Crash investigators search the area around the cockpit of Pan Am flight 103 in a farmer's field east of Lockerbie Scotland after a mid-air bombing killed all 259 passengers and crew, and 11 people on the ground.
Scottish prosecutors report that they've identified two Libyans as suspects in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
Officials say they plan on interviewing the unnamed pair in Tripoli about the bombing of a passenger jet over the town of Lockerbie in Scotland, which happened nearly 30 years ago. They believe the suspects were involved along with Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted of the bombing.
A Crown Office spokesman said in a statement released Thursday that they have sent a letter to the Libyan attorney general in Tripoli identifying the two suspects.
"The Lord Advocate and the US Attorney General are seeking the assistance of the Libyan judicial authorities for Scottish police officers and the FBI to interview the two named suspects in Tripoli," the statement read.
The attack killed 270 people.
In 2009, Megrahi was released from jail by the Scottish Government on compassionate grounds after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died in 2012, and maintained his innocence his entire life. In 2013, Libya formally admitted responsibility for the attack.
The reopening of the case comes shortly after an in-depth investigation by the Frontline news unit into the bombing, entitled "My Brother's Bomber," that uncovered new evidence. The three-part series was by filmmaker and author Ken Dornstein, whose elder brother was among those killed.
Brian Murtagh, the lead US prosecutor in the Lockerbie, told The New Yorker that Dornstein, as a journalist, had certain advantages over government investigators: “For an FBI agent to go to the places where Ken has gone, he would have to have permission from the Libyan government and the authorization of the State Department. Journalists don’t have to play by the same rules.” He continued, “We have jurisdiction to prosecute out the yin-yang, but if you can’t find the person your jurisdiction doesn’t amount to a whole lot.”
Frontline issued the following on the report:
During the course of his reporting for the three-part FRONTLINE series My Brother’s Bomber, Dornstein tracked down two men suspected of a role in Lockerbie and found both of them still alive in Libya: the alleged bomb expert, Abu Agela and Abdullah Senussi, the head of Libyan intelligence at the time of Lockerbie.
A U.S. official confirmed to The Washington Post that Agela and Senussi were the men being sought for questioning.
Lockerbie investigators knew that Megrahi and Agela, had traveled together several times before the Lockerbie bombing, but Dornstein discovered new details about their relationship.
In the film, Dornstein found a Libyan man — convicted for a separate bombing — who told him that Agela helped assemble a bomb that exploded in a Berlin disco in 1986. The FBI spoke to the Libyan, Musbah Eter, after Dornstein’s investigation, and he gave them new information. Eter said he had no doubt Lockerbie was carried out by Libyan intelligence; that Megrahi was a key member of the plot; and that Agela personally told him that he’d helped carry out the bombing.
Records showed that a week before the Lockerbie bombing, Agela entered Malta, where the bomb that blew up Flight 103 was believed to have originated. A passenger list also put Agela and Megrahi on the same flight to Tripoli on the day of the attack. But during the Lockerbie case, investigators didn’t have the connection that Dornstein’s reporting uncovered.
“Based on Ken’s story, the only two people that are alive, that were in the picture and have never been charged would be Abdullah Senussi and Abu Agela,” said Richard Marquise, a retired FBI agent who worked on the Lockerbie investigation from its inception. “[Agela] was never identified. We knew this man was a black Libyan, and he was a technical expert, but the Libyans never acknowledged that he existed.”
“Senussi was harder to hide, because he was a senior official in the government. That would be like the U.S. government saying, ‘We don’t know who John Kerry is.'”
Eter’s lawyer, Andreas Schulz, confirmed to Dornstein that the FBI was in touch with his client. “But the main problem is time,” he said. “Time is running against the investigation because these people are at a certain age. But you know, this is in the hands of the U.S. authorities. If you put all the power and the capability the U.S. has, I think there are always ways to get the hand on the culprits of Lockerbie.”
Here's the full Frontline story.
Our coverage reaches millions each week, but only a small fraction of listeners contribute to sustain our program. We still need 224 more people to donate $100 or $10/monthly to unlock our $67,000 match. Will you help us get there today?