Above the Tearline: A Window of Opportunity For a Rendition in Libya
Video Transcript:
Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton explains why the current chaos in Libya is a perfect opportunity to apprehend al-Megrahi, one of the bombers of flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
Editor’s Note: Transcripts are generated using speech-recognition technology. Therefore, STRATFOR cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
While the world is focusing on the chaos in Libya surrounding the Gadhafi regime, counterterrorism agents could take advantage of this window of opportunity to capture the Pan Am 103 bomber al-Megrahi.
On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am flight 103 outbound from Heathrow Airport in London blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. The bombing was carried out by intelligence agents working for the Gadhafi regime. One of the perpetrators in the attack spent many years in jail and in 2009 he was released due to humanitarian purposes. The suspect was suffering from terminal cancer and flown back to Libya where he was given a hero's welcome. Due to all the chaos in Tripoli at the moment, this affords U.S. intelligence the opportunity to attempt to locate the suspect for a rendition.
Tactically, you would need very granular data as to a specific location for his whereabouts and usually you're going to glean that through human assets or perhaps defectors within the Libyan intelligence and security services that would walk in or you could recruit to lead you to his specific location. The logistics challenge would be getting a team in to ferry the individual out once you captured him. You could also utilize Libyan rebels to assist you in identifying and capturing him and bringing him to a location where you could ferry him out of the country.
Operationally, what you would need from a counterterrorism perspective is proof of life, and we have that in a videotape from July 26 where the suspect was seen at an event with Gadhafi. The challenge would be whether or not our granular intelligence is good enough to locate him at this moment in time and that's always an issue when you're looking at terrorism renditions. The Above The Tearline aspect with his video is: the Pan Am 103 case was personal. I worked on that case, I know many others have lost friends and colleagues and fellow agents on that flight. There is a vested interest to bring the perpetrators to justice. The symbolism of reaching out inside of Libya and grabbing this individual and bringing him back to stand trial in a U.S. court for the bombing of Pan Am 103 would resonate around the world.
