A number of former officers from communist East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, were interviewed by the Scottish prosecution service in connection with ongoing investigations into the Lockerbie bombing.
The Daily Telegraph reported that German prosecutors in the city of Frankfurt an der Oder confirmed that they arranged interviews with five former Stasi officers for Scotland’s Crown Office prosecution service.
No details of the new investigation have been released, but there are long-standing allegations that the Stasi may have supplied the detonator used in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. A spokesman for the Frankfurt an der Oder prosecutor’s office pointed out that the former Stasi officers were interviewed as witnesses, not as suspects.
As many as 20 former Stasi officers have been interviewed across Germany in connection with the case, according to Bild newspaper.
Last December the Scottish prosecution service announced that it was pursuing new leads in relation to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie.
The Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi remains the only person ever convicted over the bombing, in which 270 people died. It has long been known that the Stasi had access to the type of detonator used in the Lockerbie bomb and were discussed in the trial that convicted al-Megrahi in 2001.
The Stasi had links with Libyan intelligence, and it allowed it to use East Berlin as a base for operations against the West, including the bombing of a West Berlin nightclub that killed two Americans in 1986.
The Crown Office stressed that the aim of the current investigation is not to cast doubt on al-Megrahi’s guilt but was pursuing new leads “in relation to the pursuit of other individuals involved in the conspiracy to commit the atrocity”.
