Evidence Reconsidered: Abu Talb

Abu Talb: Unindicted Co-conspirator, or Practice Megrahi?
23 August 2010

Note 23 August: This post was originally put up months ago but left undated and incomplete. Previously it had a bunch of incomplete, semi-organized text, which I've copied into a word doc to sort out better and update. I will split this into a few sub-posts that I'll link to here when they're up.

Breifly, Mohammed Abu Talb is an Egyptian-born struggler/terrorist with a long rap sheet of fighting and bombings. He claims he foreswore violence and fled from the fray to Sweden with his wife in the early 1980s, and opened a store. But he was jailed there in May 1989, on suspicion of a mini-string of pointless terror bombings in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1985 that killed, I believe, one. By the time he was convicted for his part in these - on December 21 1989 - he was also widely suspected of involvement in the the Pan Am 103 bombing exactly one year earlier, and he was soon named as the primary suspect.

Abu Talb wound up being exonerated for the Lockerbie incident, but found guilty of the other bombings, and like Megrahi protests his innocence of all charges. He was later called as a prosecution witness, apparently to clear him of suspicion. To read the Zeist judges' summation, he deserved it. However, and again like Megrahi, Mr. Abu Talb does have a body of circumstantial clues, assembled back when he was the prime suspect.

Most recently, on Saturday (20 August 2010), Swedish authorities for the first time acknowledged that Abu Talb had been freed from custody and had slipped from view and the reach of investigators. The allegation of just that was first aired by the obviously well-connected Scottish Law magazine/site The Firm almost a year ago.
The Firm understands Talb was quietly released in early September, only weeks after Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was released from jail in Scotland and returned to Libya.

As noted by Lucy Adams (first link above) in the Herald (Scotland):
The Herald has previously revealed that Talb could be tried if Megrahi were to be formally cleared. An appeal against Megrahi’s conviction could still be mounted even after the death of the Libyan, who is terminally ill with prostate cancer.
This apparent, possible, contingency planning is highly interesting, and sure to attract more scrutiny in the coming days. Therefore I'll seek to quickly bring what I can into a more organized discussion.

The posts:
Abu Talb and Tony Gauci

Abu Talb: Practice Megrahi?

2 comments:

Charles said...

To me this is quite simple.

The bombing is carried out by Iran and the US.

Iran is not really interested but only to the extent it can never receive a real blame. They have a hold on the US as they still have the Lebanese hostages, who will not be released until a party other than Iran is blamed (Doesn't this sound to you like a re-run of the US embassy hostages dealings)

The CIA has a problem. The US public will need to have someone to blame for Pan Am 103. If nothing is ever found rumour might spring up that the US was behind the plot (which it was).

The CIA theory set out to blame the PFLPGC, with a possible alternate of PPSF, if that goes wrong. The claer evidence of the first bomb on the plane is of an imitation PFLP GC device probably manufactured by the CIA.

Then Kuwait is invaded, which may be part of another CIA plot to encourage Saddam Hussain to overreach himself. That kills any attack on the PFLP GC, who are under protection of the Syrians.

So the "emergency back up plot", which has been on the back-burner is implemented, Magrahi and Fhimah are charged and the sky comes tumbling down.

Caustic Logic said...

Well, that could fit with your scenario - one of the leading PFLP-GC suspects looking like he wasn't involved.

Otherwise...

I confess I haven't given the hostage aspect much consideration, but it must be related somehow. I think the plot change was decided well before the invasion, with Megrahi clues in place within the span of 1989.

Side note: I still wonder what the hell Saddam was thinking. He was crazy I hear! One person I read a comment from wondered if he filled that Iran Air flight with corpses and used remote controlto make it attack the Vincennes. (confused person).