Lockerbie Witness' Credibility Questioned
Sept. 27, 2000 -- He was billed as a star witness in the case against the two Libyans accused of bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, but today a Libyan double agent came under fire from the defense team.
Defense counsel William Taylor said the double agent known by the pseudonym Abdul Majid Giaka had invented stories in a desperate bid to secure his future.
Taylor told the four judges that Giaka was a “shirker” who dreamed up incidents for the benefit of the CIA only when the U.S. intelligence agency threatened to halt payments to him.
Fellow defense counsel Richard Keen said Giaka grossly exaggeratedhis importance within the Libyan secret service to the CIA and made bizarre “tittle-tattle” claims, such as saying Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was involved in a Freemason plot.
“How did you discover that Colonel Gadhafi was a Mason?”Keen asked during the cross-examination barrage and, as Giaka stalled, repeated the question five times.
Said He Saw Explosives
Hidden behind bulletproof glass, testifying with his voice and face scrambled on courtroom television monitors, Abdel Majid Giaka took the stand Tuesday and identified the two defendants — Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah — as his co-workers in Malta’s Luqa airport.
The two men are on trial in a special Scottish court set up in the Netherlands on charges they planted the bomb that caused Pan Am Flight 103 to explode over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. A total of 270 people were killed, including 11 on the ground.
In 1986, two years before the bombing, Giaka told the court that Fhimah — whom he described as his boss — had once shown him a secret cache of explosives kept in a drawer at the airport in Malta.
Giaka described the cache as two boxes containing “a yellowish material” in plastic-wrapped bricks.
He testified that Fhimah told him “he had 10 kilograms [22 pounds] of TNT delivered by Abdel Basset.”
Giaka alleged the two Libyan men planted a suitcase bomb on a plane bound for Frankfurt, Germany. The bomb was eventually transferred to Pan Am Flight 103, which took off from Frankfurt and stopped at London’s Heathrow airport before departing for New York.
The defendants say they are innocent.
Floor to the Defense
Despite the nature of Giaka’s testimony, the prosecution completed questioning Giaka within a day, leaving the floor to the defense who proceeded to question Giaka’s credibility.
Taylor, representing Megrahi, highlighted communicationsbetween Giaka’s handlers in Malta and CIA headquarters inWashington. He said the witness, “had proved a disappointment” to the CIA and was under constant pressure to give new information.
“That’s a clear indication that your money’s going to be cut off because the quality of your information was pretty low,” Taylor said, referring to one of the CIA cables.
The CIA handed over some 36 new intelligence cables last week after the trial had been deadlocked for weeks by defense claims that the CIA had not handed over all its material on Giaka.
ABCNEWS’ Sheila MacVicar in Camp Zeist, Netherlands, ABCNEWS.com’s Lucrezia Cuen in London and Reuters contributed to this report.