BACKGROUND
HELEN DAVIS
Foreign Correspondent
T
he 21-month-old, $15
million investigation
into the Lockerbie
disaster is being wound
down and those responsible
for the bombing of Pan Am
flight 103 are now more like-
ly than ever to escape
punitive action, according to
sources in London this week.
They reveal that in-
competence, rivalry between
police investigators of
various countries involved
and interference by foreign
intelligence services have
combined to obstruct the in-
vestigation, which has now
"almost ground to a halt."
The recent warming of re-
lations between Washington
and Damascus is also con-
sidered a factor, with the
U.S. reluctant to press the
Syrians on their role in the
terrorist action.
A total of 270 passengers
and crew, most of them
Americans, died after an ex-
plosive device, concealed in a
cassette player, exploded in
the baggage hold and
destroyed the plane over the
Scottish town of Lockerbie
on December 21, 1988, about
30 minutes after take-off
from London's Heathrow
Airport for New York.
It is widely believed that
the atrocity was perpetrated
by followers of Ahmed
Jibril's Syrian-based Pop-
ular Front for the Libera-
tion-General Command
(PFLP-GC), on behalf of the
Iranian regime.
Western intelligence
sources say they have
evidence that Mr. Jibril was
paid up to $10 million by
former Iranian Interior Min-
ister All Akbar Mohtashemi
to stage the bombing, ap-
parently in reprisal for the
downing of an Iranian air-
bus by an American warship
during the Gulf War in July
1988.
Only 35 of the original
force of 130 detectives now
remain at the international
investigation center which
was set up in the Scottish
town, while fewer than 10 of-
ficers in West Germany,
The Second
Lockerbie
Disaster
The first disaster was the terrorist action
that downed Pan Am 103 last year; the
second is the botched investigation.
where the bomb is believed
to have been assembled, are
still assigned to the case.
Scottish police involved in
the inquiry complain that
they have been hindered by
West German police and
"foreign intelligence agen-
cies," including the CIA,
which, they claim, "denied
them access to the man they
believe built the bomb," who
has been identified as Mar-
wan Khreesat.
The Lockerbie investiga-
tion was characterized by
"blunders and interference"
almost from the outset.
Delays by West German
police in passing on vital
evidence meant that an op-
portunity to arrest one of the
key suspects in Malta was
lost. British police sources
also claimed that two at-
tempts to speak to Khreesat
was blocked by both the CIA
and the Mukhabarat, Jor-
dan's intelligence service.
The British head of the in-
vestigation flew to the Jor-
danian capital of Amman
last year to interview Mr.
Khreesat under Mukhabarat
supervision, but the meeting
was canceled at the last min-
ute. Several months later, an-
other senior investigator
visited Washington to meet
Mr. Khreesat's Jordanian
intelligence handler, but
that meeting, too, was
canceled at short notice.
Mr. Khreesat, a 45-year-
old Jordanian explosives ex-
pert who owns a television
repair shop in Amman, is
believed to have been an in-
formant for Western intel-
ligence and was used to
penetrate the Palestinian
group suspected of in-
volvement in the bombing.
He was arrested in the
West German town of Neuss
in late October and, inex-
plicably, released on
November 10, just two
weeks after his arrest and
seven weeks before the
disaster. At that point,
Marwan Khreesat disap-
peared from view.
What made his release so
puzzling was the fact that he
was known by German
police to have constructed
the ammonium nitrate
bomb, concealed in a Philips
record player, that exploded
on an Israeli airliner
minutes after it had taken
off from Rome in 1972.
What compounded the
puzzle is that the German
police had been discreetly
following Khreesat on shop-
ping expeditions around
Neuss and Frankfurt, where
they noticed that he was
stocking up on clocks, bat-
teries, electrical switches
and glue.
But what made the release
quite inexplicable was that
when Mr. Khreesat was ar-
rested, police stumbled on a
bizarre haul in the trunk of
his Taunus automobile: a
black Toshiba radio-cassette
recorder stuffed with some
300 grams of the virtually
undetectable Czech-made
Semtex explosive and a
barometric triggering device
designed to detonate at high
altitude.
The device is believed to be
identical to the bomb that
blew Pan Am 103 out of the
sky and is now thought to be
one of eight constructed by
Mr. Khreesat.
In their official report on
the crash, Scottish police
noted that "there can be
little doubt that Marwan
Abdel Khreesat is the bomb-
maker for the PFLP-GC,
that he was taken to West
Germany for that express
purpose, and there is a pos-
sibility that he prepared the
IED (improvised explosive
device) which destroyed PA
103." The report recom-
mended that he "be closely
questioned regarding his ac-
tivities with a view to
THE DETROIT. JEWISH NEWS
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