Lockerbie: 'Koussa knows nothing'

Published on Tuesday 5 April 2011 19:33

COLONEL Gaddafi's son has insisted that Libya's former foreign minister who defected last week to the UK knows nothing about the Lockerbie bomb.

Seif Gaddafi, one of the last senior figures believed to be loyal to his father, described Moussa Koussa as "sick and old".

Mr Koussa, who resigned from Col Gaddafi's government and fled to the UK last week, is set to answer questions from Scottish prosecutors about the terrorist atrocity which claimed the lives of 270 people in 21 December 1988.

But Mr Gaddafi suggested that Mr Koussa, who was also in charge of Libya's intelligence services for many years, might make up "funny stories" about Lockerbie and Col Gaddafi in exchange for immunity.

He said British and US officials "know everything about Lockerbie so there are no secrets" Koussa can reveal. UK police and prosecutors said steps are being taken to arrange the appointment "in the next few days".

Scottish investigators are expected to question him over the bombing after discussions with Foreign Office officials on Monday. Mr Koussa was head of Col Gaddafi's feared intelligence agency from 1994 and was a senior intelligence agent when Pan Am flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie.

The only man found guilty of the crime was former Libyan agent Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi who, when he was released on compassionate grounds from prison in Scotland in 2009, was welcomed by Seif Gaddafi at the airport in Tripoli.

As well as the Lockerbie bombing, Labour's shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has led calls for Mr Koussa to be quizzed in relation to the murder of Pc Yvonne Fletcher, who was shot during a protest outside London's Libyan Embassy in 1984.