Libya: New evidence hits Lockerbie case - The Times, May 15
BY GILLIAN HARRIS, SCOTLAND CORRESPONDENT
THE prosecution case against the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing has suffered a serious setback with the emergence of fresh evidence that could undermine the Crown case.
A report by an explosives expert is believed to conclude that the 1lb Semtex bomb that exploded on board PanAm Flight 103 was attached to the inside of the cargo hold and not in a radio-cassette recorder in the luggage hold, as the prosecution alleges. The findings will make it difficult for the prosecution to establish a link between the two Libyan defendants and the explosion which killed 270 people.
The report, presented to the prosecution just days before the trial began, casts doubt on when and where the bomb was placed on the New York-bound Boeing 747. The Crown case states that the two Libyans placed the bomb on a plane at Luqa airport in Malta, acting as security staff for Libyan Arab Airlines. The prosecution claims that the bomb travelled from Malta to Frankfurt where it was transferred to Heathrow on a feeder flight, and then placed on Pan Am 103. All luggage from Frankfurt to New York was placed together in an aluminium container. But the report is understood to suggest that such a tiny bomb would not have destroyed an entire aircraft if it had been in the container and it must have been closer to the aircraft's outside.
If the device was not in the container and cannot be traced back to Malta, the Crown has no substantial evidence to link the two Libyans with the Lockerbie bomb.
The report was commissioned by one of the Crown's own "star witnesses", Edwin Bollier, whose Swiss electronics company, Mebo, is alleged to have made the timer which detonated the bomb.
The Crown must now decide whether to call M Bollier to give evidence. It was hoped that he would establish the important link between the accused, Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, 48, and Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, 44, and the bomb's timing device.
Sources close to the trial suggest that the prosecution's request for a 12-day adjournment, granted last week, was timed to allow lawyers to consider the report and not, as claimed, to allow them to interview defence witnesses.
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