[caption id="attachment_89315" align="alignright" width="180"] A policeman walks away from the debris of the 747 Pan Am airliner on December 22, 1988.[/caption]
The new documentary by Qatar’s state-run Al Jazeera about Iran’s involvement in the 1988 attack on a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie in Scotland, is a move to plot against Tehran, a prominent Iranian journalist says.

“What was laid out was unsubstantiated rumor and innuendo which were said to be compelling because they corroborated other rumors and innuendos,” Alireza Ahmadi wrote in an article on Press TV website on Friday.

According to the documentary, aired by Al Jazeera America last week, sources associated with the Lebanon-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) plotted to down the Pan Am 103 on behalf of Iran.

Jessica de Grazia, a legal investigator who posited the idea, “was by her own account hired at a late stage in the trial specifically to 'find evidence to claim it was somebody else,'” Ahmadi said, adding, “She spends much of the documentary chronicling the comings and goings of several members of this group without clearly establishing proof of their involvement.”

Apart from de Grazia, much of the allegations were made by a former agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) named Robert Baer. Baer said the motive for Iran involved the destroying of Iran Air Flight 655, shot down by the US Navy in July 1988, claiming that “this is crucial, they thought that if they didn’t retaliate against the United States, we would continue to shoot down their civilian airliners.”

Ahmadi argued that Baer “offers no evidence of this claim. In addition, one must ask, how could the purpose of such an attack be deterrence if no one accepted responsibility?”

“Baer claims that Iran contracted PFLP to take down five Western planes. He provides no evidence of this and does not explain why no other planes were attacked,” Ahmadi added.

Richard Marquise, a retired FBI agent involved with the Lockerbie investigation, appeared on a program aired after the documentary where he refuted most of what was laid out in the previous hour, especially by Robert Baer.

“Maybe he (Baer) saw parts of what was done in the investigation, but certainly he never played a role in actively investigating the case,” Marquise said.
Near the end of the article, Ahmadi noted, “The fact that this documentary aired on Aljazeera America is also noticeable because it is likely that many other outlets refused to air it. The documentary was not created by Aljazeera, and Aljazeera’s limited audience and visibility in the US makes it an unlikely first choice for the producers. Aljazeera also has a long history of anti-Iran bias.”
On Wednesday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also reacted to the documentary, calling it a “fabricated report”.

In December 1988, all 259 people onboard Pan AM Flight 103 and 11 others on the ground were killed when the Boeing 747 exploded in the air over Scotland's southern city of Lockerbie.

By Press TV

 

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