Gaddafi 'knew' Lockerbie bomber was innocent but made prison 'deal' for him

11 June 2023 , 16:51

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The 747 Pan Am plane crashed in Lockerbie in December 1988 (Image: AFP FILES/AFP via Getty Images)

Colonel Gaddafi knew the Lockerbie bomber was innocent of mass murder but let him rot in prison in a political deal, his close adviser has said.

Daad Sharab, 61, was the Libyan dictator’s confidante for 22 years and visited Abdelbaset al-Megrahi three times in prison in Scotland.

The Libyan intelligence officer agreed to drop his appeal against his life sentence in return for his return to Libya on health grounds in 2009.

Now another former Libyan intelligence officer, Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi, 71, is to go on trial in the US over the attack.

He is accused of building the bomb that downed Pan Am flight 103 on December 21, 1988, killing all 259 on board and 11 people in Lockerbie.

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Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown and assassinated in 2011 (Getty Images)

The late Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (PA)

Sections of the craft fell on a street in the Dumfries and Galloway town.

Sharab fears the trial will again implicate al-Megrahi. Speaking from her home in Jordan, Sharab said: “I believe that Megrahi was framed.

“He fulfilled his commitment to Gaddafi and went to trial even though he knew he was innocent.

“Gaddafi made a deal with the British then to lift sanctions.” Megrahi was jailed in 2001.

A Maltese shopkeeper testified he sold him clothing found in the case that held the bomb.

The plane came down after a midair explosion over Scotland (Hulton Archive)

But writing to the King of Jordan in a letter Sharab delivered, al-Megrahi said: “I never in my life bought any clothes from any store in Malta.”

Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was a victim, said of al-Megrahi and a co-defendant: “I went into court thinking I was going to see the trial of those responsible for the murder.

Al-Megrahi shortly before his death (Dumfries and Galloway Standard)

“I came out thinking he had been framed.”

Gaddafi had Sharab imprisoned but she escaped, after 19 months, amid 2011’s Arab Spring uprising and went on to write The Colonel and I: My Life with Gaddafi.

Megrahi died aged 60 in 2012.

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*The Colonel And I: My Life With Gaddafi, by Daad Sharab. Published by Pen & Sword Military, is available on Amazon.

Jeremy Armstrong