Where Lockerbie May Lead

It has been more than 11 years since Pan Am Flight 103 was blown apart over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and crew members and 11 people on the ground. Among the victims were 189 Americans. Now, at a former U.S. Air Force base in the Netherlands, prosecutors are trying to prove that two men identified by American and British authorities as Libyan intelligence agents planted the bomb that led to mass murder.

The trial is unique in many ways. Brokered by the United Nations after years of stonewalling by Libyan officials, it is being held at a site that the Dutch government has declared to be temporarily Scottish territory. It is proceeding under the rules of Scottish law, before a panel of Scottish judges rather than a jury. And the verdict, whether it convicts the two accused Libyans or clears them, is certain not to be the last word on the case.

An astonishingly large number of links make up the chain of evidence that will be presented. Before arrest warrants were issued for the two Libyans in November 1991, investigators interviewed 15,000 witnesses in 20 countries and sifted 180,000 pieces of evidence, much of which had been scattered over 845 square miles of Scottish moorland in the explosion. The trial, which could last a year, is expected to hear as many as a thousand witnesses.

The prosecution has charged that Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah were responsible for the bomb that was placed aboard Pan Am Flight 103 as unaccompanied luggage and that detonated 31,000 feet over Scotland. The defense has said it will argue that the crime was not committed by the Libyans but by terrorists acting at the behest, or with the cooperation, of Syria, Iran and one or more radical Palestinian groups.

The case against the Libyans is strong enough that the U.N. Security Council voted in 1992 to impose sanctions on Libya until it handed the men over for trial. That finally happened last year, with an agreement that the accused would be tried in a neutral country. Few people familiar with the case believe that the relatively low-level Libyan agents acted on their own. The prosecution’s case will rely heavily on information and evidence assembled by American and British intelligence. The compelling question is what happens if that evidence points unmistakably to participation by a government, whether Libyan or Iranian or Syrian? In that event, a somber decision must be made: What steps toward punishment should be taken, and who would take them?