Nexus - 0208 - New Times Magazine-pages

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become an instrument to legitimise certain interests". THE LOCKERBIE BOMBING Many interesting pieces of information have emerged over the months and years since Lockerbie. These include:- * The plane, PanAm Flight 103 would normally have been flying over the ocean at the time of the explosion. It is alleged that the plane detoured to avoid a pressure system, which took it on a new flight path over Scotland. One won- ders, if the explosion had occurred over the ocean - the ter- rorist bomb angle would have only surfaced if a group claimed responsibility for it. * The first doctors on the scene counted one body more than the later official total. The CIA was implicated in removing one body. + Private Eye magazine has allegedly been given evidence from a local farmer who found a suitcase full of drugs in his field after the crash. He has been amazed that he was never called to give evidence at the inquest, despite telling every official he could find. ¢ Former CIA Head of Investigation into the bombing, Vincent Cannistraro, told the New York Times it was "outra- geous” to pin the whole thing onto Qadhafi. Finally, on the 19th April this year, T7ME MAGAZINE ran a cover story which basically exonerated the two accused Libyan nationals. For those who missed it- a veteran T7ME joumalist con- cluded that a Syrian drug dealer with ties to Western intelli- gence agencies was behind the planting of the bomb that destroyed PanAm Flight 103. ; It was basically a United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) "sting" operation. TIME fixes the blame on al-Khassar, who it says was being allowed to smuggle drugs into the U.S. in retum for his promise to help obtain the release of six U.S. hosages bedi in Beirut. How quickly people have forgotten the 1988 downing of an Iranian plane containing 290 civilians by the USS Vincennes. This is a U.S. warship that blows a civilian plane out of the sky, killing 290 people, and then in April 1990, George Bush confers a medal on the ship's captain for doing it! Imagine a Libyan warship blowing a U.S. plane up, killing all on board, and when the warship gets back, Qadhafi gives the captain a medal for it? Not likely! With its small population of 3.5 million people, and negli- gible military forces, the only threat Muammar al-Qadhafi can pose to the west, is as a rallying point for those opposing * A Scottish Member of Parliament, Tam Dalyell, has charged that the CIA may have created "evidence" to make Libya take the rap for the bombing. ¢ The PLO launched its own secret investigation into the Lockerbie affair, and came to the conclusion that Libya was innocent and not implicated in the bombing. However , the PLO did declare that it had received information which implicated other middle east parties, and had compiled a NEXUS#35 JUNE-JULY 1992 detailed list of names etc which it would make available.