Described by intelligence agencies as a ruthless killer with a cold and menacing air, Mohammed Abu Talb has used many aliases during his long career in terrorism, including one in Arabic meaning “he who takes revenge”.

The Egyptian-born Palestinian was one of the original suspects in the Lockerbie bombing and is likely to become the focus of renewed interest after yesterday’s decision.

Now well into his fifties and 18 years into a life sentence in a Swedish prison, Talb has a long history of terrorism dating back to 1974, and comes from a family known for its activism.

His sister-in-law was shot dead trying to blow up a bus in Israel. One of several brothers is alleged to have become a bombmaker after learning how to in Syria.

Called as a prosecution witness during the eight-month trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, Talb denied planting the bomb, saying that at the time of the attack he was at home in Uppsala, Sweden, looking after his four children.

However, as recently as 2002, a year after Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted of the atrocity, internal CIA files named Talb as the real Lockerbie bomber.

To this day some intelligence officers – as well as his former colleagues – insist that it was Talb, not Megrahi, who smuggled the maroon Samsonite suitcase on to Flight 103.

After the bombing, the police investigation focused on the possible involvement of Syria and Iran and an organisation known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC), of which Talb was a member.

According to the theory, Iran ordered the bombing in revenge for the shooting down by the US of an Iranian Airbus A-300 six months before Lockerbie, in which 290 people were killed.

In October 1988, just two months before Lockerbie, German police smashed a PFLP-GC terrorist cell after raiding a flat that was used as a bombmaking factory.

Four devices, concealed with Toshiba radio-cassette recorders similar to those that contained the Lockerbie device, were recovered. However the group’s master bombmaker, a Jordanian called Marwan Khreesat, has always claimed that a fifth was removed before the raid. It was this bomb, it is claimed, that Talb smuggled on to Flight 103.

New evidence obtained by Megrahi’s lawyers is understood to include claims from Robert Baer, a retired CIA agent, who says that he has detailed proof of secret payments to Talb and other members of the cell in the days and months after Lockerbie.

Although it is not clear how much credence this information has been given by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, the documents state: “Both Talb and the PFLP-GC received substantial payments after the bombing – [Baer] has details of the bank accounts: $11m (£5.5m) to the PFLP-GC in Lausanne on 23.12.88 ; $500,000 (£250,000) to Talb 25.4.89 in Frankfurt.”

The documents add that both Talb and Hafez Dalkamoni, leader of the PFLP-GC cell, appeared in the Iranian Roll of Honour in 1990 “for great service to the Iranian Revolution”.

The circumstantial case against Talb was further bolstered in October 1989 when FBI agents raided his home in Sweden and found a quantity of clothing manufactured in Malta.

In his early statements to police, Tony Gauci, the shopkeeper who sold the clothing that was believed to have been wrapped around the bomb, suggested that the man who bought them bore a strong resemblance to Talb.

During the raid on Talb’s home investigators also found a calendar with a circle around the date of the bombing, December 21, 1988.

Talb, who claimed to have “retired” from terrorism in the early 1980s, is serving a life sentence for his role in a series of bombings in northern Europe in the mid1980s that left one person dead and dozens injured.

A spokeswoman for the Swedish Prison and Probation Service refused even to confirm that Talb was being held in the country. She said: “Under Swedish law I cannot tell you any specific details about any prison inmates.”

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