Archive: how The Times reported the disaster | Archive: eyewitness

Who did it?
From the moment Pan Am Flight 103 was blown apart in the skies above Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, the question of who planned the attack and who carried it out challenged investigators, political leaders, security agencies and conspiracy theorists the world over. Two Libyans were eventually charged, and one imprisoned. But doubts remain over whether they were the sole instigators of the attack, and if so, whether some of the evidence against them was manufactured.

Who was in charge of the case?
Last week Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, the former Lord Advocate, who was in charge of the investigation, spoke candidly to The Times about his role in the affair, the reliability of the Crown’s case, and whether, looking back, the Scottish police had been right to target the two Libyan accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah and Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi. He addressed the key criticisms made by those who say the case was flawed.

Were Iran and Syria involved?
For the first 18 months of the inquiry, the Scottish police were convinced that the Palestinian terror group the PFLP-GC were the perpetrators, perhaps sponsored by the Iranians in revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner earlier in 1988. Only weeks before the Pan Am explosion, German police had seized a Palestinian gang after a bomb attack in Berlin, and found Toshiba cassettes adapted as bombs, which were identical to the one whose fragments had been found near Lockerbie.

Timeline: al-Megrahi and the Lockerbie bombing

The events from December 1988 when Flight 103 was blown up until al-Megrahi’s plea for relase on compassionate grounds

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Background

• Lockerbie, 20 years on - Q&A

Related Links

• The night death fell from above

• Bomber was 'sacrificial lamb for Libya'

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• PICTURES: Lockerbie

Lord Fraser does not discount the involvement of other states, but he points out that no definitive evidence has been produced to link them to the attack. The Libyans, on the other hand, were traced through the diligence of Scottish detectives, who managed to identify the manufacturers of clothing found in the suspect suitcase that had held the bomb. By proving that the clothing had been bought in Malta, and then establishing that the purchaser was al-Megrahi, they laid the foundations of the Crown case. “For me that was the most significant breakthrough,” Lord Fraser says now.

Could the CIA have planted the timer fragment that pointed to Libya?
The discovery of a fragment of circuit board from a timer made by a Swiss company with links to Libya was critical to the prosecution. But accounts of how, where and by whom it was found varied. The original fragment was found several miles from the wreckage, and some weeks after the disaster.

It was not until very much later that the CIA claimed to have identified it and matched it with a circuit board manufactured by Mebo of Zurich, a company run by Edwin Bollier, who had supplied timers to the Libyan Government. Some experts have argued that the find was just a bit too convenient to the US investigators, since, by targeting the Libyans, they could avoid falling out with Iran and Syria, important allies at the time of the Gulf War. So could the CIA have planted the evidence? “I don’t know,” says Lord Fraser. “No one ever came to me and said, ‘Now we can go for the Libyans’, it was never as straightforward as that. The CIA was extremely subtle. For me the significant evidence came when the Scottish police made the connection with Malta.” Pressed for his own view, he cites a Scottish murder case, that of Patrick Meehan, in which, it was alleged, the prosecution case had been “improved” by the planting of evidence. Was there a similarity? “I don’t know,” he said again, “but if there was one witness I was not happy about, it was Mr Bollier, who was deeply unreliable.”

Was Tony Gauci, the Maltese shop owner, a reliable witness?
Controversy has always surrounded Mr Gauci, the owner of Mary’s House in Sliema, Malta, who identified al-Megrahi as the man who bought the clothes found in the wreckage. Over the years his accounts of that critical purchase have varied, and claims have been made, not only that he first identified a different shopper, but that he had been prompted by being shown photographs of al-Megrahi. Lord Fraser was quoted in newspaper articles in 2005 as saying that Mr Gauci was “not the full shilling”. But Mr Gauci also remembered something that no one had mentioned: that he persuaded the Arab to buy an umbrella. Checks revealed that one umbrella in the wreckage was bomb-scarred.

Was there a conspiracy?
Tam Dalyell, the former MP, has argued that the CIA may have known about the attack beforehand. Lord Fraser rejects that. “I told Tam Dalyell: if there was a conspiracy, then I am in it up to the neck. I have to be involved. The only other possibility is that I have been so naive that bits of evidence have been planted, and I have swallowed it hook, line and sinker. But four other Lord Advocates have also examined the evidence and they have all concurred with it.”

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