Original subtitles

This is dark elegy,

Which I consider the most important work of my life.

Over time, it occurred to me

What a magnificent thing it would be

If as many of the mothers would participate

In portraying themselves at the moment

That they learned of their loved one's death.

[screaming and wailing]

My baby!

[sobbing]

Suse: There is a hole in a mother's heart

When her child is gone.

Because they are part of our physical being.

If it's a war, or if it's pan am 103, or if it's September 11,

The picture, the aftermath, is always the same.

This.

Reporter: Pan am flight 103 crashed

Into the scottish village of lockerbie.

Two hundred and seventy people, most of them americans, dead.

It was the worst terrorist attack on an airline ever.

Reagan: We have no knowledge of how this happened.

We're trying to find out.

Man 1: It was an attack on america.

Man 2: The largest crime scene in history.

Man 3: Two-hundred-thousand pieces of evidence.

Man 4: My daughter hadn't just died in an accident,

But been brutally murdered.

Man 5: They killed our children.

Man 6: To be lied to for 30 years.

Man 7: I think the us government had an agenda.

Reagan is the biggest terrorist in the world.

Woman 1: If it's up to our government,

We might not ever know the truth.

Man 8: Nothing is what it seems in the lockerbie story.

This particular phase of our search for the truth

Is almost complete.

That is a tremendous relief, and that's the upside

Of the decision by the judges

To deliver their verdict so soon.

Reporter: The court that has heard 84 days

And three million words of evidence

Is ready for the final day

Of britain's biggest mass murder trial.

Reporter 2: Abdelbaset ali al-megrahi, 48,

And lamin khalifah fhimah, 44,

Were both accused of planting the fatal bomb,

In a series of luggage transfers.

The prosecution, over nine months,

Called over 200 witnesses, with 10,000 pages of testimony,

Pressing its case that these men were libyan terrorists.

The evidence, even though it was circumstantial,

We thought it was very convincing.

(siren wails)

The key issues in evidence were mr megrahi's role

In the security services in libya.

His use of false identities.

And his presence in the airport in malta,

The morning that the suitcase containing the bomb

Was ingested on the flight.

And mr megrahi's connections with mr bollier,

The owner of mebo ltd.

Who, the court concluded,

Had manufactured the timing device that detonated the bomb.

Phil: As far as fhimah was concerned,

He was the libyan arab airlines manager in malta.

Fhimah supposedly provided him with a luggage tag,

That megrahi put on a suitcase aboard a flight to frankfurt,

To go on to london and pan am 103.

Megrahi couldn't have got that suitcase into the system

Without fhimah's help.

Reporter: The prosecution admits

Its case is entirely circumstantial,

But claims it is tight enough

To prove murder beyond reasonable doubt.

Nic: However, some of the evidence was contentious.

Bollier appeared to recant his previous testimony.

Now he's not so sure

A fragment of circuit board was from the timers

He said he sold to the libyan intelligence service.

He just seemed untrustworthy.

Tony gauci, the man who had a clothing store in malta,

Is significant, because he is the one

Who can identify megrahi.

But he had changing recollections of the suspect.

His testimony just didn't seem to stand up.

Phil: But we also came up with critical evidence

From a double agent working at the airport.

Reporter: Abdul majid giaka is the super-grass

Billed as the lockerbie trial's star witness.

Abdul majid told the court

How libyan intelligence planned the bombing,

And that the two accused were fully involved.

Today, he was a poor witness for the prosecution.

I remember there being quite a laugh

Amongst the people that were watching the evidence.

Just because he was just so...

He just seemed to be crazy.

It like just watching a fantasist

Being given 20 minutes to speak in an uncontrolled way

About their fantasies.

The lack of credible evidence

Was what converted me to realizing

The two accused men

Clearly could've had nothing to do with it.

Suse: I felt very apprehensive before the verdict.

But based on the evidence I heard,

I believed we had the right guys.

We waited for the judges to come onto the bench

To deliver their... Verdict

And we had absolutely no idea what was gonna happen.

I believed the evidence, in its totality, made it so compelling.

Even though there was no smoking gun.

I can remember holding phil reid's hand.

We were sitting next to each other and I can remember just...

We probably squeezed each other extra hard.

Reporter: At 11am, the judges in their robes

Sat behind the bench.

As they pronounced abdelbaset al-megrahi guilty of murder,

There was a sudden gasp.

Then, as they announced lamin fhimah was not guilty,

A second gasp.

I thought they would both be sent home not-guilty.

The shock of the verdict initially, was so great,

I collapsed.

Reporter: Many people are left to wonder,

How one of the accused could be guilty and the other not.

Fhimah's lawyer declared there was no evidence

He was at malta airport

On the day the bomb was allegedly loaded,

And still less that he was aware of being part of a bomb plot.

The judges apparently agreed.

It seemed odd - the case was against both men -

That one of them should not be proven to have been involved.

I think that shocked a lot of people.

My heart broke

When mr fhimah was allowed to leave the courtroom,

Because clearly that bomb could not have gotten on the plane

Without his assistance.

And in the case of megrahi, the judges obviously felt

That despite some of the inconsistencies in the evidence,

He could still be convicted.

Reporter: It's been a day of conflicting emotions.

Delight, at seeing at least one conviction,

But anger that the sentence isn't longer.

It was such a short sentence,

Because a life sentence in scotland is 20 years.

And it's 20 years for all of your victims,

So we were horrified that this was supposed to bring justice

To... To our loved ones.

Nic: The verdict had a whiff of diplomatic compromise about it.

That's the taint

That hangs over everyone's minds about this case.

By finding megrahi guilty,

We believed that vindicated our findings

That this was a libyan government operation.

This, to me, meant this was ordered by gaddafi.

Even though that never came to court, it vindicated us.

Reporter: This evening, khalifa fhimah headed for libya.

Al-megrahi stayed behind bars.

And the quest for the truth goes on.

John: This case is very polarized.

I worked as a researcher with megrahi's lawyers.

I've been involved in the case for about 30 years.

There's very much two different camps.

One camp believes that justice was done

At camp zeist,

To the extent that megrahi was convicted.

And then there are others who are very skeptical

Of the megrahi conviction.

In fact, believe that he was wrongly convicted

And believe that the suspects actually lie outside of libya,

In iran and a radical palestinian group.

Interviewer: Do you feel megrahi is guilty?

That's a re...

That's a very difficult question to answer.

I have a lot of unease

About information that I know is out there

But I'm not able to get sight of it

For reasons of national security.

Until access to those can be gained,

I think the controversy will continue.

So, for many people

After the trial there are even more questions,

Rather than less.

(church bell tolls)

Interviewer this is the infamous filing cabinet

You were talking about?

That's the infamous filing cabinet.

It's all full of lockerbie stuff.

-So, this is 35 years of work? -Yes.

Sadly, many of the people who've helped so much

Over those 35 years are no longer with us.

The fbi and america said publicly,

That there could have been no case brought against the libyans

Had it not been for a fragment of circuit board

That was recovered from the wreckage.

Pt/35(b) was discovered in the scattered debris

Quite some time after pan am 103 came down,

And quite a long distance from lockerbie.

For a lot of people, that already flagged question marks

About its provenance.

When I was working on the megrahi appeal

As a researcher,

I developed the evidence on the circuit board,

I spoke to the relevant experts.

There are a number of anomalies concerning pt/35(b),

Concerning its provenance,

That strongly suggest that it was a plant.

Pt/35(b) is a perfect optical copy

Of a mebo circuit board,

But it was made by a different technology.

The copper was coated with pure tin, not with tin/lead mixture.

We have material prepared by

Bona-fide academic institutions, two of them,

Who reviewed the technology used

To make the fragment called pt35(b),

And they confirmed that it was plated with pure tin

Not with tin/lead mixture.

And therefore, if it was made in any commercial enterprise at all

Must have been made after 1988.

Nobody in the industry was using pure tin back in '88.

So, do you believe that pt/35(b) is a fake?

Yes.

Interviewer: Who planted it?

I don't know.

That piece of evidence has been under scrutiny by the trial,

By the criminal cases review commission

On a number of occasions,

And the conclusion at the end is that there is not any weight

To attach to the conspiracy theories

Around the fragment having been planted.

We all have a set of beliefs

Based on our observations of the available evidence.

And people reach different conclusions

On the basis of that.

If you're looking for a clean answer, you're not gonna get it.

It's not gonna get tied up in a nice little bow.

There are people that doubt what, I think, the facts are,

And they don't wanna believe

That anybody in government can tell the truth.

And I will say this - the people who worked on this case,

Top to bottom, were honest, forthright,

Believe in justice, wanted to do the right thing.

Jim: The key item, upon which the whole case depends,

Is not correct.

The evidence that was used in the court to convict a libyan

Was, in fact, false.

Suse: We became very friendly with jim.

Then, at some point, jim veered off into a direction

That we couldn't agree with.

He believed that the truth is not known,

And we feel that the truth has become known.

So, that kind of brought us apart.

Yeah.

Obviously, we are all entitled to our beliefs,

But we don't necessarily share them.

I am 100% convinced

Pan am 103 was brought down by a timer

.Built in a shop in zurich, switzerland, by mebo.

Absolutely convinced of that.

Edwin bollier suggested that I offered him $4 million and-

Interviewer: Did you? -No. God, no.

Initially he said a man by the name of buck revell

Offered it to him.

He never met buck revell.

All of a sudden, he remembers he met me,

So I offered him the money.

No, I did not offer him one cent.

The only thing I can tell you that I did tell him,

"you need to tell us everything you know.

"you need to tell the truth."

That's the problem. His story kept changing.

It changed at the trial, and it's changed subsequent to that.

John: Edwin bollier is someone

Who's shrouded in a lot of mystery.

We've never known which side of the fence he's playing.

Probably both.

Dick: I can remember, mr. Megrahi has an office in mebo.

Ok, that's another circumstance.

All the circumstances, to me, amount to a pile, a big pile.

I have the three white roses,

For christopher, matthew and ashley.

And my red rose, as always.

If john had to fall out of the sky,

This couldn't have been a better place for him to come down.

He was a very proud american, of scottish descent.

Interviewer: Do you ever find yourself

Looking over to the field?

Oh, yes. Yes, because that's where john died.

He was... He was in the nose cone of the plane.

You know, through the years you don't get over...

..A loss of this type or this magnitude.

You just learn how to live with it.

And knowing that he is where he is,

Here at tundergarth in scotland,

Among this most beautiful countryside and setting,

You know, it's such a peaceful and serene place.

When I got john back and I viewed him,

I promised to him that I would try to find out who did this

And hold people accountable,

Because I know that if I had been on that flight,

He would've done the same thing.

When al-megrahi was found guilty, as a libyan official,

Of bringing down pan am 103...

..The libyans created a no-fault settlement offer,

Saying that libya was not taking responsibility,

But was offering $10 million.

And that the family members had to sign off

On ever trying to pursue libya ever again.

Interviewer: Does libya accept responsibility

For the attack on lockerbie?

So, to be very clear on this, what you're saying is

That you accept responsibility,

But you're not admitting that you did it?

Of course.

I felt that if libya didn't do it, they didn't owe me a penny.

And if they did do it, they shouldn't be forcing us

To sign a no-fault settlement deal.

Some of the families of the victims

Wanted gaddafi to be on trial at camp zeist in the netherlands.

So, the idea that muammar gaddafi could later come round

And dictate terms to them,

Yeah, that's gonna stick in people's throats.

Interviewer: There are people who'd say,

"if libya had nothing to do with bombing pan am 103,

Why did they pay all this compensation?"

I think that's a question that's fairly easily answered.

Gaddafi's son, saif gaddafi, told me,

"yeah, we've decided to pay compensation

"because that's the only way we can get the ball rolling

"and get our oil industry back on stream

"and get the money coming in again."

John: Libya desperately wanted and needed

To get its relationship with the west back on track.

In order to do that, they had to admit responsibility

For the bombing, whether or not they did it,

And pay compensation, whether or not they did it.

Whichever camp you fall into,

Whether you believe the libyan's did it, or not,

You've always been thwarted by politics.

Nic: Britain's needs of libya and access to oil revenues

Were greater than the united states.

They didn't need to make the compromises

The british government were, it appears, prepared to do.

Prime minister tony blair met with muammar gaddafi,

And during this meeting there were two documents signed.

One was a very large british petroleum deal.

And the second was a prisoner transfer agreement.

In libya, there were no uk prisoners,

And there was only one libyan prisoner in all of the uk.

Al-megrahi.

John: Megrahi was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2008.

At that point, a lot was going on in the background.

Tony blair had done his deal in the desert a year earlier.

There was a very strong push to normalize relations with libya.

And as far as the libyans were concerned,

If they were gonna do any deal about oil,

That deal had to involve megrahi coming home.

We have been in contact with the scottish government,

Indicating that we objected to this.

We thought it was a mistake.

We're now in contact with the libyan government,

And want to make sure that he's not welcomed back.

Interviewer: How did you feel when megrahi was released?

Pissed.

And I'd had nothing to drink. I was angry.

I'm not a big believer in the death penalty,

But I think you need to sit in prison the rest of your life

And think about what you did.

Reporter: Abdulbasset al-megrahi had been sentenced to life,

But because he has cancer

And is believed to have only three months to live,

He was released and returned to libya today.

To me, I thought, "well, I guess this is scottish justice

And everything."

But I found that all um...

..Pretty appalling.

Reporter: Hundreds of people were bussed in for the event.

Scottish flags were provided.

It was a decision taken by the scottish legal system,

But it's clear, the return of the bomber suits many people.

Out of all the things that have happened

Since December 21st, 1988,

I would say megrahi's release

Was probably one of the hardest things.

It really made me know for sure, for the rest of my life,

That there is no justice.

Because I knew he was innocent, I wanted him to go home,

So he could die with his family.

His release on compassionate leave

Was very hard to stomach,

Because my father

And none of the people on the plane or on the ground

Had been treated with any compassion.

So, it was a very, very difficult moment.

Suse: Why was he let go?

The answer simply is so that the uk can go and drill for oil.

I mean, thousands and thousands of people

Die in prison of cancer.

It was tit for tat.

Jim: I think I know who was responsible

For killing my daughter, flora.

And the truth is, actually, very simple.

But the consequences of trying to conceal the truth

Are incredibly complex.

I think she was killed by a bomb

Which was ordained by the iranian authorities.

Man: It's coming inbound, fast!

Jim: The motive they had

Was that they had had an airbus destroyed

By an american missile.

290 people killed.

And therefore they were lusting for revenge.

(indistinct chanting)

Nic: Where was iran's revenge for that?

Does iran not revenge every attack?

John: I have no doubt it was iran.

I won't say the iranians

Personally went and blew up pan am.

They used the pflp-gc, one of their client states.

We knew the iranians were behind

All the american and british hostages in lebanon.

They'd been held for the last eight years or more.

I worked on it. I was in lebanon.

I worked on that case.

(cheering and whistling)

I think we cut a deal with iran and said,

"you give us back all the hostages,

"we will drop the focus on you for pan am."

'cause we knew we were guilty, why the iranians did it.

They did it in retaliation for us killing 250 of their people.

"so, we'll go after libya,

'cause we always wanted to go after libya."

I'm not defending gaddafi.

I'm not saying he's a clean character.

He's got a lot of blood on his hands.

But not the pan am blood.

This was state-sponsored terrorism.

That's the only thing we definitely know about lockerbie.

But the full extent of that state-sponsored terrorism

Remains under a veil of secrecy.

I believe, as a libyan citizen,

That megrahi was used...

..On behalf of gaddafi,

To take part in that horrendous crime,

But play a small part.

I think it was a three-way operation.

Iran paid the money.

The fringe palestinian group in syria

Provided the technology and the planning.

And I think gaddafi provided the facilitation

To use the malta route.

Nic: It is not inconceivable.

I mean, look at the terrorist contacts gaddafi had established

That could have allowed something like that to happen.

Maybe he wanted to ingratiate himself with the iranians.

It's not impossible that this is the case.

But we don't have evidence to show it.

The lockerbie disaster

Was probably closest, out of any other sort of legal event,

To the assassination of john kennedy.

Because the questions over jfk's death have never been answered.

And indeed, the individual that's presented

As having caused this, caused the death,

For many people, they're a small pin in a much bigger picture.

Interviewer: So, megrahi's the lee harvey oswald?

Yeah.

Nic: We found abdulbasset al-megrahi's villa

In an upmarket part of town.

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

I saw him on his deathbed in tripoli,

And he was hooked up to oxygen.

The family passionately telling you he wasn't responsible.

But part of you feels, "surely this must be true?"

But the circumstantial evidence speaks very strongly

For his involvement.

And the libyan government's willingness to sacrifice him?

Absolutely.

(church bell tolls)

Newsreader: A major breakthrough

In the decades-long investigation

Into the bombing of pan am flight 103.

The man accused of making the explosive device

Is now in us custody...

Reporter: The man accused of building the bomb

That blew up pan am flight 103 over lockerbie, scotland,

In 1988,

Making his first appearance in a us court.

Interviewer: What do you make of the latest development

-In the story? Dick: Mr. Masud?

We got his name about the same time as we got megrahi's name

From the cia.

Masud allegedly was a long-time libyan intelligence officer,

Who had the skill-set to build the bomb

That brought down pan am 103.

There's also evidence that locates him in malta airport

On the day when the bomb was placed on the aircraft.

When the scottish police went to libya in 1999,

They asked questions.

"we wanna see the passport records for megrahi.

"we want fhimah. We want masud."

"we don't know who masud is.

"can't identify him. Don't know who he is."

Then, years later,

Masud confessed to a libyan police officer

That he built pan am 103 bomb and put it on the plane,

Along with fhimah and megrahi.

But masud's confession

Is probably not worth the paper it was written on

Because it was given to libyan security forces.

After the downfall of gaddafi, they were effectively militias.

This was not a confession that was given under circumstances

That would give you confidence in its authenticity.

The us apprehension and arrest of libyan terrorist suspect

Abu agila mohammad masud

Is the first tangible step made by the us department of justice

In 34 years

To hold any suspect accountable in us courts.

After 35 years, it's like, I have friends that actually say,

"when is it gonna end?" I say, "it never ends."

Suse: He was the bomb maker, so he was part of the puzzle.

We have him, so try him.

And I hope we have a different experience in trying him

And incarcerating him,

And keeping him there.

(sirens wail)

Nic: Lockerbie was a huge tragedy.

Nothing had happened on a scale like this before.

The biggest terrorist attack in the skies,

Targeting mostly americans.

This was unimaginable back in the late '80s.

Terrorism had just not reached that type of level.

When you've seen the aftermath of something like that,

You just can't get it out of your head.

I was terrified every time I got on a plane.

It was a constant and real threat.

Pan am 103 was one of those terrorist attacks

On commercial aviation

That drove pan am, pan american airways,

The stellar carrier in the united states,

Drove it out of business.

Nic: This was a wake-up call about the new terrorism

That was on the horizon.

It made people realize

That perhaps their lives weren't as safe

As they thought they were.

It wasn't long until 9/11.

They were proven right.

(siren blares)

The level of terrorism that the world faces today

Is quantifiably much greater.

It's not going away.

(gunfire)

After 20 years of the war on terror,

There are at least five times as many

Salafi jihadi terrorist groups

On the us state department's list

Than there were on September 12th, 2001.

Interviewer: Do we reap what we sow as the west,

Meddling in these other countries?

We have to understand, just like in physics,

Every action has a reaction.

Everything we do to counter terrorism is not game over,

It's just another move on the chess board.

Interviewer: The last time we were here, we talked about

He body that you found, still in his seat...

-Yes. -..In the field over there.

Hugh, you talked about

How you guys developed a relationship with him.

Right from the start, I think.

We called him "our boy", you know?

Margaret: 'cause he just looked so young.

You know, we felt responsible for him, really,

And we knew there'd be relatives somewhere

Saddened by what had happened.

Interviewer: But you did eventually find out, didn't you?

Yes. It took quite a while.

Interview: And what was his name?

Frank ciulla. Yeah.

As I say, we thought he was just a boy.

But he was actually 40, I think.

Margaret: Forty-five.

And there was a wife, called mary lou.

Hugh: We were just keeping hoping

They would come, you know?

And then it was arranged she was coming for these ashes,

And that would be her first visit.

Interviewer: So how often have you kept in contact

Over the last 30 years?

Margaret: All the time.

Mary lou always felt

It was such a beautiful place for frank to fall.

I don't know what she'll think today, mind you!

(laughs)

She's never been here on a day like this!

(laughs)

(thunder rumbles)

It's cleared a bit, right enough.

Mary lou: Hi! Margaret: Hello!

Oh, great.

I was just saying, I have to show you...

Good to see you.

I have to show you all the pictures from the last few days.

We've had a busy... Oh, yes! Yes.

..A busy few days.

-Where have you been? -How you doing?

Good.

Interviewer: Tell me, you guys have obviously

Built this relationship now,

But what was it like the first time you came here?

When I first met them, I felt like I knew them already.

I mean, really.

They were warm and we hugged and it was ok.

What happened felt so inhumane

And felt so violent and... Horrific.

-Oh, it was. -And it was. It was.

But then, coming here and seeing this,

Like, other side of the story, the humanity came back.

I felt that he was alone somewhere

And yet, when I came here, he wasn't alone.

So, that kind of really helped me a lot

'cause he was with them.

I was a different person when I came

And a different person when I left.

Mine was actually, and I don't even know how to say it,

"a nice story".

I just will never forget how you walked to the spot.

You were so confident where to go and it was that, like,

Feeling like how important that place was for you too...

Yeah.

..And the spot where his life ended.

Like, that's a major part of the story.

And we know where he came to this earth,

Where he was found and we can stand there.

It's like... It's stunning.

Suse: They all have their own very important story to tell.

It took me 15 years.

This is my contribution

To keeping the memory of what was lost alive.

Because as long as this exists and people see it,

Pan am 103 will not be forgotten.

Lucas: I want so desperately to help alex live on,

Because what happened to him is so unfair.

The fact that I see him in one of my kids

Really brings great pleasure to me.

And uh...

My youngest son is named alex, also.

And so it's his namesake.

It's nice.

It's very nice.

This is john's boarding pass.

It says pam am 103, 21st December.

His seat was 3a.

I always felt guilty that I didn't go with him,

Because I... I thought that maybe if we had gone,

We would have come back the following day together.

But then again, who knows, right?

Who knows?

Jim: It's a lovely spot.

It looks out over the sea.

My father and my mother's graves are here,

And a memorial to poor flora...

..Facing theirs.

Interviewer: You've spent the last 35 years living this.

-No regrets doing that? Jim: Infinite regrets.

The only regret that really matters, of course,

Is the loss of flora.

We are left with a legacy of loss,

But also of good memories

Of a beautiful and beloved child.