Lockerbie Testimony Ends; Verdict Could Come Next Week

A Libyan defendant Monday dropped plans to testify in his own defense in the Lockerbie trial, bringing the 8-month-old proceedings closer to a verdict.

Closing arguments were scheduled to begin today in the trial of two Libyans charged in the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed all 250 people on board and 11 on the ground. A verdict could be rendered as early as next week, court officials said.

Testimony ended abruptly when the lawyer for Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi said the Libyan would not appear after Syria refused to hand over a document that the defense said contained evidence that could deflect blame from the Libyans.

Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah have pleaded innocent to charges of murder, conspiracy and endangering air safety, which carry a maximum life sentence.

The trial began May 3. The end of testimony came as the proceedings, at a special Scottish court on a former U.S. air base about 30 miles east of The Hague, had just resumed after a one-month adjournment to await the Syrian reply.

The defense asserted the existence of a document in Damascus, the Syrian capital, containing evidence about a 1988 German police raid on a suspected Palestinian terrorist hide-out near Frankfurt a few months before the bombing. The raid turned up bomb assemblies similar to the one that blew up Flight 103.

Under Scottish law, defendants can win an acquittal by hinting the mere possibility that others may have been to blame.

The defendants’ lawyers have implicated the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command in the bombing.

Prosecutors maintain that the bomb was sent via the airport in Frankfurt, having originated in the Mediterranean island of Malta, where the defendants were seen around the time of the bombing.