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Iran blew up Lockerbie jet, says defector
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2vdOu46sAThe Lockerbie bombing was ordered by Iran and carried out by a Syrian-based terror group, an Iranian defector has claimed.
Britain’s worst terror atrocity, in which 270 people died when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded above the Scottish town in December 1988, has always been blamed on Libya.
But a former Iranian intelligence agent – now living under a witness protection scheme in Germany – has said publicly for the first time that the attack was ordered by Iran in revenge for the accidental downing of an Iranian commercial jet by the US Navy in 1988.
It was carried out by Palestinian terrorists based in Syria, he says, and not on the orders of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The atrocity killed 243 passengers, 16 crew and a further 11 people on the ground in Lockerbie.
Ex-spy Abolghassem Mesbahi claims in a documentary aired tonight on Al Jazeera that former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini wanted to mirror the 1988 US strike on an Iranian Airbus and recruited a Syrian-based group to plan an attack.
Mesbahi, who defected to Germany in the 1990s, said that the supreme leader, who died in 1989, wanted revenge.
He told documentary makers from Al Jazeera: ‘Iran decided to retaliate as soon as possible. The decision was made by the whole system in Iran and confirmed by Ayatollah Khomeni. The target…was to copy exactly what happened to the Iranian Airbus. Everything exactly the same, minimum 290 people dead.’
Evidence unearthed by the documentary-makers includes the names of four suspects belonging to the Syrian-based radical group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command. The individuals were allegedly responsible for devising the plot, making the bomb and planting it.
The programme suggests that the plot was hatched at a secret meeting in Malta, attended by representatives from the Libyan, Syrian and Iranian regimes. Ahmed Jibril, the Syrian head of the PFLP-GC is named as the plot’s mastermind. He recruited Hafez Dalkamoni, a Palestinian, and Jordanian bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat.
These two were arrested by German police, who discovered four bombs, months before Lockerbie. However, it is claimed that a fifth bomb was made and used for the Lockerbie attack. Another man, Abu Talb is named as the bomb’s alleged courier.
It is also claimed that the bomb was placed on the doomed flight at Heathrow, rather than in Malta as had been thought.
Ahmed Jibril, left, head of the PFLP-GC is named as the plot’s mastermind. He recruited Jordanian bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat, centre, but the delivery was made by Abu Talb, right, who put it on Pan Am 103 at Heathrow
Mesbahi’s claims raise new questions about the guilt of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, an intelligence officer serving Colonel Gaddafi, who was convicted of mass murder in 2001.
It has been asserted that Gaddafi devised the attack in retaliation for the US bombing of Libya in 1986. Despite Megrahi’s conviction, many – including some families of the dead – remain unconvinced that the whole truth has been uncovered.
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Originally Posted by Graham
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