Libyan’s release prevented “explosive” appeal hearing, says ex-CIA agent

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
As intelNews anticipated, Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was released last week by British authorities. Al-Megrahi, who allegedly has terminal cancer, was convicted in 2001 for his role in the Lockerbie air disaster, but has now been allowed to return to Libya in order to die in his homeland. But former CIA agent Robert Baer has repeated charges that the Libyan prisoner was released so at to prevent his legal team from filing an appeal, which Baer believes would have proven beyond doubt that Iran, not Libya, was behind the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. As The London Times has reported before, al-Megrahi’s legal team is in possession of several US government documents on the case, including a report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which says that the attack was “conceived, authorized and financed” by Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur (alternative spelling: Ali-Akbar Mohtashamipur), Iran’s Minister of Interior during the early 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. Baer claims that the CIA was aware of the Iranian connection “almost from the moment the plane exploded”, but that Washington avoided confronting Tehran so as not to damage vital energy arrangements with the Islamic state.