Lockerbie: My Brother's Bomber Storyville

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

NEWS REPORTS: 'Disaster at Christmas.

'Pan Am Flight 103 had been in the air for an hour.

'For reasons we do not yet understand, the plane,

'with 50,000 gallons of fuel on board,

'plunged into the small Scottish town...'

'..Lockerbie with liquid fire.'

'The fuselage reportedly split in two...'

'There is very little hope, I would have thought,

'for anybody who was in a plane.

'When it did come to earth, it hit very hard.'

Scene four, take one.

Action.

I mean, for some time the impression has been growing upon me

that everyone is dead.

The aspiring novelist had wanted to surprise his family with

an early arrival home.

Instead he wound up on the doomed Flight 103 and never made it.

Somewhere in Scotland, Lockerbie...

you're looking for your notebook, a pen.

It's there in the debris.

I remember you, you know, giving the memorial,

and we thought it was great you were reading letters from David.

You know, I get the sense that you kind of look up to him,

and he was older but he thought so highly of you.

NEWS REPORTS: 'Only one man was ever convicted for the crime, a Libyan,

'who was to spend the rest of his life in prison.

'WAS to spend the rest of his life.

'Today the government of Scotland released Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.'

'The Libyan intelligence agent is dying of prostate cancer.

'Scottish officials are granting him

'what they call a compassionate release.'

'Relatives of the victims are outraged...'

And then I saw the motorcade covered from every angle.

'..just eight years of a life sentence...'

And the only person ever convicted of the bombing of Flight 103,

the murder of your daughter, my brother...

NEWS REPORT: 'Tonight, the Lockerbie bomber flew home...'

..and watching him go free live on television!

'..a dying man or mass-murderer set free...'

I'm asking myself, is the murderer getting away?

And how far would I go to find out whether he is who he seems to be?

When David died, I was 19 years old.

I was home from college for Christmas break

and my sister was on her way home as well.

My father took the call from the airline and I sat with him

as we got the news that David was gone.

'The relatives of some of those who died

'have arrived in Britain from America.'

Many families flew immediately to Lockerbie, but mine stayed home.

The bombing became a topic we could never manage to discuss.

'..tonight that Flight 103 fell out of the sky,

'leaving a 100-mile trail of twisted wreckage and 270 victims.

'Today, investigators said the evidence was conclusive -

'it was a bomb.'

'The centre of the search is the crater which was gouged out

'of the ground by the Pan American jet.'

'President Reagan said the US would make every effort to find out

'who bombed the Pan Am jet.'

REAGAN: I have been following quite closely

the details of the Pan Am 103 tragedy,

and now that we know definitely that it was a bomb.

We're going to make every effort we can to find out who was guilty.

I would hope to God that our government would definitely

take a long hard look at this,

because we don't...

The group of relatives quickly became public campaigners

for the truth about Lockerbie.

NEWS REPORT: 'Jim Swire said, "We're not going to go away

'"until we get what we want."

Among the most prominent and controversial was a British doctor

named Jim Swire, who'd lost his 23-year-old daughter.

I remember the hair on the back of my neck standing up the first time

someone in the media actually use the word "murder".

I remember the impact of that word.

The concept that my lovely daughter should have been murdered.

NEWS REPORT: 'The finger of suspicion is pointing at radical Palestinian groups,

'men who see violence as the only way...'

Early theories pin the bombing on a terror group based in Syria

and backed by Iran.

'Top of the list is Ahmed Jibril, Syrian-backed head of the radical...'

But what role if any Iran played in the plot remains unclear.

And I grew quietly obsessed with the mystery.

'Yet another week of investigation into the bombing of Pan Am

'Flight 103 is nearly at an end and it is laborious.'

'Questions - when and how was the bomb placed on the plane

'and who did it?'

OK, are we all set?

Good morning. HE CLEARS HIS THROAT

For three years, the United States and Scotland have been conducting

one of the most exhaustive and complex investigations in history.

Finally, there is a press conference.

Now they're saying, "We've gotten the results

"and we're going to tell you who we believe did it and why."

Yes, we saw the statement being put out in America.

Today we are announcing an indictment in the case.

'It was an exciting moment

'because there's the assumption that we're going to find out the truth.'

We charge that two Libyan officials,

acting as operatives of the Libyan intelligence service,

along with other co-conspirators, planted

and detonated the bomb that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103.

NEWS REPORT: 'Murder warrants are out tonight for two Libyan spies.

'They are now formally charged with bombing Pan Am Flight 103

'out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland.'

There are these two men. Libyan operatives of some kind.

And you hear their names for the first time.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Mm-hm.

Lhamen Fhimah.

'Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is accused of being the mastermind of the Pan Am 103 bombing.'

I remember the story coming on and trying to feel something about this.

My God, it was Libya!

And I remember trying to work up a sense of the proper hatred

for these two men. Yes.

The plot reportedly came down to a bomb built into a radio

cassette player packed with Semtex explosive.

It was the Libyans who were accused of buying

the clothes in the bomb bag and getting it all onto Flight 103.

'Two Libyans are on trial at a court set up in the Netherlands.

'They've always insisted they are innocent.'

It would take almost ten years before the suspects were turned over

and families like mine were finally able to hear the evidence.

And when it was all over, the verdict was a disappointingly mixed bag.

'A split decision. For Lhamen Fhimah, acquittal.

'But Abdelbaset al-Megrahi found guilty as charged.

'The court ruled...'

Would I like to have tried the case in the United States? Sure.

But I don't know what more we could have done.

Brian Murtagh was one of the top US prosecutors on the case.

I believe that the evidence was there to convict Megrahi correctly

and to sustain his conviction.

I wish Fhimah had been convicted

because I think the same should be said of him.

But, you know, the judges didn't see it that way.

'After waiting 12 years...it was some level of justice.

Obviously...you can never bring your kid back.

NEWS REPORT: 'Over and over today, 'the family members wanted to know,

'will the US now pursue Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi?

CHEERING

The theory was that Lockerbie had been revenge for the US

bombing of Libya back in 1986.

'One of Gaddafi's houses was hit...'

But Gaddafi always denied a role in Pan Am 103.

His government claimed to have been pressured into paying money to

families like mine and issuing a carefully worded statement.

But they never took real responsibility for the bombing,

and the story, to me, never felt truly felt finished.

Some 20 years after the bombing, I was no longer David's little brother.

I was married with two kids

and working on documentaries for Frontline, in Boston.

EXCITED CHATTER

When the kids were very young,

I wrote a book about David's brief life,

but I'd largely put my questions about his death out of my mind.

Then, in the summer of 2009,

something unexpected happened that brought it all back.

'There is a possibility tonight that the only person convicted

'in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie,

'Scotland, might soon go free after just ten years in prison.

'Some relatives of the 270 victims are outraged.'

The one man convicted for the bombing was diagnosed with cancer

and was said to have just three months to live.

'..dying of prostate cancer.

'Scottish officials are considering granting him

'what they call a compassionate release.'

'It was a decision met with outrage at the highest levels.'

'We have been in contact with the Scottish government

'indicating that we objected to this.

'And we thought it was a mistake.'

'President Obama said the US deeply regrets the decision

'and warned Libya not to give him a hero's welcome.

'The Libyans weren't listening.'

'Megrahi emerged wearing a suit, the frail former inmate

'unrecognisable as he acknowledged the jubilant crowd.'

WHISTLING AND CHEERING

I remember being shocked by Megrahi's release.

His conviction hadn't been fully satisfying,

but at least it was an answer.

Now, all that was coming undone.

My brother and the others had been killed

and certainty about who did it was being wiped away.

'Some believe Megrahi should go free.

'They don't believe he was guilty.'

'Megrahi is not expected to live long enough for his next appeal to be heard.'

Megrahi's release also gave momentum to those who believed

he wasn't guilty at all.

And theories pinning Lockerbie on Iran were once again revived.

I wished I could let it go,

but instead I decided to set out on my own search for answers.

DOORBELL RINGS

I began by tracking down the FBI agent who'd worked longer than

anyone on the Lockerbie case.

Richard Marquise.

Richard Marquise. How are you? Good to see you, Ken. Good to see you.

Almost 25 years later, no-one's ever admitted playing any role in it.

And in fact, Megrahi, the one man convicted,

he's let go after serving only eight years under a cloud of suspicion.

Nobody is paying for this.

No-one is paying judicially, for blowing up Pan Am 103.

That's a great frustration.

CHEERING

Gaddafi was told,

"If your agents are found guilty,

"you have to admit responsibility for the attack,"

and all he would admit to was, "responsibility for the actions of my agents."

I think it's terrible that we allowed him

to get away with that statement.

When I spoke to the Lockerbie families, I said,

"I wished we could have gotten more for you."

Megrahi was the only person convicted

because he's the only person that the evidence led to.

But if he did this, he didn't do it by himself.

Megrahi is the tip of the iceberg.

If I was writing the novel version,

we would have identified not only the people who put that

bomb on the plane,

but those who ordered it up

the chain of command and put them all in jail.

That would have been the fantasy.

Over the years, I've gotten to know a lot of the investigators

and prosecutors who worked on the case.

Stuart Henderson. Ken, please come in.

'I visited their homes here and abroad

'and heard their stories.'

We didn't have any evidence of that.

'They are all retired now and almost to a man,

'they feel unsatisfied with the way the case ended.'

How frustrated do you think we are to be detectives who have

been all over the world trying to get an answer to this

At no stage did I ever say I just wanted Megrahi.

I said I wanted all of them.

Because there was no doubt in my mind he isn't the only one.

He was the baggage man and he got caught. And rightly so.

But I would like to have seen the rest of them.

No, the case isn't finished, because all those responsible for

the crime have not been identified and prosecuted, much less convicted.

'Late this afternoon, the nose of the Pan Am jet was finally lifted

'from the hillside three miles from Lockerbie.'

And the only way we're ever going to find out what happened fully is

somebody walks in that was involved and lays it all out for us.

Or there's a regime change in Libya.

In the summer of 2011, regime change in Libya suddenly seemed possible.

'Libya is burning!

'Rage against the tyranny of Gaddafi is sweeping the country.'

As the rebels gained ground,

I began to wonder about making the trip to Libya myself.

So, you had a list of names. Oh, yeah.

I mean, how many names would have been on the list? Probably ten.

Stuart Henderson and I, we both left lists with our successors to say,

"If you get to Libya this is what you ought to do.

"This is who you ought to be after, you should talk to."

Every one of these,

at some stage, played a part in it.

And the list read quite clearly.

There was Abdullah Senussi,

Ezzedine al Hinshiri,

who did the ordering of their explosive device timers,

Mohammed Rashid,

Badri Hassan.

We've got Abdullah Zadma,

Nassr Ashur, an expert in making sure that bombs go off.

Mohammed Ibrahim Bishari...

..and a surprise expert in charge,

explosives, in particular.

A surprise mechanic, you could say, that started the ball rolling.

He holds the key to it all.

These are the people that must be found

and these are the people who are responsible.

But I never ever got access to them long enough

to interview any of them.

We got part of the conspiracy, but only a small part.

You only get an answer to your final story with the rest of them.

I think, until none of them can be found at all, then you can't stop.

The fighting in Libya had closed down the main airport,

so I had to find my own way in.

I flew first into neighbouring Tunisia then hired a driver to

take me through the night towards Libya's western border.

Your first name is? Ken. No, surname.

You want me to write it in?

Put this away?

It was late in the summer of 2011,

as the Libyan revolution reached its climax,

when I finally arrived in the capital, Tripoli.

NEWS REPORT: 'We're starting with the situation in Libya.

'It has taken a new turn, they still have no idea where

'Muammar Gaddafi is, he's on the run tonight...'

'..After a lightning advance this weekend that caught Gaddafi's forces by surprise.

'It's now clear it is not over yet.'

'There is still fierce fighting in many neighbourhoods as

'forces loyal to Gaddafi make one final stand.'

After so many years of imagining this place,

it was hard to believe I was actually here

at Gaddafi's old home.

Now his compound had become a makeshift fairground

complete with lots of celebratory gunfire, souvenirs

and a general carnival atmosphere.

By the time I arrived, the NATO bombing campaign had taken out

many of Gaddafi's old command and control centres.

Rumours were flying that important intelligence material might have

been left behind here in Gaddafi's vast network of fortified bunkers.

What is this map? Libya.

Suliman Ali Zway joined up with the revolution from its start

in Benghazi where he was born.

'When I first met him, he was leading me and some other

'journalists on a tour of an old underground intelligence facility.'

That is all sealed.

'When Tripoli fell,

'there were so many places that were left unguarded.'

Do you find Gaddafi?

Come out, wherever you are.

We are just going through all of those places to show

Western journalist how an authoritarian regime was operating,

and what kind of files they kept.

Jesus, look at this room.

'Suliman seemed to share a deep interest in the secrets

'of the old regime.'

What do we think these tapes are?

For Suliman, the search for answers was personal as well.

One of the reasons I went to Tripoli is to find out what happened

to my uncle.

He was taken in '89,

he was killed in the Abu Salim massacre, 1,200 were killed.

We didn't find out until 2003 about the Lockerbie thing.

It's so long ago, everybody who might have had remotely any idea

what happened in Lockerbie would either be dead or

out of the country or on the run with Gaddafi somewhere.

So I had very little hopes to finding something substantial.

Suliman was understandably sceptical, but he was willing to help.

We rented an apartment on the outskirts of Tripoli

and the next day we began to search for the men on my list.

These are some houses, look at these.

A few of the men I was looking for lived in this exclusive

section of Tripoli.

What do people think of this neighbourhood?

It's good to be a friend of Muammar's.

MEN SHOUT OUT

Our first stop was the home of the most well-known man on my list,

Abdullah Senussi. How many people lived here?

I don't know, he had a bunch of kids, you know.

Abdullah Senussi was the head of Libyan intelligence

at the time of Lockerbie and was actually convicted

for the downing of another passenger plane that was bombed not long after Flight 103.

By the time of the Revolution,

Senussi had become the second most powerful man in the country,

which is likely why NATO

put a missile through the centre of his house.

An attack that Senussi somehow survived.

Said Rashid is this or that, it looks like this is all one thing.

This style of gate.

Just around the block,

I went looking for another of the men on my list - Said Rashid.

The US government had said that Said Rashid was one

of the masterminds of Lockerbie and many other attacks against the West.

He was known to Libyans as a ruthless Gaddafi enforcer.

All this damage is from looting or from NATO?

Rashid's family had abandoned this house just a few weeks

before I arrived.

The place was ransacked for money and valuables.

But I'd come looking

for evidence of Rashid's involvement in Lockerbie.

So this was Said Rashid's office?

In Rashid's desk, I found an Arabic translation of the indictment

of the Libyans for Pan Am 103,

complete with Rashid's handwritten notes. But there was no smoking gun.

Who is that in the white? Is that Said Rashid?

Yes.

We managed to find someone still working at Libyan state television

and he cued up the video of Megrahi's release from a Scottish prison.

I was told that several key suspects in the Lockerbie plot

had showed up to welcome him home.

The first man to greet Megrahi was another none other than Said Rashid -

the alleged mastermind of the plot.

But even more senior than Rashid was the man who Megrahi

was about to greet in the front seat of this SUV.

Who is this?

I began to feel that Megrahi's return had become

a kind of reunion for the suspected Lockerbie plotters.

It also seemed to be a belated victory celebration.

The night's featured speaker was Said Rashid.

Listening to Rashid, I tried to understand the mind

of a Gaddafi loyalist, who may have plotted to down my brother's plane.

On this night, Gaddafi couldn't have seemed more pleased

with Rashid.

But I was told things didn't end well for him.

In the chaotic early moments of the revolution, Gaddafi grew

paranoid and came to question the loyalty of the ultimate loyalist.

Rashid was shot as a traitor.

I'd already been away from my family for weeks,

but I didn't have much to show for it.

The men I was looking for had either fled the capital or were

laying low in places where I would never be able to find them.

NEWS REPORT: This is all that remains of Colonel Gaddafi's convoy as he tried to escape...

Then there was Gaddafi himself.

For weeks, Gaddafi had holed up in his hometown of Sirte.

When he tried to slip out one morning,

a NATO airstrike hit his convoy point-blank.

'Somehow, though, Colonel Gaddafi himself escaped from all this.'

Gaddafi and a few of his security detail

took cover in this drainage pipe.

The rebels dragged Muammar Gaddafi, once the most powerful man

in Libya, out of the drainage ditch and that's when the mayhem started.'

Gaddafi's last moments were recorded.

His last words, reportedly were,

"Don't kill me, don't kill my sons".

When this video hit the news, reporters began to call me

and other Lockerbie relatives.

They wanted to know what we felt, were we satisfied?

I watched Gaddafi's death over and over, trying to feel some

bloodlust for the man who may have

given the order to blow up Flight 103.

But I only managed to feel a strange empathy for this beaten man

pleading for his life.

Rebels hoisted Gaddafi's body onto a truck

so the crowds could see their prize.

Meanwhile, I heard a rumour that one of the remaining men on my list

had been in the convoy with Gaddafi that morning.

We found a video of the survivors who had been taken prisoner

by a vengeful rebel militia.

Most were low-level loyalists

and tribesman brought in to fight Gaddafi's last stand.

The prisoners were marched into a field, shot execution style

and left to rot in the desert sun.

The most high-profile among them was the man I'd been looking for,

a loyalist named Ezzedine Hinshiri,

who'd stuck with Gaddafi until the end. This looks like him, doesn't it?

It looks like it.

I knew little of Ezzedine Hinshiri's

role in Lockerbie except that he'd made the initial

order of the timers said to have blown up Flight 103.

Hinshiri had been close friends with Said Rashid, both were engineers,

both had been involved with the timers and now both were dead.

By my count, there were now only four men left on my list.

One of them,

I was told, had died of a heart attack just a few months earlier.

He wasn't like the others, not a regular intelligence officer

or a member of Gaddafi's inner circle, but an airline

executive who may have been co-opted to take part in the plot.

His name was Badri Hassan.

Badri, believe you me, is a scapegoat.

I'm sure he never knew what was going on until it was too late.

Or after it happened. Souad Hassan was Badri's wife.

Her brother, Yaseen, worked with Badri part-time

and for years listened to his sister's questions about Lockerbie.

Souad said her suspicions about Badri began almost immediately

after the bombing.

A short time, you mean, after Lockerbie?

You're sure of what? That was he wasn't involved?

Do you know why I am so interested in all of this? No.

I had an older brother. He was on the plane that went down over Lockerbie.

Really? I'm very sorry to hear that. So sorry.

Badri died with a lot of secrets, Ezzedine,

Said Rashid, Abdullah Senussi, they were always there

on the front-line,

they were always there willing to do the wicked stuff...

..for Gaddafi. And Abdelbaset.

What was Badri's relationship with Megrahi?

When was this? They met in '87. '87. The first meeting in Zurich.

Zurich, Switzerland.

Souad told me that Badri and Megrahi rented an office here

for more than a year before Lockerbie.

It turned out they were right down the hall from the Swiss company MEBO

that made the timer said to have blown up Flight 103.

It's thought that the device was bought from MEBO in Zurich.

Badri was the connection

between this MEBO company and the Libyan intelligence.

Yeah. Badri tried to prove that

they didn't know what the device was going to be used for.

Do you think Abdelbaset knew what the device was going to be used for?

I think Abdelbaset, he knows everything.

The truth has to come out about Pan Am 103. Yes.

The connection of Switzerland. The connection of Megrahi.

Eh... The connection of Zurich.

You would get a lot of information out of a certain Swiss person,

Mr...Bollier? Bollier.

He's located in Zurich. Zurich. This MEBO company.

It had been just over a year since I first set off to Libya

in search of answers,

but now, I was convinced that a key piece of the story

lay here in Zurich,

where investigators traced the custom-built timer

that was so critical to the Lockerbie plot.

At some point, this timer was fitted into the Lockerbie bomb

so it would blow up, at least in theory,

exactly when the terrorists desired.

NEWS REPORT: Edwin Bollier is said to have supplied the timer

which set off the Lockerbie explosion.

Investigators first came here to question Edwin Bollier

about his timers back in late 1990.

They showed him a photograph

of the fragment they'd found near Lockerbie

and Bollier identified it as a piece of a timer

he'd sold to the Libyan military a few years earlier.

Over the years, however, he's changed his story.

He now maintains that the timer they say blew up Flight 103

was not actually one of those he sold to Libya.

Bollier?

I told Edwin Bollier that my brother was on Flight 103

and that I was searching for the truth.

KNOCKING

And, after an initial meeting, Bollier agreed to film with me.

Hello. Hello. How are you? How are you?

People say, "You're going to speak with Edwin Bollier -

"yeah, he's not trustworthy" or "He's hiding something". Yes, yes...

"He was involved, he was helping the Libyans". Yes.

What's your response to them?

I'll show you...

'Bollier insists that he's simply a contractor

'who sold electronics to the Libyan military.

'But I wanted to walk through the story with him, step-by-step.'

'We began with the fact that the Libyan businessman,

'Badri Hassan, had rented office space from Bollier

'the year before the bombing.

'Badri's partner in the Zurich office

'was Abdelbaset al-Megrahi -

'the man who would later be convicted for the Lockerbie bombing.'

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi? Yes, yeah.

What was he like as a person? What was his character? Was he...?

Did you believe that he was involved in the bombing of Flight 103?

No, no, no. No, no.

Bollier says Badri and Megrahi were rarely in the Zurich office.

But then, just a few weeks before the bombing,

Badri came to Bollier with a rush order for timers.

HE SPEAKS IN GERMAN

'The original order for these timers

'came three years earlier, Bollier explained.'

..not only these 20 - a lot...

'Bollier hoped for a contract to make more than 1,000 of these timers

'and he said he delivered 20 prototypes to the Libyan military.'

'But the two men who originally ordered these timers,

'Ezzedine Hinshiri and Said Rashid,

'were not regular military officers.

'They were Gaddafi inner circle members

'and intelligence officials.

'And it was Badri Hassan, a civilian with ties to the inner circle,

'who would come to Bollier about the timers just before Lockerbie.

'Bollier insists that he had no idea

'the reason behind Badri's rush order.'

When Badri ordered these timers, he wanted them right away. Yes.

Did he say... Why such a rush, all of a sudden?

Cos the original order was three years earlier.

Yeah, no, uh...

So you're saying they put an order in 1985.

It's supposed to be for 1,500.

You never hear about it, you're always checking -

"What about the order?"

And then all of a sudden, three years later...

Yes, curious. Curious.

I guess what I wanted to know,

cos you had a lot of business with the Libyans -

anything about the way they ordered these timers that made you think

that they were using them for, uh...for bombs? No.

For terrorism? No. Was there anything that seemed unusual?

Bollier says he was out of stock of the MST-13 timers

that the Libyans had rush-ordered.

So he delivered some knock-off timers which they rejected.

In the end, though, it didn't matter -

the Lockerbie judges concluded that one of the original timers

supplied by Bollier to the Libyans years earlier

had been used to blow up flight 103.

At the time the FBI first encountered Edwin Bollier,

they didn't fully understand his long relationship with the Libyans.

It all began in the mid-1970s,

when Bollier said he started supplying the Libyans

with broadcasting equipment - police radios, fax machines.

But by the early 1980s,

the CIA began to suspect that he was supplying the Libyans with much more.

The details come from this once classified CIA technical report.

It explains that in 1984, four years before Lockerbie,

the CIA uncovered briefcase bombs

in the hands of Libyan operatives in north Africa.

Semtex explosive inside the suitcase

was detonated with a custom-made firing device,

using Motorola pagers.

And these pagers were ultimately traced back

to MEBO and Edwin Bollier.

There's a whole CIA report on these devices. Mm-hm.

They find a briefcase and, and...Semtex and, um... Mm-hm.

So they're analysing this whole thing.

This was in '84. Right - I mean, if you had known

this guy seems to be supplying the Libyans

with devices to do bad things,

I mean, would that have coloured your dealings with him at all?

Yeah, it would have certainly given me

a little bit different look

at who this guy is and what he might be up to.

Well, actually - so, this report makes clear that the CIA, I think,

through the Swiss police, told him, "knock it off" about the pagers,

back in 1984.

Yes - it says he was contacted by the Swiss police about those pagers.

So he does seem to have an awareness, at some point,

that the stuff he's making is being used for terrorism... Oh, yeah.

I think anybody who deals with the Libyans

in electronic weapons and things knows they're probably being used,

at some point in time, in some way, for terrorism. Right.

But...did he give these timers and other equipment

with the intent to blow up airplanes?

Proving that is pretty damn hard to do.

So, just what did Edwin Bollier know about the timing devices

he was supplying to the Gaddafi regime?

Not long after Bollier first delivered these timers

to the Libyans, police seized one of them

among a cache of weapons in the West African nation of Togo.

Then, just ten months before Lockerbie,

the CIA learned about another of Bollier's timers.

It was found in the hands of Libyan operatives

attempting to bomb targets in Senegal.

The CIA had written detailed reports on the Togo and Senegal timers,

linking them both back to Edwin Bollier.

But all of this took on new significance in June of 1990,

when Lockerbie investigators came to them

with the circuit board fragment they'd found at the crash site.

The CIA produces photographs of what we call the Senegal timer

after two Libyan intelligence operatives

travelling with pistols with silencers, Semtex,

blasting caps and this timer

were arrested by the Senegalese government

and it was sort of, like,

if we can establish that MEBO made the Senegal device,

they probably made the Togo timer as well.

So they take the thing apart

and on one of the circuit boards within the timer,

they find something that's scratched out,

that was determined to say "M-E-B-O".

I mean, did you used to write "MEBO" on the circuit board? Yes.

All the PC boards have "MEBO".

Why this is scratched, here, I don't know.

Well, they say because... But you can read "MEBO", it's clear, yeah. MEBO.

I guess what they would say is that if the Libyans were using your timers

for terrorism, they wanted to scratch it out so no-one would figure it out.

I...I don't know, but that... That it's scratched is...

This is curious. I mean, just your relationship with Libya.

You know, you...you gave them radio equipment...

You had a long relationship with them, then suddenly,

you find that your timers are showing up in the hands of Libyan agents

in Togo or Senegal and they're using your timer for terrorist purposes.

I mean, how did you feel about that?

Oh, I was not... The feeling was not good.

So it's clear that we stop everything immediately

with such...such things, with timers and commando cases.

We have stopped everything.

But I told also, on the first time...

'It wasn't clear to me when Bollier says he stopped

'supplying electronics to Libya, or why,

'and he still maintains he was only made aware

'of the Togo and Senegal operations much later.'

But at the Lockerbie trial, it emerged that Bollier

was actually in Tripoli during the week before the Senegal operation.

When asked about the purpose of this visit

and whether it had anything to do with his timers,

Bollier replied that he couldn't remember.

Bollier did remember another trip to Libya that year.

He told the FBI that he was in Tripoli that December,

just before what turned out to be a major operation...Lockerbie.

He said he ended up at Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's office,

just two nights before the bombing.

It was here he said that he witnessed a meeting.

That was...

'Bollier still recalled that night

'and even drew me the layout of Megrahi's office.'

Here, I think, here was the room from Abdelbaset...with doors,

and they have a meeting here.

And then, we...

'But what was this meeting at the office

'of the man later convicted

..with the meeting and waiting for Megrahi on that evening,

so close to Lockerbie... Yeah.

The prosecution at the trial, they made this sound like the Libyans

were planning Lockerbie in this room here,

right across from you.

They say this, yes. They say this.

Do you think that's what was going on in there? No, no. No, no.

I see...

The only problem with Bollier's current denial

is that it once again contradicts what he said years ago

when he initially spoke with investigators.

At that time, he made clear that this meeting before Lockerbie

involved thugs and some high-ranking Gaddafi officials

and when asked about the purpose of the meeting,

Bollier told the FBI that this meeting

could have been part of the preparations

for the bombing of Flight 103.

NEWS REPORT: Edwin Bollier, MEBO's owner,

was a slippery and unconvincing witness...

At the time Bollier testified at the trial of the Libyans,

he attempted to discredit much of the prosecution case.

He claimed the timer fragment he'd admitted was his back in 1990,

the key piece of physical evidence linking the bomb to Libya,

was essentially a fake, planted by unnamed conspirators

to frame him and the Libyans for the bombing

and Bollier's been trying to prove

that he's been the victim of a fraud ever since.

So you're saying it wasn't Libya. Yes.

And it wasn't Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Yes.

And it wasn't your timer. Yes.

And we don't know who fabricated the evidence... Yes, yes.

..against Libya and you. Yes.

We know nothing. Yeah, yeah, true.

When you see from this side, we know nothing.

BEEPING

Unfortunately for Bollier, a special Scottish commission

reviewed most of his claims about the timer fragment

and found them completely unsupported by evidence.

And his idea of an international conspiracy to link him to Flight 103?

The commission strongly suggested that this was pure fantasy.

CLANKING

So what to do next? How long would I keep up the chase?

There was still just one person ever convicted for Lockerbie -

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

And he continued to protest his innocence

now that he was back home in Libya.

I decided to return to Tripoli to see if I could talk to Megrahi myself

now that there was a new government in place.

My old friend and translator Suliman

had offered to help me track him down.

It turned out we weren't the only ones trying to find him.

NEWS REPORT: A lot of late news out of Libya tonight.

Among the new developments, CNN's Nic Robinson managed to locate

the Pan Am 103 bomber. Here is his report.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish jail two years ago.

He came home to a hero's welcome, freed on compassionate grounds,

because doctors said he'd be dead in three months,

The convicted Pan Am 103 bomber lives.

We found Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's villa in an upmarket part of town.

At least six security cameras and floodlights outside.

I don't see the guys, the neighbourhood watch guys.

This is Megrahi's house,

this is where he's been living for the last couple of years.

We're going to knock on the door, see if we can get any answer.

Hello.

'For 15 minutes or so, nothing...'

I remember the reporter from CNN found Megrahi.

I'm not sure that they've heard me,

so let's try the last-ditch means, which is...

He tried to jump over the wall of Megrahi's house.

Hello. Hello, hello.

We tried so many times to go to that place and we just knock on the door.

You going to park right in front?

Yes. Just... OK. Just normal. Just be yourself.

The very first time nobody answered. We spent, like, an hour there.

Every time we go, we discuss how we can approach them and how to explain

a foreigner, let alone a foreigner who wants to film with Megrahi.

At that point, we all thought that Megrahi was brought back

to Libya under bogus sick leave or something,

that he was supposed to die two years before but he didn't.

RINGING TONE

And we then realised that the guy was actually dying.

It's been decades since the bomb exploded on board Pan Am 103.

It seemed the secrets of the attack would die with the bombers.

Convicted Pan Am 103 bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi

appears to be just a shell of the man he was.

Do you know how long he has left?

Whatever secrets he has may soon be gone.

Time was running out to meet Megrahi, but then I got a break.

Right here, right here.

I met up with Dr Jim Swire, a Lockerbie relative,

who I'd known for years.

It turned out he'd also made the trip to Libya in search of answers.

And he too was here to try to meet with Megrahi before he died.

Unlike me, Dr Swire had been to Libya many times before.

When was your first trip to Tripoli?

It was about two weeks after they issued

the indictments against the two Libyans.

'Back in 1991, Dr Swire came here to meet face-to-face

'with the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

'Over the years, Swire worked hard to persuade Gaddafi to turn over

'the subjects, so the evidence could finally be heard in a proper court.'

NEWS REPORT: Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted

of 270 counts of murder and sentenced...

But during the course of the resulting trial,

Swire says he became troubled by key elements of the prosecution case.

The judges had found weaknesses in the identification of Megrahi

as the man who had bought the clothes wrapped around the bomb

and Swire believed the prosecution had failed to prove

the route that the bomb bag had taken to get onto Flight 103.

And then there were deep questions that Swire and others would raise

about the legitimacy of the key piece of physical evidence in the case,

which they suspect was in some way not genuine.

All of this in the end convinced Swire that Megrahi was innocent.

He began to meet with the convicted bomber in prison,

then started a public campaign for his release.

I'm well aware that what we're doing is disturbing

to those who think they've found closure through

the conviction of the Libyan, Megrahi, but I think it would

be inhumane, indeed downright cruel, to keep a man in prison to die...

Please understand that I think what I'm doing is to seek the truth

and I also think that

if you would look with an open mind for yourselves, you would find

there's a great deal of truth there that you haven't yet looked at.

We were perhaps a strange team.

Dr Swire wanted a chance to say farewell to a man

he now considered a friend.

And I wanted to meet a man I believed had helped murder his daughter

and my brother.

The plan was to show up at Megrahi's house with Dr Swire.

I was unlikely to get in, but if I did get my moment alone with Megrahi,

it was the kind of thing I felt I needed to capture.

Suliman tried to discourage me from secret filming in Libya

and Dr Swire didn't know at all about my hidden camera.

Oh, hello, this is Jim Swire.

This is Khaled. Oh, Khaled, hello. Oh, bless you, thank you.

But I felt the situation was just unusual enough to justify it.

Hi. Hi.

This is my friend... Hi.

Megrahi's son Khaled came to greet us.

How is Baset today?

That would be great.

The family was very sensitised by then to the media

and the reason they let me in...

I mean, they knew, you see, that Megrahi actually wanted to see me.

But I couldn't get you past the entrance hall of the house.

I was taken straight into the room where Baset was lying in bed

and he was really drifting in and out of consciousness

but he smiled when he saw me come in.

He held out a feeble hand to welcome me, as it were.

And there were tears on both sides, actually.

We both knew it was our last meeting.

So you had gone in and had your meeting and I was thinking,

"What am I going to do?"

And I was shown by the 11-year-old to the bathroom,

knowing that to the left was Megrahi's room.

So I was ushered into the bathroom.

What do I do?

And I'm washing my hands and I'm thinking,

"Am I going to make a scene?" The only person outside the door

"is his young son, am I going to push past him

"and go into the room and say, 'Did you murder my brother?

"'Tell me what you know before you die.'"

And I thought, "What is really going to come of that meeting?"

I had come in as your guest and as their guest.

He was dying and he had made his position clear.

And for a bunch of different reasons, I walked out.

Thanks very much for your help. OK. Thank you very much.

I never spoke directly to Megrahi,

but I did listen to his final messages to the world.

NEWS REPORT: Some breaking news, the only person convicted in the 1988

Lockerbie bombing has reportedly died.

Megrahi always said that he would prove his innocence before he died.

He was never able to do it.

It always appeared that it was unlikely that one person could

have been behind such a complex operation and...

My idea had been to talk face-to-face with just one of the men

involved in my brother's bombing,

but after several trips to Libya, I'd come up short.

Dr Swire might suggest that this was significant.

There's no-one to talk to perhaps

because it wasn't primarily the Libyans who did it.

But I wasn't prepared to accept this.

I kept coming back to this video I'd gotten out of Libyan state TV.

I was convinced it confirmed key parts of the story of Lockerbie

if only I could fully understand it.

First up the stairs was the man in the striped shirt, Zaid Rasi,

one of the men who originally ordered the timers from Edwin Bollier,

and there to pick him up at the airport was Abdullah Senussi,

the Libyan spy chief who was once convicted of the bombing

of a French passenger plane

and who was always suspected of a key planning role in Lockerbie.

And then there was the man in the back seat, a mystery Libyan official.

He must have been important to have been in the car at that moment,

but who was he?

I couldn't help but suspect that he might be

the big remaining question mark on my list -

an elusive figure, whom investigators never fully explained.

You mention this mysterious figure, I don't know how his name came into it.

Abu Agela Mas'ud? Yeah.

Mas'ud's name came from the CIA.

And I think the information we got was that he was a technical guy,

maybe he's the guy that hooked up the bomb,

but he's one of those guys that we can never identify.

When the Scots went to Libya in 1999,

they asked about Mas'ud and they said, "We don't know who he is.

"Can't identify him, no idea who this guy is."

The name of Abu Agela Mas'ud first surfaced during the investigation.

It came from a low-level Libyan intelligence agent

who secretly provided information to the CIA.

In the days and weeks before Lockerbie,

the witness observed Abdelbaset al-Megrahi travelling to the island

of Malta where the Lockerbie bomb is said to have originated

and travelling with him was the mystery man Abu Agela Mas'ud.

The CIA suspected Megrahi

and Abu Agela of being on some type of technical intelligence operation,

very close to the time of Lockerbie, but that's all they seemed to know.

Abu Agela had slipped through the investigators' net

and so did one last man on my list who

I suspected of playing a key planning role in the plot, Nassr Ashur.

NEWS REPORT: ..Nassr Ashur as the key figure in a series

of arms smuggling operations. Gaddafi chose...

Ashur was Gaddafi's right-hand man

when it came to supplying Semtex plastic explosive

to Irish Republican Army terrorists in the years before Lockerbie.

150 tonnes of weapons for the IRA, including two tonnes of Semtex.

In my years of work on this story,

I only talked to one person who said he knew Colonel Ashur

and had actually worked with him testing bombs in the Libyan Desert.

This was the thing that they tested in the desert?

Did anyone ever figure out when those tests were?

So Lockerbie was '88, so it was the year before. It was before.

So tell me about that. I was working in Libya in broadcasting.

We make new studios and somebody came from the military police,

"Can you come for two days into the desert?"

We make tests for something and so

and he bring me, and Nassr came, he bring me to this desert.

Bollier denies that these tests in the desert were related to Lockerbie,

but the tests did involve his timers and dropping bombs from airplanes.

And at the trial when Bollier was asked who exactly joined him

for these tests in the desert, he said a few Libyan colonels

were present, including Colonel Nassr Ashur, the explosives supplier.

Bollier said a dark-skinned man was at the tests as well.

He knew him only as Colonel Ibrahim, but I still wondered

if he was talking about the elusive bomb technician on my list.

I remembered about the black colonel also

when we make the tests in the desert.

Very dark skin?

Oh, he have dark skin.

And a small man, a small one. I don't know exactly.

Right, but what's interesting is the dark-skinned man seemed to

have been the technical adviser, travelling with Megrahi.

The name was... What's the name?

Mas'ud Abu Agela. Mas'ud Abu Agela...

No, I not know this man.

I have heard this name, possible... Sometimes hear...

Oh, you have heard the name? Mas'ud Abu Agela?

Possibly, I have heard the name. But...

'I couldn't be sure whether Bollier actually knew Abu Agela.

'But he did mention a dark-skinned man at several key points in the story.'

So here's the... This is about the test you're talking about. Yes.

A military base near Sebha. Sebha, yes.

"Bollier attended a meeting.

"A discussion centred on problems the Libyans were having with detonating bombs." Yeah.

These experiments in the desert

were two big container bombs by aeroplane.

And I have written that in the package was Semtex.

OK, can you see why it's suspicious if you were at a test in the desert

the year before Lockerbie, where they were using a timer

and detonating a bomb and there were members of the Libyan military?

There was this man, Colonel Nassr,

who turned out to be the man who was helping supply Semtex to the IRA.

You know, the Irish Republican Army.

Possibly, I have heard of this, yes. Yeah.

So, he's there and this dark-skinned man, he's there.

And then you're there. You know? This is why...it looks suspicious...

Yes. ..that you are helping the Libyans make the bomb that blew up Flight 103.

No, no, nothing.

No, no, no. No. No.

Talking to Bollier was frustrating,

but it did make me feel like I was getting closer to the truth.

He was linked with almost every man on my list,

but I just couldn't connect the dots.

Now I was back to work on the others.

The men I was looking for could be anywhere at this point.

I couldn't pick up any trace of the suspected bomb suspect, Abu Agela.

But I heard rumours that another of the men on my list,

someone with a record of supplying explosives to terrorists,

had fled the country, maybe to Cairo.

But his trail has gone cold too.

There was one major figure on my list who definitely fled the country.

And not long after my last trip into Libya,

he was finally captured and brought back for trial.

NEWS REPORT: It was a humbling return home for Abdullah al-Senussi.

Once one of the most feared people in the country,

now surrendered by Libyans chanting for justice and revenge.

Senussi is alleged to have been one of the masterminds

behind the Lockerbie attack.

I felt sure Senussi knew the truth about Lockerbie.

But would he ever tell it?

And what about the rest of these three dozen men on trial?

What did they know?

I knew only one person who had contact with

these former Gaddafi officials personally -

Libya expert, Hafed Al Ghwell.

These men believe, "I didn't do anything wrong.

"I was a part of a government, I represented my nation.

And, you know, "I don't believe I did anything wrong."

I mean, some of these guys killed for Gaddafi,

you know, in the '70s and '80s.

Gaddafi knew they will always be loyal to him.

Because everything they have comes from him.

NEWS REPORT: The Reagan administration sees Colonel Gaddafi

as public enemy number one because he supports worldwide terrorism.

This Mad Dog of the Middle East has a goal of a world revolution.

Muslim fundamentalist revolution...

The seeds of Lockerbie, I have come to believe,

were sown in the days when President Reagan and Muammar Gaddafi became

locked in an escalating war of words and attacks.

The leaders of the Western world have called you a terrorist, Colonel Gaddafi.

Dressed in a designer jumpsuit and sporting sunglasses...

How did this guy come to be known to Americans, you know,

as this almost cartoonish but dangerous figure?

This is the persona Gaddafi wanted.

"This is how I'm going to make a mark on the world stage."

And he started picking fights...

for no reason.

The finger of suspicion is pointing hard tonight at Muammar Gaddafi, the

Libyan leader, in connection with Wednesday's nightclub explosion.

..Friday's bloody terrorist attacks on airports in Vienna and Rome.

Mr Gaddafi must know that we'll hold him fully accountable

for terrorist operations against Americans.

Gaddafi picked the fight. It wasn't the US's fault.

The fault of the US is that it reacted to him.

It was called operation El Dorado Canyon.

The attack on Libya almost 24 hours ago has left many Libyans

dead or injured.

Last night's raid took a heavy toll here. Libyan officials admit...

I warned Colonel Gaddafi we would hold his regime accountable.

He did open hostilities and we closed them.

Libyan radio was recorded as saying that one of Muammar Gaddafi's

houses was hit...

The bombing of '86, it had a huge impact on Gaddafi's psyche.

If the Americans were trying to wipe out Colonel Gaddafi's home, they couldn't have got much closer.

It was a ten-minute bombing raid. He disappeared underground.

Even his inner circle did not know exactly where he was

for about three and a half months.

And I know somebody who saw him during that period.

He said he was completely devastated.

He was in a massive depression and could not believe that...

No matter what, this is politics.

"Why are they trying to kill me and kill my family?"

Abu Shalgam, one of Colonel Gaddafi's most senior diplomats,

ready to talk about revenge.

We said that we will attack any place.

I think I am clear. I am speaking clearly.

Abdel Rahman Shalgam later renounced Gaddafi.

But as Libya's ambassador in Rome back in 1986,

he threatened revenge for the US attack.

This is the largest Libyan People's Bureau in Europe...

He said Libyan embassies around the world were put on alert to

look for American targets.

And so the message was, "There will be revenge"? Exactly.

The mass funeral was for victims of Monday night's air raid.

Coffins were carried along to anti-American chants...

And you mentioned someone pledging revenge. Yeah. Said Rashid.

You said if Libya was involved in Lockerbie, Said Rashid could

have organised it. Yeah, exactly.

He could plan out the different parts of a complicated operation? Exactly.

Shalgam said he tried often to get answers about Lockerbie from key

members of the Gaddafi inner circle, like Abdullah Senussi.

About Lockerbie? About Lockerbie.

But Shalgam was much more certain about the Libyan role

in another attack against the Americans,

two and half years before Lockerbie.

The La Belle disco?

It was around 2am when the bomb went off

in the crowded La Belle discotheque.

Police say there were about 500 people inside,

many of them off-duty US soldiers.

The cycle of revenge that ended in Lockerbie likely began

here in Germany, when US servicemen at a Berlin nightclub

were attacked in April of 1986.

The evidence is now conclusive

that the terrorist bombing of La Belle discotheque was planned

and executed under the direct orders of the Libyan regime.

Orders were sent from Tripoli...

What interested me were clues that several of the men on my list

were also involved in the disco bombing.

Said Rashid seems to have led the attack but was never prosecuted.

But there was another man who worked for him on the disco bombing,

and this man would ultimately become the most significant figure

in my search for answers about Lockerbie.

Police have arrested a Libyan man suspected in the 1986 bombing

of a discotheque in Berlin.

A bombing widely seen as an attack against the United States.

The man's name - Musbah Abulgasem Eter.

The disco where the bomb went off was a hang-out for US...

As it happened, I was able to track down Musbah Eter

in Berlin in 2012, and he was willing to talk with me.

TRANSLATION:

Musbah Eter had spent years in a German prison for the disco bombing.

I tried myself to understand Eter's past.

Musbah Eter arrived in Germany in 1984,

an intelligence operative working undercover at the Libyan Embassy

along with dozens of others, all of whom were under

surveillance by the East German secret police, the Stasi.

By late March of 1986,

Eter was deeply involved with the plot to bomb the Berlin disco.

Some ten years later, he confessed to the German authorities.

And it was in that confession where Eter first mentioned a Libyan

bomb expert who played a key role in the plot.

Eter described a Libyan who brought the bomb

and instructed him how to assemble it, how to put it together,

There was a Libyan bomb expert?

A Libyan bomb expert, yes. Do you remember the name of that person?

Eter always referred to him as "Abugela".

And, of course, sorry, as a German prosecutor,

I have no idea how to spell Abugela.

I would probably spell it like "jelly" or something.

So I asked him, put it down, please.

And this is what he did.

And he wrote "neger" - black skin.

But here, in German,

it doesn't have the negative meaning it has in the US.

And that's the only description he wrote there of him,

so it must be as most important feature? Yes, yes.

That he is very dark-skinned? Mm-hm, yeah.

Eter's story was credible, it was highly accurate

and it fit in with the information we had obtained

through the Stasi files.

Danke schoen.

More La Belle files? Yes, this is only part of it.

The Stasi had a lot of information about the Libyans?

The Stasi had a lot of information on the Libyans...

'The East German secret police, the Stasi,

'kept a close watch on the Libyans in East Berlin back in the 1980s.

'And they had the La Belle suspects under close surveillance

'before and after the bombing.

'A lot of the more sensitive files they compiled were likely destroyed.

'But enough were preserved to help make the case against the Libyans for La Belle,

'and I was hoping there were still enough documents left to make

'the key link to Lockerbie.'

Could we see one, then?

To my surprise,

I was able to find Abu Agela's name all over the Stasi files.

After the disco bombing, it seemed,

he stayed in room 526 at Berlin's Metropol Hotel.

He used various codenames and aliases, but the Stasi was

also able to record his real Libyan passport number - 835004.

And this number turned out to be exactly what I was looking for.

The missing piece of a puzzle I had been trying to assemble for years.

You know, I looked at the Stasi files and I was surprised to see this,

Abu Agela and his passport number there,

because in the Lockerbie case,

there were CIA cables that describe Abu Agela's name and his role

and showed his passport number and there was a match.

Would that surprise you, that the bomb expert in La Belle

was also involved in Lockerbie?

Of course, I'm not surprised that Abugela would also do the same

for other bombs, including Lockerbie.

So what did all this really mean?

I kept coming back to those images I had gotten from state TV in Libya.

More specifically, I was focused on the man I believe was Abu Agela

there in the back seat, greeting Megrahi when he returned home.

Records show that Megrahi and Abu Agela were travelling on

the same flight several times before Lockerbie, flying in

and out of the island of Malta where the bomb was said to have originated.

In the days and weeks before the bombing,

the CIA's informant at the Malta airport suspected that Megrahi

and Abu Agela were planning some type of special operation.

We absolutely were convinced that he was involved

and that he may have been the guy that wired up the bomb,

that did all the technical stuff for the explosive.

But we had no other... We didn't know who else he was. Right.

Basically, this CIA assessment tells a story.

'I walked the original Lockerbie investigators through

'the trail that led me to the Libyan bomb expert.'

And Mas'ud Abu Agela.

Passport number - 835004.

It is the same as the Stasi documents.

So, Megrahi is travelling twice before Lockerbie

with the bomb expert from La Belle disco.

That is pretty interesting.

It would have been great to have known all that.

That's amazing.

So, during the La Belle investigation,

they find some Stasi documents. This is from April '86.

This is the week after La Belle disco.

And then you find this name.

Hmm.

And you find the passport number. 835004. Is that the same?

Yes, it certainly is! There is a solid connection here.

There's the same passport number... It is a hell of a coincidence.

And there is a witness in Berlin.

His name is Musbah Eter.

He is the Libyan who confessed in the La Belle case who names Abu Agela.

He looks like this.

And what does he say?

He says basically Abu Agela armed the bomb for the La Belle disco.

Yeah. It is in German, but I will give you from the English side.

I mean... You know, if agents brought me this now and,

you know, I'm not there,

I don't know what the... But as a prosecutor assessing...

You go talk to this guy, you find out what he says,

you get his story down,

you try and figure out how you can corroborate him.

I returned to Berlin several times to learn more from Musbah Eter.

At this point, I told him my brother had been killed

in the Lockerbie bombing

and that I was hoping he might be able to help me find the truth.

He took me to the building

where he and Abu Agela had worked together in the mid-1980s.

I was hoping he would tell me more about Lockerbie.

But then, in the middle of our filming,

Eter struck up a conversation

with a businessman who now worked at the old embassy.

Eter persuaded the businessman to take him inside.

And back in his old office,

Eter kept getting deeper into the details of what he had done here.

Libya has descended into its worst violence

since the uprising that ousted Muammar Gaddafi three years ago.

The news from Libya was consistently grim.

Some people I talked to there quietly longed for the order

of the old regime.

In Libya, a trial has begun for the sons of Muammar Gaddafi

and more than two dozen of his ex-officials.

At the same time in Tripoli,

the new government was continuing its trial of former Gaddafi officials.

Ex-spy chief Abdullah al-Senussi was among the defendants

fenced off behind bars.

From corruption to war crimes related to the 2011 uprising...

The Libyans were interested in crimes committed during the revolution.

But I was listening at home for details about the men on my list.

Then, in the middle of the trial,

a photo arrived by e-mail from Musbah Eter.

It was poor quality and came with no explanation,

but in the centre of the frame was a dark-skinned man.

The blue jumpsuit and prison bars made it pretty clear that he

was one of the men on trial in Tripoli.

So I went looking for every photo I could find of these men on trial.

And there in one of them, behind Abdullah Senussi,

the former intelligence chief, was the dark-skinned man.

The more I looked, the more photos I found of him.

I captured these images and sent them to Musbah Eter in Berlin.

He said this was indeed the bomb expert Abu Agela. 100%.

It was hard to believe I was now looking at the man

I had been trying to find for so many years.

But I still wanted more confirmation, so I connected with a human rights

worker who had been monitoring the trials in Libya.

Hi, Ken. Hey, how are you?

We can attempt cameras but I'm not sure it's going to...

'I told her I was looking for.

'At first she couldn't find Abu Agela's name on the list.

'But then...'

Wait, wait. Wait, I have a name.

It is just written slightly differently.

What does it look like to you?

I think it's defendant number 28 in this case.

So his first name is Abu A'ujilah, that would be his first name.

Mm-hmm.

And to my understanding, the biggest case against him seems to be

the bomb-making in relation to the 2011 conflict.

Charges of setting up bombs and vehicles. Wow.

That sounds like him. Yeah.

I would say that is for sure the same person.

I'm interested in the story that connects La Belle, Lockerbie...

So, I am mainly responsible for collecting evidence.

Well, that is really what I am interested in.

'I made contact with a German lawyer who had extensive files

'on Libyan terror operations.'

I am deeply interested in all the nitty-gritty of who did what

and there is one person I think whose name comes up...

What is his name?

Mas'ud Abu Agela. Yeah, yeah.

We have been checking the finals

but we haven't found anything on this name.

What I would suggest is that we meet each other...

The lawyer was willing to help me track the bomb expert,

Abu Agela, who he said was still wanted for the disco bombing.

The lawyer was also interested in the link to Lockerbie.

In both cases, the key witness would turn out to be

the lawyer's client, Musbah Eter.

Since my last trip to Berlin, I learned the US government

had contacted Eter.

They had apparently heard about the link I had found between him,

the Libyan bomb expert and Lockerbie.

I believe that the law enforcement people,

they are motivated and they take it very serious.

'Andreas Schulz is Musbah Eter's lawyer.

'He was careful not to reveal too many details

'of the ongoing investigation.'

The competent authority in the US is the FBI for this case

and that means that the FBI was here.

How about Lockerbie? Recently, yes.

But the main problem is time.

Time is running against the investigation

because these people are at a certain age.

But, you know, this is in the hands of the US authorities.

We put all the power and capability the US has...

I think there are always ways to get a hand on the culprits

of Lockerbie, so it is a question of their political will.

Since the bombing in 1988,

the FBI has maintained Lockerbie as an open case.

But to my knowledge, they never found a witness with real

first-hand information about the plot.

That is until they apparently became aware of my reporting

about Musbah Eter, then requested to meet with him

several times at the US Embassy in Berlin.

It was in these meetings, I later found out,

Eter told the FBI that he had no doubt that Lockerbie was

carried out by Libyan intelligence.

He said the operation was led by Said Rashid,

with at least double the casualties.

During the year before Lockerbie, Eter said,

Rashid hatched a plan to take down a US plane.

He said Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was part of these early discussions

and would be a key member of the team that would carry it out.

Most significantly, Eter said he had conversations with

the technical expert who he had worked with on the disco bombing,

Abu Agela,

and that Abu Agela personally told him

that he had helped carry out Lockerbie.

Abu Agela apparently also took responsibility for La Belle

and the bombing of a French passenger plane that killed 170 people.

If he said these things and there are facts to back up

some of the things he says, and it sounds like there are,

I don't know why they would not want to bring that to court.

Right.

If there is somebody alive today that was involved in this

and there is knowledge of that, we should be going after them.

We should be going after them.

We would have gone after them in 1991,

especially if we have this kind of information.

We would have indicted, certainly would have indicted him.

When it came to Abu Agela, the original Lockerbie investigators did

gather important evidence that they were never able to use against him.

This evidence centred around the airport in Malta

just off the Libyan coast where the bomb was said to have originated.

Here, they found the landing card that showed Abu Agela had entered

Malta the week before the bombing, complete with the passport number

that matched the CIA and Stasi records.

They even had Abu Agela's fingerprints.

Then they found the passenger list for the flight that Abu Agela

took home to Tripoli the day of the bombing,

possibly after helping arm the device that was then sent on to fight 103.

Joining Abu Agela on that flight was Abdelbaset al-Megrahi,

who was travelling under a known alias.

All of this evidence was gathered years ago

but it took Musbah Eter's statements in Berlin

to apparently tie it all together and potentially

generate the first new charges in the case in some 25 years.

The more we go deeper into this, the more we realise

we were always on the right track and we were always right about this.

Right. But how does that make you feel? Like...

I mean, where are we now? I don't know.