New efforts in the investigation of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing are being made after Ken Dornstein, whose brother died on the flight, directed a three-part documentary on PBS revealing additional information about possible suspects.

Dornstein, a filmmaker, conducted an investigation and found Musbah Eter, who was convicted in a 1986 nightclub bombing in Germany. Eter told Dornstein that Libyan official Abu Agila Mas’ud had armed the bomb that exploded on Pan Am Flight 103, according to a USA Today article.

Mas’ud is currently in a Libyan prison, according to Dornstein’s discoveries, after he was convicted of making bombs for the Moammar Gadhafi government in order to booby-trap the cars of opposition members in 2011, according to USA Today.

Dornstein also discovered the possible involvement of Abdullah Senussi, Gadhafi’s intelligence chief, who met Abdelbaset Ali Modmed Al Megrahi — who was convicted of the bombing and died in 2012 — at the airport upon his return to Libya from prison, according to USA Today.

“This is a fascinating breakthrough in information gleamed from the video by Ken Dornstein that shows direct connections that our investigators had suspected for a long time but couldn’t prove,” said Frank Duggan, president of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103. “But now there’s proof.”

Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988. The explosion killed all 259 people aboard — including 35 Syracuse University students who were traveling from London to New York City after completing a study abroad program — and 11 people on the ground.

Richard Marquise, a now-retired FBI agent who worked on the Pan Am Flight 103 investigation at its inception, said Dornstein found out information through his own investigation that the FBI and Scottish government did not even know.

Marquise said Scottish officials have requested to go to Libya to interview Senussi, but said he is not sure if that will work considering the current chaotic state of Libya’s government. The country has struggled to stabilize after Gadhafi’s 42-year long rule, according to BBC. Since the end of his rule in 2011, conflicts between two rival governments have arisen since the central government collapsed.

He added that Mas’ud is not recognized by Libya as a citizen — the country’s officials said he does not exist — so Scottish officials have not been able to track him down.

Marquise said when the investigation began in 1991, the FBI collected enough evidence to indict two people.

“If this investigation could have been done in the United States, we would’ve had a whole range of other resources,” Marquise said. “… But the early days were literally looking for a needle in a haystack.”

At the beginning of the investigation, the challenge was narrowing the number of suspects for the bombing, Marquise said, but now the investigation is a matter of trying to indict someone from a much smaller pool of suspects.

Even if the American or Scottish governments were able to find whoever is responsible for the bombing, Marquise said he isn’t sure if the discovery will bring closure to the victims’ families.

“Everybody uses that word ‘closure,’ … but I don’t know if you ever really get closure because birthdays come around, anniversaries come around and Christmas comes around,” Marquise said. “I don’t think closure actually exists in the real world.”

Marquise added that he would like to see more justice for the victims’ families.

Duggan, the president of Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, said he thinks it is amazing that after 27 years, the Pan Am Flight 103 is “back on the front page.” However, he said he would like to think of it as more of a measure of justice than closure.

“I hate that word — there’s never going to be closure,” Duggan said. “But at least (the victims’ families) know more now than before.”

Published on October 26, 2015 at 10:13 pm

Contact Sara: smswann@syr.edu | @saramswann