CIA used Malta-based Libyan ‘spy’ to secure Lockerbie verdict
A Libyan Arab Airlines employee who worked at Malta’s Luqa airport back in the 1980s fooled the CIA into thinking he was a credible spy into Libya’s secret service in return for a handsome $1,000 monthly wager.
A BBC investigation reveals that cables sent to the US by a CIA case officer from the embassy in Floriana, showed that the CIA handlers had grave doubts about Majid Giaka’s information – but still presented him as one of the star witnesses in the Lockerbie trial.
The other star witness was Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, whose testimony today has also been discredited.
Five months before the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988, 27-year-old Giaka turned up at the US embassy in Malta expressing “a desire to relocate... in return for sensitive information on Libya”, in the words of a cable sent by a CIA case officer.
Giaka claimed he was an agent of Libya’s Jamahiriya security organisation. It later turned out that he had only worked in the agency’s garage.
Apart from a monthly $1,000 in return for information, Giaka was also given $6,000 for fake surgery on his arm so that he could avoid military service in Libya.
The CIA hoped Giaka would have inside knowledge on the origin of the suitcase that carried the bomb that exploded over Lockerbie.
According to one cable from the US embassy, the officers said: “Giaka does not believe explosives hidden in an unaccompanied suitcase could be inserted into the handling process at Luqa International Airport.”
Finally, the case officers said: “It is clear that Giaka will never be the penetration of the ESO [Libyan External Security Organisation] that we had anticipated... unfortunately, it appears that our assisting him in scam surgery on his arm to avoid military service has had the reverse result that we had intended – it has also allowed him to avoid further service with the ESO, Giaka’s true intention from the beginning”.
Being the only Libyan agent the CIA had in Malta, the agency kept him on. When Libyan Arab Airlines security chief Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi became a suspect in the Lockerbie bombing, Giaka claimed he “had no further information” on his one-time colleague.
But the CIA managed to put him on a witness protection programme in 1991, up until he appeared in 2000 as a witness in the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands where he claimed he had seen al-Megrahi and co-accused Khalifa Fhimah, at Luqa airport before the bombing with a large brown suitcase.
The CIA embassy cables however confirm that nearly two years before, Giaka didn’t remember anything. His evidence was described by judges as “at best grossly exaggerated and at worst simply untrue” and concluded he was “largely motivated by financial considerations”.
Malta witness Tony Gauci, whose witness was the key plank for the conviction of al-Megrahi, was also accused of having been financially compensated by the Americans for his testimony. He claimed he sold al-Megrahi clothes from his shop, which were used to wrap the bomb in the suitcase that exploded the Pan-Am flight.
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