Police and investigators look at what remains of the flight deck of Pan Am 103 in a field in Lockerbie. AP
Police and investigators look at what remains of the flight deck of Pan Am 103 in a field in Lockerbie. AP

Lockerbie attack carried out by Iran’s Palestinian allies to avenge Gulf attack



A well-placed source close to the ultra-leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command has claimed that the group’s founder, Ahmed Jibril, was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988 which claimed the lives of 270 people, at the behest of Iran.

Speaking to the Daily Mirror in Jordan’s capital, Amman, Saha Khreesat said that her father, Marwan Khreesat, had left his family a dossier of evidence which points the finger of blame at Jibril, who she claims accepted money from Tehran to carry out the attack on Pan Am 103.

Ms Khreesat told the newspaper: “I think he is responsible, and he has a deal with the Iran government. I do have a proof that Ahmed Jibril is responsible for Lockerbie. It might be papers or recordings and it is not in our house now.”

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Asked whether her father, who was himself briefly a suspect in the bombing and who died in 2016 aged 70, knew who had committed the attack, she said: “For sure he knows but I don’t know. My dad left something written about this but it’s not in the house.

“If my dad made the bomb, he would have taken lots of money but now we don’t have anything because my dad didn’t have anything to do with it.

“Ahmed Jibril took the first million and then he took the rest of the money and got very rich but my dad didn’t take anything,” she continued.

“The Lockerbie accident has so many hidden things and my dad gave his secret to my mum. He did not give it to me or to my siblings or anyone else. He did not hide anything from mum.”

Asked why her father had not come forward during his life with the information, Ms Khreesat said that he may have feared that the US could have attacked Jordan in retaliation, similar to the 1986 attacks on Libya after the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub that killed two American servicemen.

“Maybe he just wanted to protect Jordan. Maybe he’ll put Jordan in danger if he talked,” she said.

“What happened to Libya will happen to Jordan. Lockerbie is an important topic since it is related to America and no one is supposed to mess with America.”

In 2001, Libyan Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was jailed for his role in the bombing after Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya was accused of being behind the attack. Al Megrahi was released from prison in 2009 while suffering from terminal cancer and died in 2012.

His family maintains that he was innocent and are campaigning to overturn his guilty verdict on the 30th anniversary of the worst terrorist atrocity in the UK.

The family’s lawyer Aamer Anwar said yesterday that “many believe that Megrahi was the victim of a miscarriage of justice and the finger of blame has long been pointed in the direction of Iran for having ordered a Syria-Palestinian group to carry out a revenge attack for the downing of an Iranian Airbus flight 655 by the US Vincennes on July 3, 1988.”

The jetliner was shot down over the Hormuz Strait killing all 290 aboard.

North Pole stats

Distance covered: 160km

Temperature: -40°C

Weight of equipment: 45kg

Altitude (metres above sea level): 0

Terrain: Ice rock

South Pole stats

Distance covered: 130km

Temperature: -50°C

Weight of equipment: 50kg

Altitude (metres above sea level): 3,300

Terrain: Flat ice
 

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Uefa Nations League: How it Works

The Uefa Nations League, introduced last year, has reached its final stage, to be played over five days in northern Portugal. The format of its closing tournament is compact, spread over two semi-finals, with the first, Portugal versus Switzerland in Porto on Wednesday evening, and the second, England against the Netherlands, in Guimaraes, on Thursday.

The winners of each semi will then meet at Porto’s Dragao stadium on Sunday, with the losing semi-finalists contesting a third-place play-off in Guimaraes earlier that day.

Qualifying for the final stage was via League A of the inaugural Nations League, in which the top 12 European countries according to Uefa's co-efficient seeding system were divided into four groups, the teams playing each other twice between September and November. Portugal, who finished above Italy and Poland, successfully bid to host the finals.