Lockerbie: an Iranian In London

[Caustic Logic]

Just wanted to alert people to an interesting new angle on the Iranian plot to blow up PA 103. (note, dispensing with references to the legal reality and just focusing on what the evidence says).

http://lockerbiedivide.blogspot.com/2011/04/iranian-in-london-strange-case-of.html

One man. Parviz Taheri, was from Iran, lived in Frankfurt, flew to London on the first leg of PA103 on Dec 21, acting nervous as he boarded with almost no luggage (none checked). He carried on this flight the address of the PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt where the PA 103 bomb was built, ripping the plane apart just after he stepped off. And he had been in Helsinki, where that warning call of a Pan Am flight out of Frankfurt around Dec 21 was placed from. He said the Iranian embassy there might have answers about the bombing, although he didn't know anything about it himself.

At the least, weird enough to read about, just to read something weird. At the most, an indirect but possibly important clue to the bombing that killed 270 23 years ago.

 

[Rolfe]

Didn't someone say that Khaled Jafaar looked nervous when boarding PA103A too? Quite a lot of jumpy people on that plane I think....

You know, when we get into this area, I start to feel I'm going down for the third time. I can see the bomb didn't come from Malta, I can see it went on at Heathrow, I can see the entire operation has Jibril's fingerprints all over it - but when it comes to the comings and goings of that crowd of murdering bastards, false warnings, who was trying to warn whom, how the bomb actually travelled to London.... I think I need a lie down.

I was speaking to Christine about it yesterday, and she reminded me that the IranAir handling facility at Heathrow was right next to Pan Am, and within the area violated by Manly's broken padlock.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Didn't someone say that Khaled Jafaar looked nervous when boarding PA103A too? Quite a lot of jumpy people on that plane I think....

You know, when we get into this area, I start to feel I'm going down for the third time. I can see the bomb didn't come from Malta, I can see it went on at Heathrow, I can see the entire operation has Jibril's fingerprints all over it - but when it comes to the comings and goings of that crowd of murdering bastards, false warnings, who was trying to warn whom, how the bomb actually travelled to London.... I think I need a lie down.

I was speaking to Christine about it yesterday, and she reminded me that the IranAir handling facility at Heathrow was right next to Pan Am, and within the area violated by Manly's broken padlock.

Rolfe.

Christine, Grahame I presume? That's great you're speaking with her finally, if so (MSP for south of Scotland). Be sure to ask her about those paprs I've been interested in.

True, appearing nervous on boarding doesn't mean much. I act nervous some times the same way without plotting anything. And carrying that address around doesn't prove much either, or his visit to Helsinki. Put together, however, together with the existing mystery of the Helsinki warning, and it's strange enough to wonder about.

An excerpt:

It can be inferred from the following defense questioning that he said a very peculiar thing to Inspector Fuhl somewhat to that effect and worse. He knew nothing of the bombing, he had said, but one might find answers by calling Iranians, at an embassy, in Helsinki.
Q Now, I think the West German police said to you that if you were not involved in the tragedy that happened to Pan Am 103, did you, with your connections, have any idea who might be involved; is that right? They asked you that question?
A Yes, it is correct.
Q And you told them to look somewhere in particular, didn't you?
A I don't know what you are referring to.
Q Well, let's see if I can jog your memory. Did you direct their attention to the Iranian embassy in Helsinki?
A No, I haven't contacted Iranian embassy at all. I had been to Helsinki just as a tourist. [...] I was not asked about the Iranian embassy in Helsinki by the German police, but they only asked my point of view regarding that incident. And I said I don't know.
Q My Lord, that's all I ask.
He later denied saying that, but it seems at one point he made this ominous reference and still admits being there (in case there was supporting evidence?). But this was only as a tourist, not as the guy who broke into Samra Mahayoun’s flat and seeded that strangely prophetic warning about the bombing of an American flight from Frankfurt two weeks later. Because two weeks later, by chance, Taheri himself flew on an American flight from Frankfurt which then blew up.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Oh, did I mention this part I just found the other night?

An American Link?
Yasmin (Arabic and/or Persian for Jasmine) Siddique testified in November 2000, a month after Taheri. In December 1988 she was not, in fact, a Pan Am employee at all. She managed a McDonald’s restaurant, but was a Frankfurt-to-London passenger on 103A (she was going to visit her Mother). And she was standing just behind Taheri in the passport cue. Siddique still recalled noticing his behavior first – unsettled, apprehensive, turning his head frequently, eyes darting about as if watching for someone.

When he got up to “the passport man,” the suspicious young man was slow to produce the passport and the inspector was slower yet to examine it carefully. Taheri “did not look at the policeman or passport control officer;” she recalled, but rather, mostly, “at his feet.”

She was close enough to see his passport and “It was a small blue American passport.” She clarified this means issued by the United States, like the ones held by some of her family who already lived there at the time. Mr. Taylor then described the man this way:
Q Now, we know that the man that you have described was, in fact, a through passenger carrying on to the United States?
A Yes.
Q On a journey of seven hours and 40 minutes after [the 1.5-hour first leg]?
A Uh-huh.

But he got off in London, to meet his fiancée, he later said. This “fact” of full booking on the doomed half of the flight as well could be an inference from his US passport and the general impression that people return home at that time of year, as she was. There was nothing else read out (that I can find) showing this booking, but Taylor and Siddique somehow agreed it was the case. She thought he carried no luggage at all as he stood in line, and found it odd considering the long flight ahead.

Either way, the American passport is unexpected and not explained by anything else I know of. He lived in Germany and, sometime in 1989, move to Sweden, where inspector Fuhl had to hunt him down for further questioning. (Oddly, alternate suspects Mohammed Abu Talb and Abu Elias both have links in Sweden as well). Taheri was still a resident of Sweden when he testified.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, do we know she wasn't simply mistaken about the passport? Is it possible that whatever passport he had simply resembled a US one, and as she was familiar with US passports, and knew the flight connected with a US flight, simply made a wrong assumption?

This is touching on something I've been meaning to bring up for a while. The Special Defence of Incrimination.

We know the defence cited "hundreds" of witnesses, and then didn't call any of them. (They called two, just the Maltese meteorologist, and the guy who saw the sloppy coding at Franlfurt on a different visit.) The witnesses who weren't called were almost all in relation to the Special Defence, I believe.

(As an aside, why didn't they call experts on identification procedures to rubbish the Gauci identification? OK, it was self-evidently rubbish, but letting it rest at that was stupid. Why didn't they call experts on the Frankfurt baggage system to find out how all the records disappeared?)

Do we know who these witnesses were? Is there any record at all of what they might have testified that the defence originally thought they were worth bringing to court?

So many of the prosecution witnesses would at first sight make more sense as defence witnesses - Bedford, Borg, Talb, and indeed all these Maltese passengers whose testimony ruled out the presence of an unaccompanied bag on KM180. It has been suggested that some at least of that was deliberate "spoiler" tactics, to deny the defence access to these people as witnesses for the defence and force the defence to treat them as hostile witnesses.

But what about the rest of them? Who were these "hundreds" of uncalled defence witnesses?

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

The defense sucked, for some reason. They helped bring a lot of information to light for historians with access to the transcripts. But as you note, nearly all the witnesses - even those with the best, most damning evidence, were called by the prosecution. I don't know if the spoiler theory holds water or not, but if so, I'm sure that's part of the reason for that. Either way, in their choices they did even more than the defense to help put down on paper valuable insights into what really happened.

I do realize this whole Taheri episode is quite speculative. And the questions you raise as to the passport and through passenger presumption are right on. That whole aspect hit me only as I was writing and I don't feel I've sorted it out well. She seems pretty sure on it being US issue, but that's possibly in error. And as I noted, the booking to New York might have been a deduction based on the first one. It wasn't apparently reflected in his booking records, or that would have come up.

It is possible he was acting nervous on purpose, and even saying things about New York and going home, to draw attention to himself and his notebook. Who knows?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Someone looked nervous getting on a flight. Well, that's enough to condemn them in conspiracy land is it?

 

[Rolfe]

What is this with people picking up he most tangential, peripheral, throwaway points to criticise, and ignoring the actual arguments being presented?

Rolfe.