TWO new suspects have been identified over the Lockerbie bombing.
Scottish prosecutors revealed yesterday they want to interview the Libyans and are seeking permission to speak to the men.
The Crown Office said yesterday that the men are believed to have acted with Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted of the 1988 bombing, which caused the deaths of 270 people.
Officials would not name them, but it was reported last night the pair are Abdullah al-Senussi, Colonel Gaddafi’s brother-in-law and former head of intelligence, and Mohammed Abouajela Masud, who is currently in a Libyan jail along with al-Senussi.
A third suspect is believed to be intelligence officer Nasser Ali Ashour, who supplied the IRA with explosives and weapons in the 1980s.
Masud had been identified by American documentary film-maker Ken Dorstein, whose brother was killed in the bombing. He believes Masud, who was named in the original indictment in 1999, was the bombmaker.
Last night SNP Westminster Leader Angus Robertson said: “It doesn’t matter if it’s 25 years after an atrocity. I think justice must be served and if there are people that have questions to answer, they should answer to Scottish and US authorities. It’s good that progress is being made.”
Megrahi, who died of cancer in 2012, always maintained he did not plant the bomb that exploded on the Pan Am flight from London to New York over Lockerbie in Dumfriesshire.
Held in jail in Scotland after being found guilty of mass murder in 2001 at a specially constructed trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, he contracted prostate cancer and in 2009 was allowed to return to Libya to die. His conviction was controversial, with some of the victims’ families believing the trial was a set-up.
The Crown Office revealed yesterday that the Lord Advocate, Frank Mulholland QC, had recently met the US Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, in Washington, to review “progress” made in the investigation.
“The Lord Advocate and the US Attorney General have recently agreed that there is a proper basis in law in Scotland and the United States to entitle Scottish and US investigators to treat two Libyans as suspects in the continuing investigation into the bombing of flight Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie,” said a Crown Office spokesman.
“The Lord Advocate has today, therefore, issued an International Letter of Request to the Libyan Attorney General in Tripoli, which identifies the two Libyans as suspects in the bombing.
“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 two individuals are suspected of involvement, along with Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, in the bombing of flight Pan Am 103 in December 1988 and the murder of 270 people.”
The Letter of Request has been issued under the treaty between the United Kingdom and Libya on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters. There is no similar treaty between the US and Libya at this time.
The investigation remains a joint one between US and Scottish prosecutors, the Police Service of Scotland and the FBI.
The spokesman added: “As the investigation remains live, and in order to preserve the integrity of that investigation, it would be inappropriate to confirm the identity of the two suspects.”
Megrahi first appealed against his conviction in 2002 but the appeal was thrown out. The following year he asked the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) for a review of the case and in June 2007 a £1.1m probe by the commission found there were six instances where a miscarriage of justice could have occurred.
This gave Megrahi grounds for another appeal but he dropped it two days before being released from jail.
His case was taken up by some of the victims’ relatives who said they had a “legitimate interest” in a full appeal. The commission then sought guidance from the Appeal Court in Edinburgh over whether the relatives could take the case forward but the court ruled this July that they could not pursue it on the dead man’s behalf.
The judges said the law was “not designed to give relatives of victims a right to proceed in an appeal for their own or the public interest”.
This week, British cleric The Rev John Mosey, who lost his teenage daughter Helga in the tragedy, said he thought the truth about Lockerbie was still being hidden. In a message to the families of victims in the MH17 disaster, he said: “I’ve told them that I hope in their countries the politicians can’t control the legal system, which is what happened here [in Britain]. That is what they’ll be up against.”
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