Lockerbie Investigators Interview Top Libyan Defector

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Source: The New York Times

Scottish police investigating the Lockerbie bombing said on Friday that they had met with the former Libyan foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, who defected to Britain and is said by officials to have held high rank in Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s intelligence services when the Pan Am Boeing 747 was blown up over Scotland in 1988.

The only person convicted in the attack, which killed 270 people — mostly American passengers on the plane — was a former Libyan intelligence officer, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, who was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds in 2009. The Libyan authorities assumed general responsibility for the bombing in 2003 as Colonel Qaddafi sought to shed a decades-long reputation as proponent of state terrorism.

News of the renewed inquiries by Scottish authorities seemed likely to encourage relatives of those killed in Lockerbie, particularly in the United States, who have long argued that responsibility for the attack went much higher in the Libyan elite than Mr. Megrahi’s conviction might suggest.

A statement issued on Friday by Scottish police and investigators said that police and prosecutors had met Mr. Koussa “in relation to the ongoing investigation into the Lockerbie bombing” but gave no details of the discussions “in order to preserve the integrity of the investigation.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/world/europe/09lockerbie.html