Lawyers for the two Libyans on trial for the Lockerbie bombing accused the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command of blowing up Pan Am over the Scottish town in 1988, reported Al Jazeerah satellite channel.
William Taylor, lawyer for Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, was quoted as saying a cell of the PFLP-GC was based in western Germany carried out the attack.
The Lockerbie trial was adjourned Wednesday for one day to allow defense lawyers to study the final text of the murder charge against two Libyans accused of the December 1988 bombing after they failed to obtain a secret document fro the Syrian authorities. The Syrian government refused to hand over evidence, which was considered vital to the defense case, according to the defense.
Both defendants, Megrahi, 48, and al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, 44, pleaded not guilty.
According to AFP, German police arrested the cell in October 1988, seizing a Toshiba radio cassette player converted into a bomb similar -- but not identical -- to the modified version used in the Lockerbie bombing two months later.
All but two members of the cell had been unexpectedly freed by December, said the agency.
Moreover, the cell could have had access to the timers used in the Pan Am bomb from the East German secret police rather than Libya, Taylor was quoted by the agency as saying.
Despite differences between the PFLP-GC device and the Pan Am one, Taylor said "it would still need to be an extraordinary coincidence for such a group in Germany in October 1988 not to have been responsible" for attacking a jet passing through its area two months later.
Leader of PFLP-GC, Damascus-based Ahmad Jibril, has always denied any link between his group and the massacre in which 270 people were killed – Albawaba.com
