TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/011689/01168900.029

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 4KB | 72 lines

WORLD, Page 37

TERRORISM

In Search of Answers

Will the bombers of Flight 103 ever be found?


    The Rt. Rev. James Whyte, head of the Church of Scotland, spoke
for a horrified world. At a memorial service in Lockerbie last
week, he condemned last month's bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 as an
act of "human wickedness" and "cold and calculated evil." With
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and some 100 relatives of U.S.
victims among the mourners, Whyte said those responsible must be
brought to justice, but cautioned, "The uncovering of the truth
will not be easy, and evidence that would stand up in a court of
law may be hard to obtain."

    Whyte alluded to what some investigators concede is a
distressing possibility: the Pan Am bombers may never be
identified, much less punished. Despite suspicions that focus on
Palestinian terrorist leaders Ahmed Jibril and Abu Nidal, no clues
have turned up so far that prove either of them orchestrated the
atrocity. As an American intelligence official put it, "There's
nothing out there."

    In leading the probe, Scotland Yard is getting unprecedented
cooperation from security agencies in Europe and the Middle East
as well as in the U.S. The FBI is providing substantial assistance,
and the National Security Agency is scanning its records for
evidence that might be contained in the electronically intercepted
telephone and radio conversations of known terrorists.

    With an estimated 90% of the Boeing 747's fragments now
recovered, experts have begun reassembling the aircraft piece by
piece in a warehouse south of Lockerbie. They are attempting to
learn exactly how and where the bomb was placed and whether it was
constructed from Semtex, a Czechoslovakian-made plastic explosive.

    Investigators on both sides of the Atlantic have started
interviewing relatives and friends of Flight 103's passengers to
determine if any of the victims had suspicious associations or
could have unwittingly carried the bomb onto the plane. Officials
last week discounted a theory that Arab terrorists surreptitiously
planted explosives in the luggage of Khalid Jafaar, a Lebanese-born
student who had been visiting his grandfather in Beirut; Jafaar's
suitcase was recovered intact.

    West German officials also ruled out the possibility that the
bomb had been slipped into one of four uninspected U.S. military
mail pouches loaded onto  Flight 103 at its point of origin at the
Frankfurt airport. It turned out that the mail was intended for
American military personnel stationed in Britain and was unloaded
at Heathrow Airport before the Pan Am plane's ill-fated takeoff for
New York. But according to some West German reports, British
investigators now suspect the bomb was planted by a worker at
London's Heathrow Airport. British officials called the claim "pure
speculation."

    In a dubious journalistic test of airport security last week,
a correspondent and producer for France's TF-1 television network
tried to place suspicious packages on three flights leaving John
F. Kennedy International Airport. When an alert TWA employee
spotted one of the packages, he found a note inside saying,
"Congratulations! You have found our phony bomb." The two men were
arrested by the FBI and charged with conspiracy to violate
air-safety laws.

    Investigators privately admit that in the end they may have to
depend on getting a tip from an informer to learn the identities
of the terrorists. Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman
Yasser Arafat agreed to assist the investigation last week, but the
initial results of his offer only served to show how frustrating
the probe could become. Even though Arafat maintains an extensive
network of security men who keep an eye on Palestinian extremists,
an Arafat spokesman said that "so far, the P.L.O. does not have any
clues."