Middle East Intelligence Bulletin
Jointly published by the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon and the Middle East Forum
  Vol. 2   No. 11 Table of Contents
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December 2000 


Lockerbie: The Syrian Connection
by Ian Ferguson

Ian Ferguson is an award winning freelance journalist with over 25 years experience. He has reported on international terrorism from around the globe, including many Middle Eastern and European groups, some of whom are linked to the Lockerbie trial. He recently coproduced a major documentary for American Radioworks and NPR investigating many of the unanswered questions in the Lockerbie investigation.

On October 9, day 58 of the trial of two Libyans suspected of masterminding the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland which killed 270 people, Colin Boyd QC, Scotland's top law officer made the following statement to the judges at Camp Zeist, Holland.

My Lords, on the afternoon of Wednesday, the 4th of October, the Crown received certain information from a foreign country, not the United States, which is relevant to the evidence in this case. I was shown this information on Thursday and instructed that inquiries be carried out. Certain inquiries were carried out at a very senior level on Friday, and the matter reviewed by me with Crown counsel and others over this weekend.

The matters raised by this information are of some complexity and considerable sensitivity. They relate not to the Crown case, but to the defense case. Inquiries are continuing, but it is likely, though not certain, that I will conclude that the information ought to be disclosed to the defense. However, there are a number of difficult issues, which require to be resolved before any disclosure is possible. I regret, My Lords, that the sensitivity of these inquiries is such that I am unable to give any further explanation at this stage.

For three weeks the mystery of this latest development deepened until details began to leak. The country which supplied new information to the prosecutors which resurrected "the Syrian connection" was Norway, a country hitherto unconnected with the Pan Am bombing.

Lockerbie wreckage
Wreckage from the Lockerbie bombing

In the early days of the investigation, from 1989-1990, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a Damascus-based terrorist group led by Ahmad Jibril, were considered to be the main suspects. It was believed then that Jibril's group was contracted to blow up an American aircraft at the behest of the Iranian leadership, who swore revenge against American after the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus over the Persian Gulf in July 1998. The US Government claimed it was a mistake, but inflicted further humiliation upon the Iranians by haggling over compensation and bestowing a medal on the ship's commander, Capt. Will Rodgers.

Despite hard intelligence that the PFLP-GC carried out the bombing of Pan Am 103, in 1991 both the US and UK authorities issued indictments against two Libyan nationals, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi. Lawyers acting for the accused at the trial lodged a special defense of incrimination, citing members of the PFLP-GC and an Egyptian-born terrorist, Muhammad Abu Talb, who is currently serving a life sentence in Sweden for carrying out a bomb attack in Denmark.

The new information which caused an almost four week adjournment in the Lockerbie trial was brought to the attention of the Scottish prosecutors by Palestinian and Syrian asylum seekers who had fled Syria for Norway. Among the defectors were the son and widow of a leading PFLP-GC bombmaker, Mobdi Goben.

Goben, a trained chemical engineer, was known as the "professor" because of his expertise with explosives. He was hunted by the police forces of several countries and narrowly escaped capture in 1989, when he managed to flee a PFLP-GC safe house in Krusevac in the former Yugoslavia, eventually arriving in Syria, where he remained until his death in 1996. Before he died, though, disillusioned by his treatment in Syria and his financial situation, he committed to tape a narrative which has become known as the Goben Memorandum.

Thirty-six typed pages of the memorandum surfaced in Norway and are now in the hands of both prosecutors and defense lawyers. In it, Goben describes the exploits and inner workings of the PFLP-GC and lays the blame of the Pan Am bombing firmly at the door of the PFLP-GC. The Memorandum claims that the explosives that blew up Pan Am 103, killing 259 passengers and crew and a further 11 on the ground, were secreted in the luggage of a young Lebanese-American passenger, Khaled Jaafar. According the Goben, the explosives were placed in Jaafar's baggage without his knowledge by Abu Elias, another bombmaker within the PFLP-GC.

These claims, if verified, could have the most damaging effect on the prosecution's case which has been been based mainly on circumstantial evidence presented to the judges. The Court has taken the Goben Memorandum seriously enough to grant the defense a motion for the issuing of a "Letter of Request" to be sent to the Government of Syria. This process could be lengthy and the judges will have to weigh the need for a speedy trial against the prospect that the Goben memorandum could provide exculpatory evidence presented on behalf of the accused Libyans.

Lawyers acting for Fhimah unsuccessfully made a submission of "No case to answer" on behalf of their client. In these legal motions the judges look only at the quantity of the evidence and not the reliability of the evidence or the credibility of the witnesses who gave testified. Interestingly, during the legal submission, the prosecution once again had to admit that in many crucial areas they lack hard evidence and will rely on inferences drawn from a "large body of circumstantial evidence." One of the last prosecution witnesses to testify was Pierre Salinger, an American journalist and former press secretary of US President John F. Kennedy, who at the end of his testimony had the following altercation with the judges:

Lord Sutherland: Thank you very much, Mr. Salinger. That's all.

Salinger: That's all? You're not letting me tell the truth. Wait a minute. They're not letting me tell the truth. I know exactly who did it. I know exactly how it was done. You have to do that here.

Lord Sutherland: Mr. Salinger, we will run the court in accordance with our normal principles. We rely upon counsel in this court to ask the questions that they think are relevant, and we will deal with that information. If you wish to make a point somewhere, you may do so elsewhere, but I'm afraid you may not do so in this court.

Salinger, the former chief Foreign Correspondent of ABC News, has long held the view that Libya had nothing to do with the Pan Am bombing. The prosecution case ended on Monday November 20 and the defense case is scheduled to begin December 5. There is, however, mounting speculation that lawyers acting for Megrahi, whose defense will be heard first, may appeal to the court for further time in order to recover the full Goben memorandum from Syria.

Background

Suspicions about PFLP-GC involvement date back to the Fall of 1988, more than two months before the Pan Am bombing. The Israeli secret service, Mossad, had received intelligence that several known Palestinian terrorists were active in Germany, and that a possible target was an Israeli handball team in Dusseldorf. The Israelis tipped off the West Germans as far back as February 1988 and a major surveillance operation was mounted in several German cities. In September, the Germans received two further pieces of intelligence which forced them to take the Israeli tip more seriously.

Ahmad Jibril
Ahmad Jibril

First, a trusted associate of Jibril, Hafez Dalkammoni, was found to be using one of the apartments which they had been monitoring in Neuss. Dalkammoni had served time in an Israeli jail for terrorist operations and had been implicated in several other actions. He first came to the attention of the intelligence community when he was wounded and left behind after an abortive raid into Israel in 1969. He was later freed in a 1979 prisoner exchange and became a senior PFLP-GC commander.

Shortly thereafter, the West German federal police, the Budeskriminalmpt (BKA), raided an apartment at 28 Sandweg, Frankfurt and found a massive arms cache belonging to the PFLP-GC. Skilled anti-terrorist officers of the BKA stepped up their surveillance. The operation was given the codename "Herbslaub," or Autumn Leaves.

Dalkamoni, it would later emerge, was at the center of a complex network of three Palestinian families, some of whom lived in Uppsala, Sweden. In early autumn, officers from the BKA began observing an apartment in Isarstrasse, Neuss which was rented to Hashem Abassi, Dalkamoni's brother-in-law. Their surveillance paid off on October 13 when a middle-aged Jordanian well-known in international intelligence circles, Marwan Khreesat, joined Dalkamoni. Khreesat was a veteran bomb-maker with a history of attacks on civilian aircraft. A warrant had been issued for his arrest in Europe in connection with a planned attack on an El Al aircraft.

Khreesat had traveled to Germany on the Jibril's instructions to lend his bomb-making expertise. While under surveillance, the men mingled with the crowds of shoppers in a busy shopping mall in Neuss, buying batteries, switches and glue. In another department store, they bought mechanical and digital clocks.

The BKA monitored several phone calls made by the suspects, including one to Damascus from Khreesat. In one of the conversations, Khressat apparently referred to the design of the bombs: "I've made some changes to the medication. It's better and stronger than before." The team felt the target date of the operation was growing near, so they went into action. On October 26, 1988, raids on apartments and shops across Germany led to 16 arrests. At an apartment in Frankfurt, they discovered an arsenal including a rocket launcher, machine guns and explosives, as well as five kilos of semtex, the explosive believed to have downed Pan Am 103.

Dalkammoni and Khreesat were arrested in Neuss. When the BKA searched their Ford Taurus, they found a Toshiba cassette radio converted into a bomb. In a move which has continued to puzzle many experts, the BKA freed all but two of the 16 suspects, including Khreesat, within days for "lack of evidence." It is now known that Khreesat was a double agent working for Jordanian intelligence and that he made the radio cassette bombs. Only Dalkamoni and Ghadanfar, one of his lieutenants, were detained on terrorism charges.

And what were the movements of all those linked to the PFLP-GC network prior to the bombing of the Pan Am aircraft? Those questions were of crucial interest to the Lockerbie investigators. German police were delighted with their operation and thought they had foiled a terrorist attack. But they had overlooked a vital piece of information. Khreesat had disclosed that he had built not just the one bomb found in the Ford Taurus, but five. It was not until April 1989, following an anonymous tip-off, that the German police raided the basement of the fruit and vegetable shop in Neuss belonging to Dalkamoni's brother-in-law, Hashem Abassi. Inside they found two radio tuners and, afterwards, a television monitor.

The items were not immediately identified as bombs and were left unattended for several days on a desk at BKA headquarters in Meckenheim. One later exploded while it was being examined, killing a German bomb disposal officer.

If the fifth was, as the defense now believes, the Lockerbie bomb, then the numbers add up. Also, throughout October 1988, the main protagonists were very active. On October 12 and 13, the German police, during their surveillance of Dalkamoni, had noted a white Volvo with a Swedish number-plate outside Abassi's apartment.

The driver, Muhammad al-Moughrabi, was arrested and later confessed to running an illegal immigration racket. His sister, Jamila, was married to the above-mentioned Abu Talb. Abu Talb's movements could be traced to Cyprus around October 3, and to Malta between October 19 and 26 . Dalkamoni was also in Cyprus and Malta on the same dates as Abu Talb. Investigators linked the two to the Miska bakery on Malta, and to a group of Palestinians also believed to be members of the PFLP-GC.

These movements seem innocent enough, but for the records of the principle actors. Abu Talb received military training in the Soviet Union and Egypt in the 1970's and has since been linked to several terrorist organizations. He fought the Israelis in Lebanon in 1982 and entered Sweden after applying for a visa through its Damascus embassy in 1983, entered the country on a Moroccan passport, one of at least five false passports he possessed. Abu Talb is expected to be released from his life sentence next year in a deal struck with Swedish officials and directly related to his testimony at the Lockerbie trial. Hashem Abassi lives in Sweden and continues to protest his innocence.

Several former intelligence officers from the USA and Germany are convinced that the CIA along with the German Intelligence agency, BND, had more agents involved in the Autumn Leaves investigation than they have acknowledged to date.


Related Articles:

The Lockerbie Bombing Trial: Is Libya Being Framed?, Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, June 2000.
Susan Lindauer Deposition, Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, July 2000.
The Lockerbie Bombing Trial: New Problems in the Prosecution's Case, Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, September 2000.

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