What if...?
Conspiracy
theories on the Lockerbie Case
Scottish and American prosecutors say they have no doubt about the guilt
of the two Libyans charged in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Yet, as
in other case involving international relations and terrorism, there is
a host of alternative theories. Some of the more provocative, published
widely in the British and American press and on Internet sites, rival
the conspiracy theories surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination.
IRAN
The theory which has gathered most weight is the one which claims that
Iran, rather than Libya, was behind the attack. That scenario says the
bombing was retaliation for the 1988 downing of an Iranian airliner
by a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf, in which 290 people died.
A TV program which aired on Sunday the 4th of June 2000 in the United
States revealed details about the alleged involvement of the Iranian
government in the Lockerbie disaster. The CBS current affairs program
60 minutes carried a report about an Iranian intelligence service defector
who says that the bombing of a Pan Am aircraft over Scotland was devised
by Iran to take revenge on the United States after U.S. Navy vessel
accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus in July 1988, killing 290.
The defector, Ahmad Behbahani, says he has documents in his possession
that prove that his Islamic fundamentalist country and not Libya was
behind the bombing.
Before the airing of this programme, it was already being alleged
that Iran contracted out the Pan Am bombing to a financially strapped
Syrian-based Palestinian group, the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).
German police raids on PFLP-GC hide-outs in 1988 and 1989 yielded information
the group was targeting a U.S.-bound flight from Frankfurt and turned
up bombs that appeared to match the Lockerbie bomb.
"It's very difficult to believe there were two separate operations targeting
the same flight,'' said Cannistraro, who believes the PFLP-GC handed off
the bombing to Libya after the raids compromised its operation.
THE CIA
One
such theory, denied by Washington, claims U.S. intelligence agents were
smoothing the way for smugglers of Middle Eastern drugs to use Pan Am
flights in exchange for information on American hostages in Lebanon. The
terrorists allegedly slipped in the bomb with a covert drug shipment.
Vincent Cannistraro, who headed the early CIA inquest into the bombing,
calls that theory "a tissue of fabrication,'' which he claims was planted
by a private investigator to avoid insurance claims.
THE PALESTINIANS
Another shadowy figure who has been linked to Lockerbie is Mohammed Abu
Talb, who is serving a life sentence in Sweden for bombing American and
Jewish targets in the Netherlands and Denmark. Abu Talb was sighted in
Malta in the weeks before the bombing and Swedish police found a diary
in his apartment with the date Dec. 21 circled.
Under Scottish law, the two Libyan defendants in the Lockerbie case
would go free if their lawyers can raise the slightest doubt for the judges
that someone else was responsible.
Special