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Was There a Deal with Iran over Lockerbie Bombing?

(Telegraph-UK) Con Coughlin - In December 1988, fire and airplane debris rained down on the Scottish village of Lockerbie, after a civilian passenger flight was blown up in mid-air, killing 270 people, by a terrorist bomb concealed in a radio cassette player. Though no conclusive proof could be found to link Tehran directly to the worst terrorist atrocity committed in Britain, few - myself included - were under any illusions that Iran's Islamic republic was the center of global terrorism. If the evidence of a former Iranian intelligence officer is to be believed, the attack was authorized by Ayatollah Khomeini. In the mid-1990s, a senior British intelligence official who had been involved in the original investigation told me that, although there was more than enough evidence to show Iran's involvement, there was not enough to secure a conviction in a British court. The issue was swept under the carpet after Washington (or so I was led to believe) did a secret deal with Tehran on the eve of the first Gulf War in 1991 to secure Iran's support for the liberation of Kuwait, in which the West agreed to drop charges over Lockerbie in return for the release of Western hostages. At a time when Washington and the EU are desperate to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear program, the latest reports about Iran's potential involvement in the Lockerbie bombing might be considered a great inconvenience.
2014-03-14 00:00:00
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