The Patsy: Lockerbie Enquiry Will Implicate Iran

The Sunday Telegraph today revives the allegation that Iran and not Libya was behind the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am flight 103.

"If the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is just, then the motivation almost certainly was that Libya, led by Col Muammar Gaddafi, wanted to strike against its then western enemies. But many relatives suspect it is more likely that Iran was seeking revenge for the shooting-down of Iran Air Flight 655, with the loss of 290 lives, by the USS Vincennes in July 1988 — just five months before Lockerbie. Iran did not accept America’s claim that it was a mistake."

Read more here

 In August 2009, the Times newspaper alleged that 'US Spies blamed Iran for Lockerbie bomb"

 "American intelligence documents blaming Iran for the Lockerbie bombing would have been produced in court if the Libyan convicted of Britain’s worst terrorist attack had not dropped his appeal... The cables, from the American Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), suggest that Iran was behind the attack on Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people in 1988, in response to the shooting down of an Iranian commercial airliner by the USS Vincennes, an American warship, five months earlier. One document that the defence team had planned to produce was a memo from the DIA dated September 24, 1989. It states: “The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar (Mohtashemi-Pur), the former Iranian minister of interior.“The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmad (Jabril), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) leader, for a sum of 1,000,000 US dollars... Robert Baer, a retired senior CIA agent who claims that Iran was behind the attack, has alleged that the Americans were wary of pursuing the country in case it disrupted oil supplies and damaged the economy."

 Read more here

Hugh Miles, writing in the Independent raised the question back in December 2008.

"If Megrahi didn't do it, who did? Some time ago suspicion fell on a gang headed by a convicted Palestinian terrorist named Abu Talb and a Jordanian triple agent named Marwan Abdel Razzaq Khreesat. Both were Iranian agents; Khreesat was also on the CIA payroll. Abu Talb was given lifelong immunity from prosecution in exchange for his evidence at the Lockerbie trial; Marwan Khreesat was released for lack of evidence by German police even though a barometric timer of the type used to detonate the bomb on Pan Am Flight 103 was found in his car when he was arrested.

Three months after the bombing, Dumfries and Galloway police published a report on Lockerbie that concluded: "There can be little doubt that Khreesat is the bomb-maker for the [Palestinian group] PFLP-GC, and there is a possibility he prepared the explosive device which destroyed Pan Am Flight 103. As such he should not be at liberty."

Not surprisingly, given the amount of skulduggery that has swirled around Lockerbie over the past 20 years, conspiracy theories related to the case have bloomed. Some believe that the CIA deliberately framed Libya so Syria would fight in the first Gulf War. Others suspect Lockerbie to be linked to drug smuggling, arms shipments and Iranian hostage negotiations."

Read more here.

Hugh Miles concludes "Short of an unexpected confession, Lockerbie will likely remain one of those great, unsolved political whodunnits, like the assassination of JFK."

Perhaps it will but somehow I don't think so. With diplomatic pressure and UN backed sanctions against Iran's nuclear programme failing to deliver the goods, I wonder whether new Lockerbie 'revelations' will provide the justification for a military response from Israel and/or the USA?

In Newsweek last month, David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary, was interviewed about Lockerbie, Iran and Palestine. The article is headed,  "Iran has a very clear choice. Britain's foreign secretary on nuclear proliferation and the Lockerbie bomber"  In a comment following the article someone has left this prediction: 

"America doesn't have to worry about Iran, Israel will handle that little problem for us! Tick, tock less than two years and counting, those bunker busters we sold them were a bargin and will make for the sweetest of party favors for the coming events! hopefully the Israelis will kill a minimum of 5 million to make a sort of statement." 

And Saudi Arabia has, according to Aljazeera and Iranian Press TV, given Israel permission to cross its air space when (not if) they attack Iran.

Watch this space.