IF NOT MEGRAHI, WHO WAS IT?

Byline: By RON MOORE

FOLLOWING the bombing, police, the FBI and intelligence services firmly believed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command was responsible.

The Iran-backed group is headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army captain and based in Damascus.

The case against Jibril and his gang is well established. It runs like this: In July 1988, five months before the Lockerbie bombing, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus in the Gulf, mistaking it for an attacker.

Ayatollah Khomeini vowed the skies would "rain blood" in revenge and offered a pounds 5million reward to anyone who "obtained justice" for Iran. The suggestion is the PFLP-GC were hired.

Two months before Lockerbie, a PFLP-GC cell was active in the Frankfurt and Neuss areas of west Germany.

On October 26, 1998, German police arrested 17 suspects who cased Frankfurt airport and browsed timetables.

Four bombs were seized but a fifth device went missing. They were concealed inside Toshiba radios similar to the one found at Lockerbie.

One of the gang, a Palestinian known as Abu Talb, had a calendar in his flat in Sweden with the date December 21 circled. New evidence, in the hands of Megrahi's defence, proves for the first time that Abu Talb was in Malta when the Lockerbie bombing took place.

During the original trial, Abu Talb was a prosecution witness, and received immunity from prosecution.

But German police have records showing that on December 23, 1988, two days after the bombing, the Iranian government deposited pounds 5.9million into a Swiss bank account that belonged to the arrested members of the PFLP-GC.