Investigation insiders were well aware of the UTA case's
fragile nature since it hinged on the testimony of a single witness
(Bernard Yanga). Yanga's testimony was inconsistent with the scientific
evidence, which had pointed to the Arab Organisation of May 15 and thus in
all likelihood to Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) (1). Additional scientific evidence
was thus necessary to strengthen Yanga's accusations against Libya.
One man came rushing to the aid of Bruguire,
the examining magistrate: J Thomas Thurman, an FBI special agent assigned
to the Bureau's prestigious Explosives Unit. This unit was responsible for
determining the origin of bombs and explosives used in terrorist
incidents. Tom Thurman has worked on all the major American terrorist
incidents since beginning work in the police crime lab in 1981. His
interest in bombs, explosives and weaponry dates back to his time in
Korea, where he headed a weapons factory. Thurman is not the kind of man
to waste his time behind a microscope, and many of his colleagues have
been bitterly critical of this. One of them, Dr Frederic Whitehurst of the
FBI's Scientific Analysis Section (SAS), complained in a memo to his
superiors that Thurman had fabricated evidence in order to prove the guilt
of Walter Leroy Moody (an American "serial bomber") while working on
another case being investigated concurrently with the Lockerbie bombing
incident. … Thurman's misbehaviour was substantiated in several other
cases and resulted in his suspension from the FBI in 1997 (2).
Thurman always tried to arrive quickly at
bombing sites and, much like a bloodhound, begin his search for evidence.
Two days after the Pan Am 747 went down over Lockerbie, he was bustling
about the wreckage, making contacts with both the Scottish police and his
CIA counterparts. It is worth repeating how he masterfully solved the
Lockerbie case by providing "scientific" evidence of the involvement of
Libya and two Libyan nationals, even though the evidence had been pointing
to Iranian and Syrian complicity via the PFLP-GC. The Americans saw a real
go-getter in action, high on the adrenalin rush he felt during his
dramatic investigations. "You can't sleep," said the new Superman. "We're
the blacksmiths of the FBI. The nuts and bolts. We get extremely dirty,
actually, filthy dirty."
Thurman's approach is anything but scientific.
He manufactures opinions or hears them on the grapevine, and then tries to
"prove" them scientifically. Working alongside his CIA colleagues on the
Lockerbie and UTA bombings, he was aware that the CIA suspected Libyan
involvement in both cases despite the evidence pointing to the PFLP-GC.
Help from the CIA
The CIA provided Thurman with information
concerning three cases that showed unmistakable signs of Libyan
involvement:
On Saturday 10 March 1984, at 12.35 pm, a UTA
DC-8 operating as flight 772 connecting Brazzaville, Bangui, N'Djamena and
Paris exploded at the N'Djamena airport in Chad. … Twenty-five people were
injured, one of whom died several months later. This incident came on the
heels of a statement by Gadafy in which he wondered if the French "were
ready to wage another Algerian war in Chad". Libya decided to harass
France, which sent 3,000 soldiers to Chad as part of Operation Manta.
Libya wanted to demonstrate that despite the French military presence,
security could not be assured in a sensitive location like an airport,
located more than 1,500 km from the "red line" on Chad's 16th
parallel. The French intelligence services concluded that Libyan
involvement was "very probable". The suitcase containing the explosives
was most likely loaded onto the aircraft in Bangui (Central African
Republic), checked in under the fictitious name of Sad Youris. In
reality, Youris was one Al Masri, who had been observed in March 1985 in
Cotonou (Benin) working within the highly active Libyan People's Bureau.
The French foreign intelligence service, the General Directorate for
External Security (GDES), conveyed its findings to the CIA.
The CIA also supplied Thurman with information
concerning the attempted bombing of the United States embassy in Togo; the
Togolese security services had arrested nine people and discovered two
suitcases packed with plastic explosives.
Most significantly, Thurman was given access
to a special CIA dossier that the Americans used to direct the Congolese
military security forces toward the trail leading to Libya. This case
pertains to the 20 February 1988 arrest at Dakar airport of two Libyans,
Mohammed Marzouk, alias Mohammed Naydi, and Mansour Omran Saber. The men
were in possession of two MST-13 timers, part of an order that Libya had
placed with the Swiss firm Mebo AG. They were also carrying Semtex and
nine kilos of plastic explosives. The men spent four months in prison and
were then released.
A year and a half into the Pan Am
investigation, Thurman "discovered" a fingernail-sized fragment of printed
circuit board that had allegedly triggered the explosion of the suitcase
bomb. In mid-June 1990 a fact-finding commission showed a photograph of
the fragment to Edwin Bollier, the head of Mebo. According to Bollier, the
fragment he identified could have come from an order Mebo had sold to the
Libyan secret service; but Bollier was not able to physically examine the
fragment itself. It was only in September 1999 during the Lockerbie trial
in Scotland that he was able to inspect two fragments of the infamous
timer using a microscope. Bollier and his adviser reached the following
conclusions: the fragments did not come from the timer that had been sold
to the Libyans; the timer fragments had not been connected electrically
(ie they had not been used); and most importantly, the fragments were not
the same as those in the photo he had been shown in 1990! In May last year
a Scottish judge asked Bollier to examine a fragment from the same timer:
this time the fragment was charred!
Bollier has proclaimed far and wide, including
on his company's website (3), that the fragments the Scottish judge showed
him had been tampered with; some form of manipulation had thus taken
place. "It's a forgery created by the FBI to support the theory
implicating Libya. What I saw could not have come from Mebo" (4). It may
be wise to keep one's distance from a man who has never been particularly
selective about who he sells to, and who has apparently continued selling
timers to Libya even after finding out that they were being used for
terrorist purposes. Indeed, Bollier - who also supplied the Stasi, the
former East German intelligence service - has changed his initial version
of events somewhat. Nevertheless, it is useful to bear his testimony in
mind (and to ascertain the nature of his relations with the CIA as well)
in order to understand the account of the timer that allegedly detonated
the suitcase on board the UTA flight.
Shifting the ground to Libya
In early summer 1990 Bruguire was studying
the possible role of the PFLP-GC and certain Shiite Muslim groups - thus
suggesting Syrian and Iranian involvement - when the Congolese report
implicating Libya was issued. This shift in focus occurred at the same as
it had in the Lockerbie investigation, and US influence was immediately
suspected. Moreover, Bruguire and the Americans were both aware of the
fragile nature of the testimony of the sole witness, Bernard Yanga…
Thurman had been working on photos of all the
UTA wreckage found in a 50 sq km area of the Tenere Desert; this evidence
was placed under special judicial seal no. 4. Unbeknownst to Bruguire and
Claude Calisti, an expert from the Prefecture of Police crime lab, in
summer 1991 Thurman identified a small piece of printed circuit board,
green in colour and measuring 4 sq cm, bearing the marking TY.
Without notifying the French authorities, the
FBI detectives began following the TY trail. TY is the trademark of the
Taiwanese firm Taiyoun, which manufactured 120,000 such timers in 1988, of
which 20,000 were for the German firm Grsslin, based in Freiburg. The FBI
then pored over Grsslin's client list of some 350 names before singling
one of them: Hans Peter Wst, a German national who had travelled to Libya
in November 1988 and met with Issa al-Shibani. Al-Shibani had asked if
Wst could provide him with timers that could run on direct current using
a nine or 12 volt power supply and which were intended for the night-time
illumination of airfields in the desert.
Upon returning to Germany, Wst contacted the
Steinmetz company about modifying the batteries, which were not
sufficiently powerful, and this was arranged. Wst told the FBI that he
delivered the timers to Tripoli on 20 July 1989. The FBI quickly concluded
that Libya had indeed purchased the TY timer, which had served as the
retarding agent in the Samsonite luggage on board the DC-10. Thurman thus
discovered the scientific evidence implicating Libya in both the Lockerbie
and Tenere incidents.
Before informing Bruguire, the Americans
began seeking British and French participation in an anti-Gadafy
initiative, which led to the Libyan embargo. Immediately after receiving
Thurman's report on 15 October 1991, Calisti notified Bruguire, who was
pleased to have formal evidence supporting Yanga's testimony and
scientifically proving the Libyan connection. "Formal proof of Libyan
culpability" was supplied by the FBI, which worked on the top-secret
photographs of the tiny piece of circuit board used to detonate the
suitcase bomb, as Jean-Marie Pontault passionately proclaimed on both
Le Point's front page and in his book (5). Neither Bruguire nor
Pontault is worried by the belated yet timely arrival of this evidence,
more than two years after the bombing.
Bruguire's bill of indictment includes the
FBI's findings in their entirety but makes no mention of the French
specialists' objections to these conclusions. Thurman's assertions,
however, have spurred two counter-inquiries, one by the French 6th Central
Criminal Investigation Directorate (CCID) and the French Territorial
Surveillance Directorate (TSD), and the other by the Prefecture of Police
crime lab.
Findings of the crime lab
The latter's conclusions are definitive: "It
cannot be established that our timer fragment came from either the first
batch purchased by the Freiburg factory or the second batch modified by
the Libyan." A French interior ministry internal memorandum, dated 10
March 1993, is equally categorical: "The investigations pertaining to the
fragment of printed circuit board found in the wreckage of the DC-10 and
which may have come from the timer that caused the explosion have been
completed. These investigations, conducted in 1992 in both Taiwan and
Germany, have not enabled us to determine that the fragment came from the
shipment of 101 timers ordered by the Libyan Issa al-Shibani."
Nor does Bruguire mention the Prefecture of
Police crime lab's counter-inquiry, conducted in spring 1993 under
Calisti's direction after the FBI investigation had been completed.
Following the release of Thurman's report, the circuit board fragment -
the "evidence" - had been removed from judicial seal no. 4, under which
all the debris had been gathered, placed under special seal no. 4/4 and
then examined thoroughly. Calisti, considered one of the world's leading
explosives experts, offered this conclusion: the fragment provided by the
FBI may have come from a timer similar to the one the FBI presented to
Bruguire (ie the same timer purchased by Libya), but in no way could the
fragment have come from the timer used to detonate the suitcase bomb.
Calisti and his team found no trace of explosives on the timer fragment.
How could the bomb's retarding agent show no
molecular trace of its exposure to penthrite during an explosion of such
magnitude? Using complicated methods, the FBI tried to allay the doubts of
its French counterparts by demonstrating that other areas close to the
bomb showed no trace of explosives; according to the FBI, the deformations
on the circuit board fragment were unquestionably due to the blast effect!
According to Calisti, the timer fragment did
not constitute scientific evidence of Libyan involvement; his familiarity
with Abu Ibrahim's bomb-making techniques also helped him arrive at this
conclusion. Indeed, the TY timer could not have fit in the suitcase bomb
because the timer was much too large. The Prefecture of Police crime lab
thus stuck to its guns. Despite his certainty, Calisti had the debris
under judicial seal no. 4 examined under a microscope in the hopes of
finding another circuit board fragment on which the blast effect could be
observed; this important test also proved unsuccessful. It is striking to
note the similarity of the "scientific" evidence discovered by the FBI in
both the Lockerbie and UTA cases. Of the tens of thousands of pieces of
debris collected at each disaster site, one lone piece of printed circuit
was found and, miracle of miracles, in each case the fragment bore
markings that allowed for positive identification: Mebo in the Lockerbie
case and TY in the case of the UTA DC-10. …
Despite the common findings of the CCID, the
TSD and the Prefecture of Police crime lab, Bruguire chose to believe
Thurman, the expert in fabricating evidence …
The suitcase story
Given that the initial scientific evidence -
the suitcase bomb - had led the investigation to focus on Ahmed Jibril and
the Arab Organisation of 15 May, and given that the timer fragment itself
was unpersuasive, Bruguire resorted to incredible contortions to
establish a link between the suitcase and Libya.
Bruguire explains in his bill of indictment
that in September 1992 the TSD was informed that the Libyans were keeping
two suitcase bombs in a non-judicial location, with one of them being of
potential interest to the inquiry already underway. According to the
Libyans, the two suitcases had been recovered at the time of bombing
incidents carried out by the Libyan opposition on Libyan soil. Shielding
himself behind the TSD, the judge saw the incidents as nothing but a
"Libyan manoeuvre" designed "to sidetrack the French investigators". The
judge then used the so-called manoeuvre to indict the Libyans.
One of the two Samsonite 200 wheeled suitcases
was similar in appearance to the one that had brought down the UTA flight.
In his bill of indictment, Bruguire stated that "the TSD's deputy
director, who examined the suitcase in Tripoli, noted that in all
probability it had been stored somewhat carelessly since it was quite
dusty. In addition, there was no indication that the suitcase had been
under any form of judicial seal. According to accounts, the suitcase was
reportedly retrieved in 1987 in Tripoli in the possession of an opponent
of Gadafy's regime who had links to the Mugarief network, the primary
opponents of the Libyan government. The DST's deputy director then spoke
with Abdallah Senoussi, head of the Libyan intelligence services. Under
pressure from the French official, Senoussi suddenly agreed to have the
two suitcases brought up to his Tripoli office. The Libyans would go on to
regret this imprudent act."
This account is quite simply false. It was in
Tripoli on Friday 15 November 1991 (not September 1992) that Senoussi
first mentioned the existence of the suitcase to General Philippe Rondot,
Pierre Joxe's intelligence adviser. In the belief that he was offering
definitive proof of his good faith, the Libyan showed the general the
suitcase bomb, which was identical to the one used on board the UTA DC-10.
Rondot was able to take samples of the explosives in the suitcase, and a
Libyan foreign intelligence official gave him the following account: "We
found this suitcase in the possession of a Tunisian member of the Mugarief
group. As you may know, Mugarief has long had a base in Baghdad, where he
provided assistance to Hissene Habre's regime in Chad, supplying it with
arms seized by Iraq after the Iran-Iraq war. Mugarief was part of Colonel
Haftar's forces, which were set up and financed by the CIA in Chad, and
which disappeared without a trace with CIA help following Idriss Deby's
overthrow of Habre. And as you may know, Mugarief is currently in the
United States."
Another TSD delegation arrived in Tripoli in
April 1992 to investigate the suitcase story and other matters. On 24
September 1992 Bruguire met secretly with the Libyan Judge Mursi at the
French consulate in Geneva, where Bruguire examined photographs of the
suitcases and retained possession of the photos. Many more secret meetings
took place before the suitcases arrived in France. What the Libyans had
taken to be proof of their good faith had been transformed by the French
examining magistrate into the key evidence of their guilt. Starting from
the presumption that Libyans are inveterate liars, Bruguire concluded
that Libya was in possession of suitcase bombs manufactured by Abu Ibrahim
and that the suitcase used to blow up the UTA DC-10 came from Tripoli.
However, in his bill of indictment, the judge forgot one "detail": the
system used to detonate the suitcase recovered by the Libyans was not the
same as the one that, according to the FBI, blew up the Samsonite suitcase
on board the aircraft in Brazzaville. This detail only served to bolster
the arguments of the French experts under Calisti's direction. In short,
the suitcase debris and timer fragments found in the Tenere Desert could
in no way constitute proof of Libyan involvement in the bombing.
The scourge of terrorists
As one of the first French judicial
celebrities, Bruguire has spent long hours polishing his image and
setting the stage for his investigations and travels. Realising that he
could single-handedly reshape French foreign policy and recognising that
politicians were scared of him, Bruguire organised and perfected a
powerful system that enabled him to lobby for and impose his own view of
the truth. Judges are the last remaining professionals to enjoy flattering
coverage in an otherwise ruthless press since they can grant scoops to
whomever they like due to the confidentiality of judicial proceedings. Woe
unto those who fail to return the favour. Bruguire was one of the first
to learn this trick. The DC-10 bombing case put him on the magazines'
front pages for the first time. The French weekly Le Point offers
justification for this in an article that must have made his head spin:
"This judge is on our cover because he represents all that we cherish as
opposed to all that we hate. A love for justice as opposed to compulsory
moral compromise; civic courage as opposed to systematic equivocation; the
rule of law as opposed to the collusive reasons of state. He is a soldier
fighting terrorism, that war waged by cowards. He combats the
investigative sloth recommended by our chronic 'realists' in order to
ensure their own peace of mind and that of a jaded state.
"Bruguire is one of the last to serve this
unworthy old crone that our democracy is becoming. He is a soldier of
justice. He is not a braggart. He has no sponsors, and has nothing to sell
or advertise save a personal conception of the law that brings honour to
all civilised nations. I recognise that his is not the image likely to be
exhibited in the court of public opinion, but this is all the more reason
to do so…"
The reality is otherwise. Bruguire has always
felt closer to the Place Beauvau (ministry of the interior) than to the
Place Vendme (ministry of justice), especially when Charles Pasqua and
Jean-Louis Debr were in power. He remained on good terms with Alain
Marsaud after Marsaud resigned his position on the 14th
antiterrorist court to join Charles Pasqua in the Senate. His close links
to the Rally for the Republic have led him to dream of occupying positions
such as the directorship of the TSD or of the Gendarmerie, since this
"soldier of justice" also has secret agent yearnings. Nothing thrilled him
more than arranging, in collaboration with General Rondot, the 1994
capture of Carlos in the Sudan. As a man of order and a believer in
"reasons of state", Bruguire sees himself on the front lines of the fight
to preserve certain values. He disdains those human rights defenders who
"play into terrorists' hands". …
In 1981 the French State Security Court, which
had dealt with terrorist cases, ceased to exist. Bruguire was then
entrusted with a bombing case involving the Direct Action group. This
proved a turning point in his career. He gave up his work on organised
crime and began to concentrate on terrorism-related matters. Eighty of his
100 cases in 1986 pertained to terrorism. Bruguire became the uncontested
expert in cases that had badly shaken public opinion - so much so that
journalists dubbed him the terrorists' "hunter" and "nemesis". …
Bruguire's methods, often seen as
expeditious, make him stand out among judges. He has increased the number
of commissions of enquiry, examinations, interrogations, temporary
detentions and instances of political provocation. Certain prominent cases
that initially seemed open-and-shut turned out to be without substance or
were poorly conceived. In January 1999 the French court of criminal appeal
dismissed the case of the Saint-Germain-des-Prs drugstore bombing
involving Carlos the Jackal, ruling that there were no grounds for
prosecution. The tribunal's judgement with respect to the vast so-called
Chalabi network - 173 Islamic activists who, on Bruguire's orders and in
connivance with Jean-Louis Debr, were rounded up with great ceremony -
was a stinging rebuff to Bruguire's efforts. Thirty-four of those
detained were released for lack of evidence on the orders of Judge Thiel,
who took over the case; of the 138 individuals tried in a Fleury-Mrogis
gymnasium, 51 were released after spending several months in pre-trial
detention…
The administration of French antiterrorist
justice under Bruguire's heavy hand is now being challenged. Bruguire's
judicial efforts have eluded any form of democratic control since
antiterrorist matters are his purview and he has been entrenched since
1986. He is accountable to no one, and thanks to his made-to-measure
position as first vice-president of the Paris tribunal, he enjoys a
semi-regal status worthy of France's ancien rgime. In the opinion
of most lawyers, the French court of criminal appeal, which should serve
as a genuine recourse as regards the decisions of antiterrorist judges,
now operates like a simple record-keeping chamber: owing to the cases'
size and complexity, the judges cover up without asking questions.
