THE government has evidence that Colonel Gadaffi, the Libyan leader, personally ordered the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie in revenge for an American air raid on Tripoli two years earlier.

Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, is preparing to rehabilitate Gadaffi after the decision to hand over for trial two men accused of putting the bomb on Pan Am 103.

A former senior intelligence officer said last week: "We have known for a long while that Gadaffi gave the order. It is a sham for him to pretend otherwise and it is an even bigger sham for the British government to let him off the hook."

The government has issued a last-minute gagging order against The Sunday Times preventing it publishing details of an intelligence operation that produced clear evidence of Gadaffi's personal involvement in the bombing of Pan Am 103. All 259 people on board the plane died as well as 11 people on the ground in Scotland.

During the three-year joint British and American investigation there was speculation that Iran and Syria were also involved. These suspicions persisted, partly because evidence was kept secret. However, the security services believe Libya was solely responsible and that Gadaffi ordered the bombing after the raid on Tripoli.

A letter from the Treasury solicitor warned that The Sunday Times's information "plainly came from a member of the intelligence community" and if published could "be extremely damaging".

Roland Phillips, for the Treasury solicitor, said in the letter: "It is said [by The Sunday Times] that even as the government is moving into a period of better relations with Libya, the government is in possession of secret intelligence that the Libyan leader himself ordered the bombing of the aircraft and is so implicated. The story goes on to allege that the secret intelligence came from two sources. My clients [the security services] are satisfied that such information would have been known only to a strictly limited circle within the intelligence community."

The letter warned that the government would seek an immediate court injunction against the newspaper unless assured that it would not print details of the intelligence or how it was obtained.

The gag provoked an angry reaction last night among opposition MPs. There were calls for the Foreign Office to suspend talks with Libya. David Wilshire, Conservative MP for Spelthorne and a member of the foreign affairs select committee, said: "If there is the slightest bit of truth in this, then the government is very foolish to start normalising relations with Libya. Some of us would argue that Gadaffi should be on trial as well."

Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, demanded an explanation from Cook in the Commons: "The families of Lockerbie victims will not thank the government for sweeping this under the carpet."

The talks between Britain and Libya are being conducted in great secrecy. The Foreign Office said it could not reveal where they were taking place or who was involved.

However, The Sunday Times has established that senior Foreign Office officials met their Libyan counterparts in Rome. The new diplomatic initiative, which promises billions of pounds in orders for British companies, followed Gadaffi's surrender of two Lockerbie suspects in April.

In an interview with the BBC last October, Gadaffi claimed the suspects may have been settling personal scores. "Perhaps these two Libyans took their own revenge against America because America had bombed their homes and killed their children," he said.

However, the security services have concluded that Gadaffi himself ordered his external security organisation (ESO) to bomb an American airliner in retaliation for Ronald Reagan's attack on Tripoli, which killed the Libyan leader's adopted daughter.

The disclosure of Gadaffi's personal involvement came to the British security services between 1990 and 1995 from two separate intelligence sources. It was circulated to a restricted number of officers within MI5, responsible for domestic counter-terrorism.

The man Gadaffi instructed to arrange the bombing was Abdallah Senussi, his brother-in-law and then head of ESO operations. Senussi was supervisor in the ESO to Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, one of the two accused. Senussi was also a key figure in orchestrating Libya's anti-American and anti-dissident policies.

Senussi used the same method to blow up a French airliner nine months after Lockerbie, also on Gadaffi's orders. A Paris court sentenced him in absentia in March this year, with five others, for the murder of all 170 people aboard UTA 772, which was destroyed when a bomb exploded in the luggage compartment over the Sahara.

Others involved in the Lockerbie plot included Said Rashid, head of the engineering section of the ESO and a member of Gadaffi's inner circle. Rashid, a cousin of Megrahi, placed an order for bomb timers from a Swiss company.

He was sentenced in absentia by an Italian court for his part in the assassination of a Libyan dissident in Milan in 1980.

British companies are already in discussion with potential customers in Libya; British Aerospace has been in talks over the possible supply of up to 30 Airbus planes as well as airports and training.

The government has given the go-ahead for the unfreezing of Libyan assets in Britain and the reopening of the Libyan Arab Airlines offices in Piccadilly, London, closed in 1994 after sanctions were imposed.

There is evidence that the Libyans hoped to blame a Palestinian terrorist organisation if the Pan Am bomb was discovered. But it blew up over land and not over the ocean, as intended. Fragments of the bomb timer were traced to an order placed by Rashid and supplied to Libya's minister for transport and communications. (30)

 

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