Non-Subscriber Extract
Defector claims debunked as Lockerbie trail hears evidence of bomb in suitcase
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16 June 2000 |
By Chris Yates
As the trial of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah entered its seventh week Monday, claims made by an Iranian defector that his country had been a key player in the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, continued to be debunked both by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Ahmed Behbahani, had told the CBS television programme 60 Minutes the previous weekend that he had himself discussed the bombing of the Pan Am jetliner with Ahmed Jibril, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP), and moreover had documentary proof of Iran’s complicity in what remains to this day one of the worst acts of terrorism aimed at civil aviation. But by Monday anonymous FBI and CIA officials had briefed Washington journalists that they had concluded the defector was an impostor who new very little of the inner workings of the Iranian intelligence service he had claimed to have been a member of.
The claims made in the 60 Minutes programme had been a cause of much consternation in Washington DC, and government officials have clearly gambled that by debunking the defector’s claims they will not influence the proceedings at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. But this is unlikely to be the last time the Behbahani story will be heard since rumour abounds that both agencies have had a vested interest in demolishing his story, a fact the Defence team representing Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah are likely to make capital from.
Throughout the seventh week of the trial the Prosecution has focused attention on the bomb, which is alleged to have been concealed in a Toshiba Bombeat radio-cassette player. Early in the week the Court was shown a picture of such a machine fitted with a timer, detonator and 400 grammes of Semtex plastic explosive. The device had been made by Alan Feraday, former head of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), following analysis of fragments of black plastic, magnetic metal, wire speaker mesh and a radio-cassette player manual found in clothing and suitcases strewn over the crash site.
Of particular interest was a minute remnant of green-coloured circuit board, no more than 10 millimetres (0.4 inches) square, embedded in a strip of a grey shirt. This, Mr. Faraday told the Court, came from the suitcase containing the bomb, which under magnification showed the number one and two parallel printed circuit tracks that positively identified it as part of a timer manufactured by the Swiss company MEBO AG.
Mr. Feraday claimed that through his examination of other wreckage he had concluded the Toshiba radio-cassette had been contained in a Samsonite suitcase along with at least 13 items of clothing and an umbrella. The case itself, he said, was in the second layer of luggage within an airline baggage container, resting at right angles or leaning upright and roughly parallel to the skin of the aircraft at a distance of about 25 inches.
Prosecutors are expected soon to call Edwin Bollier, managing director of MEBO AG to give evidence. But despite being listed as a witness for the Crown, he is seen in many circles as hostile since he has consistently cast doubt over the evidence against the two men charged with the downing of Pan Am 103. Most recently he has published a lengthy and privately commissioned report alleging that the bomb was not hidden in a suitcase at all but rather attached to the inner skin of the forward cargo hold of the aircraft.
The case continue.