 2023, so that’s a lot of momentum. It’s not just about the rising momentum. It is compounding year on year, which gives us the confidence that this is going to be something which will be a huge differentiator for us as a nation.

“Last year we added the second highest number of unicorns globally, which is a huge testimony for India as a country. Also in 2024, the tech sector contributed a staggering $283 billion in terms of the broader contribution, and this accounts roughly for about 7.3 percent of GDP.”

The development of tech-based startups, Nambiar told the Startup Mahakumbh audience, will drive India’s technological sovereignty.

“For India to be truly emerging as a developed nation, we must achieve this tech sovereignty; a future where we are not just users of technology, but we are actually creators and builders of technology or transformative technology as we move forward,” he said.

“This also means that we are leading in patents, not just platforms; we would be shaping standards, not just following them. We are going to be owning IP (intellectual property) that drives global progress, and the deep tech ecosystem will be the fulcrum of this transformation.”


Tesla sales fall again in Germany amid Musk backlash

Updated 03 April 2025
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Tesla sales fall again in Germany amid Musk backlash

  • Tesla’s sales have been slowing worldwide as Musk faces anger over his role overseeing cuts to the federal workforce
  • Musk has faced particular hostility in Germany after he vocally backed the far-right Alternative for Germany

FRANKFURT: Tesla sales plunged again in Germany last month even as the broader electric car market rebounded, data showed Thursday, the latest sign of a growing backlash against billionaire owner Elon Musk.
Just 2,229 of Tesla’s electric vehicles (EVs) were registered in March, about 43 percent fewer compared with the same period last year, the KBA federal transport authority said.
Overall electric vehicle registrations rose 35.5 percent in Germany year-on-year as sales continue to rebound from very low levels seen in early 2024.
Like elsewhere in Europe, EV sales slowed in Germany last year against a weak economic backdrop, with the situation worsened in the region’s biggest auto market by the withdrawal of government subsidies.
Tesla’s sales have been slowing worldwide as Musk faces anger over his role overseeing cuts to the federal workforce in US President Donald Trump’s administration, and due to factory upgrades.
But he has faced particular hostility in Germany after he vocally backed the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) — which is shunned by mainstream parties — ahead of February elections.
Some German Tesla drivers have put “I bought this before Elon Went crazy” stickers on their vehicles, Teslas have been targeted in suspected arson attacks in Berlin and Dresden, and protesters have staged demonstrations against the carmaker.
Over the first three months of the year Tesla registrations fell a whopping 62.2 percent compared to the same period in 2024, the KBA said.
Overall in March, the number of new vehicle registrations in Germany fell to 253,497, down 3.9 percent from a year earlier, the latest sign of weakness in the market.
German auto manufacturers are now facing another headache after Trump slapped 25-percent tariffs on car imports into the United States.


Eid break brings Indonesian capital respite from notoriously polluted air

Updated 03 April 2025
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Eid break brings Indonesian capital respite from notoriously polluted air

  • Millions of people traveled to their hometowns for Eid, leaving streets of the capital empty
  • Jakarta regularly records above 100 air quality index and ‘unhealthy’ levels of PM 2.5

JAKARTA: The long Eid Al-Fitr break in commercial activities has cleared the skies over Indonesia’s notoriously polluted capital, offering a respite for residents who throughout the year are regularly exposed to some of the world’s most toxic air.

The Jakarta metropolitan area — home to about 31 million people — recorded “good” and “moderate” air on Thursday afternoon, with an air quality index reading between 22 and 76, according to data released by the Ministry of Environment.

The numbers showed a marked improvement for a city that regularly records above 100 AQI and “unhealthy” levels of PM 2.5, a measurement of particulate matter — solid and liquid particles suspended in the air that can be inhaled and cause respiratory diseases.

“These ‘good’ and ‘moderate’ levels of air quality are possibly due to a drop in public activities during Eid holidays, as there has been a marked decrease in transportation and industrial activities in the city,” Edward Nixon Pakpahan, air quality protection and management director at the ministry, told Arab News.

“We are working to keep the air quality index for Jakarta metropolitan area below 100.”

Jakarta residents have long complained about the health risks posed by persistent air pollution from heavy traffic, industrial emissions and coal-fired power plants, which have consistently placed Jakarta among the 10 most polluted cities globally.

The streets of Jakarta and its satellite cities have been mostly empty since last weekend, after millions of people traveled back to their hometowns for Eid holidays.

Across the city, those who did not travel for Eid have been making the most of the rare good weather and clear skies.

“I love it. The sky is blue and the weather isn’t miserable or scorching hot,” Jodi Baskoro, a 40-year-old office worker based in Jakarta, told Arab News.

“It’s such great weather for those who are making their way around Jakarta to visit their families for Eid.”


Amnesty International urges Belgium to end violations of asylum-seekers’ rights

Updated 03 April 2025
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Amnesty International urges Belgium to end violations of asylum-seekers’ rights

  • ‘Belgium is actively manufacturing a homelessness crisis. Without urgent intervention, this crisis will deepen’
  • Organization interviewed people, including Palestinians, navigating country’s asylum system

LONDON: Amnesty International on Thursday condemned Belgium for denying asylum applications from thousands of people, “forcing them into homelessness.”

Amnesty accused the EU member of “discrimination against racialized single men,” which has “impacted the lives, dignity and human rights of people seeking asylum.”

It added: “To date, national and international courts have ordered the authorities in Belgium to provide reception more than 12,000 times.

“Belgium has consistently refused to fully comply with the judgments, despite these being final and legally binding.”

Amnesty interviewed people who have experienced homelessness while navigating Belgium’s asylum system since 2021. Many said as well as being denied accommodation, access to healthcare is a major problem.

Sayed, who traveled from Afghanistan, spent time in a squat in Brussels with other homeless migrants from October 2022 to 2023.

“In the beginning it was good enough, there were toilets and showers, and some people brought food in the afternoon,” he told Amnesty.

“But slowly it was turned completely into a graveyard. Showers and toilets were broken, with the passage of time … Pee was coming up to the place where you were sleeping.”

He said ordinary Belgians and local charities had been welcoming, but the state had not been. “People were feeling our pain, but not the authorities,” he added.

Palestinian refugees Ahmet and Baraa, who fled the war Gaza last year, were also forced to live in a squat.

“It was cold … You can be starving, and no one will know about it. No one will help you,” Ahmet said. “I lost a lot of relatives and friends (in Gaza). My mother is severely wounded, my brothers and sister as well. I was thinking in their shoes: I just need to survive.”

Baraa said he just wants a “simple life, basic rights, a job, food in (my) stomach and just to live like a normal person. We had a life back in Gaza, but we just lacked the security and the safety there and that is why we left. That is why we came here: to find a safe place.”

Amnesty said it fears that Belgium will continue to exacerbate the problem after its new government pledged to adopt “the strictest migration policy possible.”

Amnesty urged the government “to immediately provide sufficient reception places and ensure that all people seeking asylum are given adequate housing.

“They must ensure people have access to adequate healthcare services, including specialized psychological support, regardless of their housing situation.”

It also called on the EU to “ensure that Belgium restores compliance” with its legal obligations to asylum-seekers, “including by launching infringement procedures if necessary.”

Eva Davidova, spokeswoman for Amnesty International Belgium, said the country’s “failure to provide reception is not due to a lack of resources but a lack of political will.”

She added: “The previous government had ample time to resolve the homelessness situation and failed to do so.

“The current government is more concerned with reducing the number of people who receive asylum rather than addressing the very real harm inflicted on people seeking asylum currently in the country. 

“The scale and duration of Belgium’s persistent disregard for court orders raises questions as to how rights holders can have any hope of holding the Belgian government accountable, especially marginalized and racialized persons like those affected by this situation.”

Davidova continued: “Belgium is actively manufacturing a homelessness crisis which is bound to have a lasting adverse impact on people’s lives and dignity, while civil society is left to pick up the pieces.

“Without urgent intervention, this crisis will deepen, further violating asylum-seekers’ rights and eroding both the country’s and the EU’s commitment to human rights.”