Culprits of Lockerbie a treatise Concerning the Destruction

Did the Abu Elias character actually exist or was he merely a fiction invented by Khreesat? Was there really a fifth lethal device which was handed over to Abu Elias and went missing? These questions lie at the heart of the whole Lockerbie mystery.

“Khreesat advised that he did not tell the Germans anything about Abu Elias. Khreesat never saw Abu Elias in Germany but was told by Dalkamoni that Abu Elias had arrived. Khreesat told the Germans that they should have waited one more day to make the arrests, as Dalkamoni was on the way to meet Abu Elias when they were arrested.”

It has been argued here that the “fifth device” may well have been handed over to Abu Elias in Frankfurt on 22 October, 1988, that Marwen Khreesat actually knew this to have happened rather than that he merely assumed as much, and that it possibly took place in Khreesat’s presence. As already mentioned, the BKA surveillance log relates that at 2 pm Dalkamoni “met up with” Ramzi Diab, the “big-eared stranger” he had previously met on 18 October. (Ramzi Diab’s real name has been said to be Saleh Kwekas and that he also used the alias Ali Nasrfi Assaf). Katz states baldly that Ramzi “is believed to have transported Khreesat’s fifth barometer Toshiba [BomBeat] bomb to Vienna before disappearing” (p.216) but he does not state whether this was supposed to be before Ramzi’s arrest by Autumn Leaves or after his release (Jibril Versus Israel, p.216). On being questioned by the BKA Dalkamoni stated that Ramzi had handed him a Toshiba radio-cassette player when they met on 18 October (cf Khreesat, FD302, stating that Abu Elias had given Dalkamoni a Toshiba – the fifth device – on 22 October). If Dalkamoni was reliable and if the “belief” passed on by Katz (presumably from his Israeli intelligence source) is correct the bomb Ramzi took to Vienna would be one he took there after his release. Might this possibly suggest that Ramzi himself was the Abu Elias character? The proposition seems unlikely for the simple reason that after his release it was in November – well before Lockerbie – that he returned via Vienna and Belgrade to Damascus where, suspected to be a Mossad mole, he was liquidated on the orders of Ahmed Jibril (Israel Versus Jibril, pp.216-217, citing various reports on Ramzi Diab’s possible allegiances). It is of course possible that it was to Ramzi that the fifth device was handed on 22 October when Dalkamoni and Khreesat met him in Frankfurt, and that he passed it on to Abu Elias before his arrest? Whoever he may have been Abu Elias was the man whose expertise was crucially needed to plant the bomb on the plane.

Khreesat supposedly helped the FBI agents make up a composite picture of Abu Elias which he described as a good likeness. He may not have told the Germans much about Abu Elias but was he as helpful as he might have been to the agents? Taken at face value the preparation of the composite would suggest he was being equally circumspect with them. If he had revealed the man’s true identity, there would have been no need to prepare a composite because the likelihood is that the intelligence services would have been in possession of a photograph. If claims made later were true Khreesat must have known very well who Abu Elias was and equally it is certain they would have been in possession of a photograph. Was Abu Elias his name real or an alias (if the pun can be forgiven)? The Abu preface is merely an informal soubriquet common in Arabic, a sort of nickname, meaning “father of.” He would be father of Elias.

Rumours and reports as to the man’s true identity have been in circulation for many years. Not long after the indictments of al-Megrahi and Fhimah were announced in November 1991 the PLO released a report to the international press describing the 1988 deal between Iran and the PFLP-GC and claiming that the bomb which destroyed Pan Am 103 was built by one Khaisar Haddad, also known as Abu Elias, a blond blue-eyed Lebanese Christian member of the PFLP-GC (see Roy Rowan, “Why Did They Die?” Time magazine cover story, April 27 1992; re-cycled in Goddard, D. and Coleman, L., Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie – Inside the DIA, New York: Bloomsbury, 1993).

During the trial at Zeist, in October 2000, the Crown unexpectedly disclosed to the defence a so-called death-bed confession made by Mobdi Goben, mentioned earlier as the PFLP-GC’s co-ordinator for Yugoslavia. (Why they left it as late as to the trial to make the sudden disclosure is unclear.) Goben had managed the organisation’s safe house in Krusevac, 200 kilometres distant from Belgrade and had played a prominent role in assisting the German cell. The safe house was raided after the Autumn Leaves arrests in 1988 and the police found there detonators and Semtex later proved to have been likely to come from the same consignment as that which destroyed Pan Am 103 and that seized at 28 Sandweg, Frankfurt, the safe-house and home of suspected PLFP-GC operative Ghandafar. Goben evaded arrest after the raid and in 1996, shortly before his death, dictated the “Goben Memorandum,” as his testamentary narrative came to be known. It retailed his involvement with the PFLP-GC and set out what purported to be a highly detailed account of the Lockerbie plot, although how much credence can be attached to the narrative must be tempered by evidence, later disclosed to the defence, that Goben came to hate Ahmed Jibril (Ashton, Megrahi: You are My Jury, p.249). Those he implicated included Dalkamoni, Ghadanfar and Kwekes (Ramzi Diab), seized in the Autumn Leaves raids. He stated that following the raids he had helped co-ordinate the bombing from Yugoslavia, that Khreesat was not the organisation’s only bomb-maker, and that he, Goben, had smuggled from Syria a bomb built by a Damascus-based Palestinian named Awad (cited in Ashton, p.248). His account tallied with Khreesat’s in stating that they had met in Belgrade in 1988, together with Dalkamoni, although he put the meeting in the summer rather than September, as Khreesat had stated.

Of key interest is the fact that Goben named Abu Elias as the central figure of the Lockerbie plot on the ground, describing him as a “close relative” of Ahmed Jibril. Intriguingly, he stated that Abu Elias had planted the bomb in a suitcase associated with Khaled Jaafar, the young Lebanese American who was on Pan Am 103. Goben stated that according to his wife Miroslava Abu Elias and Jaafar met in Belgrade in early December 1988, an assertion which conflicted with claims made by two brothers named El-Salheli that Jaafar did not leave Dortmund between 8 November and the day he died (see Ashton, Megrahi: You Are My Jury, pp.123-127 and 248). The story of the bomb being planted on Jaafar at Frankfurt (or elsewhere) had first seen the light of day in the Interfor Report, referred to earlier. The inherent improbability of the primary suitcase having been flown from Frankfurt to London on the feeder flight before being transferred on the Heathrow tarmac to Maid of the Seas has already been demonstrated.

At the same time as the Crown handed the defence the Goben Memorandum they disclosed the names of six witnesses, Goben’s wife Miroslava, his son Samir and other relatives or associates, all of whom had sought refuge in Norway. In Oslo, defence solicitors Alistair Duff and Eddie MacKechnie interviewed the six witnesses and gleaned from them that Goben had hated Jibril, who had treated him very badly following his return to Syria after the safe-house was shut down in 1988. One of the witnesses stated that a Syrian, whom he named and who he said had long been living in the United States was Abu Elias and although five of the witnesses stated that the man was a relative of Ahmed Jibril they did not claim that he was Abu Elias. However, the sixth witness, who claimed to be a 20-year veteran member of the PFLP-GC and responsible for the military division finances, said that although he had once met the man named by the first witness as Abu Elias, he doubted if he was indeed that person (see Ashton, Megrahi: You Are My Jury, p.249). Subsequently to the Oslo interviews the Crown disclosed that in May 1987 the man named by the witnesses had deposited into his bank account nearly $6,000 in travellers’ cheques which had been purchased from an Arab bank in Cyprus a few days earlier by Hafez Hussein, one of Dalkamoni’s aliases. Comparative analysis of relevant signatures suggested that the one on a document relating to the purchase had been written by Dalkamoni.

(See Ashton, Megrahi: You Are My Jury, pp.250-251.) In the United States solicitors Duff and MacKechnie duly interviewed the man named by the witnesses. He refused to say if he was related to Ahmed Jibril or whether his father was a senior PFLP-GC member and claimed not to recall receiving the travel cheques 13 years before. He denied ever having used the name Abu Elias or to have heard of Goben or Khaled Jaafar. He said he had often returned to Syria between 1982 and 1988, had obtained a Syrian visa on 19 December, 1988, flying there via Frankfurt on 30 December. He said he had also visited Yugoslavia, where he had friends. He claimed, and it was later confirmed in a letter dated 2 November, 2000, from the Crown to defence solicitors, that he had had meetings with FBI officials during 1988 and 1989 and that in particular on 23 January, 1989, he was asked if he had any information about Lockerbie. He stated he had none. Ashton wonders whether a month after Lockerbie the FBI were asking him if he had any information about the bombing because they knew or believed that he was related to Jibril (Megrahi, p.251).

Evidence was later submitted to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) and subsequently passed over to the Scottish Court of Appeal for the purposes of al-Megrahi’s second appeal to the effect that Abu Elias was in fact Jibril’s nephew. Within days of the initiation of the appeal process it was reported in a mass circulation British Sunday newspaper, possibly for the first time, that the man believed to be Abu Elias was Jibril’s nephew and that he was living near Washington DC under an alias which the newspaper could not “divulge” (see Derek Lambie, “Finger of blame for Lockerbie pointed at American citizen,” Sunday Express, July 8, 2007, http://www.express. co.uk/posts/view/12732/Finger-of-blame-for-Lockerbie-pointed-at-American-citizen). A journalist who has long been deeply involved in investigating the Lockerbie bombing has disclosed to the author that Abu Elias’s mother is, or was, Ahmed Jibril’s sister. In the light of the revelation that Abu Elias may have been Jibril’s nephew it can now be seen that Khreesat may have given an early clue suggesting this in his FBI interview. Of the five 1985 F-453D bombs he built in 1985 he told the FBI that in 1987 one of them was “shown” to Abu Elias. But intriguingly he also said that one had apparently been kept intact for Jibril “to show his nephew.” It rather sounds as if he might have been talking about the same showing.