New suspects named in Lockerbie case

Tripoli, 5 February 2013:

Police in the UK have named seven Libyans suspected of conspiring to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, which killed 270 people.

The suspects are all believed to have worked for the Jamahiriya Security Organisation (JSO). A 2009 request to interview these men was denied by the former regime.

At least two of these suspects are believed to have been killed during the revolution.

It is understood that the police are also interested in talking to Qaddafi’s spy chief Abdullah Al-Senussi, currently awaiting trial for crimes committed under the dictatorship.

Abdil-Basit Al-Maghrahi remains the only person ever convicted over the Lockerbie bombing. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2001 on 270 counts of murder but was freed from a Scottish jail in 2008 on the compassionate grounds that he had three months to live. He died in May last year.

After making a surprise visit to the capital last week, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said that Scottish police would finally be allowed to come to Libya to continue investigations into the Lockerbie bombing.

A new Scottish police squad is being set up to take over the investigation in April.