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Scottish prosecutors ask Libya's interim rulers for Lockerbie help

Arab World Materials 26 September 2011 16:00 (UTC +04:00)

Azerbaijan , Baku, Sept. 26 / Trend A. Isgandarov/

Scottish prosecutors have contacted Libya's interim rulers for help in tracking down information which could lead to others being charged over the 1988 bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland.

"In particular we have asked the NTC (National Transitional Council) to make available to the Crown any documentary evidence and witnesses which could assist in the ongoing enquiries," a spokeswoman for the Scottish Crown Office said on Monday, Reuters reported.

Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, a former Libyan agent who was convicted of the bombing which killed 270 people, was released on compassionate grounds in 2009, but the Crown Office said his trial court had accepted he had not acted alone.

"Lockerbie remains an open enquiry concerning the involvement of others with Mr. Megrahi in the murder of 270 people," the spokeswoman said.

Megrahi's co-accused at the specially convened Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands in 2000 was Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah who was cleared of mass murder.

He told Sweden's Expressen newspaper last month that deposed leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi should be tried in court over suspicions he ordered the bombing.

"There is a court and he is the one to explain whether he is innocent or not," Fhimah said. "He has to."

In March, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, Libya's former justice minister and now its interim leader, said he had evidence of Gaddafi's involvement in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' scheduled transatlantic flight from London to New York. On Dec.21 1988, the aircraft flying this route was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew members Eleven people in Lockerbie, in southern Scotland, were also killed as large sections of the plane fell in the town and destroyed several houses. As a result, the event is also known as the Lockerbie bombing.

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