A new Al Jazeera documentary on the 1988 Lockerbie air disaster to be premiered today claims the tragic bombing of Pan Am flight 103 was probably plotted in a flat in St Julian’s.
The documentary, Lockerbie: What Really Happened? moves away from the theory underpinning the conviction of Libyan national Abdelbaset Al Megrahi, and suggests instead that the likely culprit is the Palestinian organisation PFLP-GC, which had a cell operating in Malta in the late 1980s. It also identifies a flat in St Julian’s as the place from which the atrocity was planned.
The film will be premiered at the Scottish Parliament this afternoon and then shown tonight on Al Jazeera.
The conclusions put Malta back into the thick of the atrocity, which killed 270 people on December 21, 1988. But the documentary also continues to cast doubt on Al Megrahi’s guilt and the notion that the bomb left from Malta. Instead it points to Heathrow airport.
Mr Al Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence officer who worked in Malta with Libyan Arab Airlines, was given a life sentence for the bombing in 2001 but he was controversially released eight years later by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds as he had terminal cancer.
He died in 2012.
Talb had come to Malta to discuss the final details of the plot
The thesis accepted at the Camp Zeist trial that convicted him was premised on the notion that Mr Al Megrahi loaded a suitcase with the bomb that downed the plane over the Scottish town of Lockerbie from Malta’s Luqa airport.
But this story has been severely discredited over recent years to the point that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) in 2007 declared that Mr Al Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.
The developments in this latest documentary tally with the original leads that brought the Scottish Police, FBI, and CIA investigators to Malta. Only months after the bombing, these investigators were working on the premise that the bomb had been planted by the PFLP-GC cell based in Malta.
At the time, Libya did not feature in the plot. Instead, the operative theory was that Iran had contracted the PFLP-GC – known to specialise in attacks on planes – in retaliation for the downing of an Iran Air aircraft by the American destroyer USS Vincennes in July 1988.
They had zeroed in on the cell in Malta on the basis of information gathered by several European intelligence agencies.
Investigators were monitoring a bakery called Miska in Qormi run by a group of Palestinians, believed to be PFLP-GC operatives. Some of these men were linked to the Egyptian convicted terrorist Abu Talb – the prime suspect behind the bombing at the time. They had illegally tapped the phones of some of the Palestinians without the knowledge of the Maltese authorities.
Journalist Joe Mifsud, who had written extensively about the case, had reported on the wire tapping (done by the FBI) which eventually led Guido de Marco, then responsible for justice and home affairs, to expel the bureau investigators over the matter. Dr Mifsud had also established that Talb visited Malta in October 1988.
The documentary claims that Talb had come to Malta at this time to hold meetings with his associates in a St Julian’s apartment to discuss the final details of the plot.
He or another member of the cell may also have bought the clothes from Mary’s House in Sliema that later ended up in the suitcase carrying the bomb. To this end, Mr Talb was one of the people that Maltese witness Tony Gauci – owner of Mary’s House – identified as the person who bought the clothes from him but he eventually changed his version and named Mr Al Megrahi.
Times of Malta collaborated with investigators for the production of the documentary.