Document reveals US spies saw Iran behind Lockerbie bombing

Al-Megrahi

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
A US intelligence report available to the lawyers of a Libyan former intelligence agent convicted for his role in the Lockerbie air disaster blames Iran, not Libya, for the attack. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who intelNews hears will be released from jail on compassionate grounds, had instructed his legal team to present the document in court if his release appeal failed. Al-Megrahi is one of two Libyans jailed for their alleged role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people. But the report, produced by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), says that the attack was “conceived, authorized and financed” by Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur (alternative spelling: Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipur), who served as the Iran’s Minister of Interior during the first years of the Islamic Revolution. The document further states that the operation was carried out by Ahmad Jibril, founder and leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), a secular Palestinian militant group with operational links to revolutionary Iran and Hezbollah. The importance of the DIA report lies in the fact that several US insiders, including former CIA operative Robert Baer, have claimed in the past that the US believed Iran to have orchestrated the Lockerbie bombing, but avoided confronting Tehran so as not to damage vital energy arrangements with the Islamic state.