Lockerbie: The Maltese Double Cross
Produced and directed by Allan Francovich
The Cutting Edge, SBS TV, Tuesday, May 16, 8.30pm (8 in SA)
Previewed by Peter Boyle
On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over the village of Lockerbie in Scotland, killing all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground. Two and a half years later, the US and British governments blamed Libya for the bombing and demanded that two Libyan accused be handed over to them.
Libya offered to hand the two over to an international investigation in a neutral country, but this was turned down. An international air embargo was imposed on Libya by the United Nations Security Council and still remains in force today.
There has been considerable scepticism about the US and British governments' indictment of the Libyans for the Lockerbie incident from diverse sources, including relatives of Lockerbie victims, the Israeli government and even the head of the initial CIA investigation into the bombing, Vincent Cannistraro.
In April 1992, Time magazine ran a cover story which revealed evidence that the bombing was the work of terrorists and double agents linked to US security agencies and the Syrian regime. This did not even provoke a reconsideration of the air embargo on Libya.
After investigating the question with the help of 10 researchers for over a year, British film maker Allan Francovich (On Company Business, Allies) has produced an hour and a half documentary, Lockerbie: The Maltese Double Cross.
Hundreds of people around the world, including the accused Libyans, were interviewed. The documentary homes in on the alleged "smoking gun" evidence referred to by the US government — , fragments of a Swiss-made timing device and clothing from Malta — and discovers that the case against the accused Libyans is very thin indeed.
The trail of evidence is complicated and, along the way, a number of operators in the shady world of arms dealing, espionage and terror are interviewed. The US security forces come out smelling very bad.
The "respectable" Swiss businessman who sold the sophisticated timing devices used in bombs, like the one that obliterated Flight 103, reveals that he sold these devices to anyone who had the money, and is even prepared to sell his "evidence" to the highest bidder!
According to Francovich, the real culprits were known by intelligence services of Germany, the UK and the USA within hours of the bombing. The sophisticated bomb was probably constructed and placed by the Ahmad Jibril terrorist group, which has links to Syrian and Western secret agencies. Members of the group were arrested in Germany, with similar devices to the one which blew up Pan Am Flight 103, shortly before the bombing, but were released.
Funding for the operation may have come from Iran, which was reported to have put out a US$10 million revenge "contract" after the US navy shot down an Iranian passenger plane over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988, killing 290 people. But the Jibril group was also working with a drug smuggling outfit headed by Syrian Monzer al-Kasser, which was being protected by the CIA unit in Frankfurt.
Lockerbie: The Maltese Double Cross does not explore in depth the reasons for the scapegoating of Libya. It mentions the long US government destabilisation and disinformation campaign against Libya, but does not explore the shifting alliances in the Middle East following the 1991 Gulf War.
Libya and the PLO opposed the attack on Iraq, while the US and its allies were supported by the Syrian and Iranian regimes.
This documentary has had only a few screenings around the world, including one for the British House of Commons and one for the secretary-general of the UN. It was pulled out of the 1994 London Film Festival, where it was to have made its world premiere, because of threats of legal action.