CROWN OFFICE STATEMENT OF 10 MAY 1995 ON CHANNEL 4 DOCUMENTARY FILM
ON LOCKERBIE TO BE BROADCAST ON 11 MAY 1995
'THE MALTESE DOUBLE CROSS'
The Lord Advocate has repeatedly made it clear that, as with any
other criminal case, he deprecates all attempts to give a version
of the Lockerbie story, from whatever angle, while criminal
proceedings are pending and while the proper authorities, which
have been responsible for the most thorough criminal investigation,
are not able to respond and give details of the evidence. The
proper place for the issues in the Lockerbie case to be explored is
in a criminal court. The Lord Advocate has repeatedly made it
clear that he cannot comment on specific allegations while criminal
proceedings are pending but that if Mr Francovich - or anyone else
- considers that he has any evidence relevant to the Lockerbie
investigation he should make it available now to the police.
Although we cannot comment on the specific allegations contained in
the film which bear on details of the evidence uncovered by the
investigation, we would emphasise that the criminal charges in this
case were brought upon the basis of corroborated evidence
supporting these charges and therefore inevitably conflicting with
much of what is in the film.
There are, however, certain matters of public record which ought to
be considered in relation to this film.
Crown Office have seen what is apparently the full version of the
film. It proceeds substantially on a theory that the bomb was
introduced onto the feeder flight Pan Am 103A at Frankfurt Airport
on 21 December 1988 by a passenger, Khaled Jaafar, acting as an
unwitting courier or 'mule' while part of a 'drug sting' operation
controlled by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration
from Cyprus and running through Frankfurt Airport.
There are certain matters of public record which have a bearing on
this theory.
As the Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons on 1 February,
the acting Administrator of the United States Drug Enforcement
Administration stated publicly to United States Congressional
investigators in 1990 that while they did conduct controlled drug
deliveries through Frankfurt in 1989 with the co-operation and
supervision of the German authorities no controlled deliveries were
conducted anywhere in Europe during or immediately before December
1988.
Khaled Jaafar's mother was legally represented at the Fatal
Accident Inquiry at Dumfries which investigated the circumstances
of the Lockerbie deaths between 1 October 1990 and
13 February 1991, hearing evidence over 55 days. The Inquiry
specifically considered evidence in relation to the suggestion that
the explosive device and/or drugs may have been in the baggage of
Khaled Jaafar. Sheriff Principal Mowat QC, the Judge who presided
at the Fatal Accident Inquiry, found, as a matter of fact,
'that Khaled Nazir Jaafar originated as a passenger at
Frankfurt. He checked in two bags, neither of which was
the suitcase containing the device and neither of which
contained any traces of illegal drugs. There was nothing
to connect him with the said suitcase containing the
device.'
Evidence at the Fatal Accident Inquiry showed that Mr Jaafar's
bags, in common with others which were not in close proximity to
the suitcase containing the improvised explosive device, were not
explosive damaged. Evidence led at the Fatal Accident Inquiry also
disproves the statement made in the film by a disembodied voice
talking on the telephone to a mysteriously silhouetted
Oswald Le Winter and purporting to describe how Mr Jaafar was
handled at Frankfurt. The disembodied voice says that he 'took him
on the plane and turned him over to Gannon'. Mr Matthew Gannon,
who was killed at Lockerbie, was not even on the plane which left
Frankfurt. As was made clear in evidence at the Fatal Accident
Inquiry, Mr Gannon joined flight PA 103 at London Heathrow, having
travelled on a connecting flight from Cyprus to London. He
therefore could not have acted as the disembodied voice claimed.
The charges brought by the Crown against the two accused are based
on evidence that the device which caused the destruction of PA 103
was contained in an unaccompanied suitcase loaded onto Flight
KM 180 at Malta and transferred to the PA 103 feeder flight at
Frankfurt.
In support of the drug-sting theory the film produces other
mysterious figures in silhouette and disembodied and distorted
voices. Crown Office would be interested to know who these people
are. But the film also puts up front in support of this theory a
collection of figures who claim to have an involvement in the
intelligence scene and whose own backgrounds merit some
examination: Oswald Le Winter, Juval Aviv, Lester Coleman and
Steven Donahue.
Oswald Le Winter is a notorious hoaxer. As long ago as 1953 he
plead guilty to impersonating a United States Marine Corps Officer.
In 1985 he was extradited from Germany to the United States for
drug trafficking, in relation to the importation into the United
States of an Amphetamine pre-cursor. He had been posing in Germany
as 'Professor Oswald Le Winter' of the Institut Organische Chemie
of Wurzburg. He plead guilty and was sentenced to 6 years
imprisonment. Of perhaps the greatest interest in relation to
Le Winter is his involvement in the 'October surprise' hoax, which
alleged that Ronald Reagan and George Bush, who were running for
United States President and Vice President in 1980, arranged to
delay the release of the American hostages in Tehran until after
the presidential election. The joint report of a Congressional
Task Force to investigate these allegations, published on 3 January
1993, records that Le Winter, when interviewed on 25 August 1992,
stated under oath that his 'October surprise' allegations had been
a complete fabrication. He said that he felt that he had been
wrongly treated by the United States Federal Government - in
relation to the drugs case which had been brought against him - and
he wanted to extract revenge. The report gives a graphic
description of how Le Winter recounted to the Task Force the
development of the hoax by way of research, cultivating journalists
to build the story and weaving into the story actual experiences
and information that he learned from telephone calls from
journalists and newspaper articles. He stated under oath to the
Congressional investigators that his claims of years of employment
in the United States Intelligence Community were false (in spite of
which he is described in the 'Maltese Double Cross' as 'CIA
1968-85'). Le Winter also said on oath that he would occasionally
provide information to military intelligence authorities, but
acknowledged that he was not a military intelligence official. The
Congressional Task Force report tellingly describes
Oswald Le Winter's story as a 'veritable text book on how the
conspiracy allegations that constitute the October surprise story
were initiated and evolved'.
Despite his claims of involvement in the intelligence community,
Mr Aviv's true background in 'security' appears to have been as a
security guard employed with the Israeli Airline El Al in the early
1970s. The reliability of his reports has not only been questioned
in the Lockerbie case, where an attempt was made to use a report
prepared by him for Pan Am's insurers in the civil litigation in
New York (which Pan Am's insurer's eventually lost), but also in
the case of the quite separate matter of a security survey sold by
him to the General Electric Capital Corporation. He was arrested
as recently as 3 March 1995 in New York charged in relation to the
alleged fabrication of that survey.
Lester Coleman is presently a fugitive from justice, wanted on
warrant in the United States for passport fraud and for perjury
specifically relating to civil litigation arising from the
Lockerbie case in New York. According to an eight-count
indictment, Coleman falsely stated that a drug 'sting' operation,
operated by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
in Nicosia, Cyprus, allowed a drug 'mule' or courier to travel on
Flight 103 and that international terrorists utilized the 'sting'
operation's ability to by-pass baggage security checks in order to
place a bomb aboard Flight 103. Specifically, the indictment
alleges that Coleman falsely testified (1) that he was assigned by
the United States Defence Intelligence Agency to run 'a network of
intelligence agents in a volatile Middle East country'; (2) that
the DEA requested Coleman's services from the Defence Intelligence
Agency resulting in Coleman being 'seconded' to the DEA and
learning of the drug 'sting' in Nicosia; (3) that Coleman saw
Khaled Nazier Jaafar (a passenger who died in the crash of
Flight 103) and whom he characterized as the 'mule' or drug courier
in the 'sting' operation, working from the offices of the Eurame
Trading Company during the period from 5 April 1988 until 18 May
1988; (4) that as a result of security problems Coleman requested
the Defence Intelligence Agency to terminate his relationship with
the DEA and the Defence Intelligence Agency then arranged a job for
him with the Boy Scouts of America; (5) and that Coleman was
reactivated by the Defence Intelligence Agency in November, 1989.
A New York Grand Jury has found probable cause that all of this
testimony was false.
Donahue was arrested in 1983 in New Jersey and admitted smuggling
hashish into the United States between 1974 and 1980. As part of
his plea agreement he was required to assist the United States Drug
Enforcement Administration and in 1988 he sued the DEA, claiming
that that agency had abandoned him in Lebanon when he was taken
hostage by a paramilitary group. The DEA countered the claim by
stating that he was never directed by them to go to the Lebanon and
that if he was taken hostage it was because he owed Lebanese drug
dealers a large amount of money. The United States District Court
for the southern district of Florida dismissed the case Donahue had
brought against the DEA in December 1993.
[The Crown Office is the Prosecuting Authority in Scotland]