An American researcher is claiming to have discovered the technical expert who armed the bomb which brought down a jumbo jet over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in late December 1988. A total of 270 people died.

Ken Dornstein, whose brother David died in the bombing, believes Abu Agila Mas'ud, currently in a Libyan jail for bombing opposition forces in the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, had travelled to Malta in December 1988 with Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, the only person to be convicted of the bombing.

He says in a film set to be broadcast next week that according to a CIA cable and evidence from the Lockerbie trial, Maltese immigration records included Mas’ud’s Libyan passport number: 835004.

The Lockerbie bomb, hidden in unaccompanied luggage, is said to have started its journey from Malta, to Frankfurt and then to Heathrow, where it was put on a Pan Am flight and exploded in mid-air. Malta has repeatedly denied that claim and some researchers say the bomb was actually put on a plane in Frankfurt.

Mas’ud worked under Abdullah Senussi, who is now facing execution in Libya as the mastermind of the bombing. He was among the most prominent people who greeted Al Magrahi when he was repatriated to Libya in August 2009 after his ‘compassionate release’ from a Scottish jail.

Dornstein’s new information, reported in New Yorker magazine and UK media, came mostly from a former Gaddafi operative, Musbah Eter, who was also involved in the bombing of the La Belle disco in Berlin in 1986.

Eter had told US officials that Mas’ud and Megrahi were involved in Lockerbie, and that he had heard Mas’ud speak of travelling to Malta to prepare the attack.

In 1996 Eter reportedly walked into the German Embassy in Malta and turned himself in. Before leaving Berlin, he had fallen in love with a German woman and fathered a daughter, and now he was looking for a way back to Germany, even if it meant serving time in prison.

A German prosecutor flew to Malta to debrief Eter. They met for beers at the Holiday Inn, and Eter gave a full confession. In 2001, he was convicted of the La Belle bombing, along with three associates.

Many dispute the verdict and insist the bomb was planted in a joint Iranian-Syrian plan to pay back the US for the accidental drowning of an Iran Air jet in July 1988.

Mr Dornstein’s three-part documentary - My Brother’s Bomber - is to be broadcast on US channel PBS starting next Tuesday.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/28/the-avenger?intcid=mod-most-popular

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