Libya: Among law enforcement and legal experts who've looked closely at the Lockerbie case, there's an array of skeptics who question that the Libyans are the real culprits, or the most important ones. Those skeptics include several of the United Kingdom's top legal experts, and the Maltese and German governments. Malta and Germany are the other two countries where the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103 allegedly traveled before blowing up over Britain. Neither government subscribes to the charge against the Libyans.
Another prominent skeptic is Noel Koch, who headed anti-terrorism efforts for the US Defense Department from 1981 to 1986 and still works on contract for the US State Department as an anti-terrorism expert. "It was decided by the two governments, by the United States and the United Kingdom, that Libya had been responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103," Koch says. "I have never believed that, and I don't believe the case will stand against the Libyans."
The real bombers, in Koch's view? "My own conviction from the outset was that the Syrians and Iranians were pre-eminently responsible for this."
Back in the early years of the Lockerbie case, British and American investigators seemed to share that conviction. In 1989 and 1990, Lockerbie investigators were talking with near-certainty, not about a Libyan plot, but one by another set of suspects: the Iranian government headed by Ayatollah Khomeini, and a Syria-based terrorist organization headed by a notorious terrorist named Ahmed Jibril.
Full article:
americanradioworks.org |
